HARD TIMES AND REPRINTED PIECES {0}
By CHARLES DICKENS
With illustrations by Marcus Stone, Maurice Greiffenhagen, and F. Walker
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
CONTENTS
BOOK THE FIRST. SOWING PAGE CHAPTER I The One Thing Needful 3 CHAPTER II Murdering the Innocents 4 CHAPTER III A Loophole 8 CHAPTER IV Mr. Bounderby 12 CHAPTER V The Keynote 18 CHAPTER VI Sleary’s Horsemanship 23 CHAPTER VII Mrs. Sparsit 33 CHAPTER VIII Never Wonder 38 CHAPTER IX Sissy’s Progress 43 CHAPTER X Stephen Blackpool 49 CHAPTER XI No Way Out 53 CHAPTER XII The Old Woman 59 CHAPTER XIII Rachael 63 CHAPTER XIV The Great Manufacturer 69 CHAPTER XV Father and Daughter 73 CHAPTER XVI Husband and Wife 79 BOOK THE SECOND. REAPING CHAPTER I Effects in the Bank 84 CHAPTER II Mr. James Harthouse 94 CHAPTER III The Whelp 101 CHAPTER IV Men and Brothers 111 CHAPTER V Men and Masters 105 CHAPTER VI Fading Away 116 CHAPTER VII Gunpowder 126 CHAPTER VIII Explosion 136 CHAPTER IX Hearing the Last of it 146 CHAPTER X Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase 152 CHAPTER XI Lower and Lower 156 CHAPTER XII Down 163 BOOK THE THIRD. GARNERING CHAPTER I Another Thing Needful 167 CHAPTER II Very Ridiculous 172 CHAPTER III Very Decided 179 CHAPTER IV Lost 186 CHAPTER V Found 193 CHAPTER VI The Starlight 200 CHAPTER VII Whelp-Hunting 208 CHAPTER VIII Philosophical 216 CHAPTER IX Final 222
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-room 64 Mr. Harthouse Dining at the Bounderbys’ 100 Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the Garden 132 Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft 206
BOOK THE FIRST SOWING
CHAPTER I THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.
‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
CHAPTER II MURDERING THE INNOCENTS
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’
‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’
‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’
‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’
‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennæ of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’—as the custom is, in these examinations.
‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’
‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’
There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
‘So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’
‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.
‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—’
‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’
‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’
‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.
‘Now, if Mr. M’Choakumchild,’ said the gentleman, ‘will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure.’
Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. ‘Mr. M’Choakumchild, we only wait for you.’
So, Mr. M’Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!
CHAPTER III A LOOPHOLE
MR. GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model—just as the young Gradgrinds were all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.
To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great town—called Coketown in the present faithful guide-book.
A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master’s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire-proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it for good gracious goodness’ sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped it!
Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a definition) as ‘an eminently practical’ father. He had a particular pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due was acceptable.
He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and banging band attached to the horse-riding establishment, which had there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was ‘Sleary’s Horse-riding’ which claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to ‘elucidate the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs.’ He was also to exhibit ‘his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.’ The same Signor Jupe was to ‘enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.’ Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in ‘the highly novel and laughable hippo-comedietta of The Tailor’s Journey to Brentford.’
Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the place.
This brought him to a stop. ‘Now, to think of these vagabonds,’ said he, ‘attracting the young rabble from a model school.’
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:
‘Louisa!! Thomas!!’
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
‘In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand; ‘what do you do here?’
‘Wanted to see what it was like,’ returned Louisa, shortly.
‘What it was like?’
‘Yes, father.’
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he thought in his eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.
‘Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe that you, with your education and resources, should have brought your sister to a scene like this.’
‘I brought him, father,’ said Louisa, quickly. ‘I asked him to come.’
‘I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.’
She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
‘You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open; Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and you, here!’ cried Mr. Gradgrind. ‘In this degraded position! I am amazed.’
‘I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,’ said Louisa.
‘Tired? Of what?’ asked the astonished father.
‘I don’t know of what—of everything, I think.’
‘Say not another word,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You are childish. I will hear no more.’ He did not speak again until they had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: ‘What would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?’ At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!
‘What,’ he repeated presently, ‘would Mr. Bounderby say?’ All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals ‘What would Mr. Bounderby say?’—as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.
CHAPTER IV MR. BOUNDERBY
NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby?
Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind’s bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby—or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus took up a commanding position, from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.
‘I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.’
Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
‘No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Enough to give a baby cold,’ Mrs. Gradgrind considered.
‘Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘For years, ma’am, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn’t have touched me with a pair of tongs.’
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing her imbecility could think of doing.
‘How I fought through it, I don’t know,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.’
Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother—
‘My mother? Bolted, ma’am!’ said Bounderby.
Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
‘My mother left me to my grandmother,’ said Bounderby; ‘and, according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take ’em off and sell ’em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen glasses of liquor before breakfast!’
Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
‘She kept a chandler’s shop,’ pursued Bounderby, ‘and kept me in an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.’
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.
‘I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma’am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those are the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of St. Giles’s Church, London, under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct—he hadn’t such advantages—but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people—the education that made him won’t do for everybody, he knows well—such and such his education was, however, and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of his life.’
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, ‘Behold your Bounderby!’
‘Well!’ blustered Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter? What is young Thomas in the dumps about?’
He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
‘We were peeping at the circus,’ muttered Louisa, haughtily, without lifting up her eyes, ‘and father caught us.’
‘And, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband in a lofty manner, ‘I should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.’
‘Dear me,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I wonder at you. I declare you’re enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn’t. Then what would you have done, I should like to know?’
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently.
‘As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn’t go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘You know, as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that’s what you want. With my head in its present state, I couldn’t remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to.’
‘That’s the reason!’ pouted Louisa.
‘Don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can’t be nothing of the sort,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘Go and be somethingological directly.’ Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woefully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had ‘no nonsense’ about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died away, and nobody minded her.
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, ‘you are always so interested in my young people—particularly in Louisa—that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to which education should be addressed. ‘And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Thomas’s and Louisa’s minds which is—or rather, which is not—I don’t know that I can express myself better than by saying—which has never been intended to be developed, and in which their reason has no part.’
‘There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of vagabonds,’ returned Bounderby. ‘When I was a vagabond myself, nobody looked with any interest at me; I know that.’
‘Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with his eyes on the fire, ‘in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?’
‘I’ll tell you in what. In idle imagination.’
‘I hope not,’ said the eminently practical; ‘I confess, however, that the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.’
‘In idle imagination, Gradgrind,’ repeated Bounderby. ‘A very bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind’s pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn’t a refined bringing up.’
‘Whether,’ said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, ‘whether any instructor or servant can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle story-book can have got into the house? Because, in minds that have been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible.’
‘Stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with explosive humility. ‘You have one of those strollers’ children in the school.’
‘Cecilia Jupe, by name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a stricken look at his friend.
‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby again. ‘How did she come there?’
‘Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not regularly belonging to our town, and—yes, you are right, Bounderby, you are right.’
‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, once more. ‘Louisa saw her when she came?’
‘Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind’s presence.’
‘Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, ‘what passed?’
‘Oh, my poor health!’ returned Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘The girl wanted to come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict them when such was the fact!’
‘Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Turn this girl to the right about, and there’s an end of it.’
‘I am much of your opinion.’
‘Do it at once,’ said Bounderby, ‘has always been my motto from a child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!’
‘Are you walking?’ asked his friend. ‘I have the father’s address. Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?’
‘Not the least in the world,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘as long as you do it at once!’
So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat—he always threw it on, as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat—and with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. ‘I never wear gloves,’ it was his custom to say. ‘I didn’t climb up the ladder in them.—Shouldn’t be so high up, if I had.’
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children’s study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which, notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
‘It’s all right now, Louisa: it’s all right, young Thomas,’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you won’t do so any more. I’ll answer for it’s being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that’s worth a kiss, isn’t it?’
‘You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,’ returned Louisa, when she had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
‘Always my pet; ain’t you, Louisa?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Good-bye, Louisa!’
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
‘What are you about, Loo?’ her brother sulkily remonstrated. ‘You’ll rub a hole in your face.’
‘You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn’t cry!’
CHAPTER V THE KEYNOTE
COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there—as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done—they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short, it was the only clear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
There was an old woman, and what do you think? She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink; Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet, And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief—some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent—some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music—some occasional light pie in which even M’Choakumchild had no finger—which craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?
‘This man lives at Pod’s End, and I don’t quite know Pod’s End,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Which is it, Bounderby?’
Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.
Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Gradgrind recognized. ‘Halloa!’ said he. ‘Stop! Where are you going! Stop!’ Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.
‘Why are you tearing about the streets,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘in this improper manner?’
‘I was—I was run after, sir,’ the girl panted, ‘and I wanted to get away.’
‘Run after?’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Who would run after you?’
The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.
‘What do you mean, boy?’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘What are you doing? How dare you dash against—everybody—in this manner?’ Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.
‘Was this boy running after you, Jupe?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl reluctantly.
‘No, I wasn’t, sir!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Not till she run away from me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they’re famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,’ addressing Sissy. ‘It’s as well known in the town as—please, sir, as the multiplication table isn’t known to the horse-riders.’ Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this.
‘He frightened me so,’ said the girl, ‘with his cruel faces!’
‘Oh!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Oh! An’t you one of the rest! An’t you a horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn’t been a horse-rider?’
‘Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,’ observed Mr. Bounderby. ‘You’d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a week.’
‘Truly, I think so,’ returned his friend. ‘Bitzer, turn you about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along.’
The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.
‘Now, girl,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘take this gentleman and me to your father’s; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are carrying?’
‘Gin,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Dear, no, sir! It’s the nine oils.’
‘The what?’ cried Mr. Bounderby.
‘The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.’
‘Then,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, ‘what the devil do you rub your father with nine oils for?’
‘It’s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the ring,’ replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. ‘They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.’
‘Serve ’em right,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for being idle.’ She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.
‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.’
Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, ‘And this is Pod’s End; is it, Jupe?’
‘This is it, sir, and—if you wouldn’t mind, sir—this is the house.’
She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
‘It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn’t mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.’
‘Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!’ said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his metallic laugh. ‘Pretty well this, for a self-made man!’
CHAPTER VI SLEARY’S HORSEMANSHIP
THE name of the public-house was the Pegasus’s Arms. The Pegasus’s legs might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus’s Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines:
Good malt makes good beer, Walk in, and they’ll draw it here; Good wine makes good brandy, Give us a call, and you’ll find it handy.
Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another Pegasus—a theatrical one—with real gauze let in for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.
As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting any one, and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the candle appeared together.
‘Father is not in our room, sir,’ she said, with a face of great surprise. ‘If you wouldn’t mind walking in, I’ll find him directly.’ They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it. The white night-cap, embellished with two peacock’s feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts, hung upon a nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other token of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who went aboard the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any sign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus’s Arms.
They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard voices expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and looked round with her hands clasped and her face full of terror.
‘Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don’t know why he should go there, but he must be there; I’ll bring him in a minute!’ She was gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her.
‘What does she mean!’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Back in a minute? It’s more than a mile off.’
Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and introducing himself with the words, ‘By your leaves, gentlemen!’ walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over his father’s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father’s hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy.
‘By your leaves, gentlemen,’ said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the room. ‘It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe!’
‘It was,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with you.’
‘You see, my friend,’ Mr. Bounderby put in, ‘we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know the value of time.’
‘I have not,’ retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, ‘the honour of knowing you,—but if you mean that you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that you are about right.’
‘And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,’ said Cupid.
‘Kidderminster, stow that!’ said Mr. Childers. (Master Kidderminster was Cupid’s mortal name.)
‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’
‘Kidderminster,’ said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, ‘stow that!—Sir,’ to Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that Jupe has missed his tip very often, lately.’
‘Has—what has he missed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent Bounderby for assistance.
‘Missed his tip.’
‘Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done ’em once,’ said Master Kidderminster. ‘Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was loose in his ponging.’
‘Didn’t do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his tumbling,’ Mr. Childers interpreted.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is tip, is it?’
‘In a general way that’s missing his tip,’ Mr. E. W. B. Childers answered.
‘Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!’ ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. ‘Queer sort of company, too, for a man who has raised himself!’
‘Lower yourself, then,’ retorted Cupid. ‘Oh Lord! if you’ve raised yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.’
‘This is a very obtrusive lad!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and knitting his brows on him.
‘We’d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were coming,’ retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. ‘It’s a pity you don’t have a bespeak, being so particular. You’re on the Tight-Jeff, ain’t you?’
‘What does this unmannerly boy mean,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in a sort of desperation, ‘by Tight-Jeff?’
‘There! Get out, get out!’ said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. ‘Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don’t much signify: it’s only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for Jupe?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Then,’ continued Mr. Childers, quickly, ‘my opinion is, he will never receive it. Do you know much of him?’
‘I never saw the man in my life.’
‘I doubt if you ever will see him now. It’s pretty plain to me, he’s off.’
‘Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?’
‘Ay! I mean,’ said Mr. Childers, with a nod, ‘that he has cut. He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can’t stand it.’
‘Why has he been—so very much—Goosed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
‘His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,’ said Childers. ‘He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can’t get a living out of them.’
‘A Cackler!’ Bounderby repeated. ‘Here we go again!’
‘A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,’ said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair—which all shook at once. ‘Now, it’s a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with it.’
‘Good!’ interrupted Mr. Bounderby. ‘This is good, Gradgrind! A man so fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good! Ha! ha! Now, I’ll tell you what, young man. I haven’t always occupied my present station of life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, but my mother—ran away from me.’
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to hear it.
‘Very well,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There’s no family pride about me, there’s no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that’s what he is, in English.’
‘It’s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English or whether in French,’ retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about. ‘I am telling your friend what’s the fact; if you don’t like to hear it, you can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do; but give it mouth in your own building at least,’ remonstrated E. W. B. with stern irony. ‘Don’t give it mouth in this building, till you’re called upon. You have got some building of your own I dare say, now?’
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
‘Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?’ said Childers. ‘Because this isn’t a strong building, and too much of you might bring it down!’
Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him, but he has cut away and left her.’
‘Pray,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘why will she never believe it of him?’
‘Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,’ said Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart than the general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. This walk was common to all the male members of Sleary’s company, and was understood to express, that they were always on horseback.
‘Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,’ said Childers, giving his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. ‘Now, he leaves her without anything to take to.’
‘It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express that opinion,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly.
‘I never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.’
‘Oh! Indeed?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been defrauded of his good opinion. ‘I was not aware of its being the custom to apprentice young persons to—’
‘Idleness,’ Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. ‘No, by the Lord Harry! Nor I!’
‘Her father always had it in his head,’ resumed Childers, feigning unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s existence, ‘that she was to be taught the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can’t say; I can only say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for her, there—and a bit of ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years.’
Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.
‘When Sissy got into the school here,’ he pursued, ‘her father was as pleased as Punch. I couldn’t altogether make out why, myself, as we were not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move in his mind—he was always half-cracked—and then considered her provided for. If you should happen to have looked in to-night, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her any little service,’ said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and repeating his look, ‘it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very fortunate and well-timed.’
‘On the contrary,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I came to tell him that her connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any connivance on her part—Bounderby, let me have a word with you.’
Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face, and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr. Bounderby’s voice as ‘No. I say no. I advise you not. I say by no means.’ While, from Mr. Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, ‘But even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.’
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company gradually gathered together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from standing about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children, who did the fairy business when required. The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all particular in respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in the world.
Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.
‘Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, ‘Your thervant! Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You’ve heard of my Clown and hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?’
He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered ‘Yes.’
‘Well, Thquire,’ he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. ‘Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?’
‘I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any more than I want to thtand in her way. I’m willing to take her prentith, though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by them ath don’t know me; but if you’d been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I have been, your voithe wouldn’t have lathted out, Thquire, no more than mine.’
‘I dare say not,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give it a name, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease.
‘Nothing for me, I thank you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Don’t thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you haven’t took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.’
Here his daughter Josephine—a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies—cried, ‘Father, hush! she has come back!’ Then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And when she saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the family-way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep over her.
‘Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,’ said Sleary.
‘O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone to try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am sure! And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you come back!’ It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby (growing impatient) took the case in hand.
‘Now, good people all,’ said he, ‘this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what’s your name! Your father has absconded—deserted you—and you mustn’t expect to see him again as long as you live.’
They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered ‘Shame!’ and the women ‘Brute!’ and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to Mr. Bounderby.
‘I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that you had better cut it thort, and drop it. They’re a very good natur’d people, my people, but they’re accuthtomed to be quick in their movementh; and if you don’t act upon my advithe, I’m damned if I don’t believe they’ll pith you out o’ winder.’
Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.
‘It is of no moment,’ said he, ‘whether this person is to be expected back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no present expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all hands.’
‘Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that!’ From Sleary.
‘Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any more, in consequence of there being practical objections, into which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you. The only condition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you communicate no more with any of your friends who are here present. These observations comprise the whole of the case.’
‘At the thame time,’ said Sleary, ‘I mutht put in my word, Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know your companionth. Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you’re a lying at prethent, would be a mother to you, and Joth’phine would be a thithter to you. I don’t pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don’t thay but what, when you mith’d your tip, you’d find me cut up rough, and thwear an oath or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that I don’t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have thed my thay.’
The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:
‘The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical education, and that even your father himself (from what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to have known and felt that much.’
The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force of the change, and drew a long breath together, that plainly said, ‘she will go!’
‘Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,’ Mr. Gradgrind cautioned her; ‘I say no more. Be sure you know your own mind!’
‘When father comes back,’ cried the girl, bursting into tears again after a minute’s silence, ‘how will he ever find me if I go away!’
‘You may be quite at ease,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out the whole matter like a sum: ‘you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr.—’
‘Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all over England, and alwayth paythe ith way.’
‘Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have no difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well known.’
‘Well known,’ assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. ‘You’re one of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the houthe. But never mind that at prethent.’
There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands before her face, ‘Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my heart!’
The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together—it was soon done, for they were not many—and to pack them in a basket which had often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still sobbing, and covering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood near the door, ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in the middle of the room, with the male members of the company about him, exactly as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter Josephine’s performance. He wanted nothing but his whip.
The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing her: and brought the children to take leave of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether.
‘Now, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘If you are quite determined, come!’
But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the professional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss—Master Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary was reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide he took her by both her hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding-master manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him crying.
‘Good-bye, my dear!’ said Sleary. ‘You’ll make your fortun, I hope, and none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I’ll pound it. I with your father hadn’t taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth to have the dog out of the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn’t have performed without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!’
With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse.
‘There the ith, Thquire,’ he said, sweeping her with a professional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, ‘and the’ll do you juthtithe. Good-bye, Thethilia!’
‘Good-bye, Cecilia!’ ‘Good-bye, Sissy!’ ‘God bless you, dear!’ In a variety of voices from all the room.
But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her bosom, and he now interposed with ‘Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large to carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!’
‘No, no!’ she said, in another burst of tears. ‘Oh, no! Pray let me keep it for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes back. He had never thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you please!’
‘Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell, Thethilia! My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if, when you’re grown up and married and well off, you come upon any horthe-riding ever, don’t be hard upon it, don’t be croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might do wurth. People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,’ continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking; ‘they can’t be alwayth a working, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth; not the wurtht. I’ve got my living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but I conthider that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!’
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs and the fixed eye of Philosophy—and its rolling eye, too—soon lost the three figures and the basket in the darkness of the street.
CHAPTER VII MRS. SPARSIT
MR. BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs. Sparsit was this lady’s name; and she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Bounderby’s car, as it rolled along in triumph with the Bully of humility inside.
For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by the mother’s side what Mrs. Sparsit still called ‘a Powler.’ Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves—which they had rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors’ Court.
The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother’s side a Powler, married this lady, being by the father’s side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher’s meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby’s tea as he took his breakfast.
If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit’s. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit’s juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered waggon-loads of early roses all over that lady’s path. ‘And yet, sir,’ he would say, ‘how does it turn out after all? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown!’
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him out to be the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An Englishman’s house is his castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together. And as often (and it was very often) as an orator of this kind brought into his peroration,
‘Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made,’
—it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you are unusually slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning.’
‘Why, ma’am,’ he returned, ‘I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind’s whim;’ Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking—as if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn’t; ‘Tom Gradgrind’s whim, ma’am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl.’
‘The girl is now waiting to know,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘whether she is to go straight to the school, or up to the Lodge.’
‘She must wait, ma’am,’ answered Bounderby, ‘till I know myself. We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he should wish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma’am.’
‘Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Bounderby.’
‘I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order that he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any association with Louisa.’
‘Indeed, Mr. Bounderby? Very thoughtful of you!’ Mrs. Sparsit’s Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.
‘It’s tolerably clear to me,’ said Bounderby, ‘that the little puss can get small good out of such companionship.’
‘Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby?’
‘Yes, ma’am, I’m speaking of Louisa.’
‘Your observation being limited to “little puss,”’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might be indicated by that expression.’
‘Louisa,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘Louisa, Louisa.’
‘You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.’ Mrs. Sparsit took a little more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the infernal gods.
‘If you had said I was another father to Tom—young Tom, I mean, not my friend Tom Gradgrind—you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my wing, ma’am.’
‘Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?’ Mrs. Sparsit’s ‘sir,’ in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.
‘I’m not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational cramming before then,’ said Bounderby. ‘By the Lord Harry, he’ll have enough of it, first and last! He’d open his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw was, at his time of life.’ Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. ‘But it’s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do you know about tumblers? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.’
‘I certainly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity serenely mournful, ‘was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.’
‘Egad, ma’am, so was I,’ said Bounderby, ‘—with the wrong side of it. A hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure you. People like you, ma’am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no idea how hard a paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it’s of no use my talking to you about tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies and honourables.’
‘I trust, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, ‘it is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment.’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said her patron, ‘perhaps some people may be pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, has gone through. But you must confess that you were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. Come, ma’am, you know you were born in the lap of luxury.’
‘I do not, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit with a shake of her head, ‘deny it.’
Mr. Bounderby was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his back to the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his position.
‘And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,’ he said, warming his legs.
‘It is true, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an affectation of humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.
‘You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood upon her. ‘It is unquestionably true.’
Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. and Miss Gradgrind being then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss.
‘Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr. Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Sparsit. Observing this, the blustrous Bounderby had the following remarks to make:
‘Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot, is Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any room in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don’t behave towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don’t care a button what you do to me, because I don’t affect to be anybody. So far from having high connections I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come here.’
‘I hope, Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, ‘that this was merely an oversight.’
‘My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said Bounderby, ‘that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware, ma’am, I don’t allow of even oversights towards you.’
‘You are very good indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head with her State humility. ‘It is not worth speaking of.’
Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
‘Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.’
‘Yes, sir, very,’ she answered, curtseying.
‘I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found you among, I dare say?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.
‘Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.’
‘Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown. ‘I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?’
‘O, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—O, of all the happy times we had together, sir!’
It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
‘And what,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, ‘did you read to your father, Jupe?’
‘About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,’ she sobbed out; ‘and about—’
‘Hush!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest.’
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Bounderby, ‘I have given you my opinion already, and I shouldn’t do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent upon it, very well!’
So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the evening.
CHAPTER VIII NEVER WONDER
LET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.
When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying ‘Tom, I wonder’—upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, ‘Louisa, never wonder!’
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M’Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.
Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement—which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body number two, said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.
There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering. They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women! They sometimes, after fifteen hours’ work, sat down to read mere fables about men and women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.
‘I am sick of my life, Loo. I, hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you,’ said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the hair-cutting chamber at twilight.
‘You don’t hate Sissy, Tom?’
‘I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,’ said Tom, moodily.
‘No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!’
‘She must,’ said Tom. ‘She must just hate and detest the whole set-out of us. They’ll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with her. Already she’s getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as—I am.’
Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.
‘As to me,’ said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky hands, ‘I am a Donkey, that’s what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.’
‘Not me, I hope, Tom?’
‘No, Loo; I wouldn’t hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don’t know what this—jolly old—Jaundiced Jail,’ Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one, ‘would be without you.’
‘Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?’
‘Why, of course I do. What’s the use of talking about it!’ returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit.
‘Because, Tom,’ said his sister, after silently watching the sparks awhile, ‘as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing to you. I can’t talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.’
‘Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a Mule too, which you’re not. If father was determined to make me either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a Mule. And so I am,’ said Tom, desperately.
‘It’s a great pity,’ said Louisa, after another pause, and speaking thoughtfully out of her dark corner: ‘it’s a great pity, Tom. It’s very unfortunate for both of us.’
‘Oh! You,’ said Tom; ‘you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of it better than a boy does. I don’t miss anything in you. You are the only pleasure I have—you can brighten even this place—and you can always lead me as you like.’
‘You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such things, I don’t so much mind knowing better. Though I do know better, Tom, and am very sorry for it.’ She came and kissed him, and went back into her corner again.
‘I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,’ said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, ‘and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out: and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and blow them all up together! However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I’ll have my revenge.’
‘Your revenge, Tom?’
‘I mean, I’ll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something, and hear something. I’ll recompense myself for the way in which I have been brought up.’
‘But don’t disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Bounderby thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half so kind.’
‘Oh!’ said Tom, laughing; ‘I don’t mind that. I shall very well know how to manage and smooth old Bounderby!’
Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination—if such treason could have been there—might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with their future.
‘What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a secret?’
‘Oh!’ said Tom, ‘if it is a secret, it’s not far off. It’s you. You are his little pet, you are his favourite; he’ll do anything for you. When he says to me what I don’t like, I shall say to him, “My sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She always used to tell me she was sure you would be easier with me than this.” That’ll bring him about, or nothing will.’
After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until he suddenly looked up, and asked:
‘Have you gone to sleep, Loo?’
‘No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.’
‘You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,’ said Tom. ‘Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.’
‘Tom,’ enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were reading what she asked in the fire, and it was not quite plainly written there, ‘do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr. Bounderby’s?’
‘Why, there’s one thing to be said of it,’ returned Tom, pushing his chair from him, and standing up; ‘it will be getting away from home.’
‘There is one thing to be said of it,’ Louisa repeated in her former curious tone; ‘it will be getting away from home. Yes.’
‘Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I had better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence, than where I should lose it altogether. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, Tom.’
The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he could make of it.
‘Except that it is a fire,’ said Tom, ‘it looks to me as stupid and blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus?’
‘I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.’
‘Wondering again!’ said Tom.
‘I have such unmanageable thoughts,’ returned his sister, ‘that they will wonder.’
‘Then I beg of you, Louisa,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door without being heard, ‘to do nothing of that description, for goodness’ sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from your father. And, Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is not to do it.’
Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped her with the conclusive answer, ‘Louisa, don’t tell me, in my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.’
‘I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. ‘Nonsense! Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your father’s ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes! I wish,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair, and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these mere shadows of facts, ‘yes, I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!’
CHAPTER IX SISSY’S PROGRESS
SISSY JUPE had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M’Choakumchild and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long so very hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled ciphering-book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one restraint.
It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The girl believed that her father had not deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she was.
The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? M’Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, ‘What is the first principle of this science?’ the absurd answer, ‘To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.’
Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe ‘must be kept to it.’ So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.
‘It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!’ she said, one night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day something clearer to her.
‘Do you think so?’
‘I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me now, would be so easy then.’
‘You might not be the better for it, Sissy.’
Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, ‘I should not be the worse, Miss Louisa.’ To which Miss Louisa answered, ‘I don’t know that.’
There had been so little communication between these two—both because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition relative to Sissy’s past career—that they were still almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Louisa’s face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.
‘You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can ever be,’ Louisa resumed. ‘You are pleasanter to yourself, than I am to _my_self.’
‘But, if you please, Miss Louisa,’ Sissy pleaded, ‘I am—O so stupid!’
Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser by-and-by.
‘You don’t know,’ said Sissy, half crying, ‘what a stupid girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help them. They seem to come natural to me.’
‘Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I suppose, Sissy?’
‘O no!’ she eagerly returned. ‘They know everything.’
‘Tell me some of your mistakes.’
‘I am almost ashamed,’ said Sissy, with reluctance. ‘But to-day, for instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity.’
‘National, I think it must have been,’ observed Louisa.
‘Yes, it was.—But isn’t it the same?’ she timidly asked.
‘You had better say, National, as he said so,’ returned Louisa, with her dry reserve.
‘National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn’t this a prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’n’t you in a thriving state?’
‘What did you say?’ asked Louisa.
‘Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all,’ said Sissy, wiping her eyes.
‘That was a great mistake of yours,’ observed Louisa.
‘Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my remark was—for I couldn’t think of a better one—that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong, too.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said, Here are the stutterings—’
‘Statistics,’ said Louisa.
‘Yes, Miss Louisa—they always remind me of stutterings, and that’s another of my mistakes—of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr. M’Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;’ here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest error; ‘I said it was nothing.’
‘Nothing, Sissy?’
‘Nothing, Miss—to the relations and friends of the people who were killed. I shall never learn,’ said Sissy. ‘And the worst of all is, that although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like it.’
Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. Then she asked:
‘Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well taught too, Sissy?’
Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, ‘No one hears us; and if any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an innocent question.’
‘No, Miss Louisa,’ answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her head; ‘father knows very little indeed. It’s as much as he can do to write; and it’s more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though it’s plain to me.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was;’ Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; ‘she was a dancer.’
‘Did your father love her?’ Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.
‘O yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake. He carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been asunder from that time.’
‘Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?’
‘Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows him as I do. When he left me for my good—he never would have left me for his own—I know he was almost broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be happy for a single minute, till he comes back.’
‘Tell me more about him,’ said Louisa, ‘I will never ask you again. Where did you live?’
‘We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in. Father’s a;’ Sissy whispered the awful word, ‘a clown.’
‘To make the people laugh?’ said Louisa, with a nod of intelligence.
‘Yes. But they wouldn’t laugh sometimes, and then father cried. Lately, they very often wouldn’t laugh, and he used to come home despairing. Father’s not like most. Those who didn’t know him as well as I do, and didn’t love him as dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right. Sometimes they played tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt them, and shrunk up, when he was alone with me. He was far, far timider than they thought!’
‘And you were his comfort through everything?’
She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. ‘I hope so, and father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They were wrong books—I am never to speak of them here—but we didn’t know there was any harm in them.’
‘And he liked them?’ said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this time.
‘O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off before it was finished.’
‘And your father was always kind? To the last?’ asked Louisa contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.
‘Always, always!’ returned Sissy, clasping her hands. ‘Kinder and kinder than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs;’ she whispered the awful fact; ‘is his performing dog.’
‘Why was he angry with the dog?’ Louisa demanded.
‘Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them—which is one of his tricks. He looked at father, and didn’t do it at once. Everything of father’s had gone wrong that night, and he hadn’t pleased the public at all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was frightened, and said, “Father, father! Pray don’t hurt the creature who is so fond of you! O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!” And he stopped, and the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with the dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.’
Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her hand, and sat down beside her.
‘Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is mine, not yours.’
‘Dear Miss Louisa,’ said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; ‘I came home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come home too, from the booth. And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as if he was in pain. And I said, “Have you hurt yourself, father?” (as he did sometimes, like they all did), and he said, “A little, my darling.” And when I came to stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he was crying. The more I spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first he shook all over, and said nothing but “My darling;” and “My love!”’
Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much of that at present.
‘I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom,’ observed his sister. ‘You have no occasion to go away; but don’t interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear.’
‘Oh! very well!’ returned Tom. ‘Only father has brought old Bounderby home, and I want you to come into the drawing-room. Because if you come, there’s a good chance of old Bounderby’s asking me to dinner; and if you don’t, there’s none.’
‘I’ll come directly.’
‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Tom, ‘to make sure.’
Sissy resumed in a lower voice. ‘At last poor father said that he had given no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and that he was a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without him all along. I said all the affectionate things to him that came into my heart, and presently he was quiet and I sat down by him, and told him all about the school and everything that had been said and done there. When I had no more left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and kissed me a great many times. Then he asked me to fetch some of the stuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best place, which was at the other end of town from there; and then, after kissing me again, he let me go. When I had gone down-stairs, I turned back that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in at the door, and said, “Father dear, shall I take Merrylegs?” Father shook his head and said, “No, Sissy, no; take nothing that’s known to be mine, my darling;” and I left him sitting by the fire. Then the thought must have come upon him, poor, poor father! of going away to try something for my sake; for when I came back, he was gone.’
‘I say! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ Tom remonstrated.
‘There’s no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils ready for him, and I know he will come back. Every letter that I see in Mr. Gradgrind’s hand takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it comes from father, or from Mr. Sleary about father. Mr. Sleary promised to write as soon as ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his word.’
‘Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ said Tom, with an impatient whistle. ‘He’ll be off if you don’t look sharp!’
After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Gradgrind in the presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, for being troublesome—but—have you had any letter yet about me?’ Louisa would suspend the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and look for the reply as earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind regularly answered, ‘No, Jupe, nothing of the sort,’ the trembling of Sissy’s lip would be repeated in Louisa’s face, and her eyes would follow Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind usually improved these occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been properly trained from an early age she would have remonstrated to herself on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact.
This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. As to Tom, he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at work on number one. As to Mrs. Gradgrind, if she said anything on the subject, she would come a little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine dormouse, and say:
‘Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that girl Jupe’s so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her tiresome letters! Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of. It really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if I never was to hear the last of anything!’
At about this point, Mr. Gradgrind’s eye would fall upon her; and under the influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid again.
CHAPTER X STEPHEN BLACKPOOL
I ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called ‘the Hands,’—a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs—lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own. He had known, to use his words, a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact.
A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was not. He took no place among those remarkable ‘Hands,’ who, piecing together their broken intervals of leisure through many years, had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most unlikely things. He held no station among the Hands who could make speeches and carry on debates. Thousands of his compeers could talk much better than he, at any time. He was a good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect integrity. What more he was, or what else he had in him, if anything, let him show for himself.
The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces—or the travellers by express-train said so—were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the night, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, were clattering home. Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the old sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always produced—the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head.
‘Yet I don’t see Rachael, still!’ said he.
It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with their shawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their chins to keep the rain out. He knew Rachael well, for a glance at any one of these groups was sufficient to show him that she was not there. At last, there were no more to come; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of disappointment, ‘Why, then, ha’ missed her!’
But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw another of the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked so keenly that perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the wet pavement—if he could have seen it without the figure itself moving along from lamp to lamp, brightening and fading as it went—would have been enough to tell him who was there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer, he darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his former walk, and called ‘Rachael!’
She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her hood a little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a face in its first bloom; she was a woman five and thirty years of age.
‘Ah, lad! ’Tis thou?’ When she had said this, with a smile which would have been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been seen but her pleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they went on together.
‘I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?’
‘No.’
‘Early t’night, lass?’
‘’Times I’m a little early, Stephen! ’times a little late. I’m never to be counted on, going home.’
‘Nor going t’other way, neither, ’t seems to me, Rachael?’
‘No, Stephen.’
He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she did. The expression was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him for it.
‘We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting to be such old folk, now.’
‘No, Rachael, thou’rt as young as ever thou wast.’
‘One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without ’t other getting so too, both being alive,’ she answered, laughing; ‘but, anyways, we’re such old friends, and t’ hide a word of honest truth fro’ one another would be a sin and a pity. ’Tis better not to walk too much together. ’Times, yes! ’Twould be hard, indeed, if ’twas not to be at all,’ she said, with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him.
‘’Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.’
‘Try to think not; and ’twill seem better.’
‘I’ve tried a long time, and ’ta’nt got better. But thou’rt right; ’t might mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachael, through so many year: thou hast done me so much good, and heartened of me in that cheering way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah, lass, and a bright good law! Better than some real ones.’
‘Never fret about them, Stephen,’ she answered quickly, and not without an anxious glance at his face. ‘Let the laws be.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a slow nod or two. ‘Let ’em be. Let everything be. Let all sorts alone. ’Tis a muddle, and that’s aw.’
‘Always a muddle?’ said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was biting the long ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along. The touch had its instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh, ‘Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus a muddle. That’s where I stick. I come to the muddle many times and agen, and I never get beyond it.’
They had walked some distance, and were near their own homes. The woman’s was the first reached. It was in one of the many small streets for which the favourite undertaker (who turned a handsome sum out of the one poor ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order that those who had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs might slide out of this working world by the windows. She stopped at the corner, and putting her hand in his, wished him good night.
‘Good night, dear lass; good night!’
She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, down the dark street, and he stood looking after her until she turned into one of the small houses. There was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but had its interest in this man’s eyes; not a tone of her voice but had its echo in his innermost heart.
When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, glancing up sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and wildly. But, they were broken now, and the rain had ceased, and the moon shone,—looking down the high chimneys of Coketown on the deep furnaces below, and casting Titanic shadows of the steam-engines at rest, upon the walls where they were lodged. The man seemed to have brightened with the night, as he went on.
His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was narrower, was over a little shop. How it came to pass that any people found it worth their while to sell or buy the wretched little toys, mixed up in its window with cheap newspapers and pork (there was a leg to be raffled for to-morrow-night), matters not here. He took his end of candle from a shelf, lighted it at another end of candle on the counter, without disturbing the mistress of the shop who was asleep in her little room, and went upstairs into his lodging.
It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under various tenants; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be. A few books and writings were on an old bureau in a corner, the furniture was decent and sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was tainted, the room was clean.
Going to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three-legged table standing there, he stumbled against something. As he recoiled, looking down at it, it raised itself up into the form of a woman in a sitting attitude.
‘Heaven’s mercy, woman!’ he cried, falling farther off from the figure. ‘Hast thou come back again!’
Such a woman! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to preserve her sitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed hand on the floor, while the other was so purposeless in trying to push away her tangled hair from her face, that it only blinded her the more with the dirt upon it. A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes, but so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing even to see her.
After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of herself with the hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair away from her eyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. Then she sat swaying her body to and fro, and making gestures with her unnerved arm, which seemed intended as the accompaniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was stolid and drowsy.
‘Eigh, lad? What, yo’r there?’ Some hoarse sounds meant for this, came mockingly out of her at last; and her head dropped forward on her breast.
‘Back agen?’ she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had that moment said it. ‘Yes! And back agen. Back agen ever and ever so often. Back? Yes, back. Why not?’
Roused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it out, she scrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders against the wall; dangling in one hand by the string, a dunghill-fragment of a bonnet, and trying to look scornfully at him.
‘I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off a score of times!’ she cried, with something between a furious menace and an effort at a defiant dance. ‘Come awa’ from th’ bed!’ He was sitting on the side of it, with his face hidden in his hands. ‘Come awa! from ’t. ’Tis mine, and I’ve a right to t’!’
As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and passed—his face still hidden—to the opposite end of the room. She threw herself upon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring hard. He sunk into a chair, and moved but once all that night. It was to throw a covering over her; as if his hands were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness.
CHAPTER XI NO WAY OUT
THE Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day’s monotony, were at their heavy exercise again.
Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion. Set anywhere, side by side, the work of GOD and the work of man; and the former, even though it be a troop of Hands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison.
So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions. There is no mystery in it; there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, for ever.—Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!
The day grew strong, and showed itself outside, even against the flaming lights within. The lights were turned out, and the work went on. The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the curse of all that tribe, trailed themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard outside, the steam from the escape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil of mist and rain.
The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clattering upon the pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour.
Stephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold wet streets, haggard and worn. He turned from his own class and his own quarter, taking nothing but a little bread as he walked along, towards the hill on which his principal employer lived, in a red house with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps, BOUNDERBY (in letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round brazen door-handle underneath it, like a brazen full-stop.
Mr. Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. Would his servant say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak to him? Message in return, requiring name of such Hand. Stephen Blackpool. There was nothing troublesome against Stephen Blackpool; yes, he might come in.
Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr. Bounderby (whom he just knew by sight), at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs. Sparsit netting at the fireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in a cotton stirrup. It was a part, at once of Mrs. Sparsit’s dignity and service, not to lunch. She supervised the meal officially, but implied that in her own stately person she considered lunch a weakness.
‘Now, Stephen,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one—these Hands will never do that! Lord bless you, sir, you’ll never catch them at that, if they have been with you twenty years!—and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit, tucked his neckerchief ends into his waistcoat.
‘Now, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, taking some sherry, ‘we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don’t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of ’em do!’ Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied; ‘and therefore I know already that you have not come here to make a complaint. Now, you know, I am certain of that, beforehand.’
‘No, sir, sure I ha’ not coom for nowt o’ th’ kind.’
Mr. Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his previous strong conviction. ‘Very well,’ he returned. ‘You’re a steady Hand, and I was not mistaken. Now, let me hear what it’s all about. As it’s not that, let me hear what it is. What have you got to say? Out with it, lad!’
Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I can go, Mr. Bounderby, if you wish it,’ said that self-sacrificing lady, making a feint of taking her foot out of the stirrup.
Mr. Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in suspension before swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. Then, withdrawing his hand and swallowing his mouthful of chop, he said to Stephen:
‘Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady. You are not to suppose because she keeps my house for me, that she hasn’t been very high up the tree—ah, up at the top of the tree! Now, if you have got anything to say that can’t be said before a born lady, this lady will leave the room. If what you have got to say can be said before a born lady, this lady will stay where she is.’
‘Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady to year, sin’ I were born mysen’,’ was the reply, accompanied with a slight flush.
‘Very well,’ said Mr. Bounderby, pushing away his plate, and leaning back. ‘Fire away!’
‘I ha’ coom,’ Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, after a moment’s consideration, ‘to ask yo yor advice. I need ’t overmuch. I were married on Eas’r Monday nineteen year sin, long and dree. She were a young lass—pretty enow—wi’ good accounts of herseln. Well! She went bad—soon. Not along of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her.’
‘I have heard all this before,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘She took to drinking, left off working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, and played old Gooseberry.’
‘I were patient wi’ her.’
(‘The more fool you, I think,’ said Mr. Bounderby, in confidence to his wine-glass.)
‘I were very patient wi’ her. I tried to wean her fra ’t ower and ower agen. I tried this, I tried that, I tried t’other. I ha’ gone home, many’s the time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her without a sense left to bless herseln lying on bare ground. I ha’ dun ’t not once, not twice—twenty time!’
Every line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its affecting evidence of the suffering he had undergone.
‘From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. She disgraced herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom back, she coom back, she coom back. What could I do t’ hinder her? I ha’ walked the streets nights long, ere ever I’d go home. I ha’ gone t’ th’ brigg, minded to fling myseln ower, and ha’ no more on’t. I ha’ bore that much, that I were owd when I were young.’
Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, raised the Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, ‘The great know trouble as well as the small. Please to turn your humble eye in My direction.’
‘I ha’ paid her to keep awa’ fra’ me. These five year I ha’ paid her. I ha’ gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha’ lived hard and sad, but not ashamed and fearfo’ a’ the minnits o’ my life. Last night, I went home. There she lay upon my har-stone! There she is!’
In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he fired for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, he stood as he had stood all the time—his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face addressed to Mr. Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd, half perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip; his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very earnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.
‘I was acquainted with all this, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘except the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job; that’s what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married. However, it’s too late to say that.’
‘Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of years, this unlucky job of yours?’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. ‘I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.’
Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a side-long way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little more sherry.
‘Well? Why don’t you go on?’ he then asked, turning rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool.
‘I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.’ Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral shock.
‘What do you mean?’ said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimney-piece. ‘What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse.’
‘I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under ’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone battering mad.’
‘He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir,’ observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.
‘I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’ read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that they can be set free fro’ their misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o’ one kind an’ another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that won’t do, they ha’ gowd an’ other cash, an’ they can say “This for yo’ an’ that for me,” an’ they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?’
‘No how,’ returned Mr. Bounderby.
‘If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I was to live wi’ her an’ not marry her—saying such a thing could be, which it never could or would, an’ her so good—there’s a law to punish me, in every innocent child belonging to me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Now, a’ God’s name,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘show me the law to help me!’
‘Hem! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘and—and—it must be kept up.’
‘No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. Not that way. ’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were in a fact’ry when a chilt, but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and eern to year wi’. I read in th’ papers every ’Sizes, every Sessions—and you read too—I know it!—with dismay—how th’ supposed unpossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a grievous case, an’ I want—if yo will be so good—t’ know the law that helps me.’
‘Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘There is such a law.’
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his attention, gave a nod.
‘But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money.’
‘How much might that be?’ Stephen calmly asked.
‘Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, and you’d have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you’d have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Perhaps twice the money.’
‘There’s no other law?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Why then, sir,’ said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, ‘’tis a muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an’ the sooner I am dead, the better.’
(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
‘Pooh, pooh! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘about things you don’t understand; and don’t you call the Institutions of your country a muddle, or you’ll get yourself into a real muddle one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are not your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind your piece-work. You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but for better for worse. If she has turned out worse—why, all we have got to say is, she might have turned out better.’
‘’Tis a muddle,’ said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door. ‘’Tis a’ a muddle!’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what!’ Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory address. ‘With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been quite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born lady, and who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage misfortunes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds—tens of Thousands of Pounds!’ (he repeated it with great relish). ‘Now, you have always been a steady Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been listening to some mischievous stranger or other—they’re always about—and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;’ here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; ‘I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!’ cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate cunning. ‘By the Lord Harry, I do!’
With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said, ‘Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.’ So he left Mr. Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself into it; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite cast down by the popular vices.
CHAPTER XII THE OLD WOMAN
OLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot hand clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon his arm.
It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment—the touch that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest love and patience could abate the raging of the sea—yet it was a woman’s hand too. It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered by time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was very cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was newly come from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted noise of the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the heavy umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to which her hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country, in her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face—his face, which, like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf—the better to hear what she asked him.
‘Pray, sir,’ said the old woman, ‘didn’t I see you come out of that gentleman’s house?’ pointing back to Mr. Bounderby’s. ‘I believe it was you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?’
‘Yes, missus,’ returned Stephen, ‘it were me.’
‘Have you—you’ll excuse an old woman’s curiosity—have you seen the gentleman?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘And how did he look, sir? Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and hearty?’ As she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old woman before, and had not quite liked her.
‘O yes,’ he returned, observing her more attentively, ‘he were all that.’
‘And healthy,’ said the old woman, ‘as the fresh wind?’
‘Yes,’ returned Stephen. ‘He were ett’n and drinking—as large and as loud as a Hummobee.’
‘Thank you!’ said the old woman, with infinite content. ‘Thank you!’
He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old woman like her.
She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? To which she answered ‘Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!’ Then he said, she came from the country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.
‘By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this morning, and I’m going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s pretty well, sir, at my age!’ said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening with exultation.
‘’Deed ’tis. Don’t do’t too often, missus.’
‘No, no. Once a year,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I spend my savings so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp about the streets, and see the gentlemen.’
‘Only to see ’em?’ returned Stephen.
‘That’s enough for me,’ she replied, with great earnestness and interest of manner. ‘I ask no more! I have been standing about, on this side of the way, to see that gentleman,’ turning her head back towards Mr. Bounderby’s again, ‘come out. But, he’s late this year, and I have not seen him. You came out instead. Now, if I am obliged to go back without a glimpse of him—I only want a glimpse—well! I have seen you, and you have seen him, and I must make that do.’ Saying this, she looked at Stephen as if to fix his features in her mind, and her eye was not so bright as it had been.
With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all submission to the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraordinary a source of interest to take so much trouble about, that it perplexed him. But they were passing the church now, and as his eye caught the clock, he quickened his pace.
He was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his telling her where he worked, the old woman became a more singular old woman than before.
‘An’t you happy?’ she asked him.
‘Why—there’s awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus.’ He answered evasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for granted that he would be very happy indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her. He knew that there was trouble enough in the world; and if the old woman had lived so long, and could count upon his having so little, why so much the better for her, and none the worse for him.
‘Ay, ay! You have your troubles at home, you mean?’ she said.
‘Times. Just now and then,’ he answered, slightly.
‘But, working under such a gentleman, they don’t follow you to the Factory?’
No, no; they didn’t follow him there, said Stephen. All correct there. Everything accordant there. (He did not go so far as to say, for her pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there; but, I have heard claims almost as magnificent of late years.)
They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands were crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. The strange old woman was delighted with the very bell. It was the beautifullest bell she had ever heard, she said, and sounded grand!
She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with her before going in, how long he had worked there?
‘A dozen year,’ he told her.
‘I must kiss the hand,’ said she, ‘that has worked in this fine factory for a dozen year!’ And she lifted it, though he would have prevented her, and put it to her lips. What harmony, besides her age and her simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but even in this fantastic action there was a something neither out of time nor place: a something which it seemed as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done with such a natural and touching air.
He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old woman, when, having occasion to move round the loom for its adjustment, he glanced through a window which was in his corner, and saw her still looking up at the pile of building, lost in admiration. Heedless of the smoke and mud and wet, and of her two long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy thrum that issued from its many stories were proud music to her.
She was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over the arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and rattle. Long before then his thoughts had gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the shameful figure heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart.
Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; stopped. The bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night—their tall chimneys rising up into the air like competing Towers of Babel.
He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had walked with her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him, in which no one else could give him a moment’s relief, and, for the sake of it, and because he knew himself to want that softening of his anger which no voice but hers could effect, he felt he might so far disregard what she had said as to wait for her again. He waited, but she had eluded him. She was gone. On no other night in the year could he so ill have spared her patient face.
O! Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home and dread to go to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank, for he was exhausted—but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.
No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had taken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour, self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his character for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first brought together in these circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path—for him—and how he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts—so filled that he had an unwholesome sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty light turn red—he went home for shelter.
CHAPTER XIII RACHAEL
A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen added to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say that the child of a King and the child of a Weaver were born to-night in the same moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any human creature who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this abandoned woman lived on!
From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door, opened it, and so into the room.
Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.
She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is to say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be she; but Rachael’s hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened from his eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of Rachael’s were in the room. Everything was in its place and order as he had always kept it, the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept. It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael’s face, and looked at nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut out from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes were filled too.
She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.
‘I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late.’
‘I ha’ been walking up an’ down.’
‘I thought so. But ’tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very heavy, and the wind has risen.’
The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the chimney, and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not to have known it was blowing!
‘I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady came round for me at dinner-time. There was some one here that needed looking to, she said. And ‘deed she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and bruised.’
He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.
‘I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married her when I was her friend—’
He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.
‘And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that ’tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her!” There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.’
‘O Rachael, Rachael!’
‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind.’
[Picture: Stephen and Rachael in the sick room]
The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The three-legged table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there were two bottles. This was one.
It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters. He turned of a deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.
‘I will stay here, Stephen,’ said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat, ‘till the bells go Three. ’Tis to be done again at three, and then she may be left till morning.’
‘But thy rest agen to-morrow’s work, my dear.’
‘I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it. ’Tis thou who art in need of rest—so white and tired. Try to sleep in the chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can well believe. To-morrow’s work is far harder for thee than for me.’
He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had cast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from himself.
‘She don’t know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I have spoken to her times and again, but she don’t notice! ’Tis as well so. When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I can, and she never the wiser.’
‘How long, Rachael, is ’t looked for, that she’ll be so?’
‘Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.’
His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was not that. He had had a fright.’
‘A fright?’
‘Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When I—’ It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it were palsied.
‘Stephen!’
She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.
‘No! Don’t, please; don’t. Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me see thee, a’ so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I see thee when I coom in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never, never!’
He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and his head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael. Seen across the dim candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as the noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went about the house clamouring and lamenting.
‘When she gets better, Stephen, ’tis to be hoped she’ll leave thee to thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now. And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.’
He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but, by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the voices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said. Even this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a long, troubled dream.
He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set—but she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his imaginary happiness—stood in the church being married. While the ceremony was performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some whom he knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from one line in the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the building with the words. They were sounded through the church, too, as if there were voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the whole appearance before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it had been, but himself and the clergyman. They stood in the daylight before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have been brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at the shape the loom took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read, he knew that he was there to suffer death. In an instant what he stood on fell below him, and he was gone.
—Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that he knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by some means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in this world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to look on Rachael’s face or hear her voice. Wandering to and fro, unceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape which everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led them out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.
The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated.
He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up.
With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair. Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a shade, while she looked into it. Again they went all round the room, scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He thought, as she once more shaded them—not so much looking at him, as looking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there—that no single trace was left in those debauched features, or in the mind that went along with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before. But that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed her to be the same.
All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and powerless, except to watch her.
Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.
Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of last night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while considering which of the two bottles she should choose. Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.
Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!
She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A moment and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come about her with its utmost power. But in that moment Rachael started up with a suppressed cry. The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair; but Rachael had the cup.
Stephen broke out of his chair. ‘Rachael, am I wakin’ or dreamin’ this dreadfo’ night?’
‘’Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep, myself. ’Tis near three. Hush! I hear the bells.’
The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.
‘I thought it must be near three,’ she said, calmly pouring from the cup into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. ‘I am thankful I stayed! ’Tis done now, when I have put this on. There! And now she’s quiet again. The few drops in the basin I’ll pour away, for ’tis bad stuff to leave about, though ever so little of it.’ As she spoke, she drained the basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the hearth.
She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before going out into the wind and rain.
‘Thou’lt let me walk wi’ thee at this hour, Rachael?’
‘No, Stephen. ’Tis but a minute, and I’m home.’
‘Thou’rt not fearfo’;’ he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the door; ‘to leave me alone wi’ her!’
As she looked at him, saying, ‘Stephen?’ he went down on his knee before her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.
‘Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!’
‘I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not like me. Between them, and a working woman fu’ of faults, there is a deep gulf set. My little sister is among them, but she is changed.’
She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.
‘Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wishfo’ to be more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee when this life is ower, and a’ the muddle cleared awa’. Thou’rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my soul alive!’
She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of his face.
‘I coom home desp’rate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and mad wi’ thinking that when I said a word o’ complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand. I told thee I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I never hurt a livin’ creetur; but happenin’ so suddenly upon ’t, I thowt, “How can I say what I might ha’ done to myseln, or her, or both!”’
She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him from saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:
‘But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha’ seen thee, aw this night. In my troublous sleep I ha’ known thee still to be there. Evermore I will see thee there. I nevermore will see her or think o’ her, but thou shalt be beside her. I nevermore will see or think o’ anything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by th’ side on’t. And so I will try t’ look t’ th’ time, and so I will try t’ trust t’ th’ time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far awa’, beyond the deep gulf, in th’ country where thy little sister is.’
He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him good night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.
The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood bare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.
CHAPTER XIV THE GREAT MANUFACTURER
TIME went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made. But, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity.
‘Louisa is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young woman.’
Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot taller than when his father had last taken particular notice of him.
‘Thomas is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young man.’
Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking about it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.
‘Really,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘the period has arrived when Thomas ought to go to Bounderby.’
Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby’s Bank, made him an inmate of Bounderby’s house, necessitated the purchase of his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to number one.
The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his mill, and worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.
‘I fear, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that your continuance at the school any longer would be useless.’
‘I am afraid it would, sir,’ Sissy answered with a curtsey.
‘I cannot disguise from you, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting his brow, ‘that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has greatly disappointed me. You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I looked for. You are extremely deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark.’
‘I am sorry, sir,’ she returned; ‘but I know it is quite true. Yet I have tried hard, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect.’
‘Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;’ Sissy very timid here; ‘that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have—’
‘No, Jupe, no,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest and most eminently practical way. ‘No. The course you pursued, you pursued according to the system—the system—and there is no more to be said about it. I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed.’
‘I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her.’
‘Don’t shed tears,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t shed tears. I don’t complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman—and—and we must make that do.’
‘Thank you, sir, very much,’ said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.
‘You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and, indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that you can make yourself happy in those relations.’
‘I should have nothing to wish, sir, if—’
‘I understand you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind; ‘you still refer to your father. I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well! If your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will say no more.’
He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her; otherwise he held her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must have fallen upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an idea that there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular form. Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very low figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not sure that if he had been required, for example, to tick her off into columns in a parliamentary return, he would have quite known how to divide her.
In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy being both at such a stage of their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while Mr. Gradgrind himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no alteration.
Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through the mill. Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in a by-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the respected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the representatives of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honourable gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind honourable gentlemen, lame honourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen, to every other consideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our Master?
All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the grate, and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said she was almost a young woman—which seemed but yesterday—she had scarcely attracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.
‘Quite a young woman,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, musing. ‘Dear me!’
Soon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual for several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject. On a certain night, when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid him good-bye before his departure—as he was not to be home until late and she would not see him again until the morning—he held her in his arms, looking at her in his kindest manner, and said:
‘My dear Louisa, you are a woman!’
She answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night when she was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes. ‘Yes, father.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I must speak with you alone and seriously. Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will you?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well?’
‘Quite well, father.’
‘And cheerful?’
She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. ‘I am as cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been.’
‘That’s well,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and went away; and Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character, and leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks that so soon subsided into ashes.
‘Are you there, Loo?’ said her brother, looking in at the door. He was quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing one.
‘Dear Tom,’ she answered, rising and embracing him, ‘how long it is since you have been to see me!’
‘Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather. But I touch him up with you when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an understanding. I say! Has father said anything particular to you to-day or yesterday, Loo?’
‘No, Tom. But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the morning.’
‘Ah! That’s what I mean,’ said Tom. ‘Do you know where he is to-night?’—with a very deep expression.
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll tell you. He’s with old Bounderby. They are having a regular confab together up at the Bank. Why at the Bank, do you think? Well, I’ll tell you again. To keep Mrs. Sparsit’s ears as far off as possible, I expect.’
With her hand upon her brother’s shoulder, Louisa still stood looking at the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than usual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.
‘You are very fond of me, an’t you, Loo?’
‘Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without coming to see me.’
‘Well, sister of mine,’ said Tom, ‘when you say that, you are near my thoughts. We might be so much oftener together—mightn’t we? Always together, almost—mightn’t we? It would do me a great deal of good if you were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo. It would be a splendid thing for me. It would be uncommonly jolly!’
Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny. He could make nothing of her face. He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek. She returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire.
‘I say, Loo! I thought I’d come, and just hint to you what was going on: though I supposed you’d most likely guess, even if you didn’t know. I can’t stay, because I’m engaged to some fellows to-night. You won’t forget how fond you are of me?’
‘No, dear Tom, I won’t forget.’
‘That’s a capital girl,’ said Tom. ‘Good-bye, Loo.’
She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance lurid. She stood there, looking steadfastly towards them, and listening to his departing steps. They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from Stone Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet. It seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the fiery haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.
CHAPTER XV FATHER AND DAUGHTER
ALTHOUGH Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove (which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits. In that charmed apartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into exact totals, and finally settled—if those concerned could only have been brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, in his Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
To this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid; Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window looked towards Coketown; and when she sat down near her father’s table, she saw the high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy distance gloomily.
‘My dear Louisa,’ said her father, ‘I prepared you last night to give me your serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have together. You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say, so much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect confidence in your good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and calculation. From that ground alone, I know you will view and consider what I am going to communicate.’
He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. But she said never a word.
‘Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has been made to me.’
Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so far surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, ‘a proposal of marriage, my dear.’ To which she returned, without any visible emotion whatever:
‘I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you.’
‘Well!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the moment at a loss, ‘you are even more dispassionate than I expected, Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have it in charge to make?’
‘I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unprepared, I wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it to me, father.’
Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment as his daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his hand, turned it over, laid it down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the blade of it, considering how to go on.
‘What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I have undertaken then to let you know that—in short, that Mr. Bounderby has informed me that he has long watched your progress with particular interest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the time might ultimately arrive when he should offer you his hand in marriage. That time, to which he has so long, and certainly with great constancy, looked forward, is now come. Mr. Bounderby has made his proposal of marriage to me, and has entreated me to make it known to you, and to express his hope that you will take it into your favourable consideration.’
Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hollow. The distant smoke very black and heavy.
‘Father,’ said Louisa, ‘do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?’
Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected question. ‘Well, my child,’ he returned, ‘I—really—cannot take upon myself to say.’
‘Father,’ pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, ‘do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?’
‘My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing.’
‘Father,’ she still pursued, ‘does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?’
‘Really, my dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘it is difficult to answer your question—’
‘Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?
‘Certainly, my dear. Because;’ here was something to demonstrate, and it set him up again; ‘because the reply depends so materially, Louisa, on the sense in which we use the expression. Now, Mr. Bounderby does not do you the injustice, and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending to anything fanciful, fantastic, or (I am using synonymous terms) sentimental. Mr. Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eyes, to very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to your good sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any such ground. Therefore, perhaps the expression itself—I merely suggest this to you, my dear—may be a little misplaced.’
‘What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?’
‘Why, my dear Louisa,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recovered by this time, ‘I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question, as you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as one of tangible Fact. The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such subjects with irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no existence, properly viewed—really no existence—but it is no compliment to you to say, that you know better. Now, what are the Facts of this case? You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your respective years, but in your means and positions there is none; on the contrary, there is a great suitability. Then the question arises, Is this one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage? In considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom. It is remarkable as showing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the British possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation yet furnished us by travellers, yield similar results. The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears.’
‘What do you recommend, father,’ asked Louisa, her reserved composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results, ‘that I should substitute for the term I used just now? For the misplaced expression?’
‘Louisa,’ returned her father, ‘it appears to me that nothing can be plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think nothing can be plainer than that?’
‘Shall I marry him?’ repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.
‘Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young women.’
‘No, father,’ she returned, ‘I do not.’
‘I now leave you to judge for yourself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among practical minds; I have stated it, as the case of your mother and myself was stated in its time. The rest, my dear Louisa, is for you to decide.’
From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.
Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the town, that he said, at length: ‘Are you consulting the chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?’
‘There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!’ she answered, turning quickly.
‘Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the remark.’ To do him justice he did not, at all.
She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concentrating her attention upon him again, said, ‘Father, I have often thought that life is very short.’—This was so distinctly one of his subjects that he interposed.
‘It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of human life is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.’
‘I speak of my own life, father.’
‘O indeed? Still,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I need not point out to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate.’
‘While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the little I am fit for. What does it matter?’
Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words; replying, ‘How, matter? What matter, my dear?’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ she went on in a steady, straight way, without regarding this, ‘asks me to marry him. The question I have to ask myself is, shall I marry him? That is so, father, is it not? You have told me so, father. Have you not?’
‘Certainly, my dear.’
‘Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that this was my answer. Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I should wish him to know what I said.’
‘It is quite right, my dear,’ retorted her father approvingly, ‘to be exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have you any wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my child?’
‘None, father. What does it matter!’
Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken her hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with some little discord on his ear. He paused to look at her, and, still holding her hand, said:
‘Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one question, because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too remote. But perhaps I ought to do so. You have never entertained in secret any other proposal?’
‘Father,’ she returned, almost scornfully, ‘what other proposal can have been made to me? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my heart’s experiences?’
‘My dear Louisa,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied. ‘You correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my duty.’
‘What do I know, father,’ said Louisa in her quiet manner, ‘of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?’ As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.
‘My dear,’ assented her eminently practical parent, ‘quite true, quite true.’
‘Why, father,’ she pursued, ‘what a strange question to ask me! The baby-preference that even I have heard of as common among children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child’s heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear.’
Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. ‘My dear Louisa,’ said he, ‘you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.’
So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, he said, ‘I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived. Mr. Bounderby is a very remarkable man; and what little disparity can be said to exist between you—if any—is more than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. It has always been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still in your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age. Kiss me once more, Louisa. Now, let us go and find your mother.’
Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed lady with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while Sissy worked beside her. She gave some feeble signs of returning animation when they entered, and presently the faint transparency was presented in a sitting attitude.
‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, who had waited for the achievement of this feat with some impatience, ‘allow me to present to you Mrs. Bounderby.’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘so you have settled it! Well, I’m sure I hope your health may be good, Louisa; for if your head begins to split as soon as you are married, which was the case with mine, I cannot consider that you are to be envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as all girls do. However, I give you joy, my dear—and I hope you may now turn all your ological studies to good account, I am sure I do! I must give you a kiss of congratulation, Louisa; but don’t touch my right shoulder, for there’s something running down it all day long. And now you see,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the affectionate ceremony, ‘I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and night, to know what I am to call him!’
‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, solemnly, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Gradgrind, when he is married to Louisa! I must call him something. It’s impossible,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness and injury, ‘to be constantly addressing him and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn’t hear of Joe, you very well know. Am I to call my own son-in-law, Mister! Not, I believe, unless the time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my relations. Then, what am I to call him!’
Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable emergency, Mrs. Gradgrind departed this life for the time being, after delivering the following codicil to her remarks already executed:
‘As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is,—and I ask it with a fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet,—that it may take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall never hear the last of.’
When Mr. Gradgrind had presented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy had suddenly turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in doubt, in a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa. Louisa had known it, and seen it, without looking at her. From that moment she was impassive, proud and cold—held Sissy at a distance—changed to her altogether.
CHAPTER XVI HUSBAND AND WIFE
MR. BOUNDERBY’S first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Sparsit. He could not make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step might be. Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady Scadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether she would be plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would break her heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr. Bounderby could not all foresee. However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so, after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to do it by word of mouth.
On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose, he took the precaution of stepping into a chemist’s shop and buying a bottle of the very strongest smelling-salts. ‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘if she takes it in the fainting way, I’ll have the skin off her nose, at all events!’ But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he entered his own house with anything but a courageous air; and appeared before the object of his misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of coming direct from the pantry.
‘Good evening, Mr. Bounderby!’
‘Good evening, ma’am, good evening.’ He drew up his chair, and Mrs. Sparsit drew back hers, as who should say, ‘Your fireside, sir. I freely admit it. It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper.’
‘Don’t go to the North Pole, ma’am!’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, and returned, though short of her former position.
Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp pair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connexion with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before she looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her attention with a hitch of his head.
‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the little bottle was ready for use, ‘I have no occasion to say to you, that you are not only a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman.’
‘Sir,’ returned the lady, ‘this is indeed not the first time that you have honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion.’
‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘I am going to astonish you.’
‘Yes, sir?’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the most tranquil manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and she now laid down her work, and smoothed those mittens.
‘I am going, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘to marry Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I hope you may be happy, Mr. Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!’ And she said it with such great condescension as well as with such great compassion for him, that Bounderby,—far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her workbox at the mirror, or swooned on the hearthrug,—corked up the smelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, ‘Now confound this woman, who could have even guessed that she would take it in this way!’
‘I wish with all my heart, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly superior manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to pity him ever afterwards; ‘that you may be in all respects very happy.’
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Bounderby, with some resentment in his tone: which was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, ‘I am obliged to you. I hope I shall be.’
‘Do you, sir!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with great affability. ‘But naturally you do; of course you do.’
A very awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby’s part, succeeded. Mrs. Sparsit sedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a small cough, which sounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.
‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Bounderby, ‘under these circumstances, I imagine it would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here, though you would be very welcome here.’
‘Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!’ Mrs. Sparsit shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed the small cough—coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within her, but had better be coughed down.
‘However, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘there are apartments at the Bank, where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a catch than otherwise; and if the same terms—’
‘I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that you would always substitute the phrase, annual compliment.’
‘Well, ma’am, annual compliment. If the same annual compliment would be acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, unless you do.’
‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘The proposal is like yourself, and if the position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without descending lower in the social scale—’
‘Why, of course it is,’ said Bounderby. ‘If it was not, ma’am, you don’t suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you have moved in. Not that I care for such society, you know! But you do.’
‘Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate.’
‘You’ll have your own private apartments, and you’ll have your coals and your candles, and all the rest of it, and you’ll have your maid to attend upon you, and you’ll have your light porter to protect you, and you’ll be what I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable,’ said Bounderby.
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say no more. In yielding up my trust here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of dependence:’ she might have said the sweetbread, for that delicate article in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite supper: ‘and I would rather receive it from your hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, I accept your offer gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for past favours. And I hope, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an impressively compassionate manner, ‘I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may be all you desire, and deserve!’
Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary altogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that tenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used to break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.
Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight weeks’ time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted wooer. Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and, on all occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing aspect. Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were made, settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. The Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons. The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his accustomed regularity.
So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid wooden legs—that popular order of architecture—Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone Lodge, M.P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.
There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of the company.
After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and know what I am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech from a man who, when he sees a Post, says “that’s a Post,” and when he sees a Pump, says “that’s a Pump,” and is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you don’t, I can’t help it. I do feel independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At the same time—not to deceive you—I believe I am worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife has found.’
Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting for her—flushed, either with his feelings, or the vinous part of the breakfast.
‘What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!’ whispered Tom.
She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first time.
‘Old Bounderby’s quite ready,’ said Tom. ‘Time’s up. Good-bye! I shall be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo! AN’T it uncommonly jolly now!’
END OF THE FIRST BOOK
BOOK THE SECOND REAPING
CHAPTER I EFFECTS IN THE BANK
A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:—Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.
The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used—that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences of any of his acts—he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he would ‘sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.’ This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.
However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.
The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.
Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills. Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets and the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat, which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the things it looks upon to bless.
Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over the public office. Her own private sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of observation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a Victim. He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never released him from her determined pity a moment.
The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr. Bounderby’s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes smaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.
Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the place. With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.
What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks, against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of the current day’s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy—a row of fire-buckets—vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal to bullion, on most beholders.
A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit’s empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her money. It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much offence and disappointment.
Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.
‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a horse, for girl number twenty.
‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘All is shut up, ma’am.’
‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the day? Anything?’
‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’
‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another.’
‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, ‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell through, ma’am.’
‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am sure, ma’am.’
As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into the street.
‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence.
‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?’
‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’
He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown, this excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all gifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man—not a part of man’s duty, but the whole.
‘Pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,’ repeated Bitzer.
‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking a long gulp.
‘Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma’am, I don’t like his ways at all.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, ‘do you recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did object to names being used, and they’re always best avoided.’
‘Please to remember that I have a charge here,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with her air of state. ‘I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby. However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might have deemed it years ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual compliment, I cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect. More, far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, ‘that I should be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under this roof, that are unfortunately—most unfortunately—no doubt of that—connected with his.’
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.
‘No, Bitzer,’ continued Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say an individual, and I will hear you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.’
‘With the usual exception, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, trying back, ‘of an individual.’
‘Ah—h!’ Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again at the point where it had been interrupted.
‘An individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘has never been what he ought to have been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated, extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma’am. He wouldn’t get it either, if he hadn’t a friend and relation at court, ma’am!’
‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.
‘I only hope, ma’am,’ pursued Bitzer, ‘that his friend and relation may not supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma’am, we know out of whose pocket that money comes.’
‘Ah—h!’ sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her head.
‘He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be pitied, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
‘Yes, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I have always pitied the delusion, always.’
‘As to an individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing nearer, ‘he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you know what their improvidence is, ma’am. No one could wish to know it better than a lady of your eminence does.’
‘They would do well,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to take example by you, Bitzer.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma’am. I have put by a little, ma’am, already. That gratuity which I receive at Christmas, ma’am: I never touch it. I don’t even go the length of my wages, though they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done, ma’am? What one person can do, another can do.’
This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?
‘As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘it’s stuff and nonsense. I don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I don’t like ’em. As to their combining together; there are many of them, I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to want.’
‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’
‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? They would say, “While my hat covers my family,” or “while my bonnet covers my family,”—as the case might be, ma’am—“I have only one to feed, and that’s the person I most like to feed.”’
‘To be sure,’ assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in return for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving conversation. ‘Would you wish a little more hot water, ma’am, or is there anything else that I could fetch you?’
‘Nothing just now, Bitzer.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,’ said Bitzer, craning a little to look over into the street from where he stood; ‘but there’s a gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma’am, and he has come across as if he was going to knock. That is his knock, ma’am, no doubt.’
He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again, confirmed himself with, ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you wish the gentleman to be shown in, ma’am?’
‘I don’t know who it can be,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth and arranging her mittens.
‘A stranger, ma’am, evidently.’
‘What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr. Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of the duty I have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion, Bitzer.’
Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous words, repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped up-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.
‘If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,’ said Bitzer, with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, Mrs. Sparsit, who had improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features down-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.
The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive gentility. For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.
‘I believe, sir,’ quoth Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you wished to see me.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, turning and removing his hat; ‘pray excuse me.’
‘Humph!’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. ‘Five and thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding, well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.’ All which Mrs. Sparsit observed in her womanly way—like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of water—merely in dipping down and coming up again.
‘Please to be seated, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you allow me to ask you if it’s always as black as this?’
‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising way.
‘Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?’
‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘It was once my good or ill fortune, as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere. My husband was a Powler.’
‘Beg your pardon, really!’ said the stranger. ‘Was—?’
Mrs. Sparsit repeated, ‘A Powler.’
‘Powler Family,’ said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs. Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued than before.
‘You must be very much bored here?’ was the inference he drew from the communication.
‘I am the servant of circumstances, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I have long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.’
‘Very philosophical,’ returned the stranger, ‘and very exemplary and laudable, and—’ It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.
‘May I be permitted to ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to what I am indebted for the favour of—’
‘Assuredly,’ said the stranger. ‘Much obliged to you for reminding me. I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby, the banker. Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the working people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material—’
Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.
‘—Raw material—where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside. Upon which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank. Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker does not reside in the edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?’
‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘he does not.’
‘Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having the good fortune to observe at the window,’ towards which he languidly waved his hand, then slightly bowed, ‘a lady of a very superior and agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker does live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.’
The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved, to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.
‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’
Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful clues and directions in aid.
‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker well?’
‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards him, I have known him ten years.’
‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had that—honour.’
‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Is she?’
‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and thirty?’
Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she was married.’
‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’
It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’
He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of all the town.
‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter, when he came to take away.
‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’
‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’
‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table, ‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’
‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against the players.’
Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it, when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward, upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs. Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.
‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the sweetbread.
CHAPTER II MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE
THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the Graces. They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?
Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen; they pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.
Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school, there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors) view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow, and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter.
Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said one day, ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.’ Jem, rather taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as ready to ‘go in’ for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in. He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, ‘If you want to bring in, for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech, look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.’ After a few dashes in the public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his hand; superscribed, ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown. Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’
Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James Harthouse’s card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so disconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to ‘go in’ for something else.
‘My name, sir,’ said his visitor, ‘is Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown.’
Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so) to have a pleasure he had long expected.
‘Coketown, sir,’ said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, ‘is not the kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you something about it before we go any further.’
Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bounderby. ‘I don’t promise it. First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland.’
By way of ‘going in’ to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, ‘Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of thinking. On conviction.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bounderby. ‘Now, you have heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best-paid work there is. More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’
‘Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.’
‘Lastly,’ said Bounderby, ‘as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.’
Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.
‘Why, you see,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, ‘it suits my disposition to have a full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I make his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr. Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s letter of introduction. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive yourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.’
If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bounderby, it would have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.
‘So now,’ said Bounderby, ‘we may shake hands on equal terms. I say, equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my independence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself, and I hope you’re pretty well.’
The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby received the answer with favour.
‘Perhaps you know,’ said he, ‘or perhaps you don’t know, I married Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, ‘you anticipate my dearest wishes.’
They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted the new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds, and the black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of which mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr. James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so careless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than in manner. Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite alone—it was of no use ‘going in’ yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.
From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself. There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another, and well matched.
‘This, sir,’ said Bounderby, ‘is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind’s eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined your father’s muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. She has lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better adviser than Loo Bounderby.’
To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.
‘Come!’ said his host. ‘If you’re in the complimentary line, you’ll get on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I have never been in the way of learning compliments myself, and I don’t profess to understand the art of paying ’em. In fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You’re a gentleman, and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am not influenced by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn’t my advantages—disadvantages you would call ’em, but I call ’em advantages—so you’ll not waste your power, I dare say.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, ‘is a noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in which a conventional hack like myself works.’
‘You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,’ she quietly returned. ‘It is natural that you should.’
He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of the world, and thought, ‘Now, how am I to take this?’
‘You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,’ said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped—in all the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease—‘to show the nation the way out of all its difficulties.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he returned, laughing, ‘upon my honour, no. I will make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your respected father’s opinions—really because I have no choice of opinions, and may as well back them as anything else.’
‘Have you none of your own?’ asked Louisa.
‘I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other set, and just as much harm as any other set. There’s an English family with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only truth going!’
This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty—a vice so dangerous, so deadly, and so common—seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest manner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased: ‘The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did believe it!’
‘You are a singular politician,’ said Louisa.
‘Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks and were reviewed together.’
Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six, and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity. The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of boredom.
In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the hap’orth of stewed eels he had purchased in the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner, received with ‘charming!’ every now and then; and they probably would have decided him to ‘go in’ for Jerusalem again to-morrow morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.
‘Is there nothing,’ he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; ‘is there nothing that will move that face?’
Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a beaming smile.
A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out her hand—a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her brother’s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.
‘Ay, ay?’ thought the visitor. ‘This whelp is the only creature she cares for. So, so!’
The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not flattering, but not unmerited.
‘When I was your age, young Tom,’ said Bounderby, ‘I was punctual, or I got no dinner!’
‘When you were my age,’ resumed Tom, ‘you hadn’t a wrong balance to get right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, then,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Don’t begin with me.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as it went on; ‘your brother’s face is quite familiar to me. Can I have seen him abroad? Or at some public school, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she resumed, quite interested, ‘he has never been abroad yet, and was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that he never saw you abroad.’
‘No such luck, sir,’ said Tom.
There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some one on whom to bestow it. ‘So much the more is this whelp the only creature she has ever cared for,’ thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it over and over. ‘So much the more. So much the more.’
Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned out with him to escort him thither.
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse dines at the Bounderby’s]
CHAPTER III THE WHELP
IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.
‘I believe you!’ said Tom.
He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts; Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and took an observation of his friend. ‘He don’t seem to care about his dress,’ thought Tom, ‘and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is!’
Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
‘Thank’ee,’ said Tom. ‘Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.’ Tom said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.
‘A very good fellow indeed!’ returned Mr. James Harthouse.
‘You think so, don’t you?’ said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at him, observed:
‘What a comical brother-in-law you are!’
‘What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,’ said Tom.
‘You are a piece of caustic, Tom,’ retorted Mr. James Harthouse.
There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice; in being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers; that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.
‘Oh! I don’t care for old Bounderby,’ said he, ‘if you mean that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin to be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day.’
‘Don’t mind me,’ returned James; ‘but take care when his wife is by, you know.’
‘His wife?’ said Tom. ‘My sister Loo? O yes!’ And he laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink.
James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.
‘My sister Loo?’ said Tom. ‘She never cared for old Bounderby.’
‘That’s the past tense, Tom,’ returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. ‘We are in the present tense, now.’
‘Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care; third person singular, she does not care,’ returned Tom.
‘Good! Very quaint!’ said his friend. ‘Though you don’t mean it.’
‘But I do mean it,’ cried Tom. ‘Upon my honour! Why, you won’t tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for old Bounderby.’
‘My dear fellow,’ returned the other, ‘what am I bound to suppose, when I find two married people living in harmony and happiness?’
Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would have put it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common face, and not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so potently.
‘You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, ‘and therefore, you needn’t be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him.’
‘Very dutiful in your interesting sister,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.
‘Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come off as easily,’ returned the whelp, ‘if it hadn’t been for me.’
The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go on.
‘I persuaded her,’ he said, with an edifying air of superiority. ‘I was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby’s pipe out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn’t it?’
‘It was charming, Tom!’
‘Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,’ continued Tom coolly, ‘because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at home was like staying in jail—especially when I was gone. It wasn’t as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good thing in her.’
‘Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.’
‘Oh,’ returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, ‘she’s a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire—for an hour at a stretch.’
‘Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,’ said Harthouse, smoking quietly.
‘Not so much of that as you may suppose,’ returned Tom; ‘for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It’s his system.’
‘Formed his daughter on his own model?’ suggested Harthouse.
‘His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed Me that way!’ said Tom.
‘Impossible!’
‘He did, though,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘I mean to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby’s, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster does.’
‘Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke’s a joke.’
‘Upon my soul!’ said the whelp. ‘I am serious; I am indeed!’ He smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a highly complacent tone, ‘Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don’t deny that. But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor.’
‘And your intelligent sister?’
‘My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back upon; and I don’t see how she is to have got over that since. But she don’t mind,’ he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. ‘Girls can always get on, somehow.’
‘Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby’s address, I found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for your sister,’ observed Mr. James Harthouse, throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.
‘Mother Sparsit!’ said Tom. ‘What! you have seen her already, have you?’
His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression, and to tap his nose several times with his finger.
‘Mother Sparsit’s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should think,’ said Tom. ‘Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!’
These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also of a voice saying: ‘Come, it’s late. Be off!’
‘Well!’ he said, scrambling from the sofa. ‘I must take my leave of you though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But it’s too mild.’
‘Yes, it’s too mild,’ returned his entertainer.
‘It’s—it’s ridiculously mild,’ said Tom. ‘Where’s the door! Good night!’
He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into the main street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and influence of his new friend—as if he were lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.
The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters.
CHAPTER IV MEN AND BROTHERS
‘OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!’
‘Good!’ ‘Hear, hear, hear!’ ‘Hurrah!’ and other cries, arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this and what other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself into a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring at the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists, knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop, and called for a glass of water.
As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage. Judging him by Nature’s evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on which he stood. In many great respects he was essentially below them. He was not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense. An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain working clothes. Strange as it always is to consider any assembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent person, lord or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader.
Good! Hear, hear! Hurrah! The eagerness both of attention and intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of the many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for one moment there. That every man felt his condition to be, somehow or other, worse than it might be; that every man considered it incumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making of it better; that every man felt his only hope to be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened brick walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own breast, that these men, through their very delusions, showed great qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational wills, was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death without birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing.
The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and bitterness.
‘But oh, my friends and brothers! Oh, men and Englishmen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! What shall we say of that man—that working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious name—who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, whatever they may be—what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom and for Right?’
The assembly was divided at this point. There were some groans and hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the condemnation of a man unheard. ‘Be sure you’re right, Slackbridge!’ ‘Put him up!’ ‘Let’s hear him!’ Such things were said on many sides. Finally, one strong voice called out, ‘Is the man heer? If the man’s heer, Slackbridge, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead o’ yo.’ Which was received with a round of applause.
Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and, holding out his right hand at arm’s length (as the manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a profound silence.
‘Oh, my friends and fellow-men!’ said Slackbridge then, shaking his head with violent scorn, ‘I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!’
Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man himself standing at the orator’s side before the concourse. He was pale and a little moved in the face—his lips especially showed it; but he stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard. There was a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took the case into his own hands.
‘My friends,’ said he, ‘by virtue o’ my office as your president, I askes o’ our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern. You all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You know him awlung o’ his misfort’ns, and his good name.’
With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead—always from left to right, and never the reverse way.
‘My friends,’ Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; ‘I ha’ hed what’s been spok’n o’ me, and ’tis lickly that I shan’t mend it. But I’d liefer you’d hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny other man’s, though I never cud’n speak afore so monny, wi’out bein moydert and muddled.’
Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his bitterness.
‘I’m th’ one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’ a’ the men theer, as don’t coom in wi’ th’ proposed reg’lations. I canna coom in wi’ ’em. My friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. Licker they’ll do yo hurt.’
Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.
‘But ’t an’t sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I’d coom in wi’ th’ rest. But I ha’ my reasons—mine, yo see—for being hindered; not on’y now, but awlus—awlus—life long!’
Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing. ‘Oh, my friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh, my fellow-countrymen, what warning but this did I give you? And how shows this recreant conduct in a man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy? Oh, you Englishmen, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of yourselves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and to your children’s and your children’s children’s?’
There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the greater part of the audience were quiet. They looked at Stephen’s worn face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in the kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.
‘’Tis this Delegate’s trade for t’ speak,’ said Stephen, ‘an’ he’s paid for ’t, an’ he knows his work. Let him keep to ’t. Let him give no heed to what I ha had’n to bear. That’s not for him. That’s not for nobbody but me.’
There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong voice called out, ‘Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!’ Then the place was wonderfully still.
‘My brothers,’ said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, ‘and my fellow-workmen—for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to this delegate here—I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I was to speak till Strike o’ day. I know weel, aw what’s afore me. I know weel that yo aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi’ a man who is not wi’ yo in this matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i’ th’ road, yo’d feel it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger. What I ha getn, I mun mak th’ best on.’
‘Stephen Blackpool,’ said the chairman, rising, ‘think on ’t agen. Think on ’t once agen, lad, afore thou’rt shunned by aw owd friends.’
There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen’s face. To repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all their minds. He looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain of anger with them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.
‘I ha thowt on ’t, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I mun go th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw heer.’
He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they slowly dropped at his sides.
‘Monny’s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok’n wi’ me; monny’s the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart’n than now. I ha’ never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any o’ my like; Gonnows I ha’ none now that’s o’ my makin’. Yo’ll ca’ me traitor and that—yo I mean t’ say,’ addressing Slackbridge, ‘but ’tis easier to ca’ than mak’ out. So let be.’
He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
‘Haply,’ he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he might as it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and distant; ‘haply, when this question has been tak’n up and discoosed, there’ll be a threat to turn out if I’m let to work among yo. I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo unless it cooms—truly, I mun do ’t, my friends; not to brave yo, but to live. I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer? I mak’ no complaints o’ bein turned to the wa’, o’ bein outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard, but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at aw, my friends, I think ’tis that.’
Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building, but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all bound themselves to renounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going his way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.
Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh, my British countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying children on the points of their enemies’ swords? Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them, to hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a God-like cause? The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east, west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers for the United Aggregate Tribunal!
Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multitude of doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound, and took it up. Private feeling must yield to the common cause. Hurrah! The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.
Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was to be Stephen’s now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By general consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he habitually walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.
He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means. It was even harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and disgrace.
The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not only did he see no Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for, although he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the women working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he was acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and dreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were seen in his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days, and had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a young man of a very light complexion accosted him in the street.
‘Your name’s Blackpool, ain’t it?’ said the young man.
Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, ‘Yes.’
‘You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?’ said Bitzer, the very light young man in question.
Stephen answered ‘Yes,’ again.
‘I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don’t you?’
Stephen said ‘Yes,’ again.
‘Then go straight up there, will you?’ said Bitzer. ‘You’re expected, and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong to the Bank; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you’ll save me a walk.’
Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant Bounderby.
CHAPTER V MEN AND MASTERS
‘WELL, Stephen,’ said Bounderby, in his windy manner, ‘what’s this I hear? What have these pests of the earth been doing to you? Come in, and speak up.’
It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was set out; and Mr. Bounderby’s young wife, and her brother, and a great gentleman from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.
‘This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby. The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, ‘Oh really?’ and dawdled to the hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.
‘Now,’ said Bounderby, ‘speak up!’
After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling of his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested deserter he had been called.
‘What were it, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘as yo were pleased to want wi’ me?’
‘Why, I have told you,’ returned Bounderby. ‘Speak up like a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.’
‘Wi’ yor pardon, sir,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘I ha’ nowt to sen about it.’
Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something in his way here, began to blow at it directly.
‘Now, look here, Harthouse,’ said he, ‘here’s a specimen of ’em. When this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous strangers who are always about—and who ought to be hanged wherever they are found—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips about them?’
‘I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo’ o’ openin’ my lips.’
‘You said! Ah! I know what you said; more than that, I know what you mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry! Quite different things. You had better tell us at once, that that fellow Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and that he is not a regular qualified leader of the people: that is, a most confounded scoundrel. You had better tell us so at once; you can’t deceive me. You want to tell us so. Why don’t you?’
‘I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad,’ said Stephen, shaking his head. ‘They taks such as offers. Haply ’tis na’ the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get no better.’
The wind began to get boisterous.
‘Now, you’ll think this pretty well, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘You’ll think this tolerably strong. You’ll say, upon my soul this is a tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing, sir! You shall hear me ask this man a question. Pray, Mr. Blackpool’—wind springing up very fast—‘may I take the liberty of asking you how it happens that you refused to be in this Combination?’
‘How ’t happens?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite wall: ‘how it happens.’
‘I’d leefer not coom to ’t, sir; but sin you put th’ question—an’ not want’n t’ be ill-manner’n—I’ll answer. I ha passed a promess.’
‘Not to me, you know,’ said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with deceitful calms. One now prevailing.)
‘O no, sir. Not to yo.’
‘As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do with it,’ said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. ‘If only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined and made no bones about it?’
‘Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.’
‘Though he knows,’ said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, ‘that there are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for! Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about in the world some time. Did you ever meet with anything like that man out of this blessed country?’ And Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an angry finger.
‘Nay, ma’am,’ said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Louisa, after glancing at her face. ‘Not rebels, nor yet rascals. Nowt o’ th’ kind, ma’am, nowt o’ th’ kind. They’ve not doon me a kindness, ma’am, as I know and feel. But there’s not a dozen men amoong ’em, ma’am—a dozen? Not six—but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by himseln. God forbid as I, that ha’ known, and had’n experience o’ these men aw my life—I, that ha’ ett’n an’ droonken wi’ ’em, an’ seet’n wi’ ’em, and toil’n wi’ ’em, and lov’n ’em, should fail fur to stan by ’em wi’ the truth, let ’em ha’ doon to me what they may!’
He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character—deepened perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not even raise his voice.
‘No, ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to one another, ’fectionate to one another, e’en to death. Be poor amoong ’em, be sick amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny o’ th’ monny causes that carries grief to the poor man’s door, an’ they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’ yo, comfortable wi’ yo, Chrisen wi’ yo. Be sure o’ that, ma’am. They’d be riven to bits, ere ever they’d be different.’
‘In short,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘it’s because they are so full of virtues that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it while you are about it. Out with it.’
‘How ’tis, ma’am,’ resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural refuge in Louisa’s face, ‘that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us most to trouble an’ misfort’n an’ mistake, I dunno. But ’tis so. I know ’tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke. We’re patient too, an’ wants in general to do right. An’ I canna think the fawt is aw wi’ us.’
‘Now, my friend,’ said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have exasperated more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to any one else, ‘if you will favour me with your attention for half a minute, I should like to have a word or two with you. You said just now, that you had nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure of that before we go any further.’
‘Sir, I am sure on ’t.’
‘Here’s a gentleman from London present,’ Mr. Bounderby made a backhanded point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, ‘a Parliament gentleman. I should like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me, instead of taking the substance of it—for I know precious well, beforehand, what it will be; nobody knows better than I do, take notice!—instead of receiving it on trust from my mouth.’
Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes involuntarily to his former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though instantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Bounderby’s face.
‘Now, what do you complain of?’ asked Mr. Bounderby.
‘I ha’ not coom here, sir,’ Stephen reminded him, ‘to complain. I coom for that I were sent for.’
‘What,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, ‘do you people, in a general way, complain of?’
Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind.
‘Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n my share in feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as ’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an’ to card, an’ to piece out a livin’, aw the same one way, somehows, ’twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, and wi’ what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’ yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha growen an’ growen, sir, bigger an’ bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly tell a man ’tis not a muddle?’
‘Of course,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Now perhaps you’ll let the gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re so fond of calling it) to rights.’
‘I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as should be looken to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do’t?’
‘I’ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. We’ll indict the blackguards for felony, and get ’em shipped off to penal settlements.’
Stephen gravely shook his head.
‘Don’t tell me we won’t, man,’ said Mr. Bounderby, by this time blowing a hurricane, ‘because we will, I tell you!’
‘Sir,’ returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty, ‘if yo was t’ tak a hundred Slackbridges—aw as there is, and aw the number ten times towd—an’ was t’ sew ’em up in separate sacks, an’ sink ’em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d leave the muddle just wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers!’ said Stephen, with an anxious smile; ‘when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can call to mind, o’ th’ mischeevous strangers! ’Tis not by them the trouble’s made, sir. ’Tis not wi’ them ’t commences. I ha no favour for ’em—I ha no reason to favour ’em—but ’tis hopeless and useless to dream o’ takin them fro their trade, ’stead o’ takin their trade fro them! Aw that’s now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an’ will be heer when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship an’ pack it off to Norfolk Island, an’ the time will go on just the same. So ’tis wi’ Slackbridge every bit.’
Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, he put his hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and he felt it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment to be faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what was in his mind.
‘Sir, I canna, wi’ my little learning an’ my common way, tell the genelman what will better aw this—though some working men o’ this town could, above my powers—but I can tell him what I know will never do ’t. The strong hand will never do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t. Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat’rally awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do ’t. Nor yet lettin alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw’en into the like muddle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ a black unpassable world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’ kindness and patience an’ cheery ways, that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so cherishes one another in their distresses wi’ what they need themseln—like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw his travels can beat—will never do ’t till th’ Sun turns t’ ice. Most o’ aw, rating ’em as so much Power, and reg’latin ’em as if they was figures in a soom, or machines: wi’out loves and likens, wi’out memories and inclinations, wi’out souls to weary and souls to hope—when aw goes quiet, draggin on wi’ ’em as if they’d nowt o’ th’ kind, and when aw goes onquiet, reproachin ’em for their want o’ sitch humanly feelins in their dealins wi’ yo—this will never do ’t, sir, till God’s work is onmade.’
Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything more were expected of him.
‘Just stop a moment,’ said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in the face. ‘I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had better turn about and come out of that. And I also told you, if you remember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-out.’
‘I were not up to ’t myseln, sir; I do assure yo.’
‘Now it’s clear to me,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you are one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about, sowing it and raising crops. That’s the business of your life, my friend.’
Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other business to do for his life.
‘You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will have nothing to do with you. I never thought those fellows could be right in anything; but I tell you what! I so far go along with them for a novelty, that I’ll have nothing to do with you either.’
Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.
‘You can finish off what you’re at,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a meaning nod, ‘and then go elsewhere.’
‘Sir, yo know weel,’ said Stephen expressively, ‘that if I canna get work wi’ yo, I canna get it elsewheer.’
The reply was, ‘What I know, I know; and what you know, you know. I have no more to say about it.’
Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no more; therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, ‘Heaven help us aw in this world!’ he departed.
CHAPTER VI FADING AWAY
IT was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Bounderby’s house. The shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look about him when he closed the door, but plodded straight along the street. Nothing was further from his thoughts than the curious old woman he had encountered on his previous visit to the same house, when he heard a step behind him that he knew, and turning, saw her in Rachael’s company.
He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.
‘Ah, Rachael, my dear! Missus, thou wi’ her!’
‘Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must say,’ the old woman returned. ‘Here I am again, you see.’
‘But how wi’ Rachael?’ said Stephen, falling into their step, walking between them, and looking from the one to the other.
‘Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be with you,’ said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply upon herself. ‘My visiting time is later this year than usual, for I have been rather troubled with shortness of breath, and so put it off till the weather was fine and warm. For the same reason I don’t make all my journey in one day, but divide it into two days, and get a bed to-night at the Travellers’ Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and go back Parliamentary, at six in the morning. Well, but what has this to do with this good lass, says you? I’m going to tell you. I have heard of Mr. Bounderby being married. I read it in the paper, where it looked grand—oh, it looked fine!’ the old woman dwelt on it with strange enthusiasm: ‘and I want to see his wife. I have never seen her yet. Now, if you’ll believe me, she hasn’t come out of that house since noon to-day. So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little last bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or three times; and her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she spoke to me. There!’ said the old woman to Stephen, ‘you can make all the rest out for yourself now, a deal shorter than I can, I dare say!’
Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to dislike this old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple as a manner possibly could be. With a gentleness that was as natural to him as he knew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the subject that interested her in her old age.
‘Well, missus,’ said he, ‘I ha seen the lady, and she were young and hansom. Wi’ fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, as I ha never seen the like on.’
‘Young and handsome. Yes!’ cried the old woman, quite delighted. ‘As bonny as a rose! And what a happy wife!’
‘Aye, missus, I suppose she be,’ said Stephen. But with a doubtful glance at Rachael.
‘Suppose she be? She must be. She’s your master’s wife,’ returned the old woman.
Stephen nodded assent. ‘Though as to master,’ said he, glancing again at Rachael, ‘not master onny more. That’s aw enden ’twixt him and me.’
‘Have you left his work, Stephen?’ asked Rachael, anxiously and quickly.
‘Why, Rachael,’ he replied, ‘whether I ha lef’n his work, or whether his work ha lef’n me, cooms t’ th’ same. His work and me are parted. ’Tis as weel so—better, I were thinkin when yo coom up wi’ me. It would ha brought’n trouble upon trouble if I had stayed theer. Haply ’tis a kindness to monny that I go; haply ’tis a kindness to myseln; anyways it mun be done. I mun turn my face fro Coketown fur th’ time, and seek a fort’n, dear, by beginnin fresh.’
‘Where will you go, Stephen?’
‘I donno t’night,’ said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his thin hair with the flat of his hand. ‘But I’m not goin t’night, Rachael, nor yet t’morrow. ’Tan’t easy overmuch t’ know wheer t’ turn, but a good heart will coom to me.’
Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. Before he had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby’s door, he had reflected that at least his being obliged to go away was good for her, as it would save her from the chance of being brought into question for not withdrawing from him. Though it would cost him a hard pang to leave her, and though he could think of no similar place in which his condemnation would not pursue him, perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the endurance of the last four days, even to unknown difficulties and distresses.
So he said, with truth, ‘I’m more leetsome, Rachael, under ’t, than I could’n ha believed.’ It was not her part to make his burden heavier. She answered with her comforting smile, and the three walked on together.
Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, finds much consideration among the poor. The old woman was so decent and contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though they had increased upon her since her former interview with Stephen, that they both took an interest in her. She was too sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her account, but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to talk to any extent: so, when they came to their part of the town, she was more brisk and vivacious than ever.
‘Come to my poor place, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘and tak a coop o’ tea. Rachael will coom then; and arterwards I’ll see thee safe t’ thy Travellers’ lodgin. ’T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha th’ chance o’ thy coompany agen.’
They complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged. When they turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his window with a dread that always haunted his desolate home; but it was open, as he had left it, and no one was there. The evil spirit of his life had flitted away again, months ago, and he had heard no more of her since. The only evidence of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in his room, and the grayer hair upon his head.
He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water from below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, and some butter from the nearest shop. The bread was new and crusty, the butter fresh, and the sugar lump, of course—in fulfilment of the standard testimony of the Coketown magnates, that these people lived like princes, sir. Rachael made the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing of a cup), and the visitor enjoyed it mightily. It was the first glimpse of sociality the host had had for many days. He too, with the world a wide heath before him, enjoyed the meal—again in corroboration of the magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of these people, sir.
‘I ha never thowt yet, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘o’ askin thy name.’
The old lady announced herself as ‘Mrs. Pegler.’
‘A widder, I think?’ said Stephen.
‘Oh, many long years!’ Mrs. Pegler’s husband (one of the best on record) was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler’s calculation, when Stephen was born.
‘’Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one,’ said Stephen. ‘Onny children?’
Mrs. Pegler’s cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, denoted some nervousness on her part. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now, not now.’
‘Dead, Stephen,’ Rachael softly hinted.
‘I’m sooary I ha spok’n on ’t,’ said Stephen, ‘I ought t’ hadn in my mind as I might touch a sore place. I—I blame myseln.’
While he excused himself, the old lady’s cup rattled more and more. ‘I had a son,’ she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of the usual appearances of sorrow; ‘and he did well, wonderfully well. But he is not to be spoken of if you please. He is—’ Putting down her cup, she moved her hands as if she would have added, by her action, ‘dead!’ Then she said aloud, ‘I have lost him.’
Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady pain, when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and calling him to the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs. Pegler was by no means deaf, for she caught a word as it was uttered.
‘Bounderby!’ she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the table. ‘Oh hide me! Don’t let me be seen for the world. Don’t let him come up till I’ve got away. Pray, pray!’ She trembled, and was excessively agitated; getting behind Rachael, when Rachael tried to reassure her; and not seeming to know what she was about.
‘But hearken, missus, hearken,’ said Stephen, astonished. ‘’Tisn’t Mr. Bounderby; ’tis his wife. Yo’r not fearfo’ o’ her. Yo was hey-go-mad about her, but an hour sin.’
‘But are you sure it’s the lady, and not the gentleman?’ she asked, still trembling.
‘Certain sure!’
‘Well then, pray don’t speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,’ said the old woman. ‘Let me be quite to myself in this corner.’
Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was quite unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa into the room. She was followed by the whelp.
Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle on the table. Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table near it, waiting to be addressed.
For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women.
Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended; something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand; something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and such another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into its component drops.
She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the few chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two women, and to Stephen.
‘I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now. I should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me. Is this your wife?’
Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped again.
‘I remember,’ said Louisa, reddening at her mistake; ‘I recollect, now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not attending to the particulars at the time. It was not my meaning to ask a question that would give pain to any one here. If I should ask any other question that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you please, for being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.’
As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael. Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.
‘He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband? You would be his first resource, I think.’
‘I have heard the end of it, young lady,’ said Rachael.
‘Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would probably be rejected by all? I thought he said as much?’
‘The chances are very small, young lady—next to nothing—for a man who gets a bad name among them.’
‘What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?’
‘The name of being troublesome.’
‘Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply separated in this town, that there is no place whatever for an honest workman between them?’
Rachael shook her head in silence.
‘He fell into suspicion,’ said Louisa, ‘with his fellow-weavers, because—he had made a promise not to be one of them. I think it must have been to you that he made that promise. Might I ask you why he made it?’
Rachael burst into tears. ‘I didn’t seek it of him, poor lad. I prayed him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he’d come to it through me. But I know he’d die a hundred deaths, ere ever he’d break his word. I know that of him well.’
Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful attitude, with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a voice rather less steady than usual.
‘No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an’ what love, an’ respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi’ what cause. When I passed that promess, I towd her true, she were th’ Angel o’ my life. ’Twere a solemn promess. ’Tis gone fro’ me, for ever.’
Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that was new in her. She looked from him to Rachael, and her features softened. ‘What will you do?’ she asked him. And her voice had softened too.
‘Weel, ma’am,’ said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; ‘when I ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’—cept laying down and dying.’
‘How will you travel?’
‘Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.’
Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand. The rustling of a bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table.
‘Rachael, will you tell him—for you know how, without offence—that this is freely his, to help him on his way? Will you entreat him to take it?’
‘I canna do that, young lady,’ she answered, turning her head aside. ‘Bless you for thinking o’ the poor lad wi’ such tenderness. But ’tis for him to know his heart, and what is right according to it.’
Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part overcome with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-command, who had been so plain and steady through the late interview, lost his composure in a moment, and now stood with his hand before his face. She stretched out hers, as if she would have touched him; then checked herself, and remained still.
‘Not e’en Rachael,’ said Stephen, when he stood again with his face uncovered, ‘could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder. T’ show that I’m not a man wi’out reason and gratitude, I’ll tak two pound. I’ll borrow ’t for t’ pay ’t back. ’Twill be the sweetest work as ever I ha done, that puts it in my power t’ acknowledge once more my lastin thankfulness for this present action.’
She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much smaller sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor picturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of expressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield could not have taught his son in a century.
Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his walking-stick with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this stage. Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather hurriedly, and put in a word.
‘Just wait a moment, Loo! Before we go, I should like to speak to him a moment. Something comes into my head. If you’ll step out on the stairs, Blackpool, I’ll mention it. Never mind a light, man!’ Tom was remarkably impatient of his moving towards the cupboard, to get one. ‘It don’t want a light.’
Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held the lock in his hand.
‘I say!’ he whispered. ‘I think I can do you a good turn. Don’t ask me what it is, because it may not come to anything. But there’s no harm in my trying.’
His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen’s ear, it was so hot.
‘That was our light porter at the Bank,’ said Tom, ‘who brought you the message to-night. I call him our light porter, because I belong to the Bank too.’
Stephen thought, ‘What a hurry he is in!’ He spoke so confusedly.
‘Well!’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! When are you off?’
‘T’ day’s Monday,’ replied Stephen, considering. ‘Why, sir, Friday or Saturday, nigh ’bout.’
‘Friday or Saturday,’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! I am not sure that I can do you the good turn I want to do you—that’s my sister, you know, in your room—but I may be able to, and if I should not be able to, there’s no harm done. So I tell you what. You’ll know our light porter again?’
‘Yes, sure,’ said Stephen.
‘Very well,’ returned Tom. ‘When you leave work of a night, between this and your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour or so, will you? Don’t take on, as if you meant anything, if he should see you hanging about there; because I shan’t put him up to speak to you, unless I find I can do you the service I want to do you. In that case he’ll have a note or a message for you, but not else. Now look here! You are sure you understand.’
He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of Stephen’s coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight up round and round, in an extraordinary manner.
‘I understand, sir,’ said Stephen.
‘Now look here!’ repeated Tom. ‘Be sure you don’t make any mistake then, and don’t forget. I shall tell my sister as we go home, what I have in view, and she’ll approve, I know. Now look here! You’re all right, are you? You understand all about it? Very well then. Come along, Loo!’
He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return into the room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. He was at the bottom when she began to descend, and was in the street before she could take his arm.
Mrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister were gone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand. She was in a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. Bounderby, and, like an unaccountable old woman, wept, ‘because she was such a pretty dear.’ Yet Mrs. Pegler was so flurried lest the object of her admiration should return by chance, or anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was ended for that night. It was late too, to people who rose early and worked hard; therefore the party broke up; and Stephen and Rachael escorted their mysterious acquaintance to the door of the Travellers’ Coffee House, where they parted from her.
They walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon them. When they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent meetings always ended, they stopped, still silent, as if both were afraid to speak.
‘I shall strive t’ see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not—’
‘Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. ’Tis better that we make up our minds to be open wi’ one another.’
‘Thou’rt awlus right. ’Tis bolder and better. I ha been thinkin then, Rachael, that as ’tis but a day or two that remains, ’twere better for thee, my dear, not t’ be seen wi’ me. ’T might bring thee into trouble, fur no good.’
‘’Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know’st our old agreement. ’Tis for that.’
‘Well, well,’ said he. ‘’Tis better, onnyways.’
‘Thou’lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?’
‘Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi’ thee, Heaven bless thee, Heaven thank thee and reward thee!’
‘May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee peace and rest at last!’
‘I towd thee, my dear,’ said Stephen Blackpool—‘that night—that I would never see or think o’ onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better than me, should’st be beside it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me see it wi’ a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!’
It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from any one, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before. At the end of the second day, he saw land; at the end of the third, his loom stood empty.
He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each of the two first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or bad. That he might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait full two hours, on this third and last night.
There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby’s house, sitting at the first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the blind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and standing on the steps for a breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the light porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing.
Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day’s labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable character.
Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down the long perspective of the street, until they were blended and lost in the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first-floor window, drew down the blind, and went up-stairs. Presently, a light went up-stairs after her, passing first the fanlight of the door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its way up. By and by, one corner of the second-floor blind was disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit’s eye were there; also the other corner, as if the light porter’s eye were on that side. Still, no communication was made to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were at last accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering.
He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for to-morrow, and all was arranged for his departure. He meant to be clear of the town very early; before the Hands were in the streets.
It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it, rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.
By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway’s crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.
Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.
So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange, to have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer morning! With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.
CHAPTER VII GUNPOWDER
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, ‘going in’ for his adopted party, soon began to score. With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a little more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most patronized of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.
‘Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not believe themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy—never mind the name—is, that we know it is all meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never say so.’
Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so unlike her father’s principles, and her early training, that it need startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with no faith in anything else? What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in its state of innocence!
It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind—implanted there before her eminently practical father began to form it—a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever heard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief and justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter, she had said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter, she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What did anything matter—and went on.
Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet so gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were ‘great fun;’ and further, that the female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their house, in his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby’s gusty way to boast to all his world that he didn’t care about your highly connected people, but that if his wife Tom Gradgrind’s daughter did, she was welcome to their company.
Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.
He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget a word of the brother’s revelations. He interwove them with everything he saw of the sister, and he began to understand her. To be sure, the better and profounder part of her character was not within his scope of perception; for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he soon began to read the rest with a student’s eye.
Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, about fifteen miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two, by a railway striding on many arches over a wild country, undermined by deserted coal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires and black shapes of stationary engines at pits’ mouths. This country, gradually softening towards the neighbourhood of Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, there mellowed into a rustic landscape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of the year, and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer time. The bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus pleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his determination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune, overspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand pounds. These accidents did sometimes happen in the best regulated families of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever with the improvident classes.
It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to instal himself in this snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow cabbages in the flower-garden. He delighted to live, barrack-fashion, among the elegant furniture, and he bullied the very pictures with his origin. ‘Why, sir,’ he would say to a visitor, ‘I am told that Nickits,’ the late owner, ‘gave seven hundred pound for that Seabeach. Now, to be plain with you, if I ever, in the whole course of my life, take seven looks at it, at a hundred pound a look, it will be as much as I shall do. No, by George! I don’t forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could have got into my possession, by any means, unless I stole ’em, were the engravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles that I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and that I sold when they were empty for a farthing a-piece, and glad to get it!’
Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style.
‘Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring half a dozen more if you like, and we’ll find room for ’em. There’s stabling in this place for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is belied, he kept the full number. A round dozen of ’em, sir. When that man was a boy, he went to Westminster School. Went to Westminster School as a King’s Scholar, when I was principally living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets. Why, if I wanted to keep a dozen horses—which I don’t, for one’s enough for me—I couldn’t bear to see ’em in their stalls here, and think what my own lodging used to be. I couldn’t look at ’em, sir, and not order ’em out. Yet so things come round. You see this place; you know what sort of a place it is; you are aware that there’s not a completer place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere—I don’t care where—and here, got into the middle of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the chief-justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were black in the face, is drivelling at this minute—drivelling, sir!—in a fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.’
It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long sultry summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the face which had set him wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it would change for him.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find you alone here. I have for some time had a particular wish to speak to you.’
It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of day being that at which she was always alone, and the place being her favourite resort. It was an opening in a dark wood, where some felled trees lay, and where she would sit watching the fallen leaves of last year, as she had watched the falling ashes at home.
He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.
‘Your brother. My young friend Tom—’
Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest. ‘I never in my life,’ he thought, ‘saw anything so remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features!’ His face betrayed his thoughts—perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according to its instructions so to do.
‘Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful—Tom should be so proud of it—I know this is inexcusable, but I am so compelled to admire.’
‘Being so impulsive,’ she said composedly.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You know I am a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding whatever.’
‘I am waiting,’ she returned, ‘for your further reference to my brother.’
‘You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog as you will find, except that I am not false—not false. But you surprised and started me from my subject, which was your brother. I have an interest in him.’
‘Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?’ she asked, half incredulously and half gratefully.
‘If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no. I must say now—even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of justly awakening your incredulity—yes.’
She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not find voice; at length she said, ‘Mr. Harthouse, I give you credit for being interested in my brother.’
‘Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account—pardon me again—I am running wide of the subject. I am interested in him for his own sake.’
She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that instant, and she remained.
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he dismissed; ‘it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your brother’s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive—a little dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?’
‘I think he makes bets.’ Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that were not her whole answer, she added, ‘I know he does.’
‘Of course he loses?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of your sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?’
She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly and a little resentfully.
‘Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. I think Tom may be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked experience.—Shall I say again, for his sake? Is that necessary?’
She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.
‘Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,’ said James Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more airy manner; ‘I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many advantages. Whether—forgive my plainness—whether any great amount of confidence is likely to have been established between himself and his most worthy father.’
‘I do not,’ said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in that wise, ‘think it likely.’
‘Or, between himself, and—I may trust to your perfect understanding of my meaning, I am sure—and his highly esteemed brother-in-law.’
She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a fainter voice, ‘I do not think that likely, either.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, after a short silence, ‘may there be a better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a considerable sum of you?’
‘You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,’ she returned, after some indecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self-contained manner; ‘you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know, it is not by way of complaint or regret. I would never complain of anything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret.’
‘So spirited, too!’ thought James Harthouse.
‘When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold them very willingly. I attached no value to them. They were quite worthless to me.’
Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband’s gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would have known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.
‘Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I could spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you at all, on the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by halves. Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so involved, but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to your honour. I have held no confidence with any one, because—you anticipated my reason just now.’ She abruptly broke off.
He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. With all possible respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. Bounderby, I think I perceive that he has not been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into these extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long been forced—with the very best intentions we have no doubt—upon him. Mr. Bounderby’s fine bluff English independence, though a most charming characteristic, does not—as we have agreed—invite confidence. If I might venture to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should express what it presents to my own view.’
As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her application of his very distinctly uttered words.
‘All allowance,’ he continued, ‘must be made. I have one great fault to find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him heavily to account.’
Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?
‘Perhaps,’ he returned, ‘I have said enough. Perhaps it would have been better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.’
‘You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.’
‘To relieve you from needless apprehension—and as this confidence regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible things, has been established between us—I obey. I cannot forgive him for not being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my observation, is a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence.’
The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with acute pain that found no relief in them.
‘In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby, that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction and advice in extricating them—rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a scapegrace on a much larger scale—will give me some influence over him, and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees,’ he added, having lifted up his eyes and looked about; for he had watched her closely until now; ‘is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched—if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too often to believe in them.’
He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter pastime, and his colour changed.
‘Halloa!’ he stammered; ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Whose name, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house together, ‘have you been carving on the trees?’
‘Whose name?’ returned Tom. ‘Oh! You mean what girl’s name?’
‘You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature’s on the bark, Tom.’
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the garden]
‘Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I’d carve her name as often as she liked.’
‘I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.’
‘Mercenary,’ repeated Tom. ‘Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.’
‘Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?’ said Louisa, showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
‘You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,’ returned her brother sulkily. ‘If it does, you can wear it.’
‘Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and then,’ said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Don’t believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little.’
‘At all events, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, softening in his admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, ‘you can’t tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason. However, never mind this now; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am sick of the subject.’
They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother’s shoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden.
‘Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.’
They had stopped among a disorder of roses—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale—and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.
‘Tom, what’s the matter?’
‘Oh! Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom with a groan, ‘I am hard up, and bothered out of my life.’
‘My good fellow, so am I.’
‘You!’ returned Tom. ‘You are the picture of independence. Mr. Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have got myself into—what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she would only have done it.’
He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man’s. After one exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his lightest air.
‘Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.’
‘Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it? Here’s old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon twopence a month, or something of that sort. Here’s my father drawing what he calls a line, and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here’s my mother who never has anything of her own, except her complaints. What is a fellow to do for money, and where am I to look for it, if not to my sister?’
He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr. Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat.
‘But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it—’
‘Not got it, Mr. Harthouse? I don’t say she has got it. I may have wanted more than she was likely to have got. But then she ought to get it. She could get it. It’s of no use pretending to make a secret of matters now, after what I have told you already; you know she didn’t marry old Bounderby for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake. Then why doesn’t she get what I want, out of him, for my sake? She is not obliged to say what she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough; she could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn’t she choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is? But no. There she sits in his company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable and getting it easily. I don’t know what you may call this, but I call it unnatural conduct.’
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind junior, as the injured men of Coketown threatened to pitch their property into the Atlantic. But he preserved his easy attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone balustrades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little surface-island.
‘My dear Tom,’ said Harthouse, ‘let me try to be your banker.’
‘For God’s sake,’ replied Tom, suddenly, ‘don’t talk about bankers!’ And very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. Very white.
Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the best society, was not to be surprised—he could as soon have been affected—but he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind College.
‘What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what they are.’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: ‘it’s too late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you’re a true friend.’
A true friend! ‘Whelp, whelp!’ thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily; ‘what an Ass you are!’
‘And I take your offer as a great kindness,’ said Tom, grasping his hand. ‘As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Well,’ returned the other, ‘it may be of more use by and by. And, my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find for yourself.’
‘Thank you,’ said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds. ‘I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Now, you see, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland: ‘every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately intent;’ the languor of his desperation being quite tropical; ‘on your softening towards your sister—which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother—which you ought to be.’
‘I will be, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.’
‘Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.’
‘Having made which bargain, Tom,’ said Harthouse, clapping him on the shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer—as he did, poor fool—that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good nature to lessen his sense of obligation, ‘we will tear ourselves asunder until dinner-time.’
When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. ‘I didn’t mean to be cross, Loo,’ he said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. ‘I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.’
After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for some one else. Alas, for some one else!
‘So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,’ thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day’s knowledge of her pretty face. ‘So much the less, so much the less.’
CHAPTER VIII EXPLOSION
THE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room, smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could give his mind to it.
He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now and at all times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate recesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him. Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad, than indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to be travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly; but he troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be, will be.
As he had rather a long ride to take that day—for there was a public occasion ‘to do’ at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men—he dressed early and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. There was a look of interest for him again.
He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding back at six o’clock. There was a sweep of some half-mile between the lodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.
‘Harthouse!’ cried Mr. Bounderby. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.
‘Then you haven’t heard!’
‘I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.’
Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
‘The Bank’s robbed!’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with a false key.’
‘Of much?’
Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, ‘Why, no; not of very much. But it might have been.’
‘Of how much?’
‘Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty pound,’ said Bounderby, with impatience. ‘But it’s not the sum; it’s the fact. It’s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that’s the important circumstance. I am surprised you don’t see it.’
‘My dear Bounderby,’ said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to his servant, ‘I do see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view. Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you—which I do with all my soul, I assure you—on your not having sustained a greater loss.’
‘Thank’ee,’ replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. ‘But I tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound.’
‘I suppose it might.’
‘Suppose it might! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head. ‘It might have been twice twenty. There’s no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn’t have been, as it was, but for the fellows’ being disturbed.’
Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer.
‘Here’s Tom Gradgrind’s daughter knows pretty well what it might have been, if you don’t,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘Dropped, sir, as if she was shot when I told her! Never knew her do such a thing before. Does her credit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!’
She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been committed.
‘Why, I am going to tell you,’ said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm to Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If you hadn’t been so mighty particular about the sum, I should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she is a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?’
‘I have already had the honour—’
‘Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same occasion?’ Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer knuckled his forehead.
‘Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank, perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business hours, everything was put away as usual. In the iron room that this young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much. In the little safe in young Tom’s closet, the safe used for petty purposes, there was a hundred and fifty odd pound.’
‘A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,’ said Bitzer.
‘Come!’ retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, ‘let’s have none of your interruptions. It’s enough to be robbed while you’re snoring because you’re too comfortable, without being put right with your four seven ones. I didn’t snore, myself, when I was your age, let me tell you. I hadn’t victuals enough to snore. And I didn’t four seven one. Not if I knew it.’
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of Mr. Bounderby’s moral abstinence.
‘A hundred and fifty odd pound,’ resumed Mr. Bounderby. ‘That sum of money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that’s no matter now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night, while this young fellow snored—Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, you say you have heard him snore?’
‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I cannot say that I have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, ‘that I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my testimony.’
‘Well!’ said the exasperated Bounderby, ‘while he was snoring, or choking, or Dutch-clocking, or something or other—being asleep—some fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not remains to be seen, got to young Tom’s safe, forced it, and abstracted the contents. Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves out at the main door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked, and the key under Mrs. Sparsit’s pillow) with a false key, which was picked up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o’clock to-day. No alarm takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and begins to open and prepare the offices for business. Then, looking at Tom’s safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the money gone.’
‘Where is Tom, by the by?’ asked Harthouse, glancing round.
‘He has been helping the police,’ said Bounderby, ‘and stays behind at the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his time of life. They would have been out of pocket if they had invested eighteenpence in the job; I can tell ’em that.’
‘Is anybody suspected?’
‘Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. Egod!’ said Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit’s arm to wipe his heated head. ‘Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody suspected. No, thank you!’
Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected?
‘Well,’ said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront them all, ‘I’ll tell you. It’s not to be mentioned everywhere; it’s not to be mentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there’s a gang of ’em) may be thrown off their guard. So take this in confidence. Now wait a bit.’ Mr. Bounderby wiped his head again. ‘What should you say to;’ here he violently exploded: ‘to a Hand being in it?’
‘I hope,’ said Harthouse, lazily, ‘not our friend Blackpot?’
‘Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,’ returned Bounderby, ‘and that’s the man.’
Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.
‘O yes! I know!’ said Bounderby, immediately catching at the sound. ‘I know! I am used to that. I know all about it. They are the finest people in the world, these fellows are. They have got the gift of the gab, they have. They only want to have their rights explained to them, they do. But I tell you what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll show you a man that’s fit for anything bad, I don’t care what it is.’
Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been taken to disseminate—and which some people really believed.
‘But I am acquainted with these chaps,’ said Bounderby. ‘I can read ’em off, like books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I appeal to you. What warning did I give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the express object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over, and floor the Established Church? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high connexions, you are on a level with the aristocracy,—did I say, or did I not say, to that fellow, “you can’t hide the truth from me: you are not the kind of fellow I like; you’ll come to no good”?’
‘Assuredly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you did, in a highly impressive manner, give him such an admonition.’
‘When he shocked you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘when he shocked your feelings?’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her head, ‘he certainly did so. Though I do not mean to say but that my feelings may be weaker on such points—more foolish if the term is preferred—than they might have been, if I had always occupied my present position.’
Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Harthouse, as much as to say, ‘I am the proprietor of this female, and she’s worth your attention, I think.’ Then, resumed his discourse.
‘You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him when you saw him. I didn’t mince the matter with him. I am never mealy with ’em. I KNOW ’em. Very well, sir. Three days after that, he bolted. Went off, nobody knows where: as my mother did in my infancy—only with this difference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What did he do before he went? What do you say;’ Mr. Bounderby, with his hat in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his sentences, as if it were a tambourine; ‘to his being seen—night after night—watching the Bank?—to his lurking about there—after dark?—To its striking Mrs. Sparsit—that he could be lurking for no good—To her calling Bitzer’s attention to him, and their both taking notice of him—And to its appearing on inquiry to-day—that he was also noticed by the neighbours?’ Having come to the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put his tambourine on his head.
‘Suspicious,’ said James Harthouse, ‘certainly.’
‘I think so, sir,’ said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. ‘I think so. But there are more of ’em in it. There’s an old woman. One never hears of these things till the mischief’s done; all sorts of defects are found out in the stable door after the horse is stolen; there’s an old woman turns up now. An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a broomstick, every now and then. She watches the place a whole day before this fellow begins, and on the night when you saw him, she steals away with him and holds a council with him—I suppose, to make her report on going off duty, and be damned to her.’
There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from observation, thought Louisa.
‘This is not all of ’em, even as we already know ’em,’ said Bounderby, with many nods of hidden meaning. ‘But I have said enough for the present. You’ll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no one. It may take time, but we shall have ’em. It’s policy to give ’em line enough, and there’s no objection to that.’
‘Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as notice-boards observe,’ replied James Harthouse, ‘and serve them right. Fellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences. If there were no consequences, we should all go in for Banks.’ He had gently taken Louisa’s parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked under its shade, though the sun did not shine there.
‘For the present, Loo Bounderby,’ said her husband, ‘here’s Mrs. Sparsit to look after. Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves have been acted upon by this business, and she’ll stay here a day or two. So make her comfortable.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ that discreet lady observed, ‘but pray do not let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do for Me.’
It soon appeared that if Mrs. Sparsit had a failing in her association with that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance. On being shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts as to suggest the inference that she would have preferred to pass the night on the mangle in the laundry. True, the Powlers and the Scadgerses were accustomed to splendour, ‘but it is my duty to remember,’ Mrs. Sparsit was fond of observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any of the domestics were present, ‘that what I was, I am no longer. Indeed,’ said she, ‘if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr. Sparsit was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family; or if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of common descent and ordinary connexions; I would gladly do so. I should think it, under existing circumstances, right to do so.’ The same Hermitical state of mind led to her renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner, until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to take them; when she said, ‘Indeed you are very good, sir;’ and departed from a resolution of which she had made rather formal and public announcement, to ‘wait for the simple mutton.’ She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt; and, feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back in her chair and silently wept; at which periods a tear of large dimensions, like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be, for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose.
But Mrs. Sparsit’s greatest point, first and last, was her determination to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions when in looking at him she was involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of emotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully cheerful, and would say, ‘You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful to find;’ and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr. Bounderby bore up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often apologized, she found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a curious propensity to call Mrs. Bounderby ‘Miss Gradgrind,’ and yielded to it some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest confusion; but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Gradgrind: whereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the happiness of knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs. Bounderby, she found almost impossible. It was a further singularity of this remarkable case, that the more she thought about it, the more impossible it appeared; ‘the differences,’ she observed, ‘being such.’
In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case of the robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town with instructions to recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.
When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, ‘Don’t be low, sir. Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do.’ Mr. Bounderby, upon whom these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in a bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large sea-animal. ‘I cannot bear to see you so, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Try a hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of living under your roof.’ ‘I haven’t played backgammon, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘since that time.’ ‘No, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, soothingly, ‘I am aware that you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no interest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you will condescend.’
They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was a fine night: not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr. Harthouse strolled out into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the stillness, though not what they said. Mrs. Sparsit, from her place at the backgammon board, was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the shadows without. ‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you don’t see a Fire, do you?’ ‘Oh dear no, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I was thinking of the dew.’ ‘What have you got to do with the dew, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘It’s not myself, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I am fearful of Miss Gradgrind’s taking cold.’ ‘She never takes cold,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Really, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. And was affected with a cough in her throat.
When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took a glass of water. ‘Oh, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Not your sherry warm, with lemon-peel and nutmeg?’ ‘Why, I have got out of the habit of taking it now, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘The more’s the pity, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘you are losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir! If Miss Gradgrind will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I have often done.’
Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr. Bounderby. ‘It will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir.’ And when Mr. Bounderby said, ‘Your health, ma’am!’ she answered with great feeling, ‘Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also.’ Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was.
Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for her brother’s coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour past midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang on until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.
She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the staircase to her brother’s room. His door being shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.
She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said nothing to him.
He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that was, and what was the matter?
‘Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming.’
‘My dear brother:’ she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: ‘is there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the truth!’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo!’
‘As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘You may be certain;’ in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom as if he were a child; ‘that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only “yes,” and I shall understand you!’
She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.
‘Not a word, Tom?’
‘How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don’t know what you mean? Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin to think of a better brother than I am. But I have nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to bed.’
‘You are tired,’ she whispered presently, more in her usual way.
‘Yes, I am quite tired out.’
‘You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day. Have any fresh discoveries been made?’
‘Only those you have heard of, from—him.’
‘Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those people, and that we saw those three together?’
‘No. Didn’t you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet when you asked me to go there with you?’
‘Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen.’
‘Nor I neither. How could I?’
He was very quick upon her with this retort.
‘Ought I to say, after what has happened,’ said his sister, standing by the bed—she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, ‘that I made that visit? Should I say so? Must I say so?’
‘Good Heavens, Loo,’ returned her brother, ‘you are not in the habit of asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep it to yourself, I shall keep it to _my_self. If you disclose it, there’s an end of it.’
It was too dark for either to see the other’s face; but each seemed very attentive, and to consider before speaking.
‘Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really implicated in this crime?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be.’
‘He seemed to me an honest man.’
‘Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so.’ There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.
‘In short,’ resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, ‘if you come to that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour, that I took him outside the door to tell him quietly, that I thought he might consider himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from my sister, and that I hoped he would make good use of it. You remember whether I took him out or not. I say nothing against the man; he may be a very good fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is.’
‘Was he offended by what you said?’
‘No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough. Where are you, Loo?’ He sat up in bed and kissed her. ‘Good night, my dear, good night.’
‘You have nothing more to tell me?’
‘No. What should I have? You wouldn’t have me tell you a lie!’
‘I wouldn’t have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the nights in your life; many and much happier as I hope they will be.’
‘Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I wonder I don’t say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to bed.’
Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and lay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him. She stood for some time at the bedside before she slowly moved away. She stopped at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if he had called her? But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and returned to her room.
Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again: tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world.
CHAPTER IX HEARING THE LAST OF IT
MRS. SPARSIT, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold rock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers would have been constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hook-beaked order.
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
She took very kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before breakfast.
‘It appears but yesterday, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that I had the honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby’s address.’
‘An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of Ages,’ said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs. Sparsit with the most indolent of all possible airs.
‘We live in a singular world, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically expressed.’
‘A singular world, I would say, sir,’ pursued Mrs. Sparsit; after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet tones; ‘as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals we were quite ignorant of, at another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind.’
‘Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I availed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs. Sparsit’s talent for—in fact for anything requiring accuracy—with a combination of strength of mind—and Family—is too habitually developed to admit of any question.’ He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took him so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution.
‘You found Miss Gradgrind—I really cannot call her Mrs. Bounderby; it’s very absurd of me—as youthful as I described her?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly.
‘You drew her portrait perfectly,’ said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Presented her dead image.’
‘Very engaging, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to revolve over one another.
‘Highly so.’
‘It used to be considered,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that Miss Gradgrind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and indeed here is Mr. Bounderby!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as if she had been talking and thinking of no one else. ‘How do you find yourself this morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir.’
Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, ‘You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table,’ Mr. Bounderby replied, ‘If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma’am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I’ll trouble you to take charge of the teapot.’ Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table.
This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she had had the honour of making Mr. Bounderby’s breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind—she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Bounderby—she hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to become familiar with it by and by—had assumed her present position. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby’s time was so very precious, and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request; long as his will had been a law to her.
‘There! Stop where you are, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘stop where you are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe.’
‘Don’t say that, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity, ‘because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be unkind is not to be you, sir.’
‘You may set your mind at rest, ma’am.—You can take it very quietly, can’t you, Loo?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way to his wife.
‘Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to me?’
‘Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. ‘You attach too much importance to these things, ma’am. By George, you’ll be corrupted in some of your notions here. You are old-fashioned, ma’am. You are behind Tom Gradgrind’s children’s time.’
‘What is the matter with you?’ asked Louisa, coldly surprised. ‘What has given you offence?’
‘Offence!’ repeated Bounderby. ‘Do you suppose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn’t name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don’t go beating about for side-winds.’
‘I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate,’ Louisa answered him composedly: ‘I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don’t understand what you would have.’
‘Have?’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘Nothing. Otherwise, don’t you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it?’
She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought. ‘You are incomprehensible this morning,’ said Louisa. ‘Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter?’
Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if she tried. But whether she ever tried or no, lay hidden in her own closed heart.
Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured ‘My benefactor!’ and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said ‘Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it.’
Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches that bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She had never been well within her daughter’s knowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to get out of it, allowed.
Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at Death’s door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown, over the coal-pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old home.
She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was usually sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without being observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and was still hard at it in the national dust-yard. Her mother had taken it rather as a disturbance than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined upon her sofa; young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she had never softened to again, since the night when the stroller’s child had raised her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby’s intended wife. She had no inducements to go back, and had rarely gone.
Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood—its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise—what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these? Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.
She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house and into her mother’s room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy had lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. Sissy was at her mother’s side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room.
There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up, from mere habit, on a couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so helpless could be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her bed; on the ground that if she did, she would never hear the last of it.
Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had much to do with it.
On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he married Louisa; that pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had called him J; and that she could not at present depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to it all at once.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘and I hope you are going on satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father’s doing. He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know.’
‘I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself.’
‘You want to hear of me, my dear? That’s something new, I am sure, when anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, Louisa. Very faint and giddy.’
‘Are you in pain, dear mother?’
‘I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.’
After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, holding her hand, could feel no pulse; but kissing it, could see a slight thin thread of life in fluttering motion.
‘You very seldom see your sister,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘She grows like you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her here.’
She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister’s. Louisa had observed her with her arm round Sissy’s neck, and she felt the difference of this approach.
‘Do you see the likeness, Louisa?’
‘Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But—’
‘Eh! Yes, I always say so,’ Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with unexpected quickness. ‘And that reminds me. I—I want to speak to you, my dear. Sissy, my good girl, leave us alone a minute.’ Louisa had relinquished the hand: had thought that her sister’s was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been: had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the gentleness of the other face in the room; the sweet face with the trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, by the rich dark hair.
Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the shadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.
‘You were going to speak to me, mother.’
‘Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know your father is almost always away now, and therefore I must write to him about it.’
‘About what, mother? Don’t be troubled. About what?’
‘You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have long left off saying anything.’
‘I can hear you, mother.’ But, it was only by dint of bending down to her ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they moved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of connexion.
‘You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name.’
‘I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.’ This, to keep her from floating away.
‘But there is something—not an Ology at all—that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find out for God’s sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.’
Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which could just turn from side to side.
She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs.
CHAPTER X MRS. SPARSIT’S STAIRCASE
MRS. SPARSIT’S nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, where, notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and contempt.
Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was), and further that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything he chose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming sweetbreads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, ‘I tell you what, ma’am; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday.’ To which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mahomedan persuasion: ‘To hear is to obey.’
Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life, to look up at her staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never turning back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief.
She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
‘And pray, sir,’ said she, ‘if I may venture to ask a question appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve—which is indeed hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do—have you received intelligence respecting the robbery?’
‘Why, ma’am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect it yet. Rome wasn’t built in a day, ma’am.’
‘Very true, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head.
‘Nor yet in a week, ma’am.’
‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon her.
‘In a similar manner, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I can wait, you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were better off in their youth than I was, however. They had a she-wolf for a nurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn’t give any milk, ma’am; she gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that.’
‘Ah!’ Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered.
‘No, ma’am,’ continued Bounderby, ‘I have not heard anything more about it. It’s in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business at present—something new for him; he hadn’t the schooling I had—is helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over. Do what you like under the rose, but don’t give a sign of what you’re about; or half a hundred of ’em will combine together and get this fellow who has bolted, out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves will grow in confidence by little and little, and we shall have ’em.’
‘Very sagacious indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Very interesting. The old woman you mentioned, sir—’
‘The old woman I mentioned, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, cutting the matter short, as it was nothing to boast about, ‘is not laid hold of; but, she may take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her villainous old mind. In the mean time, ma’am, I am of opinion, if you ask me my opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better.’
The same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting from her packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Louisa still descending.
She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low; he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face almost touched her hair. ‘If not quite!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, straining her hawk’s eyes to the utmost. Mrs. Sparsit was too distant to hear a word of their discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly, otherwise than from the expression of their figures; but what they said was this:
‘You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse?’
‘Oh, perfectly!’
‘His face, and his manner, and what he said?’
‘Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be. Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to hold forth, in the humble-virtue school of eloquence; but, I assure you I thought at the time, “My good fellow, you are over-doing this!”’
‘It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man.’
‘My dear Louisa—as Tom says.’ Which he never did say. ‘You know no good of the fellow?’
‘No, certainly.’
‘Nor of any other such person?’
‘How can I,’ she returned, with more of her first manner on her than he had lately seen, ‘when I know nothing of them, men or women?’
‘My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive representation of your devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his excellent fellow-creatures—for excellent they are, I am quite ready to believe, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to what they can get hold of. This fellow talks. Well; every fellow talks. He professes morality. Well; all sorts of humbugs profess morality. From the House of Commons to the House of Correction, there is a general profession of morality, except among our people; it really is that exception which makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the case. Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my esteemed friend Mr. Bounderby—who, as we know, is not possessed of that delicacy which would soften so tight a hand. The member of the fluffy classes was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody who proposed to him to go in for some share in this Bank business, went in, put something in his pocket which had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind extremely. Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an opportunity. Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the cleverness.’
‘I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,’ returned Louisa, after sitting thoughtful awhile, ‘to be so ready to agree with you, and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say.’
‘I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over with my friend Tom more than once—of course I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom—and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk?’
They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the twilight—she leaning on his arm—and she little thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase.
Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it.
And always gliding down, down, down!
Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant’s Staircase.
With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down.
CHAPTER XI LOWER AND LOWER
THE figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily; always verging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.
Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife’s decease, made an expedition from London, and buried her in a business-like manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes of other people who wanted other odds and ends—in fact resumed his parliamentary duties.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs. ‘Your foot on the last step, my lady,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, ‘and all your art shall never blind me.’
Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character or the graft of circumstances upon it,—her curious reserve did baffle, while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to help her.
So the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding: ‘But you’ll go down to-morrow, ma’am, all the same. You’ll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you.’
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, ‘let me beg you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I think you very well know.’
‘Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,’ said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ retorted Mrs. Sparsit, ‘your will is to me a law, sir; otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you shall say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation.’
‘Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, opening his eyes, ‘I should hope you want no other invitation.’
‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I should hope not. Say no more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ blustered Bounderby.
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘there was wont to be an elasticity in you which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!’
Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on his journey, and the Bank was closing, ‘present my compliments to young Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop and walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?’ Young Mr. Thomas being usually ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and followed on its heels. ‘Mr. Thomas,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘these plain viands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.’
‘Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.
‘How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Tom.
‘Where may he be at present?’ Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies for being so uncommunicative.
‘He is shooting in Yorkshire,’ said Tom. ‘Sent Loo a basket half as big as a church, yesterday.’
‘The kind of gentleman, now,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, ‘whom one might wager to be a good shot!’
‘Crack,’ said Tom.
He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching his looks, if she were so inclined.
‘Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘as indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr. Tom?’
‘Why, I expect to see him to-morrow,’ returned the whelp.
‘Good news!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly.
‘I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the station here,’ said Tom, ‘and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so, being due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn’t wonder if he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.’
‘Which reminds me!’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Would you remember a message to your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?’
‘Well? I’ll try,’ returned the reluctant whelp, ‘if it isn’t a long un.’
‘It is merely my respectful compliments,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I fear I may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.’
‘Oh! If that’s all,’ observed Tom, ‘it wouldn’t much matter, even if I was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of you unless she sees you.’
Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left, when he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off!’ and went off.
Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long looking at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye on the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind, but, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her reasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a passenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room windows, to appearing in its precincts openly.
Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had dispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, he strolled away idly, stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty minutes hence.
‘This is a device to keep him out of the way,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last. ‘Harthouse is with his sister now!’
It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy; but she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in darting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of coal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and whirled away.
All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down. Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.
An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its drooping eyelids Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches. One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Sparsit heard or saw until she very softly closed a gate.
She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.
Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment was a device to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled tree.
Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer to them. She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that no great one, she could have touched them both. He was there secretly, and had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horseback, and must have passed through the neighbouring fields; for his horse was tied to the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.
‘My dearest love,’ said he, ‘what could I do? Knowing you were alone, was it possible that I could stay away?’
‘You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; I don’t know what they see in you when you hold it up,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but you little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!’
That she hung her head, was certain. She urged him to go away, she commanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the amiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life. Her hands rested in one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her manner of speaking was not hurried.
‘My dear child,’ said Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit saw with delight that his arm embraced her; ‘will you not bear with my society for a little while?’
‘Not here.’
‘Where, Louisa?
‘Not here.’
‘But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far, and am altogether so devoted, and distracted. There never was a slave at once so devoted and ill-used by his mistress. To look for your sunny welcome that has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen manner, is heart-rending.’
‘Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?’
‘But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet?’
They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought there was another listener among the trees. It was only rain, beginning to fall fast, in heavy drops.
‘Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?’
‘No!’
‘Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to all other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of the most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious. My dearest Louisa, I cannot go myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of your power.’
Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life. The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he flung away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its pursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it took him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she commanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that she was true to him,—the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she had inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of which he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received into her confidence, who was devoted to her and adored her. All this, and more, in his hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in the dread of being discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of heavy rain among the leaves, and a thunderstorm rolling up—Mrs. Sparsit received into her mind, set off with such an unavoidable halo of confusion and indistinctness, that when at length he climbed the fence and led his horse away, she was not sure where they were to meet, or when, except that they had said it was to be that night.
But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her; and while she tracked that one she must be right. ‘Oh, my dearest love,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you little think how well attended you are!’
Mrs. Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the house. What to do next? It rained now, in a sheet of water. Mrs. Sparsit’s white stockings were of many colours, green predominating; prickly things were in her shoes; caterpillars slung themselves, in hammocks of their own making, from various parts of her dress; rills ran from her bonnet, and her Roman nose. In such condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the shrubbery, considering what next?
Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled, and stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf.
Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.
When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Sparsit stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went by the way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the stony road, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad. A train for Coketown would come through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so she understood Coketown to be her first place of destination.
In Mrs. Sparsit’s limp and streaming state, no extensive precautions were necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a new shape, and put it on over her bonnet. So disguised she had no fear of being recognized when she followed up the railroad steps, and paid her money in the small office. Louisa sat waiting in a corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another corner. Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to the rain, as it washed off the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two or three lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw the lightning to advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron tracks.
The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another: the little station a desert speck in the thunderstorm.
Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs. Sparsit exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice, and she felt herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could she, who had been so active in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do less than exult? ‘She will be at Coketown long before him,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, ‘though his horse is never so good. Where will she wait for him? And where will they go together? Patience. We shall see.’
The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train stopped at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed, and streets were under water. In the first instant of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting coaches, which were in great request. ‘She will get into one,’ she considered, ‘and will be away before I can follow in another. At all risks of being run over, I must see the number, and hear the order given to the coachman.’
But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into no coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the railroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a moment too late. The door not being opened after several minutes, Mrs. Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and found it empty. Wet through and through: with her feet squelching and squashing in her shoes whenever she moved; with a rash of rain upon her classical visage; with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig; with all her clothes spoiled; with damp impressions of every button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon her highly connected back; with a stagnant verdure on her general exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a mouldy lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of bitterness and say, ‘I have lost her!’
CHAPTER XII DOWN
THE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.
He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt—probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not disturb him much; but it attracted his attention sufficiently to make him raise his head sometimes, as if he were rather remonstrating with the elements. When it thundered very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind that some of the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.
The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked round the lamp upon his table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest daughter.
‘Louisa!’
‘Father, I want to speak to you.’
‘What is the matter? How strange you look! And good Heaven,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, wondering more and more, ‘have you come here exposed to this storm?’
She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. ‘Yes.’ Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall where they might, stood looking at him: so colourless, so dishevelled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.
‘What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter.’
She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.
‘Father, you have trained me from my cradle?’
‘Yes, Louisa.’
‘I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.’
He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: ‘Curse the hour? Curse the hour?’
‘How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!’
She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.
‘If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this room?’
He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with difficulty he answered, ‘Yes, Louisa.’
‘What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you had given me a moment’s help. I don’t reproach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but O! if you had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much better and much happier creature I should have been this day!’
On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and groaned aloud.
‘Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I feared while I strove against it—as it has been my task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is,—would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I hate?’
He said, ‘No. No, my poor child.’
‘Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me—for no one’s enrichment—only for the greater desolation of this world—of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?’
‘O no, no. No, Louisa.’
‘Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say.’
He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they stood close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his face.
‘With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.’
‘I never knew you were unhappy, my child.’
‘Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.’
‘And you so young, Louisa!’ he said with pity.
‘And I so young. In this condition, father—for I show you now, without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it—you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.’
As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.
‘When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul.’
‘Louisa!’ he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had passed between them in their former interview.
‘I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am here with another object.’
‘What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.’
‘I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.’
‘For you, Louisa!’
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
‘I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.’
Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
‘I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know.’
She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed them both upon her side; while in her face, not like itself—and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say—the feelings long suppressed broke loose.
‘This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means!’
He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, ‘I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground!’ And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.
END OF THE SECOND BOOK
BOOK THE THIRD GARNERING
CHAPTER I ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL
LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed at home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all that had happened since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the shadows of a dream, but gradually, as the objects became more real to her sight, the events became more real to her mind.
She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention had such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she asked:
‘When was I brought to this room?’
‘Last night, Louisa.’
‘Who brought me here?’
‘Sissy, I believe.’
‘Why do you believe so?’
‘Because I found her here this morning. She didn’t come to my bedside to wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her. She was not in her own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until I found her here taking care of you and cooling your head. Will you see father? Sissy said I was to tell him when you woke.’
‘What a beaming face you have, Jane!’ said Louisa, as her young sister—timidly still—bent down to kiss her.
‘Have I? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be Sissy’s doing.’
The arm Louisa had begun to twine around her neck, unbent itself. ‘You can tell father if you will.’ Then, staying her for a moment, she said, ‘It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of welcome?’
‘Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was—’
Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards the door, until it opened and her father entered.
He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady, trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial manner; and was often at a loss for words.
‘My dear Louisa. My poor daughter.’ He was so much at a loss at that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again.
‘My unfortunate child.’ The place was so difficult to get over, that he tried again.
‘It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last night. The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet. The only support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed, and still does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant. I am stunned by these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say; but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be very heavy indeed.’
She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck of her whole life upon the rock.
‘I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been a part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind. I had proved my—my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my favourite child, that I have meant to do right.’
He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
‘I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall.’
He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.
‘My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and again on what has so painfully passed between us. When I consider your character; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours, has been concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust myself.’
He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. Such little actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him; and his daughter received them as if they had been words of contrition.
‘But,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a wretched sense of happiness, ‘if I see reason to mistrust myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am far from feeling convinced now, however differently I might have felt only this time yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how to respond to the appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have the right instinct—supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that nature—how to help you, and to set you right, my child.’
She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had subsided; but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father was changed in nothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her in tears.
‘Some persons hold,’ he pursued, still hesitating, ‘that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I venture this morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa—’
He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to admit it even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on her bed, still half-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last night.
‘Louisa,’ and his hand rested on her hair again, ‘I have been absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your sister’s training has been pursued according to—the system,’ he appeared to come to that word with great reluctance always, ‘it has necessarily been modified by daily associations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you—ignorantly and humbly, my daughter—for the better, do you think?’
‘Father,’ she replied, without stirring, ‘if any harmony has been awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my way.’
‘O my child, my child!’ he said, in a forlorn manner, ‘I am an unhappy man to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself!’ He bent his head, and spoke low to her. ‘Louisa, I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly working about me in this house, by mere love and gratitude: that what the Head had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it be so?’
She made him no reply.
‘I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be arrogant, and you before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?’ He looked upon her once more, lying cast away there; and without another word went out of the room. He had not been long gone, when she heard a light tread near the door, and knew that some one stood beside her.
She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.
It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause of them.
As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that she stood placidly near the bedside.
‘I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me stay with you?’
‘Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are everything to her.’
‘Am I?’ returned Sissy, shaking her head. ‘I would be something to you, if I might.’
‘What?’ said Louisa, almost sternly.
‘Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let me?’
‘My father sent you to ask me.’
‘No indeed,’ replied Sissy. ‘He told me that I might come in now, but he sent me away from the room this morning—or at least—’
She hesitated and stopped.
‘At least, what?’ said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
‘I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very uncertain whether you would like to find me here.’
‘Have I always hated you so much?’
‘I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so little, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other friends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.’
Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
‘May I try?’ said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that was insensibly drooping towards her.
Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
‘First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me. Does not that repel you?’
‘No!’
‘I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that repel you?’
‘No!’
In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon the darkness of the other.
Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller’s child looked up at her almost with veneration.
‘Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!’
‘O lay it here!’ cried Sissy. ‘Lay it here, my dear.’
CHAPTER II VERY RIDICULOUS
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely have recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.
After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor letter coming with either, he went down to the country house. There, the report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of message, importing that her return was not to be expected for the present.
In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there. He looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin!
‘Well! I don’t know,’ said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy about it. ‘She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.’
‘Where were you last night, Tom?’
‘Where was I last night!’ said Tom. ‘Come! I like that. I was waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it come down before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.’
‘I was prevented from coming—detained.’
‘Detained!’ murmured Tom. ‘Two of us were detained. I was detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all.’
‘Where?’
‘Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’s.’
‘Did you see your sister?’
‘How the deuce,’ returned Tom, staring, ‘could I see my sister when she was fifteen miles off?’
Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been premature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest—What will be, will be.
‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner—which would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs—I’ll dine,’ said Mr. James Harthouse. ‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training.’
Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa, ordered ‘Some dinner at six—with a beefsteak in it,’ and got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound interest.
However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once. ‘It wouldn’t be bad,’ he yawned at one time, ‘to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.’ At another time it occurred to him, ‘Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.’ But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.
It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, ‘like the Holy Office and slow torture.’ However, still true to his conviction that indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a newspaper.
He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and apologetically:
‘Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.’
A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by ‘wanted’?
‘Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.’
‘Outside? Where?’
‘Outside this door, sir.’
Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-head duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that consideration for herself.
‘I speak to Mr. Harthouse?’ she said, when they were alone.
‘To Mr. Harthouse.’ He added in his mind, ‘And you speak to him with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so quiet) I ever heard.’
‘If I do not understand—and I do not, sir’—said Sissy, ‘what your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:’ the blood really rose in his face as she began in these words: ‘I am sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust—’
‘You may, I assure you.’
‘I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.’ He thought, ‘But that is very strong,’ as he followed the momentary upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, ‘This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see where we are going.’
‘I think,’ said Sissy, ‘you have already guessed whom I left just now!’
‘I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),’ he returned, ‘on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.’
‘I left her within an hour.’
‘At—!’
‘At her father’s.’
Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his perplexity increased. ‘Then I certainly,’ he thought, ‘do not see where we are going.’
‘She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you live.’
Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his easily given promise—which in itself shamed him—presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word could he rally to his relief.
At last he said:
‘So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak?’
‘I have no charge from her.’
‘The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.’
‘There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when she came home last night.’
‘Must believe? But if I can’t—or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be obstinate—and won’t—’
‘It is still true. There is no hope.’
James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown away.
He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
‘Well! If it should unhappily appear,’ he said, ‘after due pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you had no commission from her?’
‘I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!’
He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.
‘I am not a moral sort of fellow,’ he said, ‘and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with—in fact with—the domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, ‘that it is really in several volumes.’
Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.
‘After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it impossible to doubt—I know of hardly any other source from which I could have accepted it so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in whom the confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this—and—and, I cannot say,’ he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, ‘that I have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.’
Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.
‘You spoke,’ he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, ‘of your first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you oblige me by confiding it?’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular disadvantage, ‘the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it is the only compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do not say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other authority than I have given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under an obligation never to return to it.’
If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as affect her.
‘But do you know,’ he asked, quite at a loss, ‘the extent of what you ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the fact.’
It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
‘Besides which,’ said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the room, dubiously, ‘it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an incomprehensible way.’
‘I am quite sure,’ repeated Sissy, ‘that it is the only reparation in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.’
He glanced at her face, and walked about again. ‘Upon my soul, I don’t know what to say. So immensely absurd!’
It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.
‘If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,’ he said, stopping again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, ‘it could only be in the most inviolable confidence.’
‘I will trust to you, sir,’ returned Sissy, ‘and you will trust to me.’
His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at all.
‘I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,’ he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. ‘But I see no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine—in short, I engage to do it.’
Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in it, and her face beamed brightly.
‘You will permit me to say,’ continued Mr. James Harthouse, ‘that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy’s name?’
‘My name?’ said the ambassadress.
‘The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.’
‘Sissy Jupe.’
‘Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?’
‘I am only a poor girl,’ returned Sissy. ‘I was separated from my father—he was only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr. Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.’
She was gone.
‘It wanted this to complete the defeat,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a little while. ‘The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl—only a stroller—only James Harthouse made nothing of—only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.’
The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:
Dear Jack,—All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in for camels.
Affectionately, JEM.
He rang the bell.
‘Send my fellow here.’
‘Gone to bed, sir.’
‘Tell him to get up, and pack up.’
He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.
The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous—a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew it—so oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of himself.
CHAPTER III VERY DECIDED
THE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her patron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James’s Street, exploded the combustibles with which she was charged, and blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. Bounderby’s coat-collar.
Mr. Bounderby’s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, and leave her to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the administration of potent restoratives, such as screwing the patient’s thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When these attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead than alive.
Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting spectacle on her arrival at her journey’s end; but considered in any other light, the amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone Lodge.
‘Now, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law’s room late at night; ‘here’s a lady here—Mrs. Sparsit—you know Mrs. Sparsit—who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.’
‘You have missed my letter!’ exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, surprised by the apparition.
‘Missed your letter, sir!’ bawled Bounderby. ‘The present time is no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it’s in now.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, ‘I speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to Louisa.’
‘Tom Gradgrind,’ replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several times with great vehemence on the table, ‘I speak of a very special messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, stand forward!’
That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr. Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.
‘If you can’t get it out, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘leave me to get it out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs. Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious gentleman-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.’
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Ah! Indeed!’ cried Bounderby. ‘And in that conversation—’
‘It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what passed.’
‘You do? Perhaps,’ said Bounderby, staring with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, ‘you know where your daughter is at the present time!’
‘Undoubtedly. She is here.’
‘Here?’
‘My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud out-breaks, on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from that interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received her—here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to be more quiet.’
Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every direction except Mrs. Sparsit’s direction; and then, abruptly turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:
‘Now, ma’am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma’am!’
‘Sir,’ whispered Mrs. Sparsit, ‘my nerves are at present too much shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.’ (Which she did.)
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘without making any observation to you that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I have got to add to that, is that there is something else in which it appears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach. And the coach in which we came here being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.’ With these words, Mr. Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady, and escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone.
‘Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to speak to me,’ he resumed, ‘here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable state, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business, even as it is, and not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively treated by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine, I know. If you mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against this candid remark, you had better let it alone.’
Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his amiable nature.
‘My dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind began in reply.
‘Now, you’ll excuse me,’ said Bounderby, ‘but I don’t want to be too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am not polite. If you like politeness, you know where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends, you know, and they’ll serve you with as much of the article as you want. I don’t keep it myself.’
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we are all liable to mistakes—’
‘I thought you couldn’t make ’em,’ interrupted Bounderby.
‘Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes and I should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in connecting him with mine.’
‘I never mentioned his name!’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, well!’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering. ‘Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa.’
‘Who do you mean by We?’
‘Let me say I, then,’ he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted question; ‘I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her education.’
‘There you hit it,’ returned Bounderby. ‘There I agree with you. You have found it out at last, have you? Education! I’ll tell you what education is—To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of everything except blows. That’s what I call education.’
‘I think your good sense will perceive,’ Mr. Gradgrind remonstrated in all humility, ‘that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would be difficult of general application to girls.’
‘I don’t see it at all, sir,’ returned the obstinate Bounderby.
‘Well,’ sighed Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we will not enter into the question. I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much distressed.’
‘I don’t understand you, yet,’ said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy, ‘and therefore I won’t make any promises.’
‘In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, ‘I appear to myself to have become better informed as to Louisa’s character, than in previous years. The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I think there are—Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this—I think there are qualities in Louisa, which—which have been harshly neglected, and—and a little perverted. And—and I would suggest to you, that—that if you would kindly meet me in a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while—and to encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration—it—it would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, ‘has always been my favourite child.’
The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, and said:
‘You’d like to keep her here for a time?’
‘I—I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.’
‘I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, standing up with his hands in his pockets, ‘that you are of opinion that there’s what people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself.’
‘I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa, and—and—and almost all the relations in which I have placed her,’ was her father’s sorrowful reply.
‘Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby the flushed, confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was boisterous. ‘You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six. That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I hoped, after my entreaty, you would have taken a different tone.’
‘Just wait a bit,’ retorted Bounderby; ‘you have said your say, I believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude—to be summed up in this—that your daughter don’t properly know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain speaking, I hope.’
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘this is unreasonable.’
‘Is it?’ said Bounderby. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Because when Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies—born ladies—belonging to families—Families!—who next to worship the ground I walk on.’
He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head.
‘Whereas your daughter,’ proceeded Bounderby, ‘is far from being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well aware I don’t; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?’
‘Not, I fear,’ observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, ‘to spare me.’
‘Hear me out,’ said Bounderby, ‘and refrain from cutting in till your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.’
‘Bounderby,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, ‘the less we say to-night the better, I think.’
‘On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, the better, I think. That is,’ the consideration checked him, ‘till I have said all I mean to say, and then I don’t care how soon we stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal you made just now?’
‘What do I mean, Bounderby?’
‘By your visiting proposition,’ said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk of the hayfield.
‘I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.’
‘To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?’ said Bounderby.
‘If you put it in those terms.’
‘What made you think of this?’ said Bounderby.
‘I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid in trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of her; for better for worse, for—’
Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.
‘Come!’ said he, ‘I don’t want to be told about that. I know what I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her for; that’s my look out.’
‘I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Louisa.’
‘I think differently,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘I am going to finish this business according to my own opinions. Now, I don’t want to make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the truth, I don’t think it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject. As to your gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes best. If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don’t fall in my way, I shan’t, for it won’t be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, if she don’t come home to-morrow, by twelve o’clock at noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you’ll take charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in general, of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing-up; she’s the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn’t pull together. I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, I believe; and most people will understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up to my mark.’
‘Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘before you commit yourself to such a decision.’
‘I always come to a decision,’ said Bounderby, tossing his hat on: ‘and whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom Gradgrind’s addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after his making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given you my decision, and I have got no more to say. Good night!’
So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five minutes past twelve o’clock next day, he directed Mrs. Bounderby’s property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind’s; advertised his country retreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.
CHAPTER IV LOST
THE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour. Consequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout in renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.
They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred. No implicated man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying step. More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and the mysterious old woman remained a mystery.
Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby’s investigations was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in the robbery of Coketown Bank on such a night; he described the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and manner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and in what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon the sight of the whole population at one blow.
The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud—there was always some such ready to help them—stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirling wheels, for hours afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into the streets, there were still as many readers as before.
Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night; and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had brought it in his pocket. Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow-brothers and fellow-workmen and fellow-citizens and fellow-men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge unfolded what he called ‘that damning document,’ and held it up to the gaze, and for the execration of the working-man community! ‘Oh, my fellow-men, behold of what a traitor in the camp of those great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and of Union, is appropriately capable! Oh, my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden—oh, my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and about five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and disgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious placard, this abominable advertisement; and with what majesty of denouncement will you crush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame upon the God-like race that happily has cast him out for ever! Yes, my compatriots, happily cast him out and sent him forth! For you remember how he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst us: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the avenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and scar! And now, my friends—my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma—my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive, with a price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character of the Coketown operative! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to which your children and your children’s children yet unborn have set their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the United Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve: That Stephen Blackpool, weaver, referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly disowned by the community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the shame of his misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions!’
Thus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort. A few stern voices called out ‘No!’ and a score or two hailed, with assenting cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ the caution from one man, ‘Slackbridge, y’or over hetter in’t; y’or a goen too fast!’ But these were pigmies against an army; the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slackbridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively panting at them.
These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa some minutes before, returned.
‘Who is it?’ asked Louisa.
‘It is Mr. Bounderby,’ said Sissy, timid of the name, ‘and your brother Mr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you know her.’
‘What do they want, Sissy dear?’
‘They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems angry.’
‘Father,’ said Louisa, for he was present, ‘I cannot refuse to see them, for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come in here?’
As he answered in the affirmative, Sissy went away to bring them. She reappeared with them directly. Tom was last; and remained standing in the obscurest part of the room, near the door.
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said her husband, entering with a cool nod, ‘I don’t disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young woman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary. Tom Gradgrind, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am obliged to confront her with your daughter.’
‘You have seen me once before, young lady,’ said Rachael, standing in front of Louisa.
Tom coughed.
‘You have seen me, young lady,’ repeated Rachael, as she did not answer, ‘once before.’
Tom coughed again.
‘I have.’
Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Bounderby, and said, ‘Will you make it known, young lady, where, and who was there?’
‘I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He was there too; and an old woman who did not speak, and whom I could scarcely see, stood in a dark corner. My brother was with me.’
‘Why couldn’t you say so, young Tom?’ demanded Bounderby.
‘I promised my sister I wouldn’t.’ Which Louisa hastily confirmed. ‘And besides,’ said the whelp bitterly, ‘she tells her own story so precious well—and so full—that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!’
‘Say, young lady, if you please,’ pursued Rachael, ‘why, in an evil hour, you ever came to Stephen’s that night.’
‘I felt compassion for him,’ said Louisa, her colour deepening, ‘and I wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him assistance.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby. ‘Much flattered and obliged.’
‘Did you offer him,’ asked Rachael, ‘a bank-note?’
‘Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold.’
Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Bounderby again.
‘Oh, certainly!’ said Bounderby. ‘If you put the question whether your ridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it’s confirmed.’
‘Young lady,’ said Rachael, ‘Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a meeting to-night where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen! The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!’ Her indignation failed her, and she broke off sobbing.
‘I am very, very sorry,’ said Louisa.
‘Oh, young lady, young lady,’ returned Rachael, ‘I hope you may be, but I don’t know! I can’t say what you may ha’ done! The like of you don’t know us, don’t care for us, don’t belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha’ come that night. I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some aim of your own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I said then, Bless you for coming; and I said it of my heart, you seemed to take so pitifully to him; but I don’t know now, I don’t know!’
Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.
‘And when I think,’ said Rachael through her sobs, ‘that the poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him—when I mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there—Oh, I hope you may be sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it; but I don’t know, I don’t know!’
‘You’re a pretty article,’ growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark corner, ‘to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by rights.’
She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke.
‘Come!’ said he, ‘you know what you have engaged to do. You had better give your mind to that; not this.’
‘’Deed, I am loath,’ returned Rachael, drying her eyes, ‘that any here should see me like this; but I won’t be seen so again. Young lady, when I had read what’s put in print of Stephen—and what has just as much truth in it as if it had been put in print of you—I went straight to the Bank to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise that he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr. Bounderby then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill to-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’ pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr. Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.’
‘So far, that’s true enough,’ assented Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on. ‘But I have known you people before to-day, you’ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!’
‘I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I have written to him once before sin’ he went away,’ said Rachael; ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,’ retorted Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account of most people being judged according to the company they keep. The post-office hasn’t been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no letter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mistaken, and never wrote any.’
‘He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,’ said Rachael, turning appealingly to Louisa, ‘as much as a week, when he sent me the only letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in another name.’
‘Oh, by George!’ cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, ‘he changes his name, does he! That’s rather unlucky, too, for such an immaculate chap. It’s considered a little suspicious in Courts of Justice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names.’
‘What,’ said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, ‘what, young lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this side, or must he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a hare?’
‘Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,’ returned Louisa; ‘and I hope that he will clear himself.’
‘You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!’
‘All the surer, I suppose,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for your refusing to tell where he is? Eh?’
‘He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been done against him,’ said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off the sea, ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Notwithstanding which,’ added Mr. Bounderby, ‘if he can be laid hold of any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself. As to you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out to be true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and there’s an end of it. I wish you good night all! I must be off to look a little further into this.’
Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bounderby moved, moved with him, kept close to him, and went away with him. The only parting salutation of which he delivered himself was a sulky ‘Good night, father!’ With a brief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.
Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had been sparing of speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said:
‘Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.’
‘It goes against me,’ Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, ‘to mistrust any one; but when I am so mistrusted—when we all are—I cannot keep such things quite out of my mind. I ask your pardon for having done you an injury. I don’t think what I said now. Yet I might come to think it again, wi’ the poor lad so wronged.’
‘Did you tell him in your letter,’ inquired Sissy, ‘that suspicion seemed to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the Bank at night? He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back, and would be ready.’
‘Yes, dear,’ she returned; ‘but I can’t guess what can have ever taken him there. He never used to go there. It was never in his way. His way was the same as mine, and not near it.’
Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and whether she might come to-morrow night, to inquire if there were news of him.
‘I doubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if he can be here till next day.’
‘Then I will come next night too,’ said Sissy.
When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Gradgrind lifted up his head, and said to his daughter:
‘Louisa, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man. Do you believe him to be implicated?’
‘I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty. I do not believe it now.’
‘That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing him to be suspected. His appearance and manner; are they so honest?’
‘Very honest.’
‘And her confidence not to be shaken! I ask myself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, musing, ‘does the real culprit know of these accusations? Where is he? Who is he?’
His hair had latterly began to change its colour. As he leaned upon his hand again, looking gray and old, Louisa, with a face of fear and pity, hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side. Her eyes by accident met Sissy’s at the moment. Sissy flushed and started, and Louisa put her finger on her lip.
Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that Stephen was not come, she told it in a whisper. Next night again, when she came home with the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke in the same low frightened tone. From the moment of that interchange of looks, they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor ever pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Gradgrind spoke of it.
The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of. On the fourth day, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to have miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with his address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road, sixty miles away. Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town looked for Stephen to be brought in next day.
During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Bounderby like his shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was greatly excited, horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard rattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up. At the hour when the suspected man was looked for, the whelp was at the station; offering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who were sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.
The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. Rachael’s letter had gone, Rachael’s letter had been delivered. Stephen Blackpool had decamped in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him. The only doubt in Coketown was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing that he really would come back, or warning him to fly. On this point opinion was divided.
Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The wretched whelp plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant. ‘Was the suspected fellow the thief? A pretty question! If not, where was the 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 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.
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all round her, seeing no help. ‘Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!’
She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. And after standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran, she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she had never run before.
Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name! Don’t stop for breath. Run, run! Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had never run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.
First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of the men was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade’s shouting to him that a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.
With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and she got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole village was up: and windlasses, ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place, to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.
It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain away from it any longer—it was like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man whom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it. The men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until the implements they wanted should come up.
Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting. After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation among the people that the man would be found alive was very slight indeed.
There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in the day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, and Mr. Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there.
The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend securely was rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the construction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found wanting, and messages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in the afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, attentively watching it: the man at the windlass lowering as they were told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and then some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on; and the sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word ‘Lower away!’
As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on, that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval ensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women shrieked that another accident had happened! But the surgeon who held the watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, when the windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and that only one was returning.
The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There was an universal cry of ‘Alive or dead?’ and then a deep, profound hush.
When he said ‘Alive!’ a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in them.
‘But he’s hurt very bad,’ he added, as soon as he could make himself heard again. ‘Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno how to get him up.’
They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The sun was setting now; and the red light in the evening sky touched every face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its rapt suspense.
The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime, under the surgeon’s directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was dark now, and torches were kindled.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He lay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and meat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a little water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his work, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on his way to Mr. Bounderby’s country house after dark, when he fell. He was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn’t rest from coming the nearest way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of him.
When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him, disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from it now. Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward.
For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way. But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two men holding on at the sides—a sight to make the head swim, and oppress the heart—and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.
A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but the best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.
They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, ‘Rachael.’ She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look at her.
‘Rachael, my dear.’
She took his hand. He smiled again and said, ‘Don’t let ’t go.’
‘Thou’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?’
‘I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear—but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a muddle!’
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.
‘I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge o’ old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives—fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em fro’ want and hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Firedamp crueller than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may read, fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n and pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need; when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!’
He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.
‘Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient, suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!’
Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face turned up to the night sky.
‘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 the stones of the street. Sissy recommended that, to avoid making inquiries and attracting attention in the town, they should present themselves to pay at the door. If Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he would be sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion. If he were not, he would be sure to see them inside; and, knowing what he had done with the fugitive, would proceed with discretion still.
Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-remembered booth. The flag with the inscription SLEARY’S HORSE-RIDING was there; and the Gothic niche was there; but Mr. Sleary was not there. Master Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the exchequer—having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous forces. In the extreme sharpness of his look out for base coin, Mr. Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw anything but money; so Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.
The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though well acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act, was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her in.
Mr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash, and the Clown had only said, ‘If you do it again, I’ll throw the horse at you!’ when Sissy was recognised both by father and daughter. But they got through the Act with great self-possession; and Mr. Sleary, saving for the first instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive eye than into his fixed one. The performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling Mr. Sleary (who said ‘Indeed, sir!’ to all his observations in the calmest way, and with his eye on the house) about two legs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw ’em at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, ‘Now I’ll have a turn!’ when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.
She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr. Sleary in a very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation, as if they were coming through. ‘Thethilia,’ said Mr. Sleary, who had brandy and water at hand, ‘it doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth a favourite with uth, and you’ve done uth credith thinth the old timeth I’m thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, or they’ll break their hearth—ethpethially the women. Here’th Jothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, and though he’th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any pony you can bring againtht him. He’th named The Little Wonder of Thcolathtic Equitation; and if you don’t hear of that boy at Athley’th, you’ll hear of him at Parith. And you recollect Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather thweet upon yourthelf? Well. He’th married too. Married a widder. Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, thee wath, and now thee’th nothing—on accounth of fat. They’ve got two children, tho we’re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their father and mother both a dyin’ on a horthe—their uncle a retheiving of ’em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe—themthelvth both a goin’ a black-berryin’ on a horthe—and the Robinth a coming in to cover ’em with leavth, upon a horthe—you’d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever you thet your eyeth on! And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath wath a’motht a mother to you? Of courthe you do; I needn’t athk. Well! Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw’d a heavy back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and he never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond time—married a Cheethemonger ath fell in love with her from the front—and he’th a Overtheer and makin’ a fortun.’
These various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now, related with great heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was. Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa’s eyes, so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.
‘There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!’
As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. ‘Now, Thethilia, I don’t athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith to be Mith Thquire.’
‘This is his sister. Yes.’
‘And t’other on’th daughter. That’h what I mean. Hope I thee you well, mith. And I hope the Thquire’th well?’
‘My father will be here soon,’ said Louisa, anxious to bring him to the point. ‘Is my brother safe?’
‘Thafe and thound!’ he replied. ‘I want you jutht to take a peep at the Ring, mith, through here. Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a thpy-hole for yourthelf.’
They each looked through a chink in the boards.
‘That’h Jack the Giant Killer—piethe of comic infant bithnith,’ said Sleary. ‘There’th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in; there’th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a thpit, for Jack’th thervant; there’th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour; there’th two comic black thervanth twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), he an’t on yet. Now, do you thee ’em all?’
‘Yes,’ they both said.
‘Look at ’em again,’ said Sleary, ‘look at ’em well. You thee em all? Very good. Now, mith;’ he put a form for them to sit on; ‘I have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith. I don’t want to know what your brother’th been up to; ith better for me not to know. All I thay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. Your brother ith one them black thervanth.’
Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of satisfaction.
‘Ith a fact,’ said Sleary, ‘and even knowin’ it, you couldn’t put your finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep your brother here after the performanth. I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he’th well hid.’
Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr. Sleary no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the afternoon.
Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had encountered no one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary’s assistance, of getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night. As neither of the three could be his companion without almost identifying him under any disguise, he prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and privately dispatched.
This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated; not only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses. After watching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary bring out a chair and sit down by the side-door, smoking; as if that were his signal that they might approach.
‘Your thervant, Thquire,’ was his cautious salutation as they passed in. ‘If you want me you’ll find me here. You muthn’t mind your thon having a comic livery on.’
They all three went in; and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the Clown’s performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place, sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to call his son.
In a preposterous coat, like a beadle’s, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth-eaten and full of holes; with seams in his black face, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition daubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other means have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And one of his model children had come to this!
At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly made can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Sissy—for Louisa he disowned altogether—he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits from where his father sat.
‘How was this done?’ asked the father.
‘How was what done?’ moodily answered the son.
‘This robbery,’ said the father, raising his voice upon the word.
‘I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went away. I had had the key that was found, made long before. I dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn’t take the money all at once. I pretended to put my balance away every night, but I didn’t. Now you know all about it.’
‘If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,’ said the father, ‘it would have shocked me less than this!’
‘I don’t see why,’ grumbled the son. ‘So many people are employed in situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. How can I help laws? You have comforted others with such things, father. Comfort yourself!’
The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw: his hands, with the black partly worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. The evening was fast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was so thick.
‘You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.’
‘I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,’ whimpered the whelp, ‘than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That’s one thing.’
Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?
‘Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth time to lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail. There’th a coath in half an hour, that goeth to the rail, ‘purpothe to cath the mail train. That train will take him right to Liverpool.’
‘But look at him,’ groaned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Will any coach—’
‘I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,’ said Sleary. ‘Thay the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five minutes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. There’ll be beer to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic blackamoor.’
Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box, a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again.
‘Now,’ said Sleary, ‘come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.’ With which he delicately retired.
‘Here is your letter,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘All necessary means will be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do!’
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
‘Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!’
‘O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!’
‘After all your love!’ he returned, obdurately. ‘Pretty love! Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me.’
‘Tharp’th the word!’ said Sleary, at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.
‘I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,’ said Bitzer, shaking his head, ‘but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him!’
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.
CHAPTER VIII PHILOSOPHICAL
THEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the twilight.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate influence?’
‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man. ‘And to nothing else.’
They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind’s face as white as the pursuer’s.
‘What motive—even what motive in reason—can you have for preventing the escape of this wretched youth,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘and crushing his miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!’
‘Sir,’ returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner, ‘since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own confession, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am going to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.’
‘If this is solely a question of self-interest with you—’ Mr. Gradgrind began.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are aware.’
‘What sum of money,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘will you set against your expected promotion?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Bitzer, ‘for hinting at the proposal; but I will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would propose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind; and I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would have said, See how miserable I am! ‘Bitzer, I have but one chance left to soften you. You were many years at my school. If, in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.’
‘I really wonder, sir,’ rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, ‘to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.’
It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
‘I don’t deny,’ added Bitzer, ‘that my schooling was cheap. But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose of myself in the dearest.’
He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.
‘Pray don’t do that,’ said he, ‘it’s of no use doing that: it only worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr. Tom; whereas I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief! But, he won’t resist, you may depend upon it.’
Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward.
‘Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn’t know what your thon had done, and that I didn’t want to know—I thed it wath better not, though I only thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking. However, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank, why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it. Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I take thith young man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th no help for it. But I tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll drive your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do more, but I’ll do that.’
Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr. Gradgrind’s part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy glanced at him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind. As he locked the door, he said excitedly:
‘The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. More than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a dark night; I’ve got a horthe that’ll do anything but thpeak; I’ve got a pony that’ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I’ve got a dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig coming up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump down, and it’ll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the morning—I don’t know him?—Tharp’th the word!’
The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering about the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr. Sleary’s equipage was ready. It was a fine sight, to behold the learned dog barking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with his one practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions. Soon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a formidable creature) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.
The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight o’clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high spirits.
‘All right, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, ‘your thon may be aboard-a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left there latht night. The horthe danthed the polka till he wath dead beat (he would have walthed if he hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him the word and he went to thleep comfortable. When that prethiouth young Rathcal thed he’d go for’ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-hankercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that, ’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.’
Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.
‘I don’t want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn’t be unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thtand a collar for the dog, or a thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take ’em. Brandy and water I alwayth take.’ He had already called for a glass, and now called for another. ‘If you wouldn’t think it going too far, Thquire, to make a little thpread for the company at about three and thixth ahead, not reckoning Luth, it would make ’em happy.’
All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very willingly undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for such a service.
‘Very well, Thquire; then, if you’ll only give a Horthe-riding, a bethpeak, whenever you can, you’ll more than balanthe the account. Now, Thquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one parting word with you.’
Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary, stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:
‘Thquire,—you don’t need to be told that dogth ith wonderful animalth.’
‘Their instinct,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘is surprising.’
‘Whatever you call it—and I’m bletht if I know what to call it’—said Sleary, ‘it ith athtonithing. The way in whith a dog’ll find you—the dithtanthe he’ll come!’
‘His scent,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘being so fine.’
‘I’m bletht if I know what to call it,’ repeated Sleary, shaking his head, ‘but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that made me think whether that dog hadn’t gone to another dog, and thed, “You don’t happen to know a perthon of the name of Thleary, do you? Perthon of the name of Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding way—thtout man—game eye?” And whether that dog mightn’t have thed, “Well, I can’t thay I know him mythelf, but I know a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.” And whether that dog mightn’t have thought it over, and thed, “Thleary, Thleary! O yeth, to be thure! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one time. I can get you hith addreth directly.” In conthequenth of my being afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there mutht be a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that I don’t know!’
Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.
‘Any way,’ said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water, ‘ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter. We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, a dog. He had travelled a long way, he wath in a very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking for a child he know’d; and then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up behind, and thtood on hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.’
‘Sissy’s father’s dog!’
‘Thethilia’th father’th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead—and buried—afore that dog come back to me. Joth’phine and Childerth and me talked it over a long time, whether I thould write or not. But we agreed, “No. There’th nothing comfortable to tell; why unthettle her mind, and make her unhappy?” Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he broke hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him; never will be known, now, Thquire, till—no, not till we know how the dogth findth uth out!’
‘She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don’t it, Thquire?’ said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and water: ‘one, that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different; t’other, that it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!’
Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr. Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.
‘Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye! Mith Thquire, to thee you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!’
‘And I never thought before,’ said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to say it, ‘that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!’
CHAPTER IX FINAL
IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female—to have it in his power to say, ‘She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her’—would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.
Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.
Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look she now bestowed upon her patron.
‘What’s the matter now, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a very short, rough way.
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘do not bite my nose off.’
‘Bite your nose off, ma’am?’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘Your nose!’ meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.
Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, ‘Mr. Bounderby, sir!’
‘Well, ma’am?’ retorted Mr. Bounderby. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘May I ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘have you been ruffled this morning?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘May I inquire, sir,’ pursued the injured woman, ‘whether I am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I am not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.’ (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be beaten.)
Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.
‘Sir,’ said she, majestically. ‘It is apparent to me that I am in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.’
‘Allow me to open the door, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.’
‘You had better allow me, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, passing her, and getting his hand upon the lock; ‘because I can take the opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there’s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people’s affairs.’
Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great politeness, ‘Really, sir?’
‘I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have happened, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘and it appears to my poor judgment—’
‘Oh! Pray, sir,’ Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness, ‘don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr. Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, laughing.
Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:
‘It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s, now. Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?’
‘It never occurred to me before, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but now you mention it, should think it highly probable.’
‘Then suppose you try, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, laying an envelope with a cheque in it in her little basket. ‘You can take your own time for going, ma’am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded upon. I really ought to apologise to you—being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown—for having stood in your light so long.’
‘Pray don’t name it, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If that portrait could speak, sir—but it has the advantage over the original of not possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others,—it would testify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt.’
Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase. Mr. Bounderby closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself after his old explosive manner into his portrait—and into futurity.
Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting out a daily fight at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by about the middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more? Did he catch any glimpse of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, so devoted to his master’s great merits, who had won young Tom’s place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals he was spirited away? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for 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.
FOOTNOTES
{0} Reprinted Pieces was released as a separate eText by Project Gutenberg, and is not included in this eText.
CHAPTER I The One Thing Needful 3
CAPITOLO I L’unica cosa necessaria
CHAPTER II Murdering the Innocents 4
CAPITOLO II L’uccisione degli innocenti
CHAPTER III A Loophole 8
Un varco
CHAPTER IV Mr. Bounderby 12
CAPITOLO IV Sig. Bounderby 12
CHAPTER V The Keynote 18
CAPITOLO V La nota dominante 18
CHAPTER VI Sleary’s Horsemanship 23
CAPITOLO VI L’equitazione di Sleary
CHAPTER VII Mrs. Sparsit 33
CAPITOLO VII Signora Sparsit 33
CHAPTER VIII Never Wonder 38
CAPITOLO VIII Mai meravigliarsi
CHAPTER IX Sissy’s Progress 43
Il progresso di Sissy
CHAPTER X Stephen Blackpool 49
CAPITOLO X Stephen Blackpool 49
CHAPTER XI No Way Out 53
CAPITOLO XI Senza via d’uscita
CHAPTER XII The Old Woman 59
CAPITOLO XII La Vecchia
CHAPTER XIII Rachael 63
CAPITOLO XIII Rachel
CHAPTER XIV The Great Manufacturer 69
CAPITOLO XIV Il Grande Produttore
CHAPTER XV Father and Daughter 73
CAPITOLO XV Padre e figlia
CHAPTER XVI Husband and Wife 79 BOOK THE SECOND. REAPING
CAPITOLO XVI Marito e moglie LIBRO SECONDO. Mietitura
CHAPTER I Effects in the Bank 84
CAPITOLO I Gli effetti alla banca
CHAPTER II Mr. James Harthouse 94
CAPITOLO II Sig. James Harthouse
CHAPTER III The Whelp 101
CAPITOLO III Il cucciolo
CHAPTER IV Men and Brothers 111
CAPITOLO IV Uomini e Fratelli 111
CHAPTER V Men and Masters 105
Uomini e padroni #
CHAPTER VI Fading Away 116
CAPITOLO VI Svanendo
CHAPTER VII Gunpowder 126
CAPITOLO VII Polvere da sparo 126
CHAPTER VIII Explosion 136
Esplosione #
CHAPTER IX Hearing the Last of it 146
CAPITOLO IX Sentendo l’ultima parte
CHAPTER X Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase 152
CAPITOLO X La scala della signora Sparsit
CHAPTER XI Lower and Lower 156
CAPITOLO XI Sempre più in basso
CHAPTER XII Down 163 BOOK THE THIRD. GARNERING
CAPITOLO XII
Giù
LIBRO TERZO. RACCOLTA
CHAPTER I Another Thing Needful 167
CAPITOLO I Un’altra cosa necessaria
CHAPTER II Very Ridiculous 172
CAPITOLO II Molto ridicolo
CHAPTER III Very Decided 179
CAPITOLO III Molto Deciso
CHAPTER IV Lost 186
CAPITOLO IV Sparito 186
CHAPTER V Found 193
CAPITOLO V Trovato
CHAPTER VI The Starlight 200
CAPITOLO VI La Luce Stellare 200
CHAPTER VII Whelp-Hunting 208
CAPITOLO VII Caccia ai cuccioli
CHAPTER VIII Philosophical 216
CAPITOLO VIII Filosofico
CHAPTER IX Final 222
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-room 64 Mr. Harthouse Dining at the Bounderbys’ 100 Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the Garden 132 Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft 206
CAPITOLO IX Finale 222
Elenco delle illustrazioni
PAGINA Stephen e Rachael nella stanza dei malati 64 Il signor Harthouse a cena dai Bounderby 100 Il signor Harthouse e Tom Gradgrind nel giardino 132 Stephen Blackpool recuperato dal vecchio pozzo dell’inferno 206
BOOK THE FIRST SOWING CHAPTER I THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.
‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
LIBRO PRIMO SEMINARE CAPITOLO I L’UNICA COSA NECESSARIA
«ORA, ciò che voglio sono Fatti. Insegnate a questi ragazzi e ragazze nient’altro che Fatti. Nella vita servono solo i fatti. Non piantate altro e sradicate tutto il resto. Potete formare la mente di un animale ragionevole solo con i fatti: nulla altro sarà mai utile a loro. Questo è il principio su cui educo i miei figli, ed è questo il principio su cui educo questi bambini. Restate ai Fatti, signore!»
La scena era una semplice, spoglia e monotona volta di una sala d’istruzione, e l’indice quadrato dell’oratore enfatizzava le sue osservazioni sottolineando ogni frase con una linea sulla manica del maestro. L’enfasi veniva rafforzata dalla fronte squadrata dell’oratore, che aveva le sopracciglia come base, mentre gli occhi trovavano un comodo riparo in due buie caverne, ombreggiate dal muro. L’enfasi era aiutata dalla bocca dell’oratore, larga, sottile e dura. L’enfasi era rafforzata dalla voce dell’oratore, inflessibile, secca e dispotica. L’enfasi era favorita dai capelli dell’oratore, che si drizzavano sulle tempie della sua testa calva come una piantagione di abeti per proteggere la superficie vento lucente, tutta coperta di nodi, come la crosta di una torta di prugne, quasi che il cranio avesse appena spazio sufficiente per i fatti duri conservati al suo interno. La postura ostinata dell’oratore, il suo giubbotto quadrato, le gambe quadrate, le spalle quadrate — nay, persino la sua cravatta, addestrata a prenderlo per la gola con una presa intransigente, come un fatto irremovibile che era — tutto contribuiva all’enfasi.
‘In questa vita vogliamo solo Fatti, signore; nient’altro che Fatti!’
L’oratore e il maestro di scuola e la terza persona adulta presente si ritirarono un poco e con gli occhi spazzarono l’inclinato piano dei piccoli vasi allora e là disposti in ordine, pronti ad avere versati dentro loro imperiali galloni di fatti fino a riempirli fino al bordo.
CHAPTER II MURDERING THE INNOCENTS
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’
‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’
‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’
‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’
‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennæ of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
CAPITOLO II L’UCCELLAMENTO DEGLI INNOCENTI
THOMAS GRADGRIND, signore. Un uomo di realtà. Un uomo di fatti e calcoli. Un uomo che procede secondo il principio che due più due sono quattro, e niente di più, e che non si lascia convincere a concedere nulla in più. Thomas Gradgrind, signore — perentorio Thomas — Thomas Gradgrind. Con un righello e una bilancia, e la tabella pitagorica sempre in tasca, signore, pronto a pesare e misurare qualsiasi pezzo di natura umana, e dirvi esattamente quanto ammonta. È solo questione di cifre, un caso di semplice aritmetica. Potreste sperare di mettere in testa a George Gradgrind, o ad Augustus Gradgrind, o a John Gradgrind, o a Joseph Gradgrind (tutte persone ipotetiche e non esistenti) qualche altra credenza insensata, ma nella testa di Thomas Gradgrind — no, signore!
In questi termini il signor Gradgrind si presentava sempre mentalmente, sia al suo circolo privato di conoscenze che al pubblico in generale. In questi termini, senza alcun dubbio, sostituendo le parole “ragazzi e ragazze” a “signore”, il Thomas Gradgrind presentò ora il Thomas Gradgrind ai piccoli vasetti davanti a lui, che dovevano essere riempiti fino all’orlo di fatti.
Infatti, mentre li guardava con entusiasmo dal locale seminterrato sopra menzionato, sembrava una specie di cannone carico fino alla bocca di fatti e pronto a spazzarli via dalle regioni dell’infanzia in un solo colpo. Sembrava anche un apparecchio galvanizzante, caricato con un sostituto meccanico cupo per le tenere giovani immaginazioni che dovevano essere conquistate.
«Ragazza numero venti», disse il signor Gradgrind puntando con l’indice quadrato in modo deciso, «non conosco quella ragazza. Chi è quella ragazza?»
«Sissy Jupe, signore», spiegò la numero venti arrossendo, alzandosi e facendo una riverenza.
«Sissy non è un nome», disse il signor Gradgrind, «non chiamarti Sissy. Chiamati Cecilia».
«È mio padre che mi chiama Sissy, signore», rispose la giovane ragazza con voce tremante e facendo un altro inchino.
«Allora non gli compete farlo», disse il signor Gradgrind, «ditegli di non farlo. Cecilia Jupe. Vediamo un po’. Che lavoro fa vostro padre?»
«Appartiene alla categoria dei cavalieri di cavalli, se mi permette, signore».
Il signor Gradgrind aggrottò la fronte e scacciò con un gesto della mano quella professione sgradita.
«Qui non vogliamo saperne niente di tutto questo. Qui non dovete dirci nulla al riguardo. Vostro padre doma i cavalli, vero?»
«Se le piace, signore, quando riescono a trovarne qualcuno da domare, domano i cavalli nell’arena, signore.»
«Non dovete parlare dell’anello qui. Benissimo, allora. Descriveteci vostro padre come domatore di cavalli. Scommetto che cura i cavalli malati?»
‘Oh sì, signore.’
«Molto bene, allora. È un veterinario, uno zoppicante e un domatore di cavalli. Ditemi la vostra definizione di un cavallo.»
(Sissy Jupe gettata nel più grande allarme da questa richiesta).
«Ragazza numero venti incapace di definire un cavallo!» disse il signor Gradgrind, per l’utile generale di tutti i piccoli vasetti. «Ragazza numero venti priva di dati, in riferimento a uno degli animali più comuni! La definizione di un cavallo da parte di qualche ragazzo. Bitzer, la tua.»
L’indice si spostava qua e là fino a fermarsi improvvisamente su Bitzer, forse perché gli era capitato di sedere nella stessa luce del sole che, penetrando da una delle finestre spoglie della stanza imbiancata a calce, illuminava Sissy. Infatti, i ragazzi e le ragazze erano seduti sul piano inclinato in due gruppi compatti divisi al centro da uno stretto intervallo; e poiché Sissy si trovava all’angolo di una fila dal lato soleggiato, riceveva la prima parte del raggio solare, mentre Bitzer, che era all’angolo di una fila dall’altra parte e qualche fila più avanti, ne riceveva la fine. Ma, mentre la ragazza aveva gli occhi così scuri e i capelli così neri da sembrare ricevere dal sole un colore ancora più intenso e lucente quando lo splendore la colpiva, il ragazzo era così chiaro di occhi e di capelli che quegli stessi raggi parevano sottrargli quel poco colore che possedeva. I suoi freddi occhi non sarebbero stati quasi degli occhi se non ci fossero state le cortissime ciglia, che, mettendoli in immediato contrasto con qualcosa di più chiaro di loro, ne esprimevano la forma. I capelli corti e tagliati a spazzola potevano sembrare una semplice continuazione delle lentiggini chiare sulla fronte e sul viso. La sua pelle era così sprovvista in modo innaturale del colore naturale, che aveva l’aria di sanguinare bianco se fosse stato ferito.
«Bitzer», disse Thomas Gradgrind, «la sua definizione di un cavallo.»
«Quadrupede. Graminivoro. Quaranta denti, cioè ventiquattro molari, quattro canini e dodici incisivi. Perde il pelo in primavera; nelle zone paludose perde anche gli zoccoli. Gli zoccoli sono duri ma devono essere ferrati con ferro. L’età si determina dai segni nella bocca». Così (e molto altro) Bitzer.
«Ora, ragazza numero venti», disse il signor Gradgrind, «sai cos’è un cavallo.»
Fece di nuovo un inchino e sarebbe arrossita ancora più intensamente se fosse stata capace di arrossire più intensamente di quanto avesse fatto in tutto quel tempo. Bitzer, dopo aver rapidamente sbattuto le palpebre verso Thomas Gradgrind con entrambi gli occhi contemporaneamente e così catturando la luce sulle sue ciglia tremolanti che sembravano le antenne di affaccendati insetti, si mise un pugno sulla fronte lentigginosa e si sedette nuovamente.
Il terzo gentiluomo si fece ora avanti. Era un uomo di grande spicco nel tagliare e nel seccare; un funzionario governativo; nel suo campo (e in quelli della maggior parte degli altri), un pugile dichiarato; sempre in allenamento, sempre con un sistema da imporre alla gola generale come una pastiglia, sempre udibile al banco del suo piccolo Ufficio Pubblico, pronto a combattere contro tutta l’Inghilterra. Per continuare nella terminologia pugilistica, aveva un genio per presentarsi alla linea di demarcazione, ovunque e qualunque essa fosse, e dimostrarsi un avversario temibile. Avrebbe attaccato e danneggiato qualsiasi soggetto con il suo destro, seguito con il sinistro, si sarebbe fermato, scambiato colpi, contrattaccato, portato l’avversario (lui combatteva sempre contro tutta l’Inghilterra) alle corde e assalito con eleganza. Era certo di togliere il fiato al buon senso e rendere quell’infortunato avversario sordo alla chiamata del tempo. E aveva l’incarico, da parte dell’autorità superiore, di portare a compimento il grande Millennium dell’Ufficio Pubblico, quando i Commissari avrebbero regnato sulla terra.
‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’—as the custom is, in these examinations.
‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’
‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?’
‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’
There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
‘So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’
‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.
‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—’
‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’
‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’
‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’
The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.
‘Now, if Mr. M’Choakumchild,’ said the gentleman, ‘will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure.’
Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. ‘Mr. M’Choakumchild, we only wait for you.’
So, Mr. M’Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!
«Molto bene», disse il signore sorridendo vivacemente e incrociando le braccia. «Questo è un cavallo. Ora, lasciate che vi chieda, ragazze e ragazzi: vorreste tappezzare una stanza con rappresentazioni di cavalli?»
Dopo una pausa, metà dei bambini gridò all’unisono: «Sì, signore!». Allora l’altra metà, vedendo dal volto del gentiluomo che il “sì” era sbagliato, gridò in coro: «No, signore!», come è consuetudine in queste prove.
‘Naturalmente no. Perché mai?’
Una pausa. Un ragazzo lento e corpulento con un modo di respirare affannoso si arrischiò a rispondere: «Perché non avrebbe incollato carta da parati in una stanza, ma l’avrebbe dipinta».
«Dovete assolutamente rivestirlo di carta», disse il signore con un certo calore.
«Dovete tappezzarla», disse Thomas Gradgrind, «che vi piaccia o no. Non venite a dirci che non la tapperzzereste. Cosa intendete dire, ragazzo?»
«Allora le spiegherò», disse il signore dopo un’altra pausa, e una triste, «perché non dovrebbe tappezzare una stanza con rappresentazioni di cavalli. Vede mai i cavalli camminare su e giù per le pareti delle stanze nella realtà - in effetti? Lo vede?»
«Sì, signore!» da una metà. «No, signore!» dall’altra.
«Certo che no», disse il signore, lanciando uno sguardo indignato alla metà sbagliata. «Dunque, non dovete vedere da nessuna parte ciò che in realtà non vedete; non dovete avere da nessuna parte ciò che in realtà non avete. Quello che si chiama Gusto è solo un altro nome per la Realtà». Thomas Gradgrind annuì in segno di approvazione.
«Questo è un nuovo principio, una scoperta, una grande scoperta», disse il gentiluomo. «Ora proverò di nuovo con lei. Supponga che stia per mettere la moquette in una stanza. Userebbe una moquette su cui ci sia una rappresentazione di fiori?»
Poiché in questo periodo era generalmente convinzione che «No, signore!» fosse sempre la risposta giusta da dare a quell’uomo, il coro di NO era molto forte. Solo pochi deboli stragglatori dissero Sì: tra loro c’era Sissy Jupe.
«Ragazza numero venti», disse il signore, sorridendo nella calma forza della conoscenza.
Cecilia arrossì e si alzò in piedi.
«Dunque lei tappezzerebbe la sua stanza — o quella di suo marito, se fosse una donna adulta e avesse un marito — con rappresentazioni di fiori, vero?» disse il signore. «Perché lo farebbe?»
«Se le fa piacere, signore, sono molto affezionata ai fiori», rispose la ragazza.
«E per questo vorreste metterci sopra tavoli e sedie, e far camminare la gente con gli stivali pesanti?»
«Non li danneggerebbe, signore. Non si appassirebbero e non si seccherebbero, se mi è lecito dirlo, signore. Sarebbero l’immagine di qualcosa di molto grazioso e piacevole, e io immaginerei, »
«Ah, ah, ah! Ma non dovete immaginare», gridò il signore, tutto eccitato per essere arrivato così felicemente al suo scopo. «Ecco fatto! Non dovete mai immaginare».
«Non dovete fare nulla di simile, Cecilia Jupe», ripeté solennemente Thomas Gradgrind.
«Fatto, fatto, fatto!» disse il signore. E «Fatto, fatto, fatto!» ripeté Thomas Gradgrind.
«Dovete essere in tutte le cose regolati e governati», disse il signore, «dai fatti. Speriamo di avere, presto, un consiglio dei fatti, composto da commissari dei fatti, che costringeranno la gente ad essere una gente di fatti, e nient’altro che fatti. Dovete scartare del tutto la parola fantasia. Non avete nulla a che fare con essa. Non dovete avere, in alcun oggetto utile o ornamentale, ciò che sarebbe una contraddizione nei fatti. Non camminate sui fiori di fatto; non vi è permesso camminare sui fiori nei tappeti. Non trovate che gli uccelli stranieri e le farfalle vengano a posarsi sulla vostra ceramica; non vi è consentito dipingere uccelli stranieri e farfalle sulla vostra ceramica. Non incontrate mai quadrupedi che salgono e scendono dalle pareti; non dovete avere rappresentazioni di quadrupedi sulle pareti. Dovete usare», disse il signore, «per tutti questi scopi, combinazioni e modifiche (in colori primari) di figure matematiche che sono suscettibili di prova e dimostrazione. Questa è la nuova scoperta. Questo è un fatto. Questo è gusto».
La ragazza fece una riverenza e si sedette. Era molto giovane e sembrava spaventata dalla prospettiva concreta che il mondo le offriva.
«Ora, se il signor M’Choakumchild», disse l’uomo, «vuole procedere a dare la sua prima lezione qui, sarò felice, su sua richiesta, di osservare il suo metodo di procedura.»
Il signor Gradgrind era molto obbligato: “Signor M’Choakumchild, aspettiamo solo lei”.
Così iniziò il signor M’Choakumchild nel suo miglior modo. Lui e circa centoquaranta altri maestri di scuola erano stati recentemente prodotti nello stesso momento, nella stessa fabbrica, sugli stessi principi, come tante gambe di pianoforte. Era stato sottoposto a un’immensa varietà di prove e aveva risposto a volumi di domande che gli facevano venire il mal di testa. Ortografia, etimologia, sintassi e prosodia, biografia, astronomia, geografia e cosmografia generale, le scienze della proporzione composta, algebra, agrimensura e livellamento, musica vocale e disegno da modelli, erano tutti alla fine delle sue dieci dita gelide. Aveva faticosamente raggiunto la Lista B del Consiglio Privato di Sua Maestà e aveva tolto lo splendore ai rami più alti della matematica e della scienza fisica, al francese, al tedesco, al latino e al greco. Sapeva tutto su tutti gli Sversamenti d’acqua di tutto il mondo (qualunque cosa siano), e tutte le storie di tutti i popoli, e tutti i nomi di tutti i fiumi e delle montagne, e tutte le produzioni, costumi e usanze di tutti i paesi, e tutti i loro confini e orientamenti sui trentadue punti della bussola. Ah, piuttosto esagerato, M’Choakumchild. Se avesse solo imparato un po’ meno, quanto infinitamente meglio avrebbe potuto insegnare molto di più!
Si mise all’opera in questa lezione preparatoria, non dissimile da Morgiana nei Quaranta ladroni: esaminando uno dopo l’altro tutti i vasi disposti davanti a lui per vedere cosa contenessero. Ditemi, bravo M’Choakumchild. Quando tra poco avrete riempito fino all’orlo ogni vaso con il vostro bollente deposito, pensate che ucciderete sempre completamente la ladra Fantasia nascosta al loro interno — o a volte solo la mutilerete e la storpiate!
CHAPTER III A LOOPHOLE
MR. GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model—just as the young Gradgrinds were all models.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.
No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.
To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great town—called Coketown in the present faithful guide-book.
A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was. Not the least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in the landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master’s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire-proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.
Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in various departments of science too. They had a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard instruments their own names; and, to paraphrase the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery, If the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it for good gracious goodness’ sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped it!
Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably have described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a definition) as ‘an eminently practical’ father. He had a particular pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due was acceptable.
He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and banging band attached to the horse-riding establishment, which had there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was ‘Sleary’s Horse-riding’ which claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the entertainments with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act. Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to ‘elucidate the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs.’ He was also to exhibit ‘his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.’ The same Signor Jupe was to ‘enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.’ Lastly, he was to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William Button, of Tooley Street, in ‘the highly novel and laughable hippo-comedietta of The Tailor’s Journey to Brentford.’
Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction. But, the turning of the road took him by the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the place.
This brought him to a stop. ‘Now, to think of these vagabonds,’ said he, ‘attracting the young rabble from a model school.’
A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:
‘Louisa!! Thomas!!’
Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
‘In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand; ‘what do you do here?’
‘Wanted to see what it was like,’ returned Louisa, shortly.
‘What it was like?’
‘Yes, father.’
There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.
She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he thought in his eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.
‘Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe that you, with your education and resources, should have brought your sister to a scene like this.’
‘I brought him, father,’ said Louisa, quickly. ‘I asked him to come.’
‘I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.’
She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
‘You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open; Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and you, here!’ cried Mr. Gradgrind. ‘In this degraded position! I am amazed.’
‘I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,’ said Louisa.
‘Tired? Of what?’ asked the astonished father.
‘I don’t know of what—of everything, I think.’
‘Say not another word,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You are childish. I will hear no more.’ He did not speak again until they had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: ‘What would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?’ At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!
‘What,’ he repeated presently, ‘would Mr. Bounderby say?’ All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals ‘What would Mr. Bounderby say?’—as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.
CAPITOLO III UN VARCO
Il signor Gradgrind tornò a casa dalla scuola in uno stato di notevole soddisfazione. Era la sua scuola, e intendeva che fosse un modello. Intendeva che ogni bambino in essa fosse un modello — proprio come i giovani Gradgrind erano tutti modelli.
C’erano cinque giovani Gradgrind e ognuno di loro era un modello. Avevano subito conferenze fin dai più teneri anni; erano stati messi alla prova, come piccole lepri. Appena impararono a correre da soli, furono costretti a correre verso l’aula delle lezioni. Il primo oggetto con cui ebbero un legame o di cui conservavano il ricordo era una grande lavagna nera su cui uno spettrale Ogre tracciava figure bianche e sinistre.
Non che ne sapessero nulla, per nome o per natura, di un fatto Ogre. Dio ce ne scampi! Uso la parola solo per esprimere un mostro in un castello da conferenza, con chissà quante teste fuse insieme, che tiene prigioniera l’infanzia e la trascina nei tetri anfratti statistici per i capelli.
Nessun piccolo Gradgrind aveva mai visto un volto nella luna; era già lassù sulla luna prima che potesse parlare distintamente. Nessun piccolo Gradgrind aveva mai imparato la sciocca filastrocca: “Brilla, brilla stellina; come mi meraviglio di te!”. Nessun piccolo Gradgrind si era mai meravigliato dell’argomento, dato che ogni piccolo Gradgrind a cinque anni aveva già sezionato l’Orsa Maggiore come il professor Owen e guidato la Carrozza di Carlo come un macchinista. Nessun piccolo Gradgrind aveva mai associato una mucca in un campo con quella famosa mucca dal corno arricciato che sballottò il cane che tormentava il gatto che uccise il ratto che mangiò l’orzo, o con quella ancora più famosa mucca che ingoiò Pollicino: non aveva mai sentito parlare di queste celebrità e gli era stata presentata solo come un quadrupede ruminante graminivoro con diversi stomaci.
Mr. Gradgrind si diresse verso la sua casa pratica e concreta, chiamata Stone Lodge. Aveva praticamente abbandonato il commercio all’ingrosso di ferramenta prima di costruire Stone Lodge, e ora stava cercando un’occasione adatta per fare una figura aritmetica al Parlamento. Stone Lodge si trovava su una brughiera a un miglio o due da una grande città chiamata Coketown nella presente guida fedele.
Stone Lodge era un elemento molto regolare nel paesaggio. Non c’era il minimo travestimento che attenuasse o mascherasse quel fatto inconfutabile del panorama. Una grande casa quadrata, con un pesante portico che oscurava le finestre principali, come le folte sopracciglia del suo padrone proiettavano un’ombra sui suoi occhi. Una casa calcolata, valutata, bilanciata e collaudata. Sei finestre da una parte della porta, sei dall’altra; un totale di dodici in questo lato dell’edificio, un totale di dodici nell’altro lato; ventiquattro trasportate alle ali posteriori. Un prato, un giardino e un viale ancora giovane, tutti disposti con precisione come un registro contabile botanico. Gas ed aerazione, fognature e servizio idrico, tutti di primissima qualità. Morsetti e travetti in ferro, a fuoco sicuro dall’alto al basso; ascensori meccanici per le cameriere, con tutte le loro scope e spazzole; tutto ciò che il cuore potesse desiderare.
Tutto? Beh, credo di sì. Anche i piccoli Gradgrind avevano delle vetrine in vari settori della scienza. Avevano una piccola collezione conchilologica, e una piccola collezione metallografica, e una piccola collezione mineralogica; e tutti gli esemplari erano ordinati ed etichettati, e i pezzetti di pietra e minerale sembravano come se fossero stati staccati dalle materie prime con quegli strumenti tremendamente duri che sono i loro nomi; e, per parafrasare la fiaba oziosa di Peter Piper, che non era mai riuscito a entrare nella loro nursery, Se i piccoli Gradgrind avidi afferravano più di questo, in nome del cielo, cosa mai potevano voler afferrare questi piccoli Gradgrind così avidi?
Il loro padre proseguì il cammino con un atteggiamento di mente speranzoso e soddisfatto. Era un padre affettuoso, a modo suo; ma probabilmente si sarebbe definito (se fosse stato messo, come Sissy Jupe, a definirsi) “un padre eminentemente pratico”. Nutriva una particolare fierezza per la frase “eminentemente pratico”, che era considerata avere un’applicazione speciale nel suo caso. Qualunque fosse l’assemblea pubblica tenuta a Coketown, e qualunque ne fosse l’argomento, qualcuno di Coketown coglieva sempre l’occasione per accennare al suo amico eminentemente pratico Gradgrind. Questo faceva sempre piacere all’amico eminentemente pratico. Sapeva che gli era dovuto, e quel che gli era dovuto gli andava bene.
Era giunto al terreno neutro alla periferia della città, che non era né città né campagna eppure era entrambe le cose rovinate, quando alle sue orecchie giunse il suono di musica. La banda rumorosa e stridente dell’istituto equestre, che aveva stabilito la sua sosta in un padiglione di legno, stava suonando a tutto spiano. Una bandiera che sventolava dalla sommità del tempio annunciava all’umanità che era “Sleary’s Horse-riding” a richiedere i loro suffragi. Sleary stesso, una robusta statua moderna con un salvadanaio al gomito, in una nicchia ecclesiastica di architettura gotica primitiva, incassava il denaro. La signorina Josephine Sleary, come annunciavano alcuni striscioni stampati molto lunghi e molto stretti, inaugurava allora gli spettacoli con la sua graziosa esibizione floreale tirolese a cavallo. Tra le altre deliziose ma sempre rigorosamente morali meraviglie che bisogna vedere per crederci, quel pomeriggio il Signor Jupe avrebbe “illustrato i divertenti talenti del suo cane da palcoscenico altamente addestrato Merrylegs”. Avrebbe anche esibito “la sua incredibile impresa di lanciare settantacinque quintali in rapida successione all’indietro sopra la testa, formando così una fontana di ferro solido a mezz’aria, un’impresa mai tentata prima in questo o in qualsiasi altro paese e che, avendo suscitato tali applausi entusiasti da folle appassionate, non può essere ritirata”. Lo stesso Signor Jupe avrebbe “animato le varie esibizioni a frequenti intervalli con i suoi casti scherzi e battute shakespeariane”. Infine, ne avrebbe concluso l’esibizione apparirendo nel suo personaggio preferito di Mr. William Button, di Tooley Street, nella “molto originale e divertente hippo-comedietta del Viaggio del sarto a Brentford”.
Thomas Gradgrind, naturalmente, non prestò alcuna attenzione a queste futilità e proseguì come avrebbe dovuto fare un uomo pratico, scacciando i rumorosi insetti dai suoi pensieri o relegandoli nella Casa di correzione. Ma la curva della strada lo portò sul retro del carrozzone e lì, sul retro del carrozzone, si era radunato un gruppo di bambini in atteggiamenti furtivi, che cercavano di sbirciare le nascoste meraviglie del luogo.
Questo lo fece fermare. «Pensare che questi vagabondi» disse «attirino la giovane canaglia da una scuola esemplare!».
C’era uno spazio di erba stentata e rifiuti secchi tra lui e la giovane canaglia, così tirò fuori il monocolo dal panciotto per cercare qualche bambino che conosceva di nome e poteva mandar via. Fenomeno quasi incredibile sebbene distintamente visto, cosa vide allora se non la sua stessa figlia Louisa, metallurgica, che spiava con tutte le sue forze attraverso un buco in una tavola di legno, e il suo stesso figlio Thomas, matematico, che si abbassava a terra per cogliere anche solo uno zoccolo dell’elegante atto floreale tirolese su cavalli!
Muto per lo stupore, il signor Gradgrind si avvicinò al punto in cui la sua famiglia era così disonorata, posò una mano su ciascun figlio errante e disse:
‘Luigia!! Tommaso!!’
Entrambe le rose, rosse e disorientate. Ma Louisa guardò suo padre con più audacia di Thomas. Infatti, Thomas non lo guardava, ma si abbandonò ad essere portato a casa come una macchina.
«Per il nome della meraviglia, dell’ozio e della follia!», disse il signor Gradgrind, prendendone uno per mano ciascuno di loro, «cosa fate qui?»
«Volevo vedere com’era», rispose brevemente Louisa.
‘Com’era?’
‘Sì, padre.’
C’era un’aria di stanchezza cupa in entrambi, e particolarmente nella ragazza: tuttavia, attraverso la sua insoddisfazione si intravedeva una luce senza nulla su cui posarsi, un fuoco senza nulla da bruciare, un’immaginazione affamata che in qualche modo manteneva viva se stessa e illuminava la sua espressione. Non con la luminosità naturale di una giovinezza allegra, ma con lampi incerti, ansiosi, dubitativi, che avevano qualcosa di doloroso in loro, analogo ai cambiamenti sul volto di un cieco che cerca la sua strada a tentoni.
Era una bambina ora, di quindici o sedici anni; ma un giorno non lontano sembrerebbe diventare donna all’improvviso. Suo padre pensava così mentre la guardava. Era carina. Sarebbe stata testarda (pensò nel suo modo eminentemente pratico) se non fosse stato per la sua educazione.
«Tommaso, anche se ho la prova sotto gli occhi, trovo difficile credere che tu, con la tua educazione e le tue risorse, abbia portato tua sorella in un posto del genere.»
«L’ho portato io, padre», disse subito Louisa, «gli ho chiesto di venire».
«Mi dispiace sentirlo. Mi dispiace davvero molto sentirlo. Non migliora Thomas e peggiora te, Louisa».
Guardò di nuovo suo padre, ma nessuna lacrima le scese lungo la guancia.
«Voi! Voi, Thomas, a cui è aperto il cerchio delle scienze; voi, Thomas, che si può dire siano pieni di fatti; voi, Thomas, che siete stati educati alla precisione matematica; voi, Thomas, qui!» gridò il signor Gradgrind. «In questa posizione degradante! Sono sbalordito.»
«Ero stanca, padre. Sono stata stanca per un lungo periodo», disse Louisa.
«Stanco? Di che cosa?» chiese il padre stupito.
‘Non so di cosa, di tutto, credo.’
«Non dire un’altra parola», rispose il signor Gradgrind. «Sei infantile. Non voglio sentire altro». Non parlò più finché non ebbero camminato per mezzo miglio in silenzio, quando poi, con gravità, esclamò: «Cosa direbbero i tuoi migliori amici, Louisa? Non attribuisci alcun valore al loro buon giudizio? Cosa direbbe il signor Bounderby?» Al solo menzionare quel nome, la figlia gli lanciò un’occhiata che si distingueva per il suo carattere intenso e scrutatore. Lui non se ne accorse, perché prima di guardarla lei aveva nuovamente abbassato lo sguardo!
«Che cosa», ripeté poco dopo, «direbbe il signor Bounderby?» Per tutto il tragitto fino a Stone Lodge, mentre con grave indignazione conduceva i due delinquenti a casa, continuò a ripetere a intervalli: «Che cosa direbbe il signor Bounderby?», come se il signor Bounderby fosse la signora Grundy.
CHAPTER IV MR. BOUNDERBY
NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby?
Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind’s bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby—or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus took up a commanding position, from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.
‘I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch.’
Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
‘No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Enough to give a baby cold,’ Mrs. Gradgrind considered.
‘Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘For years, ma’am, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn’t have touched me with a pair of tongs.’
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing her imbecility could think of doing.
‘How I fought through it, I don’t know,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.’
Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother—
‘My mother? Bolted, ma’am!’ said Bounderby.
Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
‘My mother left me to my grandmother,’ said Bounderby; ‘and, according to the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take ’em off and sell ’em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen glasses of liquor before breakfast!’
Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
‘She kept a chandler’s shop,’ pursued Bounderby, ‘and kept me in an egg-box. That was the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.’
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.
‘I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma’am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those are the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of St. Giles’s Church, London, under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct—he hadn’t such advantages—but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people—the education that made him won’t do for everybody, he knows well—such and such his education was, however, and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of his life.’
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, ‘Behold your Bounderby!’
‘Well!’ blustered Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter? What is young Thomas in the dumps about?’
He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
‘We were peeping at the circus,’ muttered Louisa, haughtily, without lifting up her eyes, ‘and father caught us.’
‘And, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband in a lofty manner, ‘I should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.’
‘Dear me,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I wonder at you. I declare you’re enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn’t. Then what would you have done, I should like to know?’
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently.
‘As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn’t go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘You know, as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that’s what you want. With my head in its present state, I couldn’t remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to.’
‘That’s the reason!’ pouted Louisa.
‘Don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can’t be nothing of the sort,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘Go and be somethingological directly.’ Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woefully defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had ‘no nonsense’ about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr. Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died away, and nobody minded her.
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, ‘you are always so interested in my young people—particularly in Louisa—that I make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to which education should be addressed. ‘And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Thomas’s and Louisa’s minds which is—or rather, which is not—I don’t know that I can express myself better than by saying—which has never been intended to be developed, and in which their reason has no part.’
‘There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of vagabonds,’ returned Bounderby. ‘When I was a vagabond myself, nobody looked with any interest at me; I know that.’
‘Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with his eyes on the fire, ‘in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?’
‘I’ll tell you in what. In idle imagination.’
‘I hope not,’ said the eminently practical; ‘I confess, however, that the misgiving has crossed me on my way home.’
‘In idle imagination, Gradgrind,’ repeated Bounderby. ‘A very bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind’s pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn’t a refined bringing up.’
‘Whether,’ said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and his cavernous eyes on the fire, ‘whether any instructor or servant can have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle story-book can have got into the house? Because, in minds that have been practically formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible.’
‘Stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with explosive humility. ‘You have one of those strollers’ children in the school.’
‘Cecilia Jupe, by name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a stricken look at his friend.
‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby again. ‘How did she come there?’
‘Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not regularly belonging to our town, and—yes, you are right, Bounderby, you are right.’
‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, once more. ‘Louisa saw her when she came?’
‘Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me. But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind’s presence.’
‘Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, ‘what passed?’
‘Oh, my poor health!’ returned Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘The girl wanted to come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the school, and Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict them when such was the fact!’
Eccitato com’era quando giunse a questo culmine, Josiah Bounderby di Coketown si fermò. Si fermò proprio mentre il suo amico eminentemente pratico, ancora accompagnato dai due giovani colpevoli, entrava nella stanza. Il suo amico eminentemente pratico, vedendolo, si fermò anche lui e lanciò a Louisa uno sguardo di rimprovero che diceva chiaramente: «Ecco il tuo Bounderby!»
«Bene!» esclamò con fare arrogante il signor Bounderby «che succede? Di che si lamenta il giovane Thomas?»
Parlò del giovane Thomas, ma guardava Louisa.
«Stavamo spiando il circo», mormorò Louisa con aria altezzosa senza alzare gli occhi, «e papà ci ha scoperte.»
«E, signora Gradgrind», disse il marito con tono altezzoso, «mi sarei aspettato tanto presto di trovare i miei figli che leggono poesie.»
«Oh, mio Dio», piagnucolò la signora Gradgrind, «come potete, Louisa e Thomas! Mi meraviglio. Vi dichiaro che siete capaci di far rimpiangere a uno di aver mai avuto una famiglia. Sono sul punto di dire che vorrei non averla avuta. Allora cosa avreste fatto, mi piacerebbe sapere?»
Il signor Gradgrind non sembrò impressionato favorevolmente da queste osservazioni convincenti. Fece una smorfia impaziente.
«Come se, con la mia testa nel suo attuale stato pulsante, non poteste andare a guardare le conchiglie e i minerali e altre cose che vi sono state fornite, invece dei circhi!» disse la signora Gradgrind. «Lo sapete bene quanto me che nessun giovane ha maestri di circo, o tiene i circhi in armadietti, o frequenta lezioni sui circhi. Che cosa potreste mai voler sapere dei circhi? Sono sicura che avete abbastanza da fare, se è quello che volete. Con la mia testa nel suo attuale stato, non riuscirei a ricordare i semplici nomi della metà dei fatti ai quali dovete prestare attenzione».
«Questa è la ragione!» disse con dispetto Louisa.
«Non dirmi che questa è la ragione, perché non può essere niente del genere», disse la signora Gradgrind. «Vai e studia qualcosa di scientifico immediatamente». La signora Gradgrind non era un personaggio scientifico e solitamente mandava i suoi figli ai loro studi con questa generica ingiunzione a scegliere il proprio percorso.
In realtà, il patrimonio di fatti in generale della signora Gradgrind era pietosamente carente; ma il signor Gradgrind nel collocarla nella sua alta posizione matrimoniale, era stato influenzato da due ragioni. In primo luogo, era più che soddisfacente come questione di cifre; in secondo luogo, non aveva “sciocchezze” in testa. Per sciocchezze intendeva fantasia; e veramente è probabile che fosse tanto libera da qualsiasi traccia di quella natura, quanto lo sia mai stato un essere umano non giunto alla perfezione dell’assoluto idiota.
La semplice circostanza di essere rimasta sola con suo marito e il signor Bounderby fu sufficiente a far svenire nuovamente questa ammirevole donna senza che ci fosse alcun conflitto tra lei e qualcun altro. Così, morì di nuovo dentro di sé, e nessuno se ne curò.
«Bounderby», disse il signor Gradgrind, avvicinando una sedia al caminetto, «lei è sempre così interessato ai miei giovani - in particolare a Louisa - che non mi scuso per dirle che sono molto contrariato da questa scoperta. Mi sono dedicato sistematicamente (come lei sa) all’educazione della ragione dei membri della mia famiglia. La ragione è (come lei sa) l’unica facoltà a cui dovrebbe essere rivolta l’educazione. Eppure, Bounderby, sembra che da questo imprevisto episodio di oggi, sebbene in sé irrilevante, sia emerso qualcosa nella mente di Thomas e Louisa che è - o meglio, che non è - non so esprimermi meglio che dicendo - che non era mai stato previsto sviluppare, e in cui la loro ragione non ha alcuna parte.»
«Non c’è certamente motivo di guardare con interesse un gruppo di vagabondi», rispose Bounderby. «Quando ero io stesso un vagabondo, nessuno mi ha mai guardato con alcun interesse; lo so bene».
«Allora sorge la domanda», disse l’eminente padre pratico, con gli occhi sul fuoco, «da dove nasce questa volgare curiosità?»
«Vi dirò in cosa: nell’oziosa immaginazione.»
«Spero di no», disse l’eminente pratico; «confesso tuttavia che il dubbio mi ha attraversato mentre tornavo a casa.»
«Nell’oziosa immaginazione, Gradgrind», ripeté Bounderby, «è una cosa molto negativa per chiunque, ma è dannatamente negativa per una ragazza come Louisa. Chiederei scusa a Mrs. Gradgrind per le mie espressioni forti, ma sa benissimo che non sono un personaggio raffinato. Chi si aspetta raffinatezza da me rimarrà deluso. Non ho avuto un’educazione raffinata».
«Se sia possibile», disse Gradgrind, riflettendo con le mani nelle tasche e gli occhi caverneux fissi sul fuoco, «che qualche insegnante o domestico abbia suggerito qualcosa? Se Louisa o Thomas abbiano letto qualcosa? Se, nonostante tutte le precauzioni, qualche libro di storie oziose sia riuscito a entrare in casa? Perché, in menti che sono state praticamente formate secondo regole e linee, fin dalla culla, questo è così curioso, così incomprensibile.»
«Fermati un attimo!» esclamò Bounderby, che tutto quel tempo era rimasto in piedi, come prima, sul focolare, scoppiando addirittura contro i mobili della stanza con una umiltà esplosiva. «Hai uno di quei bambini vagabondi a scuola».
«Cecilia Jupe di nome», disse il signor Gradgrind con un’espressione quasi colpita rivolta al suo amico.
‘Fermiamoci un attimo!’ gridò di nuovo Bounderby. ‘Come ci è arrivata?’
«Perché, di fatto, ho visto la ragazza io stesso per la prima volta solo in questo momento. Si è presentata qui alla casa chiedendo di essere ammessa, dato che non appartiene regolarmente al nostro paese e—sì, hai ragione, Bounderby, hai ragione».
‘Fermati un attimo!’, gridò di nuovo Bounderby. ‘Louisa l’ha vista quando è venuta?’
«Louisa l’ha certamente vista, perché mi ha accennato alla richiesta. Ma non ho dubbio che Louisa l’abbia vista in presenza della signora Gradgrind».
“Prego, signora Gradgrind,” disse Bounderby, “cosa è successo?”
«Oh, la mia povera salute!» rispose Mrs. Gradgrind «La ragazza voleva venire a scuola e il signor Gradgrind voleva che le ragazze venissero a scuola, e sia Louisa che Thomas dissero che la ragazza voleva venire e che il signor Gradgrind voleva che le ragazze venissero, e come era possibile contraddirli se questo era un fatto!»
‘Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Turn this girl to the right about, and there’s an end of it.’
‘I am much of your opinion.’
‘Do it at once,’ said Bounderby, ‘has always been my motto from a child. When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!’
‘Are you walking?’ asked his friend. ‘I have the father’s address. Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?’
‘Not the least in the world,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘as long as you do it at once!’
So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat—he always threw it on, as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat—and with his hands in his pockets, sauntered out into the hall. ‘I never wear gloves,’ it was his custom to say. ‘I didn’t climb up the ladder in them.—Shouldn’t be so high up, if I had.’
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children’s study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which, notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
‘It’s all right now, Louisa: it’s all right, young Thomas,’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you won’t do so any more. I’ll answer for it’s being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that’s worth a kiss, isn’t it?’
‘You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,’ returned Louisa, when she had coldly paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
‘Always my pet; ain’t you, Louisa?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Good-bye, Louisa!’
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still doing this, five minutes afterwards.
‘What are you about, Loo?’ her brother sulkily remonstrated. ‘You’ll rub a hole in your face.’
‘You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn’t cry!’
«Ora le dico una cosa, Gradgrind!» disse il signor Bounderby. «Giri questa ragazza verso destra e la faccenda è chiusa».
‘Sono molto d’accordo con te.’
«Fallo subito», disse Bounderby, «è sempre stato il mio motto fin da bambino. Quando pensai che sarei scappato dalla mia scatola delle uova e da mia nonna, lo feci subito. Fai la stessa cosa. Fallo subito!»
«State andando a piedi?» chiese il suo amico. «Ho l’indirizzo del padre. Forse non vi dispiacerebbe accompagnarmi in città?»
‘Neanche per sogno’, disse il signor Bounderby, ‘purché lo facciate subito!’
Così, il signor Bounderby si gettò il cappello sulla testa — lo gettava sempre così, per esprimere un uomo che era stato troppo occupato a farsi da sé per imparare come portare il cappello con eleganza — e con le mani in tasca uscì nel corridoio. «Non indosso mai i guanti», era solito dire. «Non sono salito sulla scala con quelli addosso.— Non sarei così in alto, se li avessi messi».
Dopo essere stato lasciato a passeggiare per la sala un minuto o due mentre il signor Gradgrind saliva le scale per l’allocuzione, aprì la porta dello studio dei bambini e guardò in quell’appartamento sereno rivestito di pavimento che, nonostante le sue librerie e i suoi armadietti e la sua varietà di apparecchiature erudite e filosofiche, aveva molto dell’aspetto cordiale di una stanza dedicata alla taglia capelli. Louisa si appoggiava languidamente alla finestra guardando fuori senza guardare nulla, mentre il giovane Thomas stava annusando vendicativamente il fuoco. Adam Smith e Malthus, due Gradgrind più giovani, erano usciti per una lezione sotto custodia; e la piccola Jane, dopo aver prodotto parecchia argilla umida sul viso con matita di grafite e lacrime, si era addormentata sopra delle frazioni volgari.
«Va tutto bene ora, Louisa: va tutto bene, giovane Thomas», disse il signor Bounderby; «non lo farete più. Mi impegno che con il padre è finita. Bene, Louisa, questo vale un bacio, no?»
«Può prenderne una, signor Bounderby», rispose Louisa dopo aver fatto una pausa fredda e aver attraversato lentamente la stanza per offrirgli il viso con aria scontrosa, voltandogli le spalle.
“Sempre la mia piccola; non è così, Louisa?” disse il signor Bounderby. “Arrivederci, Louisa!”
Egli proseguì per la sua strada, ma lei rimase nello stesso punto, strofinando con il fazzoletto la guancia che egli aveva baciato fino a renderla rossa di fuoco. Cinque minuti dopo continuava ancora a farlo.
«Che cosa stai facendo, Loo?» la rimproverò il fratello con aria burbera. «Ti strofinerai un buco sulla faccia.»
‘Puoi tagliare il pezzo con il tuo coltellino se vuoi, Tom. Non piangerei!’
CHAPTER V THE KEYNOTE
COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there—as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done—they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because, whoever did, the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short, it was the only clear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
CAPITOLO V LA NOTA FONDAMENTALE
Coketown, verso cui i signori Bounderby e Gradgrind si stavano ora dirigendo a piedi, era un trionfo di realtà; non aveva più tracce di fantasia in sé di quante ne avesse la stessa signora Gradgrind. Suoniamo la nota fondamentale, Coketown, prima di proseguire il nostro brano.
Era una città di mattoni rossi, o che sarebbero stati rossi se il fumo e la cenere lo avessero permesso; ma com’era, era una città di rosso innaturale e nero come il volto dipinto di un selvaggio. Era una città di macchinari e alte ciminiere, dalle quali interminabili serpenti di fumo si trascinavano per sempre e mai si srotolavano. Aveva un canale nero e un fiume che scorreva viola con una tintura maleodorante, e enormi edifici pieni di finestre dove c’era un crepitio e un tremore tutto il giorno, e dove il pistone della macchina a vapore lavorava monotamente su e giù, come la testa di un elefante in uno stato di malinconia pazzia. Conteneva diverse grandi strade tutte molto simili tra loro, e molte piccole vie ancora più simili tra loro, abitate da persone ugualmente simili tra loro, che entravano ed uscivano tutte alle stesse ore, con lo stesso suono sullo stesso marciapiede, per fare lo stesso lavoro, e per le quali ogni giorno era uguale a ieri e domani, e ogni anno la controparte dell’ultimo e del prossimo.
Questi attributi di Coketown erano in gran parte inseparabili dal lavoro che la sosteneva; contro di essi bisognava mettere a bilancio i comfort della vita che si diffondevano per tutto il mondo e le eleganze della vita che contribuivano, non chiediamoci quanto, alla figura dell’alta signora, che faticava appena a sopportare l’accenno al luogo. Le restanti caratteristiche erano volontarie, ed eccole qua.
Non si vedeva nulla a Coketown che non fosse severamente laborioso. Se i membri di una confessione religiosa costruivano lì una cappella - come avevano fatto i membri di diciotto confessioni religiose - la facevano in modo da renderla un magazzino pio di mattoni rossi, con talvolta (ma questo solo negli esempi più ornamentali) una campana su una gabbia per uccelli sulla cima. L’unica eccezione era la Nuova Chiesa; un edificio intonacato con un campanile quadrato sopra la porta, che terminava in quattro piccole guglie come gambe di legno fiorite. Tutte le iscrizioni pubbliche della città erano dipinte allo stesso modo, con caratteri severi bianchi e neri. La prigione poteva essere l’infermeria, l’infermeria poteva essere la prigione, il municipio poteva essere entrambe le cose o qualsiasi altra cosa, per quanto appariva al contrario nelle grazie della loro costruzione. Fatto, fatto, fatto, ovunque nell’aspetto materiale della città; fatto, fatto, fatto, ovunque in quello immateriale. La scuola M’Choakumchild era tutta fatti, e la scuola di design era tutta fatti, e le relazioni tra padrone e operaio erano tutte fatti, e tutto era fatto tra l’ospedale per partorienti e il cimitero, e ciò che non si poteva esprimere in cifre o dimostrare acquistabile nel mercato più economico e vendibile nel più caro, non era, e mai sarebbe stato, fino alla fine dei tempi, Amen.
Una città così sacra al fatto e così trionfante nella sua affermazione, naturalmente andava bene? Perché no, non proprio bene. No? Caro mio!
No. Coketown non era uscita dalle proprie fornaci in tutti i sensi come oro che avesse superato la prova. Prima di tutto, il mistero sconcertante del posto era: chi apparteneva alle diciotto denominazioni? Perché, chiunque fossero, non erano certo le classi lavoratrici. Era molto strano camminare per le strade in una domenica mattina e notare quanti pochi di loro venissero chiamati via dal loro quartiere, dalle loro stanze anguste, dagli angoli delle loro stesse strade dove se ne stavano accasciati, fissando con sguardo assente tutto quel viavai verso le chiese e i luoghi di culto, come se non avessero nulla a che fare con quella faccenda. E non era solo lo straniero a notare questo fatto, perché c’era un’organizzazione locale a Coketown la cui esistenza veniva menzionata alla Camera dei Comuni ogni sessione, e i cui membri presentavano petizioni indignate per ottenere atti parlamentari che rendessero queste persone religiose con la forza. Poi c’era la Società del Tè Totale, che si lamentava di come queste stesse persone volessero ubriacarsi e dimostrava in tabelle che lo facevano davvero, e provava alle feste da tè che nessun incentivo, umano o divino (tranne una medaglia) li avrebbe indotti a rinunciare all’abitudine di ubriacarsi. Poi c’era il chimico e farmacista con altre tabelle che dimostravano come quando non si ubriacavano, prendevano oppio. Poi veniva il cappellano esperto del carcere, con ulteriori tabelle che superavano tutte le precedenti tabelle, mostrando come queste stesse persone volessero frequentare luoghi malfamati, nascosti agli occhi pubblici, dove ascoltavano canti volgari e vedevano balli volgari, e magari vi partecipavano; e dove A. B., ventiquattro anni il prossimo compleanno, condannato a diciotto mesi di isolamento, aveva dichiarato lui stesso (non che si fosse mai dimostrato particolarmente degno di fede) che la sua rovina era iniziata lì, e ne era perfettamente sicuro e convinto, altrimenti sarebbe stato un esemplare morale eccezionale. Poi venivano il signor Gradgrind e il signor Bounderby, i due gentiluomini che in quel momento camminavano per Coketown ed erano entrambi eminentemente pratici, che potevano, quando necessario, fornire ulteriori tabelle basate sulla loro esperienza personale, illustrate da casi che avevano conosciuto e visto, dalle quali risultava chiaramente — in breve, era l’unica cosa chiara della faccenda — che queste stesse persone erano nel complesso un cattivo gruppo, signori; che qualunque cosa si facesse per loro non ne sarebbero mai stati grati, signori; che erano irrequieti, signori; che non sapevano mai cosa volevano; che vivevano del meglio e compravano burro fresco; e insistevano sul caffè Mocha e rifiutavano tutte le parti della carne tranne quelle prime, eppure erano perennemente insoddisfatti e incontrollabili. In breve, era la morale della vecchia favola per bambini:
There was an old woman, and what do you think? She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink; Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet, And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief—some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent—some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music—some occasional light pie in which even M’Choakumchild had no finger—which craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?
‘This man lives at Pod’s End, and I don’t quite know Pod’s End,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Which is it, Bounderby?’
Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.
Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Gradgrind recognized. ‘Halloa!’ said he. ‘Stop! Where are you going! Stop!’ Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.
‘Why are you tearing about the streets,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘in this improper manner?’
‘I was—I was run after, sir,’ the girl panted, ‘and I wanted to get away.’
‘Run after?’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Who would run after you?’
The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.
‘What do you mean, boy?’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘What are you doing? How dare you dash against—everybody—in this manner?’ Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.
‘Was this boy running after you, Jupe?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl reluctantly.
‘No, I wasn’t, sir!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Not till she run away from me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they’re famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,’ addressing Sissy. ‘It’s as well known in the town as—please, sir, as the multiplication table isn’t known to the horse-riders.’ Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this.
‘He frightened me so,’ said the girl, ‘with his cruel faces!’
‘Oh!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Oh! An’t you one of the rest! An’t you a horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn’t been a horse-rider?’
‘Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,’ observed Mr. Bounderby. ‘You’d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a week.’
‘Truly, I think so,’ returned his friend. ‘Bitzer, turn you about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along.’
The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.
‘Now, girl,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘take this gentleman and me to your father’s; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are carrying?’
‘Gin,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Dear, no, sir! It’s the nine oils.’
‘The what?’ cried Mr. Bounderby.
‘The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.’
‘Then,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, ‘what the devil do you rub your father with nine oils for?’
‘It’s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the ring,’ replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. ‘They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.’
‘Serve ’em right,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for being idle.’ She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.
‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.’
Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, ‘And this is Pod’s End; is it, Jupe?’
‘This is it, sir, and—if you wouldn’t mind, sir—this is the house.’
She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
‘It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn’t mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.’
‘Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!’ said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his metallic laugh. ‘Pretty well this, for a self-made man!’
C’era una vecchia donna e sapete che cosa? Viveva solo di cibo e bevande; Il suo unico nutrimento era cibo e bevande, Eppure questa vecchia non voleva MAI stare zitta.
È possibile, mi domando, che ci fosse qualche analogia tra il caso della popolazione di Coketown e quello dei piccoli Gradgrind? Sicuramente, nessuno di noi in pieno possesso delle nostre facoltà mentali e a conoscenza dei dati, dovrebbe essere informato a questa ora del giorno che uno degli elementi primari nell’esistenza della popolazione lavoratrice di Coketown è stato per decenni deliberatamente ignorato? Che in loro ci fosse qualche Fantasia che chiedeva di essere portata alla luce invece di continuare a lottare in convulsioni? Che esattamente nella misura in cui lavoravano a lungo e monotoni, cresceva in loro il desiderio di un po’ di sollievo fisico - qualche svago che incoraggiasse il buon umore e lo spirito frizzante, e che gli desse sfogo - qualche festività riconosciuta, anche solo per una onesta danza al ritmo di un’allegra banda musicale - qualche occasionale torta leggera in cui persino M’Choakumchild non avesse alcuna parte - un desiderio che doveva e sarebbe stato soddisfatto a dovere, o che inevitabilmente sarebbe andato storto, finché le leggi della Creazione non fossero state abrogate?
«Quest’uomo vive a Pod’s End e non conosco bene Pod’s End», disse il signor Gradgrind. «Dov’è, Bounderby?»
Il signor Bounderby sapeva che si trovava da qualche parte in centro città, ma non ne sapeva di più. Così si fermarono per un momento, guardandosi intorno.
Quasi nello stesso istante in cui lo facevano, una ragazza che il signor Gradgrind riconobbe arrivò di corsa dall’angolo della strada con un passo svelto e uno sguardo spaventato. «Ehi!» disse lui. «Fermati! Dove stai andando? Fermati!» La ragazza numero venti si fermò allora, palpitante, e gli fece una riverenza.
‘Perché state correndo per le strade’, disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘in questo modo inappropriato?’
‘Fuggivo - fuggivo da qualcuno che mi inseguiva’, ansimò la ragazza, ‘e volevo allontanarmi.’
“Inseguire?” ripeté il signor Gradgrind. “Chi vorrebbe inseguirti?”
La domanda le fu inaspettatamente e improvvisamente risposta dal ragazzo senza espressione, Bitzer, che sbucò da dietro l’angolo con una cieca velocità e così poco prevedendo un ostacolo sul marciapiede, che si scontrò contro il panciotto del signor Gradgrind e rimbalzò sulla strada.
«Cosa intendi dire ragazzo?» disse il signor Gradgrind. «Che cosa stai facendo? Come osi sfrecciare contro—tutti—in questo modo?» Bitzer raccolse il suo berretto, che la collisione gli aveva fatto cadere; e arretrando, e strofinandosi la fronte con le nocche delle dita, sostenne che si trattava di un incidente.
«Questo ragazzo vi stava inseguendo, Jupe?» chiese il signor Gradgrind.
«Sì, signore», disse la ragazza a malincuore.
«No, non lo ero, signore!» esclamò Bitzer. «Non prima che lei scappasse da me. Ma i cavalieri non si preoccupano mai di quello che dicono, signore; sono famosi per questo. Lei sa che i cavalieri sono famosi per non preoccuparsi mai di quello che dicono», rivolgendosi a Sissy. «È un fatto tanto noto in città quanto — scusi, signore, quanto la tabellina dell’addizione non è nota ai cavalieri.» Bitzer provò questa battuta su Mr. Bounderby.
‘Ha spaventato me così,’ disse la ragazza, ‘con le sue facce crudeli!’
«Oh!» esclamò Bitzer «Oh! Non sei tu uno degli altri? Non sei un cavaliere di cavalli? Non l’ho mai guardata, signore. Le ho chiesto se saprebbe definire un cavallo domani e mi sono offerto di dirglielo ancora una volta, ma lei è scappata via e io l’ho inseguita, signore, perché sapesse come rispondere quando le fosse stato chiesto. Non avresti pensato a dire un tale guaio se non fossi stato un cavaliere di cavalli?»
«La sua vocazione sembra essere piuttosto bene conosciuta tra loro», osservò il signor Bounderby. «Avreste avuto tutta la scuola che spiava in fila indiana entro una settimana».
«In verità, lo credo anch’io», rispose l’amico. «Bitzer, voltati e vattene a casa. Jupe, resta qui un momento. Se sento ancora di te che corri in questo modo, ragazzo, saprai di me attraverso il preside della scuola. Mi hai capito. Vattene».
Il ragazzo si fermò nel suo rapido ammiccare, si strofinò di nuovo la fronte con le nocche, diede un’occhiata a Sissy, si voltò e se ne andò.
«Ora, ragazza», disse il signor Gradgrind, «accompagna questo gentiluomo e me dal tuo padre; stiamo andando da lui. Cosa c’è in quella bottiglia che porti?»
«Gin», disse il signor Bounderby.
‘Caro, no, signore! Sono i nove oli.’
«Il che cosa?» gridò il signor Bounderby.
‘I nove oli, signore, per massaggiare il padre.’
«Allora», disse il signor Bounderby con una risata breve e sonora, «perché diavolo gli strofini addosso nove oli?»
«È quello che usano sempre le nostre persone, signore, quando si fanno qualche ferita nell’arena», rispose la ragazza, guardandosi alle spalle per assicurarsi che il suo inseguitore se ne fosse andato. «A volte si ammaccano molto male».
«Gliel’hanno meritato», disse il signor Bounderby «per essere pigri». Lei alzò lo sguardo verso il suo volto con un misto di stupore e timore.
«Per Giorgio!» disse il signor Bounderby «quando avevo quattro o cinque anni meno di te, avevo lividi peggiori su di me che non ne avrebbero levati dieci oli, venti oli, quaranta oli. Non li prendevo facendo esercizi ginnici, ma perché mi picchiavano. Per me non c’era danza sulla corda; ballavo sul terreno nudo e venivo frustato con la corda».
Il signor Gradgrind, sebbene abbastanza duro, non era affatto un uomo così ruvido come il signor Bounderby. Il suo carattere non era cattivo, tutto considerato; sarebbe potuto essere molto gentile davvero, se solo avesse commesso qualche errore di calcolo negli anni precedenti. Disse, nel tono che intendeva rassicurante, mentre svoltavano in una stretta strada, «E questo è Pod’s End; vero, Jupe?»
«Questo è il posto, signore, e — se non le dispiace, signore — questa è la casa.»
Si fermò, al crepuscolo, davanti alla porta di un misero pub con luci rosse fioche. Era così smunto e squallido come se, per mancanza di clientela, avesse preso a bere lui stesso ed avesse imboccato la strada che tutti i ubriaconi percorrono, trovandosi ormai molto vicino alla fine.
«È solo passare oltre la soglia, signore, e salire le scale, se non le dispiace, e aspettare lì un momento finché trovo una candela. Se dovesse sentire abbaiare un cane, signore, è solo Merrylegs, che abbaia soltanto».
«Bene, Merrylegs e nove olii, eh!» disse il signor Bounderby entrando per ultimo con la sua risata metallica. «Questo è davvero un bel risultato per un uomo che si è fatto da sé!»
CHAPTER VI SLEARY’S HORSEMANSHIP
THE name of the public-house was the Pegasus’s Arms. The Pegasus’s legs might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon the sign-board, the Pegasus’s Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines:
Good malt makes good beer, Walk in, and they’ll draw it here; Good wine makes good brandy, Give us a call, and you’ll find it handy.
Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another Pegasus—a theatrical one—with real gauze let in for his wings, golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.
As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting any one, and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the candle appeared together.
‘Father is not in our room, sir,’ she said, with a face of great surprise. ‘If you wouldn’t mind walking in, I’ll find him directly.’ They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it. The white night-cap, embellished with two peacock’s feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts, hung upon a nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other token of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who went aboard the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any sign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus’s Arms.
They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard voices expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and looked round with her hands clasped and her face full of terror.
‘Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don’t know why he should go there, but he must be there; I’ll bring him in a minute!’ She was gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her.
‘What does she mean!’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Back in a minute? It’s more than a mile off.’
Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and introducing himself with the words, ‘By your leaves, gentlemen!’ walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender, and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried upside down over his father’s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father’s hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy.
‘By your leaves, gentlemen,’ said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the room. ‘It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe!’
‘It was,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with you.’
‘You see, my friend,’ Mr. Bounderby put in, ‘we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know the value of time.’
‘I have not,’ retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, ‘the honour of knowing you,—but if you mean that you can make more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that you are about right.’
‘And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,’ said Cupid.
‘Kidderminster, stow that!’ said Mr. Childers. (Master Kidderminster was Cupid’s mortal name.)
‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’
‘Kidderminster,’ said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, ‘stow that!—Sir,’ to Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that Jupe has missed his tip very often, lately.’
‘Has—what has he missed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent Bounderby for assistance.
CAPITOLO VI L’EQUESTRI SMERALDI DI SLEARY
Il nome della locanda era il Pegaso’s Arms. Le gambe del Pegaso avrebbero potuto essere più adatte allo scopo; ma sotto al cavallo alato cavallo sulla targa, le insegne del Pegaso erano incise con lettere romane. Sotto quella iscrizione, ancora una volta, in un nastro fluttuante, il pittore aveva dipinto queste righe:
Il buon malto fa la birra buona, entrate e ve la serviranno qui; il buon vino fa il buon brandy, fateci un saluto e lo troverete comodo.
Incorniciato e dietro vetro sulla parete dietro il piccolo bar squallido, c’era un altro Pegaso — uno teatrale — con ali in vero velo inserite, stelle dorate incollate su tutto lui e la sua eterea imbragatura fatta di seta rossa.
Poiché fuori era diventato troppo buio per vedere l’insegna e dentro non si vedeva ancora abbastanza bene da distinguere il quadro, né Mr. Gradgrind né Mr. Bounderby furono offesi da queste idealità. Seguirono la ragazza su una ripida scala a gomito senza incontrare nessuno e rimasero al buio mentre lei andava a prendere una candela. Si aspettavano di sentire Merrylegs abbaiare da un momento all’altro, ma il cane addestrato non aveva ancora latrato quando la ragazza riapparve con la candela in mano.
«Il padre non è nella nostra stanza, signore», disse con un’espressione di grande sorpresa. «Se vuole avere la gentilezza di entrare, lo troverò subito». Entrarono; e Sissy, dopo aver messo due sedie per loro, corse via con passo veloce e leggero. Era una stanza misera, arredata in modo trasandato, con un letto dentro. Il bianco notturno, arricchito con due piume di pavone e una treccia dritta come un fuso, con cui il signor Jupe aveva animato quel pomeriggio stesso le varie esibizioni con i suoi casti scherzi e battute shakespeariane, era appeso a un chiodo; ma nessun’altra parte del suo guardaroba o altro segno di lui o delle sue occupazioni si vedeva da nessuna parte. Quanto a Merrylegs, quell’illustre antenato dell’animale altamente addestrato che salì sull’arca, avrebbe potuto essere accidentalmente escluso dall’Arma del Pegaso, per quanto riguarda i segni di un cane visibili o udibili.
Sentirono le porte delle stanze di sopra aprirsi e chiudersi mentre Sissy passava da una all’altra in cerca del padre; e poco dopo sentirono voci esprimere sorpresa. Lei scese di nuovo di corsa, aprì un vecchio baule per capelli ammaccato e malandato, lo trovò vuoto e si guardò intorno con le mani giunte e il volto pieno di terrore.
«Papà deve essere andato al Booth, signore. Non so perché dovrebbe esserci andato, ma ci sarà sicuramente; lo porterò qui tra un minuto!» Scomparve subito dopo, senza cappello, con i suoi lunghi capelli scuri e infantili che le svolazzavano dietro.
“Cosa vuole dire!” disse il signor Gradgrind. “Tornare tra un minuto? È più di un miglio di distanza.”
Prima che il signor Bounderby potesse rispondere, un giovane apparve sulla porta e, presentandosi con le parole: «Per le foglie di voi, signori!», entrò con le mani in tasca. Il suo volto, rasato da vicino, magro ed esangue, era ombreggiato da una grande quantità di capelli scuri, pettinati a ciuffo tutto intorno alla testa e divisi al centro. Le sue gambe erano molto robuste, ma più corte di quanto dovrebbero essere le gambe ben proporzionate. Il suo torace e la schiena erano tanto troppo larghi, quanto le sue gambe erano troppo corte. Era vestito con un cappotto da Newmarket e pantaloni aderenti; portava una sciarpa intorno al collo; emanava odore di olio per lampade, paglia, buccia d’arancia, fieno per cavalli e segatura; e sembrava il più straordinario tipo di Centauro, composto dello stallato e del teatro. Dove l’uno iniziasse, e l’altro finisse, nessuno avrebbe potuto dirlo con precisione. Questo signore era menzionato negli annunci del giorno come il signor E. W. B. Childers, così giustamente celebrato per la sua audace impresa acrobatica come il Cacciatore Selvaggio delle Praterie Nord Americane; in questa popolare performance, un bambino di piccola statura con un volto vecchio, che ora lo accompagnava, assisteva come suo figlioletto: veniva trasportato a testa in giù sulla spalla del padre, per un piede, e tenuto per la corona della sua testa, con i talloni rivolti verso l’alto, nel palmo della mano di suo padre, secondo il violento modo paterno con cui i cacciatori selvaggi possono essere osservati ad accarezzare la loro prole. Truccato con riccioli, ghirlande, ali, bismuto bianco e carminio, questa promettente giovane persona si elevava in un Cupido così piacevole da costituire il principale delight della parte materna degli spettatori; ma in privato, dove le sue caratteristiche erano una giacca corta precoce e una voce estremamente ruvida, diventava del Turf, turfista.
«Per le vostre foglie, signori», disse il signor E. W. B. Childers, guardandosi intorno nella stanza. «Era lei, credo, che desiderava vedere Jupe!»
«È così», disse il signor Gradgrind. «Sua figlia è andata a chiamarlo, ma non posso aspettare; quindi, se permette, lascerò un messaggio per lui con lei».
«Vedete, mio caro amico», intervenne il signor Bounderby, «siamo la gente che conosce il valore del tempo, e voi siete la gente che non lo conosce.»
«Non ho», ribatté il signor Childers dopo averlo esaminato dalla testa ai piedi, «l’onore di conoscere lei, ma se intende dire che può trarre più denaro dal suo tempo di quanto io ne tragga dal mio, mi sembra di poter dedurre dall’aspetto che ha che abbia ragione.»
«E quando l’avrete fatto, potrete anche tenerlo, credo», disse Cupido.
«Kidderminster, metti via quello!» disse il signor Childers. (Il nome mortale del piccolo Amore era Master Kidderminster.)
«E allora perché viene qui a darci della spocchiosità?» gridò il giovane Kidderminster, dimostrando un carattere molto irascibile. «Se vuoi darci della spocchiosità, paga la tua ocra alle porte e portala via.»
«Kidderminster», disse Childers alzando la voce, «smettila! — Signore», rivolgendosi a Gradgrind, «mi stavo rivolgendo a lei. Forse non lo sa (perché forse non è stato molto tra il pubblico), ma Jupe ha spesso mancato il bersaglio ultimamente».
«Ha, cosa ha perso?» chiese il signor Gradgrind, lanciando un’occhiata al potente Bounderby in cerca di aiuto.
‘Missed his tip.’
‘Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done ’em once,’ said Master Kidderminster. ‘Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was loose in his ponging.’
‘Didn’t do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his tumbling,’ Mr. Childers interpreted.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is tip, is it?’
‘In a general way that’s missing his tip,’ Mr. E. W. B. Childers answered.
‘Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!’ ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. ‘Queer sort of company, too, for a man who has raised himself!’
‘Lower yourself, then,’ retorted Cupid. ‘Oh Lord! if you’ve raised yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.’
‘This is a very obtrusive lad!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and knitting his brows on him.
‘We’d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were coming,’ retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. ‘It’s a pity you don’t have a bespeak, being so particular. You’re on the Tight-Jeff, ain’t you?’
‘What does this unmannerly boy mean,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in a sort of desperation, ‘by Tight-Jeff?’
‘There! Get out, get out!’ said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. ‘Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it don’t much signify: it’s only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for Jupe?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Then,’ continued Mr. Childers, quickly, ‘my opinion is, he will never receive it. Do you know much of him?’
‘I never saw the man in my life.’
‘I doubt if you ever will see him now. It’s pretty plain to me, he’s off.’
‘Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?’
‘Ay! I mean,’ said Mr. Childers, with a nod, ‘that he has cut. He was goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can’t stand it.’
‘Why has he been—so very much—Goosed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
‘His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,’ said Childers. ‘He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can’t get a living out of them.’
‘A Cackler!’ Bounderby repeated. ‘Here we go again!’
‘A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,’ said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair—which all shook at once. ‘Now, it’s a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with it.’
‘Good!’ interrupted Mr. Bounderby. ‘This is good, Gradgrind! A man so fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good! Ha! ha! Now, I’ll tell you what, young man. I haven’t always occupied my present station of life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, but my mother—ran away from me.’
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to hear it.
‘Very well,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There’s no family pride about me, there’s no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that’s what he is, in English.’
‘It’s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English or whether in French,’ retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about. ‘I am telling your friend what’s the fact; if you don’t like to hear it, you can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do; but give it mouth in your own building at least,’ remonstrated E. W. B. with stern irony. ‘Don’t give it mouth in this building, till you’re called upon. You have got some building of your own I dare say, now?’
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
‘Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?’ said Childers. ‘Because this isn’t a strong building, and too much of you might bring it down!’
Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him, but he has cut away and left her.’
‘Pray,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘why will she never believe it of him?’
‘Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,’ said Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master Kidderminster walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart than the general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. This walk was common to all the male members of Sleary’s company, and was understood to express, that they were always on horseback.
‘Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,’ said Childers, giving his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. ‘Now, he leaves her without anything to take to.’
‘It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express that opinion,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly.
‘I never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.’
‘Oh! Indeed?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been defrauded of his good opinion. ‘I was not aware of its being the custom to apprentice young persons to—’
‘Ha perso la sua mancia.’
«Proposto quattro volte al gioco dei baldruchi la scorsa notte, e non l’ha mai fatto una volta», disse il signorino Kidderminster. «Ha mancato il bersaglio anche ai cartelloni, ed era impreciso nel lancio».
«Non ha fatto quello che avrebbe dovuto fare. È stato scarso nei salti e negativo nelle acrobazie», interpretò il signor Childers.
‘Ah!’ disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘questo è un consiglio, vero?’
«In generale gli manca la punta», rispose il signor E. W. B. Childers.
«Nove olii, Merrylegs, punte mancanti, giarrettiere, stendardi e Ponging, eh!» esclamò Bounderby con la sua risata delle risate. «Una compagnia strana davvero per un uomo che si è fatto da sé!»
«Allora abbassatevi», ribatté Cupido. «Oh Signore! se vi siete innalzati tanto fino a quel punto, abbassatevi un po’.»
«Questo è un ragazzo davvero impertinente!» disse il signor Gradgrind voltandosi e aggrottando la fronte verso di lui.
«Avremmo mandato un giovane gentiluomo ad accoglierla se avessimo saputo che veniva», ribatté il signorino Kidderminster senza scomporsi. «È un peccato che non abbia prenotato, visto che è così esigente. È sul Tight-Jeff, vero?»
«Che cosa intende questo ragazzo scortese», chiese il signor Gradgrind, fissandolo con una specie di disperazione, «con “Tight-Jeff”?»
«Ecco! Vattene, vattene!» disse Childers, spingendo fuori dalla stanza il suo giovane amico in modo piuttosto rustico. «Che sia Jeff Stretto o Jeff Largo non ha molta importanza: è solo questione di fune tesa e fune allentata. Volevi darmi un messaggio per Jupe?»
‘Sì, lo ero.’
«Allora», continuò il signor Childers in fretta, «secondo me non lo riceverà mai. Ne sapete molto di lui?»
‘Non ho mai visto quell’uomo in vita mia.’
«Dubito che lo vedrete mai più adesso. È abbastanza chiaro per me: se n’è andato».
‘Intende dire che ha abbandonato sua figlia?’
«Sì! Voglio dire», disse Childers con un cenno del capo, «che se n’è andato. È stato beffato ieri sera, è stato beffato la sera prima, è stato beffato oggi. Ultimamente si era messo in testa di farsi sempre beffare e non ne può più».
«Perché è stato — così tanto — beffato?» chiese il signor Gradgrind, strappando la parola da sé con grande solennità e riluttanza.
«Le sue articolazioni si stanno irrigidendo e sta diventando un uomo finito», disse Childers. «Ha ancora i suoi pregi come gallina cedrone, ma non riesce più a guadagnarsi da vivere con quelli».
‘Un gallinaceo!’, ripeté Bounderby, ‘Eccoci di nuovo!’
«Un oratore, se al gentiluomo piace di più», disse il signor E. W. B. Childers, gettando sprezzantemente l’interpretazione alle sue spalle, e accompagnandola con un movimento della sua lunga chioma—che si agitò tutta insieme. «Ora, è un fatto notevole, signore, che quell’uomo ne fu più ferito dal sapere che la figlia sapeva di lui esser stato beffato, che nel subire l’onta stessa».
«Bene!» lo interruppe il signor Bounderby «Questo è davvero un bel colpo, Gradgrind! Un uomo così affezionato alla figlia da scappare via da lei! Questo è diabolamente buono! Ha! ha! Ora, le dico una cosa, giovanotto. Non ho sempre occupato la mia attuale posizione sociale. So come vanno queste cose. Potrebbe stupirsi nel saperlo, ma mia madre, scappò via da me.»
E. W. B. Childers rispose con tono pungente che non era affatto sorpreso di sentirlo.
‘Molto bene’, disse Bounderby, ‘sono nato in un fosso e mia madre è scappata da me. La giustifico per questo? No. L’ho mai giustificata per questo? Neanche per sogno. Come la chiamo per questo? La chiamo probabilmente la peggior donna che sia mai vissuta al mondo, a parte mia nonna ubriacona. Non ho nessun orgoglio familiare, non ho nessuna immaginativa sentimentalità da ciarlatano. Chiamo una vanga vanga; e chiamo la madre di Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, senza alcun timore o alcun favore, come la chiamerei se fosse stata la madre di Dick Jones di Wapping. E così per questo uomo. È un fuggitivo e un vagabondo, ecco cos’è, in inglese.’
«A me è del tutto indifferente ciò che sia o non sia, sia in inglese sia in francese», ribatté il signor E. W. B. Childers voltandosi. «Sto dicendo al suo amico la verità; se non gli piace sentirselo dire, può sempre godere dell’aria aperta. Lei ha abbastanza coraggio, lo so; ma si faccia coraggio almeno nel suo edificio», rimarcò E. W. B. con severa ironia. «Non si faccia coraggio in questo edificio finché non gli viene chiesto. Ha un proprio edificio, immagino?»
«Forse è così», rispose il signor Bounderby, facendo tintinnare i suoi soldi e ridendo.
«Allora fatevi largo nel vostro edificio, se non vi dispiace», disse Childers. «Perché questo non è un edificio robusto e troppa presenza di voi potrebbe farlo crollare!»
Dopo aver di nuovo squadrato il signor Bounderby dalla testa ai piedi, si voltò da lui, come se avesse definitivamente liquidato un uomo, al signor Gradgrind.
«Jupe ha mandato fuori sua figlia per un’erranda non più di un’ora fa e poi è stato visto uscire lui stesso, con il cappello calato sugli occhi e un pacco avvolto in un fazzoletto sotto al braccio. Lei non ci crederà mai, ma lui l’ha abbandonata».
‘Per favore,’ disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘perché non vuole mai crederci?’
«Perché quei due erano una cosa sola. Perché non furono mai separati. Perché, fino a questo momento, sembrava che lui la adorasse», disse Childers facendo un paio di passi per guardare dentro il baule vuoto. Sia Mr. Childers che Master Kidderminster camminavano in modo curioso; con le gambe più divaricate rispetto alla media degli uomini, e con una presunzione molto saputa di essere rigidi alle ginocchia. Questo modo di camminare era comune a tutti i membri maschili della compagnia di Sleary, ed esprimeva il fatto che fossero sempre a cavallo.
«Povera Sissy! Avrebbe fatto meglio a metterla in apprendistato», disse Childers, scuotendo di nuovo i capelli mentre alzava lo sguardo dalla scatola vuota. «Ora lascia lei senza nulla da portare con sé».
«È un’opinione lodevole da parte di chi non ha mai fatto il tirocinio», rispose con approvazione il signor Gradgrind.
‘Non sono mai stato apprendista? Sono diventato apprendista quando avevo sette anni.’
«Oh! Davvero?», disse il signor Gradgrind con un certo risentimento, come se gli fosse stata sottratta la sua buona opinione. «Non ero a conoscenza che fosse consuetudine apprendistare giovani persone a—»
‘Idleness,’ Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. ‘No, by the Lord Harry! Nor I!’
‘Her father always had it in his head,’ resumed Childers, feigning unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s existence, ‘that she was to be taught the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can’t say; I can only say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for her, there—and a bit of ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years.’
Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.
‘When Sissy got into the school here,’ he pursued, ‘her father was as pleased as Punch. I couldn’t altogether make out why, myself, as we were not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move in his mind—he was always half-cracked—and then considered her provided for. If you should happen to have looked in to-night, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her any little service,’ said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and repeating his look, ‘it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very fortunate and well-timed.’
‘On the contrary,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I came to tell him that her connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any connivance on her part—Bounderby, let me have a word with you.’
Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face, and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr. Bounderby’s voice as ‘No. I say no. I advise you not. I say by no means.’ While, from Mr. Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, ‘But even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.’
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company gradually gathered together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from standing about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children, who did the fairy business when required. The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all particular in respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in the world.
Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.
‘Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, ‘Your thervant! Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You’ve heard of my Clown and hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?’
He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered ‘Yes.’
‘Well, Thquire,’ he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. ‘Ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?’
‘I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any more than I want to thtand in her way. I’m willing to take her prentith, though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and not eathy heard by them ath don’t know me; but if you’d been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath young, ath often ath I have been, your voithe wouldn’t have lathted out, Thquire, no more than mine.’
‘I dare say not,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give it a name, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease.
‘Nothing for me, I thank you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Don’t thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you haven’t took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.’
Here his daughter Josephine—a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies—cried, ‘Father, hush! she has come back!’ Then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And when she saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the family-way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep over her.
“Ociosità,” intervenne il signor Bounderby con una risata fragorosa. “No, per Dio Harry! Neanche io!”
«Suo padre aveva sempre in testa», riprese Childers fingendo di non accorgersi dell’esistenza del signor Bounderby, «che lei dovesse imparare il diavolo e la educazione. Come gli sia venuto in mente, non saprei dire; posso solo affermare che non gli è mai uscito dalla testa. Ha raccolto un po’ di lettura per lei qua - e un po’ di scrittura là - e un po’ di calcoli da qualche altra parte - negli ultimi sette anni».
Il signor E. W. B. Childers tirò fuori una mano dalle tasche, si accarezzò il viso e il mento e guardò il signor Gradgrind con un bel po’ di dubbio e un pizzico di speranza. Fin dall’inizio aveva cercato di conciliarsi quell’uomo, per amore della ragazza abbandonata.
«Quando Sissy entrò a far parte della scuola qui», continuò lui, «suo padre fu contento come un papa. Io non riuscivo proprio a capire perché, dato che noi non ci fermavamo mai in nessun posto, ma andavamo e venivamo da tutte le parti. Tuttavia suppongo che avesse già in mente questo trasferimento - era sempre mezzo matto - e poi pensò di aver provveduto a lei. Se per caso ti fosse capitato di passare stasera per dirgli che intendevi farle qualche piccolo favore», disse Childers, accarezzandosi ancora il viso e ripetendo la sua occhiata, «sarebbe stato molto fortunato e ben-pensato; molto fortunato e ben-pensato.»
«Al contrario», rispose il signor Gradgrind, «sono venuto per dirgli che i suoi legami la rendono inadatta alla scuola e che non deve più frequentarla. Tuttavia, se suo padre l’ha davvero abbandonata senza alcuna sua complicità — Bounderby, ho bisogno di parlarle un momento».
A questo punto, il signor Childers si allontanò cortesemente con la sua andatura da cavallerizzo fino al pianerottolo fuori dalla porta e lì rimase a carezzarsi il viso e fischiare sommessamente. Mentre era così impegnato, udì pronunciare dal signor Bounderby frasi come: «No. Io dico no. Non lo consiglio. Dico assolutamente di no». Dal canto suo, dal signor Gradgrind udì in tono molto più basso le parole: «Ma anche come esempio per Louisa, di ciò a cui conduce e in che cosa termina questa ricerca oggetto di volgare curiosità. Consideralo, Bounderby, da questo punto di vista».
Nel frattempo i vari membri della compagnia di Sleary si riunivano gradualmente dalle zone superiori dove erano alloggiati e, dopo essere rimasti in piedi a parlare tra loro sottovoce e con Childers, finirono per insinuarsi nella stanza insieme a lui. Tra loro c’erano due o tre giovani donne attraenti, i loro due o tre mariti, le loro due o tre madri e i loro otto o nove bambini che facevano la parte delle fate quando era necessario. Il padre di una delle famiglie aveva l’abitudine di bilanciare il padre di un’altra famiglia sulla cima di un grande palo; il padre di una terza famiglia spesso costruiva una piramide con entrambi quei padri, con Master Kidderminster come apice e se stesso come base; tutti i padri sapevano ballare su barili rotolanti, stare in piedi sulle bottiglie, prendere coltelli e palle al volo, far girare bacinelle, cavalcare qualsiasi cosa, saltare sopra tutto e non fermarsi davanti a nulla. Tutte le madri sapevano (e facevano) ballare sulla corda allentata e su quella tesa, eseguivano rapidi numeri su cavalli senza sella; nessuna di loro era particolarmente preoccupata di mostrare le gambe; e una di loro, sola in un carro greco, guidava sei cavalli a mano in ogni città che visitavano. Tutti si davano delle arie da monelli scaltri e sbruffoni, non erano molto ordinati nei vestiti privati, non erano affatto meticolosi negli arrangiamenti domestici, e la letteratura combinata dell’intera compagnia avrebbe prodotto una povera lettera su qualsiasi argomento. Eppure c’era qualcosa di notevolmente gentile e infantile in queste persone, un’inettitudine particolare per ogni tipo di pratica subdola e una costante disponibilità ad aiutarsi e compatirsi a vicenda che meritava spesso altrettanto rispetto e sempre la stessa generosa considerazione delle virtù quotidiane di qualsiasi classe sociale.
L’ultimo ad apparire fu il signor Sleary: un uomo robusto come già accennato, con un occhio fisso e uno mobile, una voce (se così si può chiamare) simile agli sforzi di un vecchio paio di mantici rotto, una superficie flaccida e una testa confusa che non era mai sobria né mai ubriaca.
«Signorino!» disse il signor Sleary, che soffriva d’asma e la cui respirazione era troppo affannosa per pronunciare bene la lettera «s», «Il vostro servitore! Questo è un brutto pezzo di brutta storia, questo sì. Avete sentito dire che il mio pagliaccio e il suo cane sono stati trovati morti?»
Si rivolse al signor Gradgrind, che rispose ‘Sì’.
«Bene, signorino», rispose lui togliendosi il cappello e strofinando la fodera con il fazzoletto che teneva all’interno proprio per quello scopo. «È sua intenzione fare qualcosa per quella povera ragazza, signorino?»
«Avrò qualcosa da proporle quando tornerà», disse il signor Gradgrind.
«Mi fa piacere sentirlo, signor Thquire. Non che io voglia liberarmi della bambina, tanto meno desidero mettermi sulla sua strada. Sono disposto a prendermi cura di lei, anche se alla sua età è tardi. La mia voce è un po’ rauca, signor Thquire, e non facile da sentire per chi non mi conosce; ma se foste stato voi ad essere raffreddato e scaldato, scaldato e raffreddato, raffreddato e scaldato nell’arena quando eravate giovane, come è capitato spesso a me, la vostra voce non sarebbe durata più della mia, signor Thquire.»
«Probabilmente no», disse il signor Gradgrind.
«Che cosa prenderà, signorino, mentre aspetta? Prenderà del vino di Sherry? Dica il nome, signorino!» disse il signor Sleary con affabile disinvoltura.
«Nulla per me, grazie», disse il signor Gradgrind.
«Non dica niente, signor cavaliere. Cosa dice il suo amico? Se non ha ancora mangiato, prenda un bicchiere di birra amara.»
Qui sua figlia Josephine — una graziosa ragazza bionda di diciotto anni, che era stata messa su un cavallo a due anni e aveva fatto testamento a dodici, il quale portava sempre con sé, esprimendo il suo morente desiderio di essere condotta alla tomba dai due pony pezzati — gridò: «Papà, zitto! è tornata!». Poi arrivò Sissy Jupe, correndo nella stanza come ne era uscita. E quando vide tutti riuniti e vide le loro espressioni e non vide il padre presente, proruppe in un pianto davvero deplorevole e si rifugiò sul seno della più esperta acrobata delle funi (lei stessa incinta), che si inginocchiò per accudirla e piangere su di lei.
‘Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,’ said Sleary.
‘O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone to try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am sure! And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you come back!’ It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby (growing impatient) took the case in hand.
‘Now, good people all,’ said he, ‘this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from, myself. Here, what’s your name! Your father has absconded—deserted you—and you mustn’t expect to see him again as long as you live.’
They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered ‘Shame!’ and the women ‘Brute!’ and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to Mr. Bounderby.
‘I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that you had better cut it thort, and drop it. They’re a very good natur’d people, my people, but they’re accuthtomed to be quick in their movementh; and if you don’t act upon my advithe, I’m damned if I don’t believe they’ll pith you out o’ winder.’
Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Gradgrind found an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.
‘It is of no moment,’ said he, ‘whether this person is to be expected back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no present expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all hands.’
‘Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that!’ From Sleary.
‘Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any more, in consequence of there being practical objections, into which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you. The only condition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you communicate no more with any of your friends who are here present. These observations comprise the whole of the case.’
‘At the thame time,’ said Sleary, ‘I mutht put in my word, Thquire, tho that both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If you like, Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know your companionth. Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you’re a lying at prethent, would be a mother to you, and Joth’phine would be a thithter to you. I don’t pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don’t thay but what, when you mith’d your tip, you’d find me cut up rough, and thwear an oath or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that I don’t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have thed my thay.’
The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:
‘The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of influencing your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical education, and that even your father himself (from what I understand) appears, on your behalf, to have known and felt that much.’
The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force of the change, and drew a long breath together, that plainly said, ‘she will go!’
‘Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,’ Mr. Gradgrind cautioned her; ‘I say no more. Be sure you know your own mind!’
‘When father comes back,’ cried the girl, bursting into tears again after a minute’s silence, ‘how will he ever find me if I go away!’
‘You may be quite at ease,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out the whole matter like a sum: ‘you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr.—’
‘Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all over England, and alwayth paythe ith way.’
‘Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have no difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am well known.’
‘Well known,’ assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. ‘You’re one of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the houthe. But never mind that at prethent.’
There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands before her face, ‘Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my heart!’
The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together—it was soon done, for they were not many—and to pack them in a basket which had often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still sobbing, and covering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood near the door, ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in the middle of the room, with the male members of the company about him, exactly as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter Josephine’s performance. He wanted nothing but his whip.
«Con una fiamma interiore, sulla mia anima è così», disse Sleary.
«Oh mio caro padre, mio buon gentile padre, dove sei andato? So che te ne sei andato per cercare di farmi del bene! Sei partito per colpa mia, ne sono sicura! E quanto sarai infelice e indifeso senza di me, povero, povero padre, finché non tornerai!» Era così patetico sentirla dire molte cose di questo genere, con il viso rivolto verso l’alto e le braccia tese come se stesse cercando di fermare la sua ombra che si allontanava per abbracciarla, che nessuno parlò finché Mr. Bounderby (diventato impaziente) non prese in mano la situazione.
«Ora, brava gente», disse lui, «questo è uno spreco sfrenato di tempo. La ragazza deve capire la verità. Che la prenda da me, se preferite, che sono stato abbandonato anch’io. Ehi, come ti chiami! Tuo padre si è dato alla macchia - ti ha abbandonata - e non dovrai aspettarti di rivederlo mai più finché vivrai».
A queste persone importava così poco dei semplici Fatti e avevano raggiunto un tale stato avanzato di degenerazione al riguardo che invece di essere colpite dal buon senso dell’oratore, ne furono straordinariamente offese. Gli uomini mormoravano «Vergogna!» e le donne «Bruto!», mentre Sleary, con un certo affanno, comunicò il seguente suggerimento a Mr. Bounderby in disparte.
«Le dico una cosa, Thquire. Per parlarle chiaro, la mia opinione è che farebbe meglio a lasciar perdere e mollare tutto. Sono gente molto buona, la mia gente, ma sono abituati ad agire in fretta; e se non segue il mio consiglio, mi venga un colpo se non credo che la butteranno fuori dalla finestra.»
Il signor Bounderby essendo stato frenato da questa mite osservazione, il signor Gradgrind trovò l’occasione per la sua esposizione eminentemente pratica dell’argomento.
«Non ha importanza», disse lui, «se questa persona è attesa di ritorno in un qualche momento o il contrario. È partito e non c’è alcuna aspettativa che torni al momento presente. Questo, credo, sia concordato da tutti».
«Sia come ha detto lei, signorino. Ci pensi su!» Da Sleary.
«Bene, allora. Io, che sono venuto qui per informare il padre della povera ragazza, Jupe, che non poteva più essere accolta nella scuola a causa di obiezioni pratiche, nelle quali non è necessario entrare nei dettagli, alla presenza dei figli di persone così impiegate, sono pronto in queste mutate circostanze a fare una proposta. Sono disposto ad assumere la responsabilità di te, Jupe, e a educarti e provvederti. L’unica condizione (oltre al tuo buon comportamento) che pongo è che tu decida ora, subito, se accompagnarmi o rimanere qui. Inoltre, se mi accompagnerai ora, si intende che non comunicherai più con nessuno dei tuoi amici presenti qui. Queste osservazioni comprendono l’intera questione».
«Nello stesso tempo,» disse Sleary «devo dire la mia parola, signorino, affinché entrambi i lati della bandiera siano ugualmente visibili. Se a lei piace, Thethilia, essere stampata, conosce la natura del lavoro e conosce le sue compagne. Emma Gordon, sulle cui ginocchia si trova in questo momento, sarebbe una madre per lei, e Joth’phine sarebbe una sorella per lei. Non pretendo di essere io stesso della razza degli angeli, e non dico che no, quando le mancherebbe il denaro, mi troverebbe tagliente e le direi un paio di parolacce. Ma ciò che dico, signorino, è che, buono o cattivo umore che sia, non ho mai fatto del male a un cavallo, né più di quanto bastasse per sgridarlo, e non mi aspetto di cominciare diversamente alla mia età, con un cavaliere. Non sono mai stato molto loquace, signorino, e ho detto la mia.»
La parte finale di questo discorso era rivolta al signor Gradgrind, che la accolse con un’grave inclinazione del capo e poi osservò:
«L’unica osservazione che ti farò, Jupe, per influenzare la tua decisione è che è altamente desiderabile avere una solida educazione pratica e che anche tuo padre stesso (da quello che ho capito) sembra averlo saputo e sentito profondamente in tuo favore.»
Le ultime parole ebbero un effetto visibile su di lei. Si fermò nel suo pianto disperato, si staccò leggermente da Emma Gordon e rivolse il volto verso il suo protettore. Tutti i presenti percepirono la forza del cambiamento e trattennero il respiro insieme, come a dire chiaramente: «Se ne andrà!»
«Sii sicura di conoscere la tua stessa mente, Jupe», l’avvertì il signor Gradgrind; «non dico altro. Sii sicura di conoscere la tua stessa mente!»
«Quando tornerà papà», esclamò la ragazza, scoppiando di nuovo in lacrime dopo un minuto di silenzio, «come potrà mai trovarmi se me ne vado!»
«Potete stare perfettamente tranquilla», disse il signor Gradgrind con calma; elaborò l’intera questione come se fosse un problema matematico: «potete stare perfettamente tranquilla su questo punto, Jupe. In tal caso, vostro padre, immagino, dovrà scoprire chi è il signor—»
«Thleary. È il mio nome, signorino. Non ne ho vergogna. Conosciuto in tutta l’Inghilterra e pago sempre i conti».
«Deve scoprire il signor Sleary, che poi gli direbbe dove sei andato. Io non avrei alcun potere di trattenerti contro la sua volontà e lui non avrebbe difficoltà a trovare in qualsiasi momento il signor Thomas Gradgrind di Coketown. Sono ben noto».
«Bene noto», assentì il signor Sleary, facendo rotolare il suo occhio cadente. «Lei è uno di quelli, signore, che tengono una bella somma di denaro fuori dalle case. Ma non importa per ora».
Ci fu un altro silenzio; e poi esclamò singhiozzando con le mani davanti al viso: «Oh, datemi i miei vestiti, datemi i miei vestiti, e lasciatemi andare via prima che mi spezzi il cuore!»
Le donne si misero tristemente all’opera per raccogliere i vestiti, e fu presto fatto perché non erano molti, e metterli in un cesto che era spesso viaggiato con loro. Sissy rimase tutto il tempo seduta a terra, ancora singhiozzando e coprendosi gli occhi. Il signor Gradgrind e il suo amico Bounderby si tenevano vicino alla porta, pronti a portarla via. Il signor Sleary stava in mezzo alla stanza con i membri maschili della compagnia intorno a lui, esattamente come sarebbe stato al centro dell’arena durante la performance di sua figlia Josephine. Non gli mancava altro che il frustino.
The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing her: and brought the children to take leave of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether.
‘Now, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘If you are quite determined, come!’
But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the professional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give her a parting kiss—Master Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary was reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide he took her by both her hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding-master manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him crying.
‘Good-bye, my dear!’ said Sleary. ‘You’ll make your fortun, I hope, and none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I’ll pound it. I with your father hadn’t taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth to have the dog out of the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn’t have performed without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!’
With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse.
‘There the ith, Thquire,’ he said, sweeping her with a professional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, ‘and the’ll do you juthtithe. Good-bye, Thethilia!’
‘Good-bye, Cecilia!’ ‘Good-bye, Sissy!’ ‘God bless you, dear!’ In a variety of voices from all the room.
But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her bosom, and he now interposed with ‘Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large to carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!’
‘No, no!’ she said, in another burst of tears. ‘Oh, no! Pray let me keep it for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes back. He had never thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you please!’
‘Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell, Thethilia! My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if, when you’re grown up and married and well off, you come upon any horthe-riding ever, don’t be hard upon it, don’t be croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might do wurth. People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,’ continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking; ‘they can’t be alwayth a working, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth; not the wurtht. I’ve got my living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but I conthider that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!’
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs and the fixed eye of Philosophy—and its rolling eye, too—soon lost the three figures and the basket in the darkness of the street.
La cesta preparata in silenzio, le portarono il cappello e glielo misero, lisciandole i capelli scompigliati. Poi si strinsero intorno a lei, chinandosi su di lei con atteggiamenti molto naturali, baciandola e abbracciandola: e fecero venire i bambini per salutarla; ed erano tutte insieme delle donne dal cuore tenero, semplici e sciocche.
‘Ora, Jupe’, disse il signor Gradgrind. ‘Se sei davvero deciso, vieni!’
Ma doveva ancora salutare la parte maschile della compagnia e ognuno di loro dovette aprire le braccia (perché tutti assumevano l’atteggiamento professionale quando si trovavano vicino a Sleary) e darle un bacio d’addio, tranne il giovane Kidderminster, in cui la giovane natura aveva un sapore originale di misantropo, che era anche noto per aver nutrito progetti matrimoniali e che si ritirò con aria cupa. Il signor Sleary fu tenuto da parte fino all’ultimo. Aprì le braccia e la prese per entrambe le mani, e avrebbe voluto farla saltare su e giù, secondo il modo in cui i maestri di equitazione congratulano le giovani signore per essere scese da un atto rapido; ma Sissy non aveva alcuna reazione ed era lì davanti a lui che piangeva.
«Addio, mia cara!» disse Sleary «Farete fortuna, spero, e nessuno dei nostri poveri folkth vi darà mai fastidio, ve lo assicuro. Mi dispiace che vostro padre non abbia portato con sé questo cane; è un inconveniente averlo fuori dalla gabbia. Ma al secondo pensiero, non avrebbe eseguito nulla senza il suo padrone, anche se è largo quanto lungo!»
Con ciò la guardò attentamente con il suo occhio fisso, osservò i suoi ospiti con quello mobile, la baciò, scosse la testa e la consegnò al signor Gradgrind come se fosse un cavallo.
«Ecco dove si trova, signorina», disse scrutandola con uno sguardo professionale come se la stesse sistemando sul sedile, «e lei le farà giustizia. Addio, Settimia!»
«Addio, Cecilia!» «Addio, Sissy!» «Dio ti benedica, cara!» Da tutta la stanza si levò un coro di voci diverse.
Ma l’occhio del maestro di equitazione aveva notato la bottiglia delle nove oli essenziali nel suo seno e ora intervenne con «Lascia la bottiglia, mia cara; è troppo grande da portare; non ti sarà più utile. Dammi!»
«No, no!» disse in un altro scoppio di lacrime. «Oh, no! La prego, lasci che lo tenga per papà finché non torna! Ne avrà bisogno quando tornerà. Non aveva mai pensato di andarsene, quando mi ha mandata a prenderlo. Devo tenerlo per lui, la prego!»
«Sia come vuoi tu, mia cara. (Vedi com’è la situazione, Squilere!) Addio, Thethilia! Le mie ultime parole per te sono queste: rispetta i termini del tuo impegno, sii obbediente con lo Squilere e dimenticaci. Ma se, quando sarai cresciuta e sposata e benestante, ti imbatti in qualche esibizione di equitazione, non essere severa al riguardo, non arrabbiarti, fallo un Bethpeak se puoi, e pensa che potresti fare qualcosa di meglio. La gente deve divertirsi, Squilere, in qualche modo», continuò Sleary, reso ancora più affannato dal tanto parlare; «non possono lavorare sempre, né possono imparare sempre. Tiriamo fuori il meglio da noi stessi, non il peggio. Ho guadagnato da vivere con l’equitazione per tutta la vita, lo so; ma ritengo di aver esposto la filosofia dell’argomento quando ti dico, Squilere, tiriamo fuori il meglio da noi stessi: non il peggio!»
La filosofia di Sleary venne esposta mentre scendevano le scale e l’occhio fisso della Filosofia — e anche il suo occhio rotante — presto persero di vista i tre personaggi e il cesto nell’oscurità della strada.
CHAPTER VII MRS. SPARSIT
MR. BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs. Sparsit was this lady’s name; and she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Bounderby’s car, as it rolled along in triumph with the Bully of humility inside.
For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by the mother’s side what Mrs. Sparsit still called ‘a Powler.’ Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves—which they had rather frequently done, as respected horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors’ Court.
The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother’s side a Powler, married this lady, being by the father’s side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an immensely fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher’s meat, and a mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he did not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby’s tea as he took his breakfast.
If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive Princess whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit’s. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit’s juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered waggon-loads of early roses all over that lady’s path. ‘And yet, sir,’ he would say, ‘how does it turn out after all? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown!’
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him out to be the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, An Englishman’s house is his castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together. And as often (and it was very often) as an orator of this kind brought into his peroration,
‘Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made,’
—it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you are unusually slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning.’
‘Why, ma’am,’ he returned, ‘I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind’s whim;’ Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking—as if somebody were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn’t; ‘Tom Gradgrind’s whim, ma’am, of bringing up the tumbling-girl.’
‘The girl is now waiting to know,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘whether she is to go straight to the school, or up to the Lodge.’
‘She must wait, ma’am,’ answered Bounderby, ‘till I know myself. We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he should wish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma’am.’
‘Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Bounderby.’
‘I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order that he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any association with Louisa.’
‘Indeed, Mr. Bounderby? Very thoughtful of you!’ Mrs. Sparsit’s Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.
‘It’s tolerably clear to me,’ said Bounderby, ‘that the little puss can get small good out of such companionship.’
‘Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby?’
‘Yes, ma’am, I’m speaking of Louisa.’
‘Your observation being limited to “little puss,”’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might be indicated by that expression.’
‘Louisa,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘Louisa, Louisa.’
‘You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.’ Mrs. Sparsit took a little more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the infernal gods.
CAPITOLO VII LA SIGNORA SPARSIT
Essendo il signor Bounderby scapolo, una signora anziana presiedeva la sua dimora, in considerazione di un certo stipendio annuale. Il nome di questa signora era Mrs Sparsit; ed ella era una figura prominente che accompagnava l’automobile del signor Bounderby mentre sfrecciava trionfante con il bullo dell’umiltà all’interno.
Infatti, la signora Sparsit non solo aveva conosciuto tempi migliori, ma era anche molto ben collegata. Aveva una grande zia che viveva proprio in questi giorni e si chiamava Lady Scadgers. Il defunto signor Sparsit, di cui lei era la vedova, era dalla parte della madre ciò che la signora Sparsit continuava a chiamare “un Powler”. Si osservò talvolta che gli estranei poco informati e con una comprensione ottusa non sapevano cosa fosse un Powler e sembravano persino incerti se si trattasse di un’attività commerciale, o di un partito politico, o di una professione di fede. La migliore classe di menti, tuttavia, non aveva bisogno di essere informata che i Powler erano un antico ceppo, che potevano risalire così indietro nel tempo da non sorprendersi se a volte si perdevano - il che era accaduto piuttosto frequentemente, per quanto riguardava la carne di cavallo, il gioco d’azzardo clandestino, le transazioni monetarie ebraiche e il Tribunale dei Debitori Insolventi Corte.
Il defunto signor Sparsit, essendo dalla parte materna un Powler, sposò questa dama, che era dalla parte paterna una Scadgers. La lady Scadgers (una vecchia donna immensamente grassa, con un appetito smisurato per la carne del macellaio e una gamba misteriosa che ormai si rifiutava di alzarsi dal letto da quattordici anni) combinò il matrimonio in un periodo in cui Sparsit aveva appena raggiunto la maggiore età, ed era principalmente noto per un esile corpo, debolmente sostenuto su due lunghi e snelli sostegni, e coronato da una testa che non valeva la pena di menzionare. Egli ereditò una discreta fortuna dallo zio, ma la dovette tutta prima di entrare in possesso di essa, e la spendette due volte subito dopo. Così, quando morì a ventiquattro anni (la scena della sua morte fu Calais, e la causa il brandy), non lasciò alla vedova, da cui si era separato poco dopo la luna di miele, una situazione agiata. Quella signora sconsolata, quindici anni più vecchia di lui, cadde presto in un’accesa faida con il suo unico parente, lady Scadgers; e, in parte per far dispetto a sua signoria, e in parte per mantenersi, si mise al servizio con uno stipendio. Ed eccola ora, nei suoi giorni di vecchiaia, con lo stile coriolano del naso e le folte sopracciglia nere che avevano catturato Sparsit, preparando il tè per il signor Bounderby mentre questi faceva colazione.
Se Bounderby fosse stato un conquistatore e la signora Sparsit una principessa catturata che avrebbe portato in giro come elemento di prestigio nelle sue parate, non avrebbe potuto fare più sfoggio di lei di quanto ne facesse abitualmente. Proprio come faceva parte della sua propensione a vantarsi sminuire la propria estrazione sociale, così faceva parte di essa esaltare quella della signora Sparsit. Nella stessa misura in cui non ammetteva che la sua giovinezza fosse stata accompagnata da una sola circostanza favorevole, rischiarava la carriera giovanile della signora Sparsit con ogni possibile vantaggio e spargeva carichi di rose primaverili lungo tutto il cammino di quella signora. ‘Eppure, signore,’ diceva, ‘come vanno a finire le cose? Ecco qua che lei ha cento sterline l’anno (le do cento sterline, che lei è così gentile da considerare una cifra cospicua), e tiene la casa di Josiah Bounderby di Coketown!’
Anzi, rese questa sua arma così ampiamente conosciuta che terze parti la presero e la maneggiarono in alcune occasioni con notevole vivacità. Uno degli attributi più esasperanti di Bounderby era che non solo cantava le proprie lodi ma stimolava anche altri a farlo. In lui c’era un’infezione morale di frasi fatte. Forestieri, abbastanza modesti altrove, si alzavano ai pranzi a Coketown e vantavano Bounderby in modo davvero sfrenato. Lo dipingevano come gli stemmi reali, l’Union-Jack, la Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, il Bill of Rights, un inglese ha casa è il suo castello, Chiesa e Stato e Dio salvi la Regina, tutti messi insieme. E ogni volta (e succedeva spesso) che un oratore di questo tipo portava nella sua perorazione,
«I principi e i lord possono fiorire o appassire, un soffio può crearli, come un soffio li ha creati»,
— era certo che più o meno tutti i presenti avevano capito che lui aveva sentito parlare della signora Sparsit.
«Signor Bounderby», disse la signora Sparsit, «questa mattina siete insolitamente lento con la colazione».
«Perché, signora», rispose lui, «stavo pensando al capriccio di Tom Gradgrind;» Tom Gradgrind, per un suo modo di parlare schietto e indipendente — come se qualcuno cercasse sempre di corromperlo con enormi somme perché dicesse Thomas, ma lui non lo facesse; «il capriccio di Tom Gradgrind, signora, di educare la ragazza acrobata.»
«La ragazza sta aspettando di sapere», disse la signora Sparsit, «se deve andare subito a scuola o salire fino alla villa.»
«Deve aspettare, signora», rispose Bounderby, «finché non lo saprò io stesso. Tom Gradgrind sarà qui tra poco, immagino. Se dovesse desiderare che rimanga un giorno o due in più, naturalmente potrà farlo, signora».
‘Naturalmente può, se lo desidera, signor Bounderby.’
«Gli ho detto che l’avrei messa alla prova qui, la scorsa notte, affinché potesse dormirci sopra prima di decidere se lasciarla associare a Louisa.»
«Davvero, signor Bounderby? Molto premuroso da parte sua!» Il naso coriolaniano della signora Sparsit subì una leggera dilatazione delle narici e le sue sopracciglia nere si contrassero mentre prendeva un sorso di tè.
«È abbastanza chiaro a me», disse Bounderby, «che la piccola gattina non può trarre alcun bene da una simile compagnia.»
‘Parla della giovane Miss Gradgrind, signor Bounderby?’
‘Sì, signora, sto parlando di Louisa.’
«Poiché la sua osservazione si riferiva soltanto alla “piccola gattina”», disse la signora Sparsit, «e trattandosi di due bambine, non sapevo a quale delle due potesse alludere tale espressione.»
‘Luigia’, ripeté il signor Bounderby. ‘Luigia, Luigia.’
«È un padre completamente diverso per Louisa, signore». La signora Sparsit prese ancora un po’ di tè; e mentre aggrottava nuovamente le sopracciglia sopra la sua tazza fumante, sembrò quasi che il suo volto classico stesse invocando gli dei infernali.
‘If you had said I was another father to Tom—young Tom, I mean, not my friend Tom Gradgrind—you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my wing, ma’am.’
‘Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?’ Mrs. Sparsit’s ‘sir,’ in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.
‘I’m not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational cramming before then,’ said Bounderby. ‘By the Lord Harry, he’ll have enough of it, first and last! He’d open his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw was, at his time of life.’ Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. ‘But it’s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do you know about tumblers? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.’
‘I certainly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity serenely mournful, ‘was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.’
‘Egad, ma’am, so was I,’ said Bounderby, ‘—with the wrong side of it. A hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure you. People like you, ma’am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no idea how hard a paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it’s of no use my talking to you about tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies and honourables.’
‘I trust, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, ‘it is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment.’
‘Well, ma’am,’ said her patron, ‘perhaps some people may be pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown, has gone through. But you must confess that you were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. Come, ma’am, you know you were born in the lap of luxury.’
‘I do not, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit with a shake of her head, ‘deny it.’
Mr. Bounderby was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his back to the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his position.
‘And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,’ he said, warming his legs.
‘It is true, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an affectation of humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.
‘You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood upon her. ‘It is unquestionably true.’
Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. and Miss Gradgrind being then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss.
‘Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr. Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Sparsit. Observing this, the blustrous Bounderby had the following remarks to make:
‘Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot, is Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any room in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don’t behave towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don’t care a button what you do to me, because I don’t affect to be anybody. So far from having high connections I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come here.’
‘I hope, Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, ‘that this was merely an oversight.’
‘My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said Bounderby, ‘that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware, ma’am, I don’t allow of even oversights towards you.’
‘You are very good indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head with her State humility. ‘It is not worth speaking of.’
Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
‘Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.’
‘Yes, sir, very,’ she answered, curtseying.
‘I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found you among, I dare say?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.
‘Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.’
‘Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown. ‘I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?’
‘O, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—O, of all the happy times we had together, sir!’
It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
‘And what,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, ‘did you read to your father, Jupe?’
‘About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,’ she sobbed out; ‘and about—’
‘Hush!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest.’
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Bounderby, ‘I have given you my opinion already, and I shouldn’t do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent upon it, very well!’
So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the evening.
«Se aveste detto che sono stato un secondo padre per Tom — il giovane Tom, intendo, non il mio amico Tom Gradgrind — forse vi sareste avvicinato al segno. Intendo portare il giovane Tom nel mio ufficio. Lo prenderò sotto la mia protezione, signora».
«Davvero? È piuttosto giovane per questo, non è vero, signore?» Il «signore» di Mrs Sparsit, rivolgendosi al signor Bounderby, era una parola cerimoniosa che pretendeva considerazione per sé stessa nell’uso più che onorarlo.
«Non lo prenderò subito; deve prima finire di far riempire il suo cervello con l’istruzione», disse Bounderby. «Perbacco, ne avrà abbastanza, alla fine! Aprirebbe gli occhi, quel ragazzo, se sapesse quanto fosse vuota d’insegnamento la mia giovane testa ai suoi tempi.» Il che, tra l’altro, probabilmente sapeva, perché ne aveva sentito parlare abbastanza spesso. «Ma è straordinaria la difficoltà che ho su centinaia di argomenti del genere a parlare con qualcuno in termini paritari. Ecco, per esempio, stamattina le ho parlato dei giocolieri. Ma che ne sa lei dei giocolieri? Al tempo in cui essere un giocoliere nella fanghiglia delle strade sarebbe stato una manna dal cielo per me, il premio della lotteria, lei era all’Opera italiana. Stava uscendo dall’Opera italiana, signora, con il satin bianco e i gioielli, in tutto lo sfarzo del lusso, mentre io non avevo un soldo per comprare una torcia per illuminarla».
«Certamente, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con una dignità serenamente malinconica, «ero familiare all’Opera italiana in tenera età.»
«Eh sì, signora, anch’io lo ero», disse Bounderby, «—ma dal lato sbagliato. Il marciapiede dell’Arcade era un letto duro, ve lo assicuro. Persone come voi, signora, abituate fin dall’infanzia a dormire su piumini d’oca, non hanno idea di quanto sia duro un lastrone di pavimentazione, senza provarlo. No, no, è inutile che io parli di tumberi con voi. Dovrei parlare di ballerine straniere e del West End di Londra e di May Fair e di lord e lady e onorevoli.»
«Confido, signore», riprese la signora Sparsit con rassegnazione decorosa, «che non sia necessario che lei faccia nulla del genere. Spero di aver imparato a adattarmi ai cambiamenti della vita. Se ho acquisito un interesse nell’ascoltare le sue esperienze edificanti, e non riesco quasi a sentirmene abbastanza, non rivendico alcun merito per questo, poiché credo che sia un sentimento generale».
«Beh, signora», disse il suo patrono, «forse a qualcuno piace sentir dire che gli fa piacere ascoltare, nel suo modo rustico, ciò che Josiah Bounderby di Coketown ha passato. Ma deve ammettere che lei stessa è nata in un agiato benessere. Su, signora, sa bene di essere nata in un agiato benessere».
‘Non lo nego,’ rispose la signora Sparsit scuotendo il capo.
Il signor Bounderby fu costretto ad alzarsi da tavola e a rimanere in piedi con le spalle alla stufa, guardandola, perché lei era un tale miglioramento della sua posizione.
«E tu eri nella società più raffinata. Una società dannatamente elevata», disse, scaldandosi le gambe.
«È vero, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con un’affettazione di umiltà del tutto opposta alla sua e quindi priva di ogni pericolo di urtarla.
«Eravate nel massimo stile e tutto il resto», disse il signor Bounderby.
«Sì, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con un’aria di vedovanza sociale. «È indubbiamente vero».
Il signor Bounderby si piegò sulle ginocchia e abbracciò letteralmente le proprie gambe per la grande soddisfazione che provava e scoppiò in una risata fragorosa. Poco dopo vennero annunciati il signor Gradgrind e sua figlia, al quale diede prima una stretta di mano e poi un bacio.
«Può essere mandato qui Jupe, Bounderby?» chiese il signor Gradgrind.
Certamente. Così Jupe fu mandata lì. Entrando, fece una riverenza a Mr. Bounderby e al suo amico Tom Gradgrind, e anche a Louisa; ma nella sua confusione sfortunatamente tralasciò Mrs. Sparsit. Notandolo, il vociferante Bounderby fece le seguenti osservazioni:
«Ora, ti dico una cosa, ragazza mia. Il nome di quella signora accanto al bollitore è la signora Sparsit. Quella signora fa da padrona in questa casa, ed è una signora molto benestante. Di conseguenza, se mai dovessi tornare in qualche stanza di questa casa, rimarrai poco tempo lì dentro se non ti comporterai con lei nel modo più rispettoso possibile. Ora, a me non importa nulla di quello che fai a me, perché non pretendo di essere nessuno. Lontano dall’avere buone conoscenze, io non ne ho affatto e vengo dalla feccia della terra. Ma verso quella signora mi interessa ciò che fai; e dovrai comportarti in modo deferente e rispettoso, o non verrai più qui».
«Spero, Bounderby», disse il signor Gradgrind con voce conciliante, «che si sia trattato solo di un lapsus».
«La mia amica Tom Gradgrind suggerisce, signora Sparsit», disse Bounderby, «che si sia trattato semplicemente di un errore. Molto probabile. Tuttavia, come sapete, signora, non tollero nemmeno gli errori nei vostri confronti».
«Siete davvero molto gentile, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit, scuotendo il capo con la sua umiltà da gran dama. «Non vale nemmeno la pena di parlarne».
Sissy, che tutto questo tempo si era scusata debolmente con le lacrime negli occhi, fu ora fatta avvicinare dal padrone di casa a Mr. Gradgrind. Lei lo guardava intensamente, e Louisa stava in piedi freddamente accanto, con gli occhi fissi a terra, mentre lui proseguiva così:
«Jupe, ho deciso di prenderti in casa mia; e quando non sei impegnata a scuola, ti occuperai della signora Gradgrind, che è piuttosto malaticcia. Ho spiegato alla signorina Louisa — questa è la signorina Louisa — il misero ma naturale epilogo della tua recente carriera; e devi capire bene che tutto quel passato è ormai superato e non deve più essere menzionato. Da questo momento inizia la tua storia. So che al momento sei ignorante».
«Sì, signore, molto», rispose lei, facendo una riverenza.
«Avrò la soddisfazione di farvi educare severamente; e sarete una prova vivente per tutti coloro che entreranno in contatto con voi dei vantaggi dell’educazione che riceverete. Sarete rieducata e formata. Avete l’abitudine, immagino, di leggere a vostro padre e a quelle persone tra cui vi ho trovata?», disse il signor Gradgrind, facendole cenno di avvicinarsi prima di parlare e abbassando la voce.
«Solo a mio padre e a Merrylegs, signore. Almeno intendo dire che era sempre lì con mio padre».
«Non importa di Merrylegs, Jupe», disse il signor Gradgrind con una smorfia fugace, «non chiedo di lui. Mi sembra di capire che tu fossi solita leggere a tuo padre?»
«Oh, sì, signore, migliaia di volte! Erano i momenti più felici, oh, tra tutti i bei tempi che abbiamo passato insieme, signore!»
Fu solo quando il suo dolore esplose che Louisa la guardò.
«E cosa», chiese il signor Gradgrind con voce ancora più bassa, «leggevi a tuo padre, Jupe?»
«A proposito delle fate, signore, e del nano, e dello zoppo, e dei geni», singhiozzò; «e a proposito di—»
«Silenzio!» disse il signor Gradgrind «questo è sufficiente. Non pronunciare mai più una parola di tali sciocchezze distruttive. Bounderby, questo è un caso che richiede un addestramento rigoroso e lo osserverò con interesse».
«Bene,» rispose Mr. Bounderby «ho già espresso il mio parere e non farei come fate voi. Ma, molto bene, molto bene. Poiché siete deciso a farlo, molto bene!»
Così il signor Gradgrind e sua figlia portarono Cecilia Jupe con loro a Stone Lodge, e lungo la strada Louisa non pronunciò mai una parola, né buona né cattiva. E il signor Bounderby si dedicò alle sue occupazioni quotidiane. E la signora Sparsit si rifugiò dietro le sopracciglia e meditò nel buio di quel ritiro per tutta la sera.
CHAPTER VIII NEVER WONDER
LET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.
When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying ‘Tom, I wonder’—upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, ‘Louisa, never wonder!’
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M’Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.
Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement—which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body number two, said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.
There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering. They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women! They sometimes, after fifteen hours’ work, sat down to read mere fables about men and women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.
‘I am sick of my life, Loo. I, hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you,’ said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the hair-cutting chamber at twilight.
‘You don’t hate Sissy, Tom?’
‘I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,’ said Tom, moodily.
‘No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!’
‘She must,’ said Tom. ‘She must just hate and detest the whole set-out of us. They’ll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with her. Already she’s getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as—I am.’
Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.
‘As to me,’ said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky hands, ‘I am a Donkey, that’s what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.’
‘Not me, I hope, Tom?’
‘No, Loo; I wouldn’t hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don’t know what this—jolly old—Jaundiced Jail,’ Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one, ‘would be without you.’
‘Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?’
‘Why, of course I do. What’s the use of talking about it!’ returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit.
‘Because, Tom,’ said his sister, after silently watching the sparks awhile, ‘as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing to you. I can’t talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.’
‘Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a Mule too, which you’re not. If father was determined to make me either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a Mule. And so I am,’ said Tom, desperately.
‘It’s a great pity,’ said Louisa, after another pause, and speaking thoughtfully out of her dark corner: ‘it’s a great pity, Tom. It’s very unfortunate for both of us.’
CAPITOLO VIII NON MERAVIGLIARSI MAI
RIPRENDIAMO ancora una volta la nota fondamentale prima di proseguire con il motivo.
Quando aveva una mezza dozzina di anni in meno, Louisa era stata udita un giorno iniziare una conversazione con suo fratello dicendo: «Tom, mi domando» — al che il signor Gradgrind, che era la persona che ascoltava nascosta, si fece avanti alla luce e disse: «Louisa, non ti domandare mai!»
Ecco in cosa consisteva l’origine dell’arte e del mistero meccanico di educare la ragione senza abbassarsi alla coltivazione dei sentimenti e degli affetti. Mai meravigliarsi. Con l’aiuto della somma, della sottrazione, della moltiplicazione e della divisione, sistemate tutto in qualche modo, e mai meravigliarsi. Portatemi quel bambino che sta imparando a camminare, dice M’Choakumchild, e vi assicuro che non si metterà mai a meravigliarsi.
Ora, oltre a moltissimi bambini appena in grado di camminare, nella città di Coketown viveva una popolazione considerevole di bambini che avevano camminato contro il tempo verso l’infinito mondo per venti, trenta, quaranta, cinquanta anni e più. Questi infanti portentosi essendo creature allarmanti da far aggirare in qualsiasi società umana, le diciotto denominazioni si graffiavano incessantemente il viso a vicenda e tiravano i capelli l’una dell’altra come modo di concordare sui passi da intraprendere per il loro miglioramento — cosa che non fecero mai; una circostanza sorprendente, quando si considera la felice adattabilità dei mezzi allo scopo. Tuttavia, sebbene differissero in ogni altro particolare, concepibile e inconcepibile (soprattutto inconcepibile), erano abbastanza bene uniti sul punto che questi infelici bambini non dovessero mai meravigliarsi. Il corpo numero uno, disse che dovevano prendere tutto per buono. Il corpo numero due, disse che dovevano prendere tutto sull’economia politica. Il corpo numero tre, scrisse libri piccoli e pesanti per loro, mostrando come il bravo bambino cresciuto arrivasse invariabilmente alla Cassa di Risparmio, e il cattivo bambino cresciuto finisse invariabilmente deportato. Il corpo numero quattro, sotto tristi pretesti di essere buffo (quando era davvero molto melanconico), faceva i più superficiali tentativi di nascondere le insidie della conoscenza, in cui era dovere di questi bambini farsi contrabbandare e ingannare. Ma tutti i corpi erano d’accordo sul fatto che non dovessero mai meravigliarsi.
C’era una biblioteca a Coketown, alla quale era facile accedere liberamente. Il signor Gradgrind si tormentava molto su ciò che la gente leggeva in questa biblioteca: un punto sul quale piccoli fiumi di tabelle periodicamente fluivano nell’oceano ululante delle tabelle, nel quale nessun sommozzatore è mai arrivato a una certa profondità e ne è risalito sano di mente. Era una circostanza demoralizzante, ma un fatto melancolico, che anche questi lettori insistessero nel meravigliarsi. Si meravigliavano della natura umana, delle passioni umane, delle speranze e paure umane, delle lotte, trionfi e sconfitte, delle preoccupazioni e gioie e dolori, delle vite e morti di uomini e donne comuni! A volte, dopo quindici ore di lavoro, si sedevano a leggere semplici favole su uomini e donne più o meno come loro, e sui bambini, più o meno come i propri. Preferivano Defoe a Euclide, e sembravano essere nel complesso più consolati da Goldsmith che da Cocker. Il signor Gradgrind lavorava per sempre, in stampa e fuori dalla stampa, su questa somma eccentrica, e non riusciva mai a capire come facesse a produrre questo prodotto inspiegabile.
«Sono stufo della mia vita, Loo. La odio completamente e odio tutti, tranne te», disse il giovane innaturale Thomas Gradgrind nella stanza per tagliare i capelli al crepuscolo.
‘Non odi Sissy, Tom?’
«Odio essere costretto a chiamarla Jupe. E lei odia me», disse Tom, con aria cupa.
‘No, non lo fa, Tom, ne sono sicuro!’
«Deve», disse Tom. «Deve semplicemente odiare e detestare tutta la nostra famiglia. Penso che le daranno un sacco di noie prima di aver finito con lei. Già sta diventando pallida come cera, e pesante come—io».
Il giovane Thomas espresse questi sentimenti seduto a cavalcioni di una sedia davanti al fuoco, con le braccia sullo schienale e la sua faccia burbera appoggiata su di esse. Sua sorella era seduta nell’angolo più buio accanto al caminetto, ora guardandolo lui, ora osservando i vivaci scintille mentre cadevano sul focolare.
«Per quanto mi riguarda», disse Tom, arruffandosi i capelli in ogni modo con le sue mani imbronciate, «sono un asino, ecco cosa sono. Sono testardo come uno di loro, più stupido di uno di loro, provo altrettanto piacere e mi piacerebbe scalciare come uno di loro».
«Non io, spero, Tom?»
«No, Loo; non ti farei del male. Ho fatto un’eccezione per te fin dall’inizio. Non so cosa sarebbe questa—allegra vecchia—Prigione Giallastra», Tom si era fermato a cercare un nome sufficientemente lusinghiero ed espressivo per il tetto paterno, e sembrava alleviare la mente per un momento con la forte allitterazione di questo, «senza di te.»
‘In effetti, Tom? Lo dici davvero e sinceramente?’
«Ma certo che lo faccio! A cosa serve parlarne?», rispose Tom strofinandosi il viso sulla manica del cappotto come se volesse mortificare la sua carne e metterla d’accordo con il suo spirito.
«Perché, Tom», disse sua sorella dopo aver osservato in silenzio le scintille per un po’, «man mano che cresco e mi avvicino all’età adulta, spesso rimango qui a pensare e mi domando quanto sia sfortunata io nel non riuscire a farti amare la casa meglio di quanto riesca. Non so fare quello che sanno fare le altre ragazze. Non posso suonare per te, né cantare. Non posso parlarti in modo da alleggerirti il pensiero, perché non vedo mai spettacoli divertenti e non leggo libri interessanti di cui potrebbe essere piacevole o consolatorio parlare con te quando sei stanco».
«Beh, nemmeno io. Sono altrettanto ostinato di te in questo; e sono un Mulo, cosa che tu non sei. Se mio padre era deciso a farmi diventare o uno Spocchioso o un Mulo, e io non sono uno Spocchioso, allora è logico che debba essere un Mulo. E così è», disse Tom disperatamente.
«È un grande peccato», disse Louisa dopo una nuova pausa e parlando pensierosa dal suo angolo buio: «è un grande peccato, Tom. È molto sfortunato per entrambi».
‘Oh! You,’ said Tom; ‘you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of it better than a boy does. I don’t miss anything in you. You are the only pleasure I have—you can brighten even this place—and you can always lead me as you like.’
‘You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such things, I don’t so much mind knowing better. Though I do know better, Tom, and am very sorry for it.’ She came and kissed him, and went back into her corner again.
‘I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,’ said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, ‘and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out: and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them, and blow them all up together! However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I’ll have my revenge.’
‘Your revenge, Tom?’
‘I mean, I’ll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something, and hear something. I’ll recompense myself for the way in which I have been brought up.’
‘But don’t disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Bounderby thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half so kind.’
‘Oh!’ said Tom, laughing; ‘I don’t mind that. I shall very well know how to manage and smooth old Bounderby!’
Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination—if such treason could have been there—might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with their future.
‘What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a secret?’
‘Oh!’ said Tom, ‘if it is a secret, it’s not far off. It’s you. You are his little pet, you are his favourite; he’ll do anything for you. When he says to me what I don’t like, I shall say to him, “My sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She always used to tell me she was sure you would be easier with me than this.” That’ll bring him about, or nothing will.’
After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until he suddenly looked up, and asked:
‘Have you gone to sleep, Loo?’
‘No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.’
‘You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,’ said Tom. ‘Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.’
‘Tom,’ enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were reading what she asked in the fire, and it was not quite plainly written there, ‘do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr. Bounderby’s?’
‘Why, there’s one thing to be said of it,’ returned Tom, pushing his chair from him, and standing up; ‘it will be getting away from home.’
‘There is one thing to be said of it,’ Louisa repeated in her former curious tone; ‘it will be getting away from home. Yes.’
‘Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I had better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence, than where I should lose it altogether. Don’t you see?’
‘Yes, Tom.’
The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he could make of it.
‘Except that it is a fire,’ said Tom, ‘it looks to me as stupid and blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus?’
‘I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.’
‘Wondering again!’ said Tom.
‘I have such unmanageable thoughts,’ returned his sister, ‘that they will wonder.’
‘Then I beg of you, Louisa,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door without being heard, ‘to do nothing of that description, for goodness’ sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from your father. And, Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is not to do it.’
Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped her with the conclusive answer, ‘Louisa, don’t tell me, in my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.’
‘I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. ‘Nonsense! Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your father’s ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes! I wish,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair, and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these mere shadows of facts, ‘yes, I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!’
«Oh! Sei tu», disse Tom; «sei una ragazza, Loo, e una ragazza se la cava meglio di un ragazzo. Non mi manca nulla in te. Sei l’unica gioia che ho - puoi illuminare anche questo posto - e puoi sempre guidarmi come ti pare».
«Sei un caro fratello, Tom; e finché penserai che io possa fare cose del genere, non mi dispiace sapere di meglio. Anche se so di meglio, Tom, e ne sono molto spiacente». Si avvicinò a baciarlo e tornò nel suo angolo.
«Vorrei poter raccogliere tutti i Fatti di cui sentiamo tanto parlare», disse Tom, stringendo i denti con cattiveria, «e tutte le Cifre e tutte le persone che li hanno scoperti: e vorrei mettere mille barili di polvere sotto di loro e farli saltare in aria tutti insieme! Comunque, quando andrò a vivere con il vecchio Bounderby, avrò la mia vendetta.»
«La tua vendetta, Tom?»
«Voglio dire che mi divertirò un po’, uscirò e vedrò qualcosa, e ascolterò qualcosa. Mi compenserò per il modo in cui sono stato cresciuto».
«Ma non deluderti in anticipo, Tom. Il signor Bounderby pensa come mio padre e è molto più ruvido e nemmeno la metà di gentile».
«Oh!» disse Tom ridendo «non mi preoccupo di questo. Saprei benissimo come gestire e blandire il vecchio Bounderby!»
Le loro ombre erano ben definite sulla parete, ma quelle degli alti scaffali nella stanza si fondevano tutte insieme sul muro e sul soffitto, come se il fratello e la sorella fossero avvolti da una caverna oscura. O forse un’immaginazione fantasiosa — se mai tale tradimento potesse esserci stato — avrebbe potuto farla apparire come l’ombra del loro argomento e della sua inquietante associazione con il loro futuro.
“Qual è il tuo grande metodo per addolcire e gestire le cose, Tom? È un segreto?”
«Oh!» disse Tom «se è un segreto, non è lontano. Sei tu. Tu sei il suo piccolo tesoro, sei il suo preferito; farebbe qualsiasi cosa per te. Quando mi dirà qualcosa che non mi piace, gli risponderò: “Mia sorella Loo ne sarà ferita e delusa, signor Bounderby. Mi ripeteva sempre di essere sicura che lei sarebbe stato più indulgente con me”. Questo lo convincerà, altrimenti niente lo farà».
Dopo aver atteso qualche risposta e non averne ricevuta nessuna, Tom ricadde stancamente nel presente tempo, si avvolse sbadigliando intorno ai montanti della sua sedia e arruffò sempre più i capelli finché improvvisamente alzò lo sguardo e chiese:
«Sei andata a dormire, Loo?»
«No, Tom. Sto guardando il fuoco.»
«Sembra che tu ci trovi più cose da guardare di quante io abbia mai trovato», disse Tom. «Un altro dei vantaggi, immagino, di essere una ragazza».
«Tom», chiese sua sorella lentamente e con un tono curioso, come se stesse leggendo ciò che domandava nel fuoco e non fosse scritto lì abbastanza chiaramente, «aspetti con qualche soddisfazione questo cambiamento a casa del signor Bounderby?»
«Ebbene, c’è una cosa da dire a riguardo», rispose Tom, allontanando la sedia e alzandosi in piedi; «sarà un modo per andarsene via da casa.»
«C’è una cosa da dire a suo favore», ripeté Louisa con lo stesso tono curioso di prima, «ci allontanerà dalla casa. Sì.»
«Non che io non voglia lasciarvi, Loo, e non che io voglia lasciarvi qui. Ma devo andarmene, sapete, piaccia o no; ed è meglio che vada dove posso portare con me qualche vantaggio della vostra influenza, anziché dove la perderei del tutto. Non capite?»
‘Sì, Tom.’
La risposta tardò tanto ad arrivare, sebbene non ci fosse indecisione in essa, che Tom si avvicinò e si appoggiò allo schienale della sua sedia per contemplare il fuoco che la assorbiva così tanto dal suo punto di vista, e vedere cosa ne poteva ricavare.
«Tranne che non è un fuoco», disse Tom, «mi sembra stupido e vuoto come tutto il resto. Cosa ci vedi di interessante? Non uno spettacolo circense?»
«Non vedo nulla di particolare in questo, Tom. Ma da quando lo sto guardando mi sono chiesto come saremo tu e io una volta cresciuti».
«Di nuovo a fantasticare!» disse Tom.
«Ho pensieri così incontrollabili», rispose sua sorella, «che vogliono meravigliarsi.»
«Allora ti prego, Louisa», disse la signora Gradgrind, che aveva aperto la porta senza farsi sentire, «di non fare nulla di simile, per amor del cielo, tu ragazza sconsiderata, o tuo padre non mi darà più tregua. E Thomas, è davvero vergognoso, con il mio povero mal di testa che non mi dà pace, che un ragazzo cresciuto come te e la cui educazione ha costato quanto la tua, si lasci prendere dall’idea di incoraggiare sua sorella a meravigliarsi, quando sa benissimo che suo padre glielo ha espressamente proibito.»
Louisa negò la partecipazione di Tom al reato; ma sua madre la fermò con la risposta conclusiva: «Louisa, non dirmelo in queste condizioni di salute; perché a meno che tu non fossi stata incoraggiata, è moralmente e fisicamente impossibile che tu l’abbia fatto».
«Non ero incoraggiato da nulla, mamma, se non dal vedere le scintille rosse che cadevano dal fuoco, si imbiancavano e morivano. Mi fece pensare, dopotutto, quanto sarebbe stata breve la mia vita, e quanto poco avrei potuto sperare di fare in essa».
«Nonsense!» disse la signora Gradgrind, quasi energica. «Nonsense! Non stare lì a dirmi queste cose in faccia, Louisa, quando sai benissimo che se mai dovessero giungere alle orecchie di tuo padre non ne sentirei più parlare. Dopo tutto il disturbo che si è preso per te! Dopo le conferenze a cui hai assistito e gli esperimenti che hai visto! Dopo che ti ho sentita io stessa, quando l’intero mio fianco destro era intorpidito, continuare con il tuo maestro a parlare di combustione, calcinazione, calorificazione e quasi ogni tipo di atione che avrebbe potuto mandare fuori di testa una povera invalida, sentirti ora parlare in questo modo assurdo di scintille e ceneri! Vorrei», singhiozzò la signora Gradgrind, prendendo posto su una sedia e sfoderando il suo argomento più forte prima di soccombere sotto queste semplici ombre di fatti, «sì, vorrei davvero che non avessi mai avuto una famiglia, così sapresti cosa significa fare a meno di me!»
CHAPTER IX SISSY’S PROGRESS
SISSY JUPE had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M’Choakumchild and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long so very hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled ciphering-book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one restraint.
It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The girl believed that her father had not deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she was.
The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? M’Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, ‘What is the first principle of this science?’ the absurd answer, ‘To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.’
Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe ‘must be kept to it.’ So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.
‘It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!’ she said, one night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day something clearer to her.
‘Do you think so?’
‘I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me now, would be so easy then.’
‘You might not be the better for it, Sissy.’
Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, ‘I should not be the worse, Miss Louisa.’ To which Miss Louisa answered, ‘I don’t know that.’
There had been so little communication between these two—both because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition relative to Sissy’s past career—that they were still almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Louisa’s face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.
‘You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can ever be,’ Louisa resumed. ‘You are pleasanter to yourself, than I am to _my_self.’
‘But, if you please, Miss Louisa,’ Sissy pleaded, ‘I am—O so stupid!’
Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser by-and-by.
‘You don’t know,’ said Sissy, half crying, ‘what a stupid girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help them. They seem to come natural to me.’
‘Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I suppose, Sissy?’
‘O no!’ she eagerly returned. ‘They know everything.’
‘Tell me some of your mistakes.’
‘I am almost ashamed,’ said Sissy, with reluctance. ‘But to-day, for instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity.’
‘National, I think it must have been,’ observed Louisa.
‘Yes, it was.—But isn’t it the same?’ she timidly asked.
‘You had better say, National, as he said so,’ returned Louisa, with her dry reserve.
‘National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn’t this a prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’n’t you in a thriving state?’
‘What did you say?’ asked Louisa.
‘Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all,’ said Sissy, wiping her eyes.
‘That was a great mistake of yours,’ observed Louisa.
‘Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my remark was—for I couldn’t think of a better one—that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong, too.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said, Here are the stutterings—’
‘Statistics,’ said Louisa.
‘Yes, Miss Louisa—they always remind me of stutterings, and that’s another of my mistakes—of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr. M’Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;’ here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest error; ‘I said it was nothing.’
CAPITOLO IX I PROGRESSI DI SISSY
SISSY JUPE non ebbe una vita facile tra il signor M’Choakumchild e la signora Gradgrind, e nei primi mesi del suo periodo di prova fu spesso tentata di scappare. Piovevano fatti tutto il giorno in modo così intenso, e la vita in generale le appariva come un libro di calcoli così strettamente regolato, che sicuramente sarebbe scappata se non fosse stato per un solo freno.
È triste pensarci; ma questa rinuncia non era il risultato di un calcolo aritmetico, era stata autoimposta sfidando ogni previsione, e andava contro qualsiasi tabella delle probabilità che un attuario avrebbe potuto stilare sulla base dei dati. La ragazza credeva che suo padre non l’avesse abbandonata; viveva nella speranza che sarebbe tornato, e nella fede che la sua felicità ne sarebbe aumentata se lei fosse rimasta dove si trovava.
La misera ignoranza con cui Jupe si aggrappava a questo conforto, rifiutando il superiore sollievo di sapere, su una solida base aritmetica, che suo padre era un vagabondo innaturale, riempì Mr. Gradgrind di pietà. Eppure, cosa si poteva fare? M’Choakumchild riferì che aveva una testa molto ottusa per i numeri; che, una volta acquisita un’idea generale del globo, mostrava il minimo interesse concepibile nelle sue esatte misure; che era estremamente lenta nell’acquisizione delle date, a meno che non fosse accaduto qualche misero incidente in relazione ad esse; che scoppiava a piangere quando le veniva richiesto (attraverso il processo mentale) di nominare immediatamente il costo di duecentoquarantasette cappelli di mussola a quattordici pence e mezzo; che era in fondo, nella scuola, al livello più basso possibile; che dopo otto settimane di introduzione agli elementi dell’Economia Politica, solo ieri era stata corretta da un chiacchierone alto tre piedi, per aver risposto alla domanda ‘Qual è il primo principio di questa scienza?’ con la ridicola risposta: ‘Fare agli altri ciò che vorrei fosse fatto a me.’
Il signor Gradgrind osservò scuotendo la testa che tutto ciò era molto grave; che dimostrava la necessità di un’infinità di macinazione al mulino della conoscenza, secondo il sistema, l’orario, il libro blu, i rapporti e le tabelle dalla A alla Z; e che Jupe «doveva essere tenuta a studiare». Così Jupe fu costretta a studiare e divenne abbattuta, ma non più saggia.
«Sarebbe una bella cosa essere lei, signorina Louisa!» disse una sera, quando Louisa aveva cercato di rendere più chiare le sue perplessità per il giorno dopo.
‘Pensi davvero?’
«Avrei tanta conoscenza, signorina Louisa. Tutto ciò che ora mi è difficile sarebbe allora così facile».
‘Non ne usciresti migliorata, Sissy.’
Cecilia acconsentì dopo un attimo di esitazione: «Non credo che mi farebbe male, signorina Louisa.» A cui la signorina Louisa rispose: «Non ne sono così sicura.»
Tra i due c’era stato così poco contatto — sia perché la vita a Stone Lodge scorreva monotona come un meccanismo che scoraggiava l’intervento umano, sia per il divieto relativo alla passata carriera di Sissy — che erano ancora quasi estranei. Con i suoi occhi scuri fissati con stupore sul volto di Louisa, Sissy era incerta se dire altro o rimanere in silenzio.
«Sei più utile a mia madre e le sei più gradito di quanto io possa mai essere», riprese Louisa. «Tu sei più gradita a te stessa di quanto io lo sia a me stessa».
‘Ma, per favore, signorina Louisa,’ implorò Sissy, ‘sono. O così stupida!’
Con una risata più allegra del solito, Louisa le disse che sarebbe diventata più saggia col tempo.
«Non sapete», disse Sissy, piangendo a metà, «che stupida ragazza io sia. Durante tutte le ore di scuola faccio degli errori. Il signor e la signora M’Choakumchild mi chiamano continuamente per farmi fare degli errori. Non posso evitarli. Mi sembra naturale farli».
“Signor e signora M’Choakumchild non commettono mai errori, immagino, Sissy?”
‘O no!’ rispose con entusiasmo. ‘Sanno tutto.’
‘Dimmi qualcuno dei tuoi errori.’
«Mi vergogno quasi», disse Sissy con riluttanza, «ma oggi, per esempio, il signor M’Choakumchild ci stava spiegando la Prosperità Naturale.»
«Nazionele, credo che sia stato», osservò Louisa.
«Sì, era quella.—Ma non è la stessa?» chiese timorosamente.
«Faresti meglio a dire Nazionale, dato che lui l’ha detto così», rispose Louisa con la sua secca riservatezza.
«Prosperità nazionale. E lui disse: Ora questa scuola è una nazione. E in questa nazione ci sono cinquanta milioni di denaro. Non è forse una nazione prospera? Ragazza numero venti, non è forse una nazione prospera, e non sei tu in uno stato florido?»
«Che cosa hai detto?» chiese Louisa.
«Signorina Louisa, ho detto che non lo sapevo. Pensavo di non poter sapere se fosse una nazione prospera o no e se io fossi in condizioni floride o no, a meno che non sapessi chi aveva i soldi e se qualcuno di essi mi appartenesse. Ma questo non c’entrava nulla. Non era affatto nei numeri», disse Sissy asciugandosi gli occhi.
«Questo è stato un grande errore da parte tua», osservò Louisa.
«Sì, Miss Louisa, ora lo so che era così. Allora il signor M’Choakumchild disse che mi avrebbe messo alla prova di nuovo. E disse: Questa scuola è una città immensa e in essa ci sono un milione di abitanti, ma solo venticinque muoiono di fame per le strade nel corso di un anno. Qual è il tuo commento su questa proporzione? E io risposi — perché non riuscivo a pensare a niente di meglio — che mi sembrava dovesse essere altrettanto duro per coloro che morivano di fame, se gli altri fossero stati un milione o un milione di milioni. E anche quello era sbagliato».
‘Naturalmente lo era.’
«Allora il signor M’Choakumchild disse che mi avrebbe messo alla prova ancora una volta. E disse:
Ecco gli balbettii, »
«Statistiche», disse Louisa.
«Sì, signorina Louisa — mi ricordano sempre balbettii e questo è un altro dei miei errori — degli incidenti in mare. E ho scoperto (ha detto il signor M’Choakumchild) che in un dato periodo centomila persone sono andate in mare per lunghi viaggi, e solo cinquecento di loro sono annegate o bruciate fino alla morte. Qual è la percentuale? E io ho detto, signorina;» qui Sissy singhiozzò apertamente come se confessasse con estrema contrizione il suo più grande errore; «ho detto che era nulla.»
‘Nothing, Sissy?’
‘Nothing, Miss—to the relations and friends of the people who were killed. I shall never learn,’ said Sissy. ‘And the worst of all is, that although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like it.’
Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. Then she asked:
‘Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well taught too, Sissy?’
Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, ‘No one hears us; and if any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an innocent question.’
‘No, Miss Louisa,’ answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her head; ‘father knows very little indeed. It’s as much as he can do to write; and it’s more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though it’s plain to me.’
‘Your mother?’
‘Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was;’ Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; ‘she was a dancer.’
‘Did your father love her?’ Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.
‘O yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake. He carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been asunder from that time.’
‘Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?’
‘Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows him as I do. When he left me for my good—he never would have left me for his own—I know he was almost broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be happy for a single minute, till he comes back.’
‘Tell me more about him,’ said Louisa, ‘I will never ask you again. Where did you live?’
‘We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in. Father’s a;’ Sissy whispered the awful word, ‘a clown.’
‘To make the people laugh?’ said Louisa, with a nod of intelligence.
‘Yes. But they wouldn’t laugh sometimes, and then father cried. Lately, they very often wouldn’t laugh, and he used to come home despairing. Father’s not like most. Those who didn’t know him as well as I do, and didn’t love him as dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right. Sometimes they played tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt them, and shrunk up, when he was alone with me. He was far, far timider than they thought!’
‘And you were his comfort through everything?’
She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. ‘I hope so, and father said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to be his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They were wrong books—I am never to speak of them here—but we didn’t know there was any harm in them.’
‘And he liked them?’ said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this time.
‘O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her head cut off before it was finished.’
‘And your father was always kind? To the last?’ asked Louisa contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.
‘Always, always!’ returned Sissy, clasping her hands. ‘Kinder and kinder than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me, but Merrylegs. Merrylegs;’ she whispered the awful fact; ‘is his performing dog.’
‘Why was he angry with the dog?’ Louisa demanded.
‘Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them—which is one of his tricks. He looked at father, and didn’t do it at once. Everything of father’s had gone wrong that night, and he hadn’t pleased the public at all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was frightened, and said, “Father, father! Pray don’t hurt the creature who is so fond of you! O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!” And he stopped, and the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with the dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.’
Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her hand, and sat down beside her.
‘Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is mine, not yours.’
‘Dear Miss Louisa,’ said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; ‘I came home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come home too, from the booth. And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as if he was in pain. And I said, “Have you hurt yourself, father?” (as he did sometimes, like they all did), and he said, “A little, my darling.” And when I came to stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he was crying. The more I spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first he shook all over, and said nothing but “My darling;” and “My love!”’
Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much of that at present.
‘I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom,’ observed his sister. ‘You have no occasion to go away; but don’t interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear.’
‘Oh! very well!’ returned Tom. ‘Only father has brought old Bounderby home, and I want you to come into the drawing-room. Because if you come, there’s a good chance of old Bounderby’s asking me to dinner; and if you don’t, there’s none.’
‘Niente, Sissy?’
«Nulla, signorina, per i parenti e gli amici delle persone che sono state uccise. Non imparerò mai», disse Sissy. «E la cosa peggiore è che, sebbene mio povero padre desiderasse tanto che io imparassi, e sebbene io abbia tanta voglia di imparare perché lui lo voleva, ho paura di non piacermi».
Louisa rimase a guardare la graziosa testolina modesta mentre si abbassava imbarazzata davanti a lei, finché non fu rialzata di nuovo per lanciarle un’occhiata al viso. Poi chiese:
«Anche tuo padre sapeva così tanto che desiderava che anche tu fossi ben istruita, Cissy?»
Sissy esitò prima di rispondere e mostrò così chiaramente di rendersi conto che stavano addentrando un terreno proibito, che Louisa aggiunse: «Nessuno ci sente; e anche se qualcuno ci sentisse, sono sicura che non si potrebbe trovare nulla di male in una domanda così innocente.»
«No, Miss Louisa», rispose Sissy incoraggiata da questo invito, scuotendo la testa «papà sa davvero molto poco. Sa appena scrivere; e in generale è più facile che le persone non riescano a leggere quello che ha scritto. Anche se per me è chiaro».
‘La tua madre?’
«Padre diceva che era una vera studiosa. Morì quando nacqui. Era, » Sissy fece la terribile comunicazione con apprensione: «era una ballerina».
«Il padre l’amava?» Louisa fece queste domande con un forte interesse selvaggio e vagante che le era proprio; un interesse smarrito come una creatura bandita, che si nascondeva nei luoghi solitari.
«Oh sì! Tanto quanto mi ama lui. Mio padre mi amò prima di tutto per amore di lei. Mi portava con sé quando ero ancora un bebè. Da allora non siamo mai stati separati».
«Eppure lui vi lascia ora, Sissy?»
«Solo per il mio bene. Nessuno lo capisce come faccio io; nessuno lo conosce come lo conosco io. Quando mi ha lasciata per il mio bene — non mi avrebbe mai lasciata per il suo — so che era quasi disperato a causa della prova. Non sarà felice neanche per un minuto, finché non tornerà».
“Dimmi di più su di lui,” disse Louisa, “non te lo chiederò mai più. Dove vivevate?”
«Viaggiavamo per il paese e non avevamo un posto fisso dove vivere.
Papà è, »; Sissy sussurrò la tremenda parola: «un pagliaccio».
«Per far ridere la gente?» disse Louisa con un cenno di intelligenza.
«Sì. Ma a volte non ridevano e allora papà piangeva. Ultimamente, molto spesso non ridevano e lui tornava a casa disperato. Papà non è come gli altri. Quelli che non lo conoscevano tanto bene quanto me e non lo amavano tanto quanto me, avrebbero potuto credere che non fosse del tutto in sé. A volte facevano scherzi su di lui; ma non sapevano mai come li sentisse, come si ritraesse quando era solo con me. Era molto più timido di quanto pensassero!»
‘E sei stata il suo conforto in tutto?’
Annuì, con le lacrime che le scendevano lungo il viso. «Lo spero, e mio padre diceva che lo ero. Era perché lui era così spaventato e tremante, e perché si sentiva un uomo povero, debole, ignorante e indifeso (queste erano le sue parole), che voleva tanto che io sapessi molto e fossi diversa da lui. Leggevo per lui per rincuorare il suo coraggio, e gli piaceva moltissimo. Erano libri sbagliati — non dovrò mai parlarne qui — ma noi non sapevamo che ci fosse qualcosa di male in essi».
«E gli piacevano?» disse Louisa, con uno sguardo scrutatore su Sissy tutto questo tempo.
«Oh, moltissimo! Lo tenevano lontano da cose che gli facevano davvero del male. E spesso e volentieri di notte, dimenticava tutti i suoi guai chiedendosi se il Sultano avrebbe lasciato la signora continuare con la storia, o le avrebbe fatto tagliare la testa prima che fosse finita.»
«E tuo padre è sempre stato gentile? Fino alla fine?» chiese Louisa, violando il grande principio e meravigliandosene moltissimo.
«Sempre, sempre!» rispose Sissy, stringendosi le mani. «Più e più gentile di quanto io possa dire. Si è arrabbiato solo una notte, e non con me, ma con Merrylegs. Merrylegs», sussurrò il terribile fatto; «è il suo cane da esibizione».
«Perché era arrabbiato con il cane?» chiese Louisa.
«Poco dopo che erano tornati a casa dalla rappresentazione, il padre disse a Merrylegs di saltare sullo schienale delle due sedie e di mettersi sopra - è uno dei suoi trucchi. Lo guardò e non lo fece subito. Tutto ciò che riguardava il padre era andato storto quella sera, e non aveva affatto soddisfatto il pubblico. Gridò che anche il cane sapeva che lui stava fallendo, e non aveva compassione per lui. Poi picchiò il cane, e io mi spaventai, e dissi: “Padre, padre! Ti prego, non fare del male alla creatura che ti vuole tanto bene! O cielo, perdona a tuo padre, fermati!” E si fermò, e il cane era sanguinante, e il padre si sdraiò piangendo sul pavimento con il cane tra le braccia, e il cane gli leccava la faccia.»
Louisa vide che singhiozzava e, avvicinandosi a lei, la baciò, le prese la mano e si sedette accanto a lei.
«Concludi raccontandomi come tuo padre ti ha lasciata, Sissy. Ora che ti ho chiesto tanto, dimmi la fine. La colpa, se c’è qualche colpa, è mia e non tua».
«Cara Miss Louisa», disse Sissy, coprendosi gli occhi e singhiozzando ancora, «tornai a casa da scuola quel pomeriggio e trovai il povero papà appena tornato a casa anche lui dalla baracca. E sedeva dondolandosi davanti al fuoco, come se avesse male. Gli chiesi: “Ti sei fatto male, papà?” (come talvolta gli capitava, come a tutti loro), e lui rispose: “Un po’, tesoro mio.” E quando mi chinai per guardargli il viso, vidi che piangeva. Più cercavo di parlargli, più si nascondeva la faccia; all’inizio tremava tutto e non diceva altro che “Tesoro mio” e “Mia amore!”»
In quel momento entrò Tom con aria svogliata e fissò i due con freddezza che non dimostrava un interesse particolare per nulla se non per sé stesso, e nemmeno tanto in quel momento.
«Sto facendo alcune domande a Sissy, Tom», osservò sua sorella. «Non hai motivo di andartene; ma non interromperci per un attimo, caro Tom».
«Oh! benissimo!» rispose Tom. «Solo che papà ha portato a casa il vecchio Bounderby e voglio che tu venga nel salotto. Perché se vieni c’è una buona possibilità che il vecchio Bounderby mi inviti a cena; e se non vieni, non ce ne sono».
‘I’ll come directly.’
‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Tom, ‘to make sure.’
Sissy resumed in a lower voice. ‘At last poor father said that he had given no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and that he was a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without him all along. I said all the affectionate things to him that came into my heart, and presently he was quiet and I sat down by him, and told him all about the school and everything that had been said and done there. When I had no more left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and kissed me a great many times. Then he asked me to fetch some of the stuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best place, which was at the other end of town from there; and then, after kissing me again, he let me go. When I had gone down-stairs, I turned back that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in at the door, and said, “Father dear, shall I take Merrylegs?” Father shook his head and said, “No, Sissy, no; take nothing that’s known to be mine, my darling;” and I left him sitting by the fire. Then the thought must have come upon him, poor, poor father! of going away to try something for my sake; for when I came back, he was gone.’
‘I say! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ Tom remonstrated.
‘There’s no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils ready for him, and I know he will come back. Every letter that I see in Mr. Gradgrind’s hand takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it comes from father, or from Mr. Sleary about father. Mr. Sleary promised to write as soon as ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his word.’
‘Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ said Tom, with an impatient whistle. ‘He’ll be off if you don’t look sharp!’
After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Gradgrind in the presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, for being troublesome—but—have you had any letter yet about me?’ Louisa would suspend the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and look for the reply as earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind regularly answered, ‘No, Jupe, nothing of the sort,’ the trembling of Sissy’s lip would be repeated in Louisa’s face, and her eyes would follow Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind usually improved these occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been properly trained from an early age she would have remonstrated to herself on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact.
This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. As to Tom, he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at work on number one. As to Mrs. Gradgrind, if she said anything on the subject, she would come a little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine dormouse, and say:
‘Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that girl Jupe’s so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her tiresome letters! Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of. It really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if I never was to hear the last of anything!’
At about this point, Mr. Gradgrind’s eye would fall upon her; and under the influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid again.
‘Verrò subito.’
‘Aspetto te’, disse Tom, ‘per essere sicuro’.
Sissy riprese con voce più bassa. «Alla fine il povero papà disse che non aveva dato alcuna soddisfazione ancora una volta e che non ne dava mai, e che era un disonore e una vergogna, e sarebbe stato meglio per me se non ci fosse stato fin dall’inizio. Gli dissi tutte le cose affettuose che mi venivano dal cuore, e dopo un po’ si calmò e io mi sedetti accanto a lui, e gli raccontai tutto della scuola e di tutto ciò che era stato detto e fatto lì. Quando non avevo più nulla da dire, mi mise le braccia al collo e mi baciò molte volte. Poi mi chiese di prendere un po’ della roba che usava per la piccola ferita che si era fatta, e di comprarla nel posto migliore, che era all’altra estremità della città; e poi, dopo avermi baciata ancora una volta, mi lasciò andare. Quando ero scesa al piano terra, tornai indietro per poter stare un po’ più a lungo con lui, e guardai dentro dalla porta, e dissi: “Papà caro, devo portare Merrylegs?” Papà scosse la testa e disse: “No, Sissy, no; non prendere nulla che sia noto essere mio, tesoro;” e lo lasciai seduto accanto al fuoco. Poi deve essergli venuto in mente, povero papà! di andarsene per provare qualcosa per il mio bene; perché quando sono tornata, era sparito.»
«Dico io! Stai attenta a vecchio Bounderby, Loo!» ammonì Tom.
«Non c’è altro da dire, Miss Louisa. Tengo pronti i nove oli per lui e so che tornerà. Ogni lettera che vedo scritta di mano del signor Gradgrind mi toglie il respiro e mi offusca la vista, perché penso che provenga da mio padre o dal signor Sleary a proposito di mio padre. Il signor Sleary ha promesso di scrivere non appena si avesse notizia di mio padre, e confido in lui per mantenere la sua parola».
«Stai attenta a non perdere di vista il vecchio Bounderby, Loo!» disse Tom con un fischio impaziente. «Se non stai attenta se ne andrà!»
Dopo di ciò, ogni volta che Sissy faceva un inchino davanti al signor Gradgrind in presenza della sua famiglia e diceva con voce tremante: «Mi scusi, signore, se la disturbo, ma, ha ricevuto qualche lettera su di me?», Louisa sospendeva l’attività del momento, qualunque essa fosse, e aspettava la risposta con altrettanta ansia quanto Sissy. E quando il signor Gradgrind rispondeva regolarmente: «No, Jupe, niente del genere», il tremore sul labbro di Sissy si ripeteva nel volto di Louisa e i suoi occhi seguivano Sissy con compassione fino alla porta. Il signor Gradgrind approfittava solitamente di queste occasioni per osservare, quando lei se ne era andata, che se Jupe fosse stata educata correttamente fin dalla tenera età si sarebbe rimproverata su principi solidi l’infondatezza di queste speranze fantastiche. Eppure sembrava (anche se non a lui, perché non ne vedeva nulla) che la speranza fantastica potesse prendere una presa altrettanto forte quanto il Fatto.
Questa osservazione deve essere limitata esclusivamente alla figlia. Per quanto riguarda Tom, stava diventando quel trionfo del calcolo non senza precedenti che di solito opera per il numero uno. Per quanto riguarda la signora Gradgrind, se avesse detto qualcosa sull’argomento, sarebbe uscita un po’ dalle sue coperte, come una femminile marmotta, e avrebbe detto:
«Per l’amor del cielo, come la mia povera testa è tormentata e preoccupata dalle continue domande di quella ragazza Jupe sulle sue noiose lettere! Per onore e parola, sembra che io sia condannato a vivere in mezzo a cose delle quali non sentire mai la fine. È davvero una circostanza straordinaria: sembra che non sentirò mai la fine di nulla!»
A questo punto circa, l’occhio del signor Gradgrind si posava su di lei; e sotto l’influenza di quel pezzo invernale di fatto, ella diventava nuovamente torpida.
CHAPTER X STEPHEN BLACKPOOL
I ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called ‘the Hands,’—a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs—lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own. He had known, to use his words, a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact.
A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was not. He took no place among those remarkable ‘Hands,’ who, piecing together their broken intervals of leisure through many years, had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most unlikely things. He held no station among the Hands who could make speeches and carry on debates. Thousands of his compeers could talk much better than he, at any time. He was a good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect integrity. What more he was, or what else he had in him, if anything, let him show for himself.
The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were illuminated, like Fairy palaces—or the travellers by express-train said so—were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the night, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, were clattering home. Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the old sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always produced—the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head.
‘Yet I don’t see Rachael, still!’ said he.
It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with their shawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their chins to keep the rain out. He knew Rachael well, for a glance at any one of these groups was sufficient to show him that she was not there. At last, there were no more to come; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of disappointment, ‘Why, then, ha’ missed her!’
But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw another of the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked so keenly that perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the wet pavement—if he could have seen it without the figure itself moving along from lamp to lamp, brightening and fading as it went—would have been enough to tell him who was there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer, he darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his former walk, and called ‘Rachael!’
She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her hood a little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a face in its first bloom; she was a woman five and thirty years of age.
‘Ah, lad! ’Tis thou?’ When she had said this, with a smile which would have been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been seen but her pleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they went on together.
‘I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?’
‘No.’
‘Early t’night, lass?’
‘’Times I’m a little early, Stephen! ’times a little late. I’m never to be counted on, going home.’
‘Nor going t’other way, neither, ’t seems to me, Rachael?’
‘No, Stephen.’
He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she did. The expression was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him for it.
‘We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting to be such old folk, now.’
‘No, Rachael, thou’rt as young as ever thou wast.’
‘One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without ’t other getting so too, both being alive,’ she answered, laughing; ‘but, anyways, we’re such old friends, and t’ hide a word of honest truth fro’ one another would be a sin and a pity. ’Tis better not to walk too much together. ’Times, yes! ’Twould be hard, indeed, if ’twas not to be at all,’ she said, with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him.
‘’Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.’
‘Try to think not; and ’twill seem better.’
‘I’ve tried a long time, and ’ta’nt got better. But thou’rt right; ’t might mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachael, through so many year: thou hast done me so much good, and heartened of me in that cheering way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah, lass, and a bright good law! Better than some real ones.’
‘Never fret about them, Stephen,’ she answered quickly, and not without an anxious glance at his face. ‘Let the laws be.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a slow nod or two. ‘Let ’em be. Let everything be. Let all sorts alone. ’Tis a muddle, and that’s aw.’
‘Always a muddle?’ said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was biting the long ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along. The touch had its instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh, ‘Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus a muddle. That’s where I stick. I come to the muddle many times and agen, and I never get beyond it.’
They had walked some distance, and were near their own homes. The woman’s was the first reached. It was in one of the many small streets for which the favourite undertaker (who turned a handsome sum out of the one poor ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order that those who had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs might slide out of this working world by the windows. She stopped at the corner, and putting her hand in his, wished him good night.
‘Good night, dear lass; good night!’
She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, down the dark street, and he stood looking after her until she turned into one of the small houses. There was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but had its interest in this man’s eyes; not a tone of her voice but had its echo in his innermost heart.
When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, glancing up sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and wildly. But, they were broken now, and the rain had ceased, and the moon shone,—looking down the high chimneys of Coketown on the deep furnaces below, and casting Titanic shadows of the steam-engines at rest, upon the walls where they were lodged. The man seemed to have brightened with the night, as he went on.
His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was narrower, was over a little shop. How it came to pass that any people found it worth their while to sell or buy the wretched little toys, mixed up in its window with cheap newspapers and pork (there was a leg to be raffled for to-morrow-night), matters not here. He took his end of candle from a shelf, lighted it at another end of candle on the counter, without disturbing the mistress of the shop who was asleep in her little room, and went upstairs into his lodging.
It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under various tenants; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be. A few books and writings were on an old bureau in a corner, the furniture was decent and sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was tainted, the room was clean.
Going to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three-legged table standing there, he stumbled against something. As he recoiled, looking down at it, it raised itself up into the form of a woman in a sitting attitude.
‘Heaven’s mercy, woman!’ he cried, falling farther off from the figure. ‘Hast thou come back again!’
Such a woman! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to preserve her sitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed hand on the floor, while the other was so purposeless in trying to push away her tangled hair from her face, that it only blinded her the more with the dirt upon it. A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes, but so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing even to see her.
After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of herself with the hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair away from her eyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. Then she sat swaying her body to and fro, and making gestures with her unnerved arm, which seemed intended as the accompaniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was stolid and drowsy.
‘Eigh, lad? What, yo’r there?’ Some hoarse sounds meant for this, came mockingly out of her at last; and her head dropped forward on her breast.
‘Back agen?’ she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had that moment said it. ‘Yes! And back agen. Back agen ever and ever so often. Back? Yes, back. Why not?’
Roused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it out, she scrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders against the wall; dangling in one hand by the string, a dunghill-fragment of a bonnet, and trying to look scornfully at him.
‘I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off a score of times!’ she cried, with something between a furious menace and an effort at a defiant dance. ‘Come awa’ from th’ bed!’ He was sitting on the side of it, with his face hidden in his hands. ‘Come awa! from ’t. ’Tis mine, and I’ve a right to t’!’
As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and passed—his face still hidden—to the opposite end of the room. She threw herself upon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring hard. He sunk into a chair, and moved but once all that night. It was to throw a covering over her; as if his hands were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness.
CAPITOLO X STEPHEN BLACKPOOL
Ho una vaga idea che gli inglesi lavorino sodo quanto qualsiasi altro popolo sotto il sole. Confesso questa ridicola idiosincrasia come motivo per cui vorrei concedere loro un po’ più di svago.
Nella parte più laboriosa di Coketown; nelle fortificazioni interne di quella brutta cittadella, dove la Natura era murata fuori con la stessa forza con cui si tenevano imprigionati gli esalati e i gas mortali; nel cuore del labirinto di stretti cortili su cortili, e vicoli chiusi su vicoli, che erano sorti a poco a poco, ogni pezzo in gran fretta per lo scopo di qualche uomo, e il tutto una famiglia innaturale, che si spingeva, calpestava e opprimeva fino alla morte; nell’ultimo angolo chiuso di questo grande serbatoio esausto, dove i camini, per mancanza d’aria da creare corrente, erano costruiti in una grandissima varietà di forme stentate e contorte, come se ogni casa esibisse un’insegna del tipo di persone che ci si poteva aspettare nascessero lì; tra la moltitudine di Coketown, genericamente chiamata “le Mani”,—una razza che avrebbe trovato più favore presso certa gente se la Provvidenza avesse voluto farli solo mani, o, come i poveri esseri della costa, solo mani e stomaci—viveva un certo Stephen Blackpool, di quarant’anni.
Stephen sembrava più vecchio, ma aveva avuto una vita dura. Si dice che ogni vita abbia le sue rose e spine; tuttavia, nel caso di Stephen, sembrava ci fosse stato un disguido o un errore per cui qualcun altro si era impossessato delle sue rose, mentre lui si era ritrovato con le stesse spine di quel qualcun altro in aggiunta alle proprie. Aveva conosciuto, per usare le sue parole, una gran quantità di guai. Di solito lo chiamavano Vecchio Stephen, come un rozzo omaggio a questo fatto.
Un uomo piuttosto curvo, con la fronte aggrottata, un’espressione pensierosa e una testa dall’aspetto duro ma sufficientemente capiente, sulla quale i suoi capelli grigi ferro cadevano lunghi e radi, il vecchio Stephen avrebbe potuto passare per un uomo particolarmente intelligente nella sua condizione. Eppure non lo era. Non aveva alcun posto tra quei notevoli “Operai” che, mettendo insieme i loro frammentari intervalli di tempo libero nel corso di molti anni, erano riusciti a padroneggiare scienze difficili e ad acquisire una conoscenza delle cose più improbabili. Non occupava alcuna posizione tra gli Operai che sapevano fare discorsi e sostenere dibattiti. Migliaia dei suoi pari potevano parlare molto meglio di lui, in qualsiasi momento. Era un buon tessitore di telai a potenza e un uomo di integrità perfetta. Quello che era in più o quello che aveva dentro di sé, se c’era qualcosa, lasciamo che lo mostri da solo.
Le luci delle grandi fabbriche, che sembravano, quando erano illuminate, palazzi di fate — o almeno così dicevano i viaggiatori del treno espresso — si erano tutte spente; e le campane avevano suonato per la fine del lavoro per la notte, ed erano tornate silenziose; e gli Operai, uomini e donne, ragazzi e ragazze, tornavano a casa rumorosamente. Il vecchio Stephen era in piedi nella strada, con quella sensazione che lo prendeva ogni volta che le macchine si fermavano — la sensazione di aver lavorato e smesso di funzionare dentro la sua stessa testa.
«Eppure non vedo ancora Rachel!» disse lui.
Era una notte piovosa e molti gruppi di giovani donne gli passavano accanto con i loro scialli tirati sopra le teste scoperte e stretti sotto il mento per tenere lontana la pioggia. Conosceva bene Rachael bene, perché uno sguardo a ciascuno di questi gruppi gli era sufficiente per capire che lei non c’era. Alla fine, non ne arrivarono più; e allora si voltò via dicendo con tono deluso: «Ebbene, l’ho persa!».
Ma non aveva percorso la lunghezza di tre strade quando vide un’altra delle figure avvolte nello scialle davanti a lui, che guardò così attentamente che forse il solo ombra riflesso in modo indistinto sul marciapiede bagnato - se l’avesse potuto vedere senza che la figura stessa si muovesse da una lampada all’altra, illuminandosi e svanendo mentre procedeva - sarebbe stato sufficiente a dirgli chi c’era. Accelerando subito il passo rendendolo più veloce e allo stesso tempo più silenzioso, si lanciò in avanti finché non fu molto vicino a quella figura, poi riprese la sua andatura precedente e chiamò: «Rachael!»
Si voltò, trovandosi allora nella luce di una lampada; e sollevando un po’ il cappuccio, mostrò un viso ovale tranquillo, scuro e piuttosto delicato, irradiato da un paio di occhi molto gentili, e ulteriormente messo in risalto dall’ordine perfetto dei suoi capelli neri lucenti. Non era un volto nel suo primo fiore; aveva trentacinque anni.
«Ah, ragazzo mio! Sei tu?» Quando ebbe detto questo, con un sorriso che si sarebbe espresso perfettamente anche se non si fossero visti altro che i suoi occhi piacevoli, rimise su il cappuccio e proseguirono insieme.
“Pensavo che fossi dietro di me, Rachael?”
‘No.’
«Presto per la notte, ragazza?»
«A volte arrivo un po’ in anticipo, Stephen! Altre volte un po’ in ritardo. Non si può mai contare su di me quando torno a casa.»
“Non stai andando nemmeno nell’altra direzione, vero, Rachael?”
‘No, Stephen.’
La guardò con un certo disappunto dipinto sul volto, ma con una convinzione rispettosa e paziente che lei avesse ragione in tutto ciò che faceva. L’espressione non le sfuggì; posò per un attimo la mano sul suo braccio come a ringraziarlo di questo.
«Siamo così veri amici, ragazzo mio, e amici di vecchia data, e stiamo diventando ormai tanta gente anziana.»
‘No, Rachael, sei giovane come sempre.’
«Uno di noi sarebbe perplesso su come invecchiare, Stephen, senza che l’altro lo facesse anche lui, entrambi essendo vivi», rispose ridendo; «ma, comunque sia, siamo amici così vecchi e nascondere una parola di onesta verità l’uno all’altra sarebbe un peccato e un peccato. È meglio non camminare troppo insieme. A volte sì! Sarebbe davvero difficile se non dovesse essere affatto», disse, con una allegria che cercava di trasmettergli.
«È difficile, comunque, Rachael».
‘Cerca di non pensare e sembrerà meglio.’
«Ho provato per un lungo periodo, e non è migliorata. Ma hai ragione; potrebbe far parlare la gente, anche di te. Sei stata questo per me, Rachael, per tanti anni: mi hai fatto tanto bene e mi hai incoraggiato in quel modo così confortante, che la tua parola è una legge per me. Ah, ragazza, e una legge luminosa e buona! Migliore di alcune vere».
«Non ti affliggere per loro, Stephen», rispose in fretta e non senza lanciargli un’occhiata preoccupata. «Lascia fare alle leggi».
«Sì», disse con uno o due cenni lenti del capo. «Lasciamoli stare. Lasciamo che tutto sia come è. Lasciamo in pace tutti quanti soli. È un pasticcio, e basta».
«Sempre un pasticcio?», disse Rachael con un altro dolce tocco sul suo braccio, come per richiamarlo fuori dalla riflessione in cui stava mordicchiando le lunghe estremità del suo fazzoletto da collo mentre camminava. Il tocco ebbe il suo effetto immediato. Lasciò cadere le mani, si voltò verso di lei con un volto sorridente e disse, scoppiando in una risata bonaria: «Sì, Rachael, ragazza mia, sempre un pasticcio. È qui che mi fermo. Arrivo al pasticcio molte volte e ancora, e non riesco mai ad andare oltre».
Avevano camminato per un po’ e si trovavano vicino alle loro case. Quella della donna fu la prima a essere raggiunta. Si trovava in una delle tante piccole strade dove l’impresario di pompe funebri preferito (che traeva un bel profitto dall’unica triste pompa del quartiere) teneva una scala nera, affinché coloro che avevano fatto il loro quotidiano giro su e giù per le strette scale potessero scivolare fuori da questo mondo di lavoro dalle finestre. Lei si fermò all’angolo, mise la mano nella sua e gli augurò una buona notte.
«Buona notte, cara ragazza; buona notte!»
Ella andò per la strada buia con la sua figura snella e il suo passo sobrio e femminile, ed egli rimase a guardarla finché non entrò in una delle piccole case. Forse non c’era un solo movimento del suo ruvido scialle che non avesse interesse agli occhi di quell’uomo; non un tono della sua voce che non avesse eco nel più profondo del suo cuore.
Quando lei gli fu scomparsa dalla vista, egli proseguì il suo cammino verso casa, guardando talvolta in su al cielo, dove le nuvole navigavano veloci e selvagge. Ma ora si erano diradate, la pioggia aveva cessato e la luna splendeva, guardando giù dalle alte ciminiere di Coketown nelle profonde fornaci sottostanti, proiettando ombre titantiche delle macchine a vapore in riposo sulle mura dove erano alloggiate. L’uomo sembrava essersi illuminato con la notte, mentre proseguiva.
La sua casa, in una strada simile alla prima, salvo che era più stretta, si trovava sopra un piccolo negozio. Come mai la gente ritenesse utile vendere o acquistare i miseri giocattoli esposti nella sua vitrina insieme a giornali economici e carne di maiale (domani-sera si sarebbe sorteggiata una zampa), qui non ha importanza. Egli prese la sua estremità di candela da uno scaffale, l’accese con un’altra estremità di candela sul bancone, senza disturbare la padrona del negozio che dormiva nella sua stanzetta, e salì al piano superiore nel suo alloggio.
Era una stanza che non era estranea alla scala nera sotto vari affittuari; ma per il momento era pulita quanto poteva esserlo una simile stanza. C’erano alcuni libri e scritti su un vecchio scrittoio in un angolo, i mobili erano decorosi e sufficienti, e sebbene l’atmosfera fosse viziata, la stanza era pulita.
Andandosi al focolare per posare la candela su un tavolino rotondo e tripode che lì stava, inciampò contro qualcosa. Mentre indietreggiava guardando verso il basso, quella cosa si sollevò assumendo le sembianze di una donna seduta.
«La misericordia del cielo, donna!» esclamò, allontanandosi ulteriormente dalla figura. «Sei tornata di nuovo!»
Che donna! Una creatura invalida e ubriaca, appena capace di mantenere la posizione seduta sostenendosi con una mano imbrattata sul pavimento, mentre l’altra cercava inutilmente di spingere via i capelli aggrovigliati dal viso, accecandola ancora di più per la sporcizia che li ricopriva. Una creatura così ripugnante da guardare, nei suoi stracci, macchie e schizzi, ma molto più ripugnante in quanto a infamia morale, tanto che era una cosa vergognosa anche solo vederla.
Dopo uno o due giuramenti impazienti e qualche stupido gesto di arrabbiarsi con se stessa usando la mano non necessaria per sostenersi, riuscì a liberare i capelli dagli occhi abbastanza da poterlo vedere. Poi si mise a dondolare il corpo avanti e indietro, facendo gesti con il braccio intorpidito che sembravano voler accompagnare una risata, anche se la sua espressione era ottusa e assonnata.
«Eh, ragazzo? Allora sei qui?» Alcuni suoni rauchi che volevano dire questo le uscirono infine in tono beffardo e la sua testa cadde in avanti sul petto.
«Tornato di nuovo?» strillò dopo alcuni minuti, come se lui l’avesse appena detto in quel momento. «Sì! E tornato ancora. Tornato spesso e volentieri. Tornato? Sì, tornato. Perché no?»
Svegliata dalla violenza insensata con cui lo aveva gridato, si rialzò e rimase in piedi appoggiandosi alle pareti con le spalle; dondolando in una mano per la corda un misero frammento di cappello e cercando di guardarlo con disprezzo.
«Ti venderò di nuovo, e ti venderò ancora, e ti venderò venti volte!» gridò, con qualcosa tra una minaccia furiosa e un tentativo di danza provocatoria. «Allontanati dal letto!» Lui era seduto sul bordo del letto, con il viso nascosto tra le mani. «Vattene via da lì! È mio, e ho diritto a esso!»
Mentre barcollava verso di esso, lui la evitò con un brivido e passò — il volto ancora nascosto — all’estremità opposta della stanza. Si gettò pesantemente sul letto e presto russava forte. Lui si accasciò su una sedia e non si mosse più tutta quella notte. Fu solo per coprirla; come se le sue mani non fossero sufficienti a nasconderla, anche nel buio.
CHAPTER XI NO WAY OUT
THE Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day’s monotony, were at their heavy exercise again.
Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion. Set anywhere, side by side, the work of GOD and the work of man; and the former, even though it be a troop of Hands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison.
So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions. There is no mystery in it; there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, for ever.—Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!
The day grew strong, and showed itself outside, even against the flaming lights within. The lights were turned out, and the work went on. The rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the curse of all that tribe, trailed themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard outside, the steam from the escape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil of mist and rain.
The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clattering upon the pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour.
Stephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold wet streets, haggard and worn. He turned from his own class and his own quarter, taking nothing but a little bread as he walked along, towards the hill on which his principal employer lived, in a red house with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps, BOUNDERBY (in letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round brazen door-handle underneath it, like a brazen full-stop.
Mr. Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. Would his servant say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak to him? Message in return, requiring name of such Hand. Stephen Blackpool. There was nothing troublesome against Stephen Blackpool; yes, he might come in.
Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr. Bounderby (whom he just knew by sight), at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs. Sparsit netting at the fireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in a cotton stirrup. It was a part, at once of Mrs. Sparsit’s dignity and service, not to lunch. She supervised the meal officially, but implied that in her own stately person she considered lunch a weakness.
‘Now, Stephen,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one—these Hands will never do that! Lord bless you, sir, you’ll never catch them at that, if they have been with you twenty years!—and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit, tucked his neckerchief ends into his waistcoat.
‘Now, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, taking some sherry, ‘we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don’t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of ’em do!’ Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied; ‘and therefore I know already that you have not come here to make a complaint. Now, you know, I am certain of that, beforehand.’
‘No, sir, sure I ha’ not coom for nowt o’ th’ kind.’
Mr. Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his previous strong conviction. ‘Very well,’ he returned. ‘You’re a steady Hand, and I was not mistaken. Now, let me hear what it’s all about. As it’s not that, let me hear what it is. What have you got to say? Out with it, lad!’
Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I can go, Mr. Bounderby, if you wish it,’ said that self-sacrificing lady, making a feint of taking her foot out of the stirrup.
Mr. Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in suspension before swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. Then, withdrawing his hand and swallowing his mouthful of chop, he said to Stephen:
‘Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady. You are not to suppose because she keeps my house for me, that she hasn’t been very high up the tree—ah, up at the top of the tree! Now, if you have got anything to say that can’t be said before a born lady, this lady will leave the room. If what you have got to say can be said before a born lady, this lady will stay where she is.’
‘Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady to year, sin’ I were born mysen’,’ was the reply, accompanied with a slight flush.
‘Very well,’ said Mr. Bounderby, pushing away his plate, and leaning back. ‘Fire away!’
‘I ha’ coom,’ Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, after a moment’s consideration, ‘to ask yo yor advice. I need ’t overmuch. I were married on Eas’r Monday nineteen year sin, long and dree. She were a young lass—pretty enow—wi’ good accounts of herseln. Well! She went bad—soon. Not along of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her.’
CAPITOLO XI NESSUNA USCITA
I palazzi delle fate si illuminarono prima che la pallida alba mostrasse i mostruosi serpenti di fumo che si snodavano sopra Coketown. Un tintinnio di zoccoli sul selciato; un rapido suonare di campane; e tutti gli elefanti pazzi malinconici, lucidati e oliati per la monotonia della giornata, erano già al loro pesante esercizio.
Stephen si chinò sul suo telaio, tranquillo, vigile e costante. Un contrasto particolare, poiché ogni uomo era nella foresta di telai dove Stephen lavorava, con il meccanismo schiantante, frantumante, strappante su cui lui lavorava. Non temete, buone persone di un carattere ansioso, che l’Arte condanni la Natura all’oblio. Mettete fianco a fianco, ovunque, l’opera di DIO e l’opera dell’uomo; e quest’ultima, anche se si tratta di un gruppo di mani di scarso conto, guadagnerà in dignità dal confronto.
Così tante centinaia di Mani in questo Mulino; così tanti centinaia di cavalli di potenza a vapore. Si sa, con la precisione di un singolo chilogrammo, cosa il motore può fare; ma nemmeno tutti i calcolatori del Debito Nazionale possono dirmi la capacità per il bene o il male, per l’amore o l’odio, per il patriottismo o l’insoddisfazione, per la decomposizione della virtù in vizio, o viceversa, in un singolo momento nell’anima di uno qualsiasi di questi suoi tranquilli servitori, con i volti composti e le azioni regolate. Non c’è mistero in esso; c’è un mistero insondabile nel più umile di loro, per sempre.—Supponendo che dovessimo invertire la nostra aritmetica per gli oggetti materiali, e governare queste terribili quantità sconosciute con altri mezzi!
Il giorno si fece più intenso e mostrò se stesso all’esterno, anche contro le fiammeggianti luci interne. Le luci furono spente e il lavoro continuò. La pioggia cadde e i serpenti di Fumo, sottomessi alla maledizione di tutta quella stirpe, si trascinarono sulla terra. Nel cortile abbandonato all’esterno, il vapore dal tubo di sfogo, l’ammasso di barili e vecchio ferro, i lucenti cumuli di carbone, le ceneri ovunque, erano avvolti in un velo di nebbia e pioggia.
Il lavoro continuò fino a quando suonò la campana del mezzogiorno. Più rumore di passi sui marciapiedi. I telai e le ruote fermi, e gli operai liberi per un’ora.
Stephen uscì dal caldo mulino e si trovò nel vento umido vento e nelle strade fredde e bagnate, con l’aspetto sfinito e provato. Si allontanò dalla sua classe sociale e dal suo quartiere, portando con sé solo un po’ di pane mentre camminava verso la collina su cui viveva il suo principale datore di lavoro, in una casa rossa casa con persiane esterne nere, tende interne verdi, una porta d’ingresso nera, due gradini bianchi davanti, BOUNDERBY (in lettere molto simili a lui stesso) su una targhetta di ottone e un pomello della porta rotondo in ottone sotto di essa, come un punto fermo in ottone.
Il signor Bounderby era a pranzo. Così Stephen si aspettava. Avrebbe detto il suo domestico che uno degli Operai chiedeva di parlargli? Messaggio di risposta, richiedendo il nome di tale Operaio. Stephen Blackpool. Non c’era nulla di preoccupante contro Stephen Blackpool; sì, poteva entrare.
Stephen Blackpool nel salotto. Il signor Bounderby (che conosceva solo di vista), che pranzava con un bistecca e sherry. La signora Sparsit faceva la rete accanto al caminetto, in una posizione a sella laterale, con un piede in uno staffo di cotone. Faceva parte sia della dignità che del servizio della signora Sparsit non pranzare. Supervisionava il pasto ufficialmente, ma lasciava intendere che nella sua persona imponente considerasse il pranzo una debolezza.
‘Ora, Stephen,’ disse il signor Bounderby, ‘cosa c’è che non va in te?’
Stephen fece un inchino. Non uno servile - queste Mani non lo farebbero mai! Signore benedica voi, signore, non li coglierete mai in questo, anche se sono con voi da vent’anni! - e, come toletta di cortesia per la signora Sparsit, si infilò le estremità del fazzoletto nel panciotto.
«Ora, sapete», disse il signor Bounderby, prendendo un po’ di sherry, «non abbiamo mai avuto difficoltà con voi e non siete mai stato uno di quelli irragionevoli. Non vi aspettate di essere sistemato su una carrozza a sei cavalli e di mangiare zuppa di tartaruga e cinghiale con un cucchiaio d’oro, come fanno molti di loro!» Il signor Bounderby rappresentava sempre questo come l’unico, immediato e diretto obiettivo di qualsiasi operaio che non fosse completamente soddisfatto; «e quindi so già che non siete venuto qui per fare un reclamo. Ora, sapete, ne sono certo in anticipo».
‘No, signore, certo che non sono venuto per niente del genere.’
Il signor Bounderby sembrò piacevolmente sorpreso, nonostante la sua precedente forte convinzione. «Benissimo», rispose. «Sei un bravo ragazzo e non mi ero sbagliato. Ora dimmi di che si tratta. Poiché non è quello, allora dimmi cos’è. Cosa hai da dire? Sputa il rospo, ragazzo!»
Stephen si trovò a guardare verso la signora Sparsit. «Posso andarmene, signor Bounderby, se lo desidera», disse quella donna disinteressata, fingendo di togliere il piede dalla staffa.
Il signor Bounderby la fermò trattenendo un boccone di costoletta sospeso prima di inghiottirlo e tendendole la mano sinistra. Poi ritrasse la mano e inghiottì il suo boccone, dicendo a Stephen:
«Ora sapete che questa brava signora è una vera nobildonna, una gran dama. Non dovete pensare che perché tiene la mia casa per me non sia stata molto in alto nell’albero — ah, proprio sulla cima dell’albero! Ora, se avete qualcosa da dire che non può essere detto davanti a una vera nobildonna, questa signora lascerà la stanza. Se ciò che dovete dire può essere detto davanti a una vera nobildonna, questa signora rimarrà dove è».
«Signore, spero di non aver mai detto nulla che non fosse adatto all’udito di una signora nobile da quando sono venuto al mondo», fu la risposta, accompagnata da un leggero rossore.
«Molto bene», disse il signor Bounderby allontanando il piatto e appoggiandosi allo schienale. «Sparate pure!»
«Sono venuto», cominciò Stephen, alzando gli occhi dal pavimento dopo averci pensato su per qualche istante, «a chiedervi consiglio. Ne ho davvero bisogno. Mi sono sposato il Lunedì dell’Angelo diciannove anni fa, lungo e triste. Era una giovane ragazza — abbastanza carina — con buone referenze su di sé. Beh! È andata male — presto. Non per colpa mia. Sapete che non sono stato un marito crudele nei suoi confronti».
‘I have heard all this before,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘She took to drinking, left off working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, and played old Gooseberry.’
‘I were patient wi’ her.’
(‘The more fool you, I think,’ said Mr. Bounderby, in confidence to his wine-glass.)
‘I were very patient wi’ her. I tried to wean her fra ’t ower and ower agen. I tried this, I tried that, I tried t’other. I ha’ gone home, many’s the time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her without a sense left to bless herseln lying on bare ground. I ha’ dun ’t not once, not twice—twenty time!’
Every line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its affecting evidence of the suffering he had undergone.
‘From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. She disgraced herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom back, she coom back, she coom back. What could I do t’ hinder her? I ha’ walked the streets nights long, ere ever I’d go home. I ha’ gone t’ th’ brigg, minded to fling myseln ower, and ha’ no more on’t. I ha’ bore that much, that I were owd when I were young.’
Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, raised the Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, ‘The great know trouble as well as the small. Please to turn your humble eye in My direction.’
‘I ha’ paid her to keep awa’ fra’ me. These five year I ha’ paid her. I ha’ gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha’ lived hard and sad, but not ashamed and fearfo’ a’ the minnits o’ my life. Last night, I went home. There she lay upon my har-stone! There she is!’
In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he fired for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, he stood as he had stood all the time—his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face addressed to Mr. Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd, half perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip; his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very earnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.
‘I was acquainted with all this, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘except the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job; that’s what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married. However, it’s too late to say that.’
‘Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of years, this unlucky job of yours?’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. ‘I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.’
Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a side-long way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little more sherry.
‘Well? Why don’t you go on?’ he then asked, turning rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool.
‘I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.’ Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral shock.
‘What do you mean?’ said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimney-piece. ‘What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse.’
‘I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under ’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone battering mad.’
‘He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir,’ observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.
‘I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’ read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that they can be set free fro’ their misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o’ one kind an’ another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that won’t do, they ha’ gowd an’ other cash, an’ they can say “This for yo’ an’ that for me,” an’ they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?’
‘No how,’ returned Mr. Bounderby.
‘If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I was to live wi’ her an’ not marry her—saying such a thing could be, which it never could or would, an’ her so good—there’s a law to punish me, in every innocent child belonging to me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Now, a’ God’s name,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘show me the law to help me!’
‘Hem! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘and—and—it must be kept up.’
‘No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. Not that way. ’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were in a fact’ry when a chilt, but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and eern to year wi’. I read in th’ papers every ’Sizes, every Sessions—and you read too—I know it!—with dismay—how th’ supposed unpossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a grievous case, an’ I want—if yo will be so good—t’ know the law that helps me.’
«Ho già sentito tutto questo prima», disse il signor Bounderby. «Si mise a bere, smise di lavorare, vendette i mobili, impegnò gli abiti e si comportò come una vecchia bacucca».
‘Fui paziente con lei.’
(«Più sciocco sei, penso», disse il signor Bounderby, confidenzialmente al suo bicchiere di vino.)
«Ero molto paziente con lei. Ho cercato di allontanarla da quel luogo troppo e troppo spesso. Ci ho provato in un modo, ci ho provato in un altro, ci ho provato in un terzo. Sono andato a casa, molte sono le volte che l’ho fatto, e ho trovato tutto svanito come se non ci fosse stato nulla al mondo, e lei senza più un senso per benedire se stessa giacente su terra nuda. L’ho fatto non una volta sola, né due volte: venti volte!»
Ogni linea del suo volto si accentuò mentre lo diceva e forniva la sua commovente testimonianza della sofferenza che aveva sopportato.
«Dalla mala alla peggio, dalla peggio al peggiore. Mi ha lasciato. Si è disonorata in tutti i modi, amara e cattiva. È tornata, è tornata, è tornata. Cosa potevo fare per impedirglielo? Ho camminato per le strade tutta la notte prima di andare a casa. Sono andato al ponte, con l’intenzione di buttarmi giù e non vederne più niente. Ho sopportato tanto che ero vecchio quando ero giovane».
La signora Sparsit, che procedeva con disinvoltura e agio man mano che lavorava a rete, alzò le sopracciglia alla coriolana e scosse la testa come per dire: «Anche i grandi sanno cosa sia il problema tanto quanto i piccoli. Bene, volga il suo umile sguardo nella mia direzione».
«Le ho pagato per tenerla lontana da me. Da cinque anni le pago. Ho avuto di nuovo intorno a me dei ragazzi presentabili. Ho vissuto una vita dura e triste, ma non mi sono mai vergognato né ho temuto un solo istante della mia esistenza. Ieri sera, sono tornato a casa. E lì era distesa sul mio focolare! L’ho vista!»
Nella forza della sua disgrazia e nell’energia del suo dolore, per un momento si comportò come un uomo orgoglioso. Un attimo dopo, era di nuovo com’era stato tutto il tempo—con la solita curvatura; con il volto pensieroso rivolto a Mr. Bounderby, che aveva un’espressione strana, metà acuta e metà perplessa, come se fosse deciso a svelare qualcosa di molto difficile; con in mano sinistra, stretta sul fianco, il cappello; con il braccio destro che, con una rude proprietà e forza d’azione, enfatizzava molto seriamente ciò che diceva: non meno quando si fermava sempre un po’ piegato ma senza ritrarsi mentre lui faceva pausa.
«Conoscevo tutto questo, sapete», disse il signor Bounderby, «tranne l’ultima clausola, da molto tempo. È una brutta faccenda; questa è la verità. Avreste fatto meglio a rimanere come eravate e non sposarvi. Comunque sia, ormai è troppo tardi per dirlo».
«Era un matrimonio sbilanciato, signore, per quanto riguarda gli anni?» chiese la signora Sparsit.
«Avete sentito la domanda di questa signora. Era un matrimonio sbilanciato per quanto riguarda gli anni questo sfortunato lavoro del vostro?» disse il signor Bounderby.
‘Non lo so nemmeno io. Io avevo ventuno anni, lei quasi venti.’
«Davvero, signore?» disse la signora Sparsit al suo Capo con grande placidità. «Ho dedotto che, trattandosi di un matrimonio così miserabile, probabilmente era disuguale dal punto di vista dell’età».
Il signor Bounderby guardò la buona donna con molta insistenza, ma di sottecchi e con un’espressione stranamente imbarazzata. Si rinforzò con un altro sorso di vino di Jerez.
«Ebbene? Perché non continui?» chiese poi, voltandosi piuttosto irritato verso Stephen Blackpool.
«Sono venuto a chiedervi, signore, come posso liberarmi di questa donna». Stephen infuse un’ancora più profonda gravità nell’espressione mista del suo volto attento. La signora Sparsit emise una dolce esclamazione, come se avesse ricevuto uno shock morale.
«Cosa intendi dire?» disse Bounderby alzandosi per appoggiare la schiena contro il caminetto. «Di cosa stai parlando? L’hai presa per meglio o per peggio».
«Devo liberarmi di lei. Non posso più sopportarla. Ho vissuto sotto il suo giogo per troppo tempo, senza avere la pietà e le parole consolatrici della migliore ragazza che sia mai esistita o che esisterà. Forse, se non fosse stato per lei, sarei impazzito».
«Desidera essere libero per sposare la donna di cui parla, e io ne ho paura, signore», osservò sottovoce la signora Sparsit, molto abbattuta dalla mancanza di moralità della gente.
«Lo so. La signora dice la verità. Lo so. Stavo per dirlo. Ho letto sui giornali che le persone importanti (che Dio li benedica tutti! Non voglio loro alcun male!) non sono legate l’una all’altra, nel bene e nel male, così in fretta, ma possono essere liberate dai loro matrimoni infelici e sposarsi di nuovo. Quando non vanno d’accordo perché i loro caratteri non si intonano, hanno stanze di vario tipo nelle loro case, oltre un po’, e possono vivere separati. Noi abbiamo solo una stanza e non possiamo farlo. Quando questo non è possibile, hanno oro e altri beni e possono dire “Questo per te e quello per me” e possono andare ognuno per la propria strada. Noi non possiamo. Nonostante tutto ciò, possono essere liberati per errori più piccoli dei miei. Quindi, devo liberarmi di questa donna e voglio sapere come?»
«Niente affatto», rispose il signor Bounderby.
“Se le facessi del male, signore, ci sarebbe una legge per punirmi?”
‘Naturalmente c’è.’
‘Ci sono leggi che mi puniscono se scappo da lei?’
‘Naturalmente c’è.’
‘Se sposassi quell’altra cara ragazza, ci sarebbe una legge per punirmi?’
‘Naturalmente c’è.’
«Se dovessi vivere con lei senza sposarla — ammesso che una cosa del genere potesse essere possibile, il che non è e non sarà mai, visto che lei è così buona — esisterebbe una legge per punirmi, per ogni innocente bambino mio?»
‘Naturalmente c’è.’
«Ora, per amor di Dio», disse Stephen Blackpool, «mostratemi la legge che mi aiuti!»
«Emme! C’è una sacralità in questa relazione di vita», disse il signor Bounderby, «e—e—va mantenuta».
«No no, non dica questo, signore. Non è mantenuto in piedi in quel modo. Non in quel modo. È tenuto giù in quel modo. Sono un tessitore, ero in una fabbrica da bambino, ma ho occhi per vedere e orecchie per ascoltare. Leggo sui giornali ogni mese, ogni sessione — e anche voi leggete — lo so! — con sgomento — come la presunta impossibilità di liberarsi l’uno dell’altra, a qualsiasi prezzo, in qualsiasi condizione, porti sangue su questa terra, e porti molte comuni persone sposate alla battaglia, all’omicidio e alla improvvisa morte. Dobbiamo capire bene questo. Il mio è un caso grave, e voglio — se volete essere così gentili — sapere la legge che mi aiuta».
‘Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘There is such a law.’
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his attention, gave a nod.
‘But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money.’
‘How much might that be?’ Stephen calmly asked.
‘Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, and you’d have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you’d have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Perhaps twice the money.’
‘There’s no other law?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Why then, sir,’ said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, ‘’tis a muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an’ the sooner I am dead, the better.’
(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
‘Pooh, pooh! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘about things you don’t understand; and don’t you call the Institutions of your country a muddle, or you’ll get yourself into a real muddle one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are not your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind your piece-work. You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but for better for worse. If she has turned out worse—why, all we have got to say is, she might have turned out better.’
‘’Tis a muddle,’ said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door. ‘’Tis a’ a muddle!’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what!’ Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory address. ‘With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been quite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born lady, and who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage misfortunes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds—tens of Thousands of Pounds!’ (he repeated it with great relish). ‘Now, you have always been a steady Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been listening to some mischievous stranger or other—they’re always about—and the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;’ here his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; ‘I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!’ cried Mr. Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate cunning. ‘By the Lord Harry, I do!’
With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said, ‘Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.’ So he left Mr. Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself into it; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite cast down by the popular vices.
«Ora, le dico una cosa!» disse il signor Bounderby mettendo le mani nelle tasche. «Esiste proprio una legge del genere».
Stephen, tornando al suo modo tranquillo e senza mai distrarsi, annuì.
“Ma non è per te, costa una fortuna.”
«Quanto potrebbe essere?» chiese calmo Stephen.
«Dovreste recarvi presso i tribunali dei Doctors’ Commons con una causa, e dovreste andare in un tribunale di Common Law con una causa, e dovreste presentarvi alla Camera dei Lord con una causa, e dovreste ottenere un atto parlamentare per poter risposare, e vi costerebbe (se si trattasse di un caso molto semplice), immagino da mille a quindicento sterline», disse il signor Bounderby. «Forse anche il doppio della cifra».
‘Non c’è altra legge?’
‘Assolutamente no.’
«Allora, signore», disse Stephen impallidendo e facendo con la sua mano destra un gesto come se desse tutto ai quattro venti, «è un pasticcio. È proprio un completo pasticcio, e prima muoio meglio è».
(La signora Sparsit di nuovo abbattuta dall’empietà della gente.)
«Fufù, fufù! Non dica sciocchezze, mio caro amico», disse il signor Bounderby, «su cose che non capisce; e non chiami istituzioni del suo paese un pasticcio, altrimenti si ritroverà in un vero pasticcio una di queste belle mattine. Le istituzioni del suo paese non sono il suo lavoro a cottimo, e l’unica cosa che deve fare è badare al suo lavoro a cottimo. Non ha sposato sua moglie per stare ora bene e ora male; ma per il meglio e per il peggio. Se lei si è rivelata peggiore—beh, tutto quello che possiamo dire è che avrebbe potuto rivelarsi migliore».
«È un pasticcio», disse Stephen scuotendo la testa mentre si dirigeva verso la porta. «È tutto un pasticcio!»
«Ora, vi dirò una cosa!» riprese il signor Bounderby, come un discorso di commiato. «Con le opinioni che chiamerò profane, avete scandalizzato questa signora: che, come vi ho già detto, è nata nobildonna e che, come non vi ho ancora detto, ha avuto i suoi problemi coniugali per decine di migliaia di sterline — decine di migliaia di sterline!» (lo ripeté con grande gusto). «Ora, finora siete sempre stato un bravo ragazzo; ma secondo me, e ve lo dico chiaro, state imboccando la strada sbagliata. Avete ascoltato qualche estraneo maleducato o altro — ce ne sono sempre in giro — e la cosa migliore che potete fare è uscirne fuori. Ora sapete;» qui il suo volto esprimeva una meravigliosa acutezza; «vedo lontano quanto un altro uomo; forse più di molti, perché da giovane mi tenevano ben stretto al macinello. Vedo tracce della zuppa di tartaruga e del cervo e del cucchiaio d’oro in tutto questo. Sì, le vedo!» gridò il signor Bounderby, scuotendo la testa con astuzia ostinata. «Per Dio, le vedo!»
Con un movimento della testa molto diverso e un profondo sospiro, Stephen disse: «Grazie, signore, le auguro buona giornata». Così se ne andò lasciando il signor Bounderby che si gonfiava davanti al suo ritratto appeso alla parete, come se stesse per esplodere dentro di esso; e la signora Sparsit ancora in groppa al cavallo con il piede nella staffa, abbattutissima dai vizi popolari.
CHAPTER XII THE OLD WOMAN
OLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot hand clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon his arm.
It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment—the touch that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest love and patience could abate the raging of the sea—yet it was a woman’s hand too. It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered by time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was very cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was newly come from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted noise of the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the heavy umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to which her hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country, in her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face—his face, which, like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf—the better to hear what she asked him.
‘Pray, sir,’ said the old woman, ‘didn’t I see you come out of that gentleman’s house?’ pointing back to Mr. Bounderby’s. ‘I believe it was you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?’
‘Yes, missus,’ returned Stephen, ‘it were me.’
‘Have you—you’ll excuse an old woman’s curiosity—have you seen the gentleman?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘And how did he look, sir? Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and hearty?’ As she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old woman before, and had not quite liked her.
‘O yes,’ he returned, observing her more attentively, ‘he were all that.’
‘And healthy,’ said the old woman, ‘as the fresh wind?’
‘Yes,’ returned Stephen. ‘He were ett’n and drinking—as large and as loud as a Hummobee.’
‘Thank you!’ said the old woman, with infinite content. ‘Thank you!’
He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old woman like her.
She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? To which she answered ‘Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!’ Then he said, she came from the country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.
‘By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this morning, and I’m going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s pretty well, sir, at my age!’ said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening with exultation.
‘’Deed ’tis. Don’t do’t too often, missus.’
‘No, no. Once a year,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I spend my savings so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp about the streets, and see the gentlemen.’
‘Only to see ’em?’ returned Stephen.
‘That’s enough for me,’ she replied, with great earnestness and interest of manner. ‘I ask no more! I have been standing about, on this side of the way, to see that gentleman,’ turning her head back towards Mr. Bounderby’s again, ‘come out. But, he’s late this year, and I have not seen him. You came out instead. Now, if I am obliged to go back without a glimpse of him—I only want a glimpse—well! I have seen you, and you have seen him, and I must make that do.’ Saying this, she looked at Stephen as if to fix his features in her mind, and her eye was not so bright as it had been.
With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all submission to the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraordinary a source of interest to take so much trouble about, that it perplexed him. But they were passing the church now, and as his eye caught the clock, he quickened his pace.
He was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his telling her where he worked, the old woman became a more singular old woman than before.
‘An’t you happy?’ she asked him.
‘Why—there’s awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus.’ He answered evasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for granted that he would be very happy indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her. He knew that there was trouble enough in the world; and if the old woman had lived so long, and could count upon his having so little, why so much the better for her, and none the worse for him.
‘Ay, ay! You have your troubles at home, you mean?’ she said.
‘Times. Just now and then,’ he answered, slightly.
‘But, working under such a gentleman, they don’t follow you to the Factory?’
No, no; they didn’t follow him there, said Stephen. All correct there. Everything accordant there. (He did not go so far as to say, for her pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there; but, I have heard claims almost as magnificent of late years.)
They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands were crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. The strange old woman was delighted with the very bell. It was the beautifullest bell she had ever heard, she said, and sounded grand!
She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with her before going in, how long he had worked there?
‘A dozen year,’ he told her.
‘I must kiss the hand,’ said she, ‘that has worked in this fine factory for a dozen year!’ And she lifted it, though he would have prevented her, and put it to her lips. What harmony, besides her age and her simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but even in this fantastic action there was a something neither out of time nor place: a something which it seemed as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done with such a natural and touching air.
He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old woman, when, having occasion to move round the loom for its adjustment, he glanced through a window which was in his corner, and saw her still looking up at the pile of building, lost in admiration. Heedless of the smoke and mud and wet, and of her two long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy thrum that issued from its many stories were proud music to her.
She was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over the arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and rattle. Long before then his thoughts had gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the shameful figure heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart.
Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; stopped. The bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night—their tall chimneys rising up into the air like competing Towers of Babel.
He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had walked with her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him, in which no one else could give him a moment’s relief, and, for the sake of it, and because he knew himself to want that softening of his anger which no voice but hers could effect, he felt he might so far disregard what she had said as to wait for her again. He waited, but she had eluded him. She was gone. On no other night in the year could he so ill have spared her patient face.
O! Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home and dread to go to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank, for he was exhausted—but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.
No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had taken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour, self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his character for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first brought together in these circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path—for him—and how he had sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts—so filled that he had an unwholesome sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty light turn red—he went home for shelter.
CAPITOLO XII LA VECCHIA DONNA
Vecchio STEPHEN scese i due gradini bianchi e chiuse la porta nera con il piastrino di ottone, servendosi del punto fermo in ottone che lucidò un’ultima volta con la manica della giacca, notando che la sua mano calda lo appannava. Attraversò la strada tenendo gli occhi fissi a terra e così camminava tristemente via quando sentì una mano toccargli il braccio.
Non era il contatto di cui aveva più bisogno in un momento del genere: quel contatto che avrebbe potuto calmare le acque agitate della sua anima, come la mano alzata dell’amore e della pazienza più sublimi poteva placare l’impeto del mare. Eppure era pur sempre una mano di donna. Era un’anziana signora, ancora alta e ben fatta, sebbene avvizzita dal tempo, su cui i suoi occhi caddero quando si fermò e si voltò. Era vestita con grande semplicità ed era molto pulita; aveva il fango della campagna sulle scarpe ed era appena arrivata da un viaggio. L’agitazione del suo comportamento nel frastuono insolito delle strade, lo scialle leggero che portava aperto sul braccio, l’ombrello pesante e il piccolo cestino, i guanti larghi a dita lunghe ai quali le sue mani non erano abituate: tutto faceva pensare a una vecchia signora di campagna con i suoi semplici vestiti da festa venuta a Coketown per un’impresa rara. Stephen Blackpool notò tutto questo in un attimo, con la rapida osservazione tipica della sua classe sociale, e inclinò il suo volto attento - quel volto che, come quelli di molti suoi simili, a forza di lavorare negli anni con gli occhi e le mani nel bel mezzo di un frastuono enorme aveva acquisito quella concentrazione che ci è familiare nei volti dei sordi - per sentire meglio ciò che lei gli chiedeva.
«Per favore, signore», disse la vecchia donna, «non l’ho forse vista uscire da quella casa del gentiluomo?» indicando di nuovo quella del signor Bounderby. «Credo fosse lei, a meno che non abbia avuto la sfortuna di sbagliare persona seguendola».
‘Sì, signora,’ rispose Stephen, ‘ero io.’
Avete, mi scuserà la curiosità di una vecchia donna, avete visto il signore?
‘Sì, signora.’
«E come appariva, signore? Era corpulento, audace, schietto e cordiale?» Mentre si raddrizzava e alzava il capo per adeguare i gesti alle parole, a Stephen venne l’idea di aver già visto quella vecchia donna prima d’allora, e di non esserle andato del tutto a genio.
“Sì,” rispose lui, osservandola più attentamente, “era proprio così.”
«E sano», disse la vecchia donna, «come il fresco vento?»
‘Sì,’ rispose Stephen, ‘mangiava e beveva - tanto quanto un ummobee.’
“Grazie!” disse la vecchia donna con infinita soddisfazione. “Grazie!”
Egli certamente non aveva mai visto prima questa vecchia signora. Tuttavia gli sembrava di ricordare vagamente che più volte avesse sognato una vecchia come lei.
Camminò al suo fianco e lui si adattò con gentilezza al suo umore, dicendo che Coketown era un posto molto attivo, no? A cui lei rispose: «Eh sì! Terribilmente attiva!» Poi lui disse di aver capito che veniva dalla campagna. E lei confermò.
«Con il Parlamentare questa mattina. Ho fatto quaranta miglia con il Parlamentare questa mattina e tornerò indietro per le stesse quaranta miglia questo pomeriggio. Ho camminato nove miglia fino alla stazione questa mattina, e se non trovo nessuno sulla strada che mi dia un passaggio, farò ritorno a piedi di altre nove miglia stasera. Questo è piuttosto bene, signore, per la mia età!» disse la chiacchierona vecchia signora, il cui sguardo si illuminò d’orgoglio.
”Certo che sì. Non farlo troppo spesso, signora.”
«No, no. Una volta all’anno», rispose scuotendo la testa. «Spendo i miei risparmi così, una volta ogni anno. Vengo regolarmente a vagabondare per le strade e vedere i signori».
«Solo per vederli?» rispose Stephen.
«Questo mi basta», rispose con grande serietà e interesse, «non chiedo altro! Sono rimasta qui, da questa parte della strada, per vedere quel signore», girando di nuovo la testa verso il signor Bounderby, «uscire. Ma quest’anno è in ritardo e non l’ho visto. Al suo posto siete uscito voi. Ora, se devo tornare indietro senza averlo nemmeno intravisto — voglio solo un’occhiata — beh! Ho visto voi e voi avete visto lui, quindi dovrà bastarmi così». Dicendo questo, guardò Stephen come per fissarne i lineamenti nella mente, ma il suo sguardo non era più così luminoso.
Con una grande tolleranza per le differenze di gusti e con tutta la deferenza verso i patrizi di Coketown, gli sembrava così straordinaria questa fonte d’interesse da giustificare tanto sforzo che ne rimase perplesso. Ma stavano passando davanti alla chiesa ora e mentre il suo occhio coglieva l’orologio, accelerò il passo.
Stava andando al lavoro? disse la vecchia donna, accelerando anche lei il passo senza difficoltà alcuna. Sì, era quasi ora. Quando le disse dove lavorava, la vecchia divenne ancora più strana di prima.
«Non sei felice?» gli chiese lei.
«Perché—quasi tutti hanno i loro problemi, signora». Rispose evasivamente, perché la vecchia sembrava dare per scontato che lui sarebbe stato davvero molto felice e non aveva il coraggio di deluderla. Sapeva che nel mondo c’erano abbastanza guai; e se la vecchia aveva vissuto così a lungo, e poteva contare sul fatto che lui ne avesse così pochi, allora tanto meglio per lei, e non peggio per lui.
«Sì, sì! Avete i vostri problemi in casa, intendete?», disse lei.
«Tempi. Ogni tanto», rispose lui, con nonchalance.
“Ma lavorando per un signore del genere, non ti seguono fino alla fabbrica?”
No, no; non lo seguirono fin lì, disse Stephen. Tutto corretto là. Tutto in armonia là. (Non arrivò fino al punto di dire, per il suo piacere, che c’era una specie di Diritto Divino là; ma ho sentito asserzioni quasi altrettanto magnifiche negli ultimi anni.)
Erano ormai sulla strada sterrata vicino al luogo e le Mani si stavano affollando. La campana suonava e il Serpente era un serpente di molte spire, mentre l’Elefante si preparava. La vecchia signora strana era entusiasta della campana stessa. Era la più bella campana che avesse mai sentito, disse, e suonava magnificamente!
Gli chiese, quando si fermò gentilmente per stringerle la mano prima di entrare, da quanto tempo lavorava lì.
«Un dozzina di anni», le disse.
«Devo baciare la mano», disse lei, «che ha lavorato in questa splendida fabbrica per una dozzina d’anni!» E lo sollevò, anche se lui avrebbe voluto impedirglielo, e lo portò alle labbra. Non sapeva che armonia, oltre alla sua età e alla sua semplicità, la circondasse, ma anche in questa azione fantastica c’era qualcosa che non era né fuori tempo né luogo: qualcosa che sembrava come se nessun altro avrebbe potuto rendere così serio o fare con un’aria tanto naturale e commovente.
Era già da mezz’ora al suo telaio a pensare a quella vecchia signora, quando, dovendo girargli intorno per regolarlo, lanciò un’occhiata attraverso una finestra che si trovava nel suo angolo e la vide ancora che guardava verso l’edificio in costruzione, rapita dall’ammirazione. Non curandosi del fumo, della melma e dell’umidità, né dei suoi due lunghi viaggi, lo stava fissando come se il pesante ronzio che ne usciva dai numerosi piani fosse per lei una musica orgogliosa.
Poi se ne andò e il giorno la seguì, e le luci si accesero di nuovo, e l’Express sfrecciò in piena vista del Palazzo delle Fate sopra gli archi vicini: poco sentito tra lo stridere della macchina, e appena udibile sopra il suo fragore e il suo rumore. Molto prima allora i suoi pensieri erano tornati alla stanza triste sopra la piccola bottega, e alla figura vergognosa pesante sul letto, ma più pesante nel cuore di lui.
Le macchine rallentarono, pulsando debolmente come un polso che sta per cedere, e si fermarono. Il campanello suonò di nuovo; la luce accecante e il calore svanirono; le fabbriche, che incombevano pesanti nella notte umida e buia — i loro alti comini che si innalzavano nell’aria come torri di Babele in competizione.
La sera prima aveva parlato con Rachael, era vero, e l’aveva accompagnata per un tratto; ma sopportava una nuova disgrazia che nessun altro poteva alleviare neanche per un momento, e proprio a causa di essa, sapendo che gli serviva il placarsi della sua ira che solo la voce di lei poteva ottenere, sentì che avrebbe potuto trascurare ciò che aveva detto fino al punto da aspettarla ancora. Aspettò, ma lei lo aveva evitato. Se n’era andata. In nessun’altra sera dell’anno avrebbe tanto sentito la mancanza del suo paziente volto.
O! Meglio non avere una casa dove posare il capo che averne una e temere di entrarvi per un motivo del genere. Mangiò e bevve perché era esausto — ma sapeva o gli importava poco cosa; e vagabondò sotto la fredda pioggia, pensando e ripensando, rimuginando e rimuginando ancora.
Nessuna parola di un nuovo matrimonio era mai passata tra loro; ma Rachael aveva avuto grande pietà per lui anni fa, e solo con lei egli aveva aperto il suo cuore chiuso tutto questo tempo, sull’argomento delle sue miserie; e sapeva benissimo che se fosse stato libero di chiederglielo, lei lo avrebbe preso. Pensava alla casa che in quel momento avrebbe potuto cercare con piacere e orgoglio; all’uomo diverso che quella notte avrebbe potuto essere; alla leggerezza che allora sarebbe stata nel suo petto ora così gravato; all’onore, al rispetto di sé, alla tranquillità allora ristabiliti e ora tutti strappati a pezzi. Pensava allo spreco della parte migliore della sua vita, al cambiamento che ogni giorno rendeva il suo carattere peggiore, alla terribile natura della sua esistenza, legata mani e piedi a una donna morta, e tormentata da un demone in quella forma. Pensava a Rachael, quanto giovane quando furono messi insieme per la prima volta in queste circostanze, quanto matura ora, quanto presto sarebbe diventata vecchia. Pensava al numero di ragazze e donne che l’aveva vista sposarsi, quante case con bambini intorno a sé aveva visto crescere, come avesse serenamente perseguito il suo tranquillo cammino solitario—per lui—and come talvolta avesse visto un’ombra di malinconia sul suo beato volto, che lo colpiva con rimorso e disperazione. Collocò l’immagine di lei accanto all’infame immagine dell’ultima notte; e pensava: “È possibile che tutto il corso terreno di una così gentile, buona e abnegata persona fosse soggiogato a un miserabile come quello?”
Pieno di questi pensieri — così pieno che aveva una sensazione malsana di crescere, di essere posto in qualche nuova e malata relazione verso gli oggetti tra cui passava, di vedere l’iride intorno a ogni luce nebbiosa diventare rossa — andò a casa per ripararsi.
CHAPTER XIII RACHAEL
A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen added to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say that the child of a King and the child of a Weaver were born to-night in the same moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any human creature who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this abandoned woman lived on!
From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door, opened it, and so into the room.
Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.
She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is to say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be she; but Rachael’s hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened from his eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of Rachael’s were in the room. Everything was in its place and order as he had always kept it, the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept. It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael’s face, and looked at nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut out from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes were filled too.
She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.
‘I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late.’
‘I ha’ been walking up an’ down.’
‘I thought so. But ’tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very heavy, and the wind has risen.’
The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the chimney, and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not to have known it was blowing!
‘I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady came round for me at dinner-time. There was some one here that needed looking to, she said. And ‘deed she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and bruised.’
He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.
‘I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married her when I was her friend—’
He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.
‘And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that ’tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want of aid. Thou knowest who said, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her!” There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.’
‘O Rachael, Rachael!’
‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind.’
[Picture: Stephen and Rachael in the sick room]
The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The three-legged table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there were two bottles. This was one.
It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters. He turned of a deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.
‘I will stay here, Stephen,’ said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat, ‘till the bells go Three. ’Tis to be done again at three, and then she may be left till morning.’
‘But thy rest agen to-morrow’s work, my dear.’
‘I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it. ’Tis thou who art in need of rest—so white and tired. Try to sleep in the chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can well believe. To-morrow’s work is far harder for thee than for me.’
He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had cast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from himself.
‘She don’t know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I have spoken to her times and again, but she don’t notice! ’Tis as well so. When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I can, and she never the wiser.’
‘How long, Rachael, is ’t looked for, that she’ll be so?’
‘Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.’
His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it was not that. He had had a fright.’
‘A fright?’
‘Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When I—’ It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it were palsied.
‘Stephen!’
She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.
‘No! Don’t, please; don’t. Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me see thee, a’ so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I see thee when I coom in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never, never!’
CAPITOLO XIII RACHEL
Una candela ardeva debolmente nella finestra, alla quale la scala nera era stata spesso appoggiata per far scivolare via tutto ciò che di più prezioso esisteva in questo mondo per una moglie instancabile e un gruppo di bambini affamati; e Stephen aggiunse ai suoi altri pensieri la severa riflessione che, tra tutte le casualità di questa esistenza sulla terra, non ce n’era nessuna distribuita con una mano così disuguale come la morte. La disuguaglianza della Nascita era nulla in confronto. Infatti, anche se il figlio di un Re e il figlio di un Tessitore fossero nati la scorsa-notte nello stesso momento, quale era questa disparità rispetto alla morte di qualsiasi essere umano che fosse utile o amato da qualcun altro, mentre questa donna abbandonata continuava a vivere!
Dall’esterno della sua casa passò cupamente all’interno, con il respiro trattenuto e un lento passo. Si avvicinò alla porta, la aprì ed entrò nella stanza.
C’era silenzio e pace. C’era Rachel seduta accanto al letto.
Lei girò la testa e la luce del suo volto illuminò il mezzanotte della sua mente. Si sedette accanto al letto, vegliando e curando sua moglie. Cioè, lui vide che qualcuno giaceva là, e sapeva troppo bene che doveva essere lei; ma le mani di Rachael avevano tirato una tenda, in modo da schermarla dai suoi occhi. I suoi indumenti sconvenienti erano stati rimossi, e alcuni di quelli di Rachael si trovavano nella stanza. Tutto era al suo posto e ordinato come lui l’aveva sempre tenuto, il piccolo fuoco era stato appena ravvivato e il focolare era stato spazzato di fresco. Gli sembrava di vedere tutto questo nel volto di Rachael, e non guardava altro. Mentre lo fissava, la vista gli fu oscurata dalle lacrime che riempivano i suoi occhi; ma prima di allora aveva visto quanto lei lo guardasse intensamente, e come anche i suoi occhi fossero pieni.
Si voltò di nuovo verso il letto e assicuratasi che tutto fosse tranquillo, parlò con voce bassa, calma e allegra.
‘Finalmente sei arrivato, Stephen. Sei in ritardo.’
‘Ho camminato avanti e indietro.’
«Lo pensavo anch’io. Ma è una notte troppo brutta per questo. Piove molto forte e il vento si è alzato».
Il vento? Vero. Soffiava forte. Ascolta il tuono nel camino e quel rumore tumultuoso! Essere stato fuori in un simile vento, senza sapere che soffiava!
«Sono già stato qui una volta prima d’ora oggi, Stephen. La padrona di casa è venuta a cercarmi all’ora di pranzo. C’era qualcuno qui che aveva bisogno di cure, ha detto. E in effetti aveva ragione. Era tutto smarrito e perso, Stephen. Ferito anche lui, e contuso».
Si mosse lentamente verso una sedia e si sedette, abbassando la testa davanti a lei.
«Sono venuta a fare quel poco che potevo, Stephen; prima di tutto perché lei lavorava con me quando eravamo entrambe ragazze e perché tu la corteggiasti e la sposasti mentre io ero sua amica»
Si appoggiò la fronte solcata sulla mano con un gemito sommesso.
«E poi, perché conosco il tuo cuore e sono certo che è troppo misericordioso per lasciarla morire o anche solo soffrire senza aiuto. Sai chi ha detto: “Chi di voi è senza peccato scagli la prima pietra contro di lei!” Ce n’è stato a sufficienza che l’hanno fatto. Tu non sei uomo da lanciare l’ultima pietra, Stephen, quando lei è caduta così in basso».
‘O Rachael, Rachael!’
«Sei stata una sofferente crudele, che il Cielo ti ricompensi!» disse con accenti compassionevoli. «Sono la tua povera amica, con tutto il mio cuore e la mia mente».
Stephen e Rachael nella stanza dei malati
Le ferite di cui aveva parlato sembravano trovarsi sul collo dell’autoesiliato. Ora le medicava senza mostrarsi ancora. Imbevette un pezzo di lino in una bacinella, nella quale versò del liquido da una bottiglia, e lo applicò con mano delicata sulla piaga. Il tavolino a tre gambe era stato avvicinato al capezzale, e sopra c’erano due bottiglie. Questa ne era una.
Non era così lontano che Stephen, seguendo con gli occhi le sue mani, non potesse leggere ciò che vi era stampato in grandi lettere. Impallidì e un improvviso orrore sembrò abbattersi su di lui.
«Rimarrò qui, Stephen», disse Rachael, riprendendo tranquillamente il suo posto, «finché le campane suoneranno tre. Dovrà essere fatto di nuovo alle tre, e poi potrà rimanere fino al mattino».
‘Ma riposati per il lavoro di domani, mia cara.’
«Ho dormito profondamente la scorsa notte. Posso passare insonne molte notti, se necessario. Sei tu che hai bisogno di riposo: così pallido e stanco. Prova a dormire su quella sedia mentre io veglio. Non hai chiuso occhio la scorsa notte, lo so bene. Il lavoro di domani sarà molto più duro per te che per me».
Udì il fragore e l’impeto all’esterno, e gli sembrò che il suo recente umore iracondo stesse cercando di raggiungerlo. Lei lo aveva scacciato; lei lo avrebbe tenuto fuori; si affidava a lei per difendersi da se stesso.
«Non mi conosce, Stephen; borbotta e fissa il vuoto in uno stato di torpore. Le ho parlato più volte, ma non si accorge nemmeno di me! È bene così. Quando tornerà in sé, avrò fatto tutto quello che potevo, senza che lei se ne renda conto».
‘Quanto tempo, Rachael, ci vorrà prima che sia così?’
‘Il dottore ha detto che forse domani tornerà in sé.’
I suoi occhi ricaddero sulla bottiglia e un tremito lo percorse, facendolo rabbrividire in ogni membro. Lei pensò che avesse freddo per l’umidità. «No», disse, «non era quello. Aveva ricevuto uno spavento».
‘Una paura?’
«Sì, sì! stavo entrando. Quando ero in passeggiata. Quando pensavo. Quando io—» Lo riprese; e si alzò in piedi, aggrappandosi allo scaffale del caminetto mentre con una mano tremante come se fosse paralizzata si schiacciava i capelli freddi e bagnati di sudore.
‘Stephen!’
Lei stava venendo da lui, ma lui tese il braccio per fermarla.
«No! Ti prego, no; non farlo. Lascia che ti veda seduto accanto al letto. Lascia che ti veda così buono e così indulgente. Lascia che ti veda come ti vedo quando entro. Non potrò mai vederti meglio di così. Mai, mai, mai!»
He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and his head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael. Seen across the dim candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as the noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went about the house clamouring and lamenting.
‘When she gets better, Stephen, ’tis to be hoped she’ll leave thee to thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now. And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.’
He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but, by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the voices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said. Even this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a long, troubled dream.
He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set—but she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his imaginary happiness—stood in the church being married. While the ceremony was performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some whom he knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from one line in the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the building with the words. They were sounded through the church, too, as if there were voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the whole appearance before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it had been, but himself and the clergyman. They stood in the daylight before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have been brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at the shape the loom took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read, he knew that he was there to suffer death. In an instant what he stood on fell below him, and he was gone.
—Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that he knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by some means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in this world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to look on Rachael’s face or hear her voice. Wandering to and fro, unceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape which everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led them out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.
The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated.
He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up.
With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair. Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a shade, while she looked into it. Again they went all round the room, scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He thought, as she once more shaded them—not so much looking at him, as looking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there—that no single trace was left in those debauched features, or in the mind that went along with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before. But that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed her to be the same.
All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and powerless, except to watch her.
Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.
Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of last night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while considering which of the two bottles she should choose. Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.
Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!
Ebbe un violento attacco di tremore e poi si accasciò sulla sedia. Dopo un po’ riuscì a controllarsi e, appoggiandosi con un gomito su un ginocchio e la testa su quella mano, poté guardare verso Rachael. Vista attraverso la luce fioca della candela con i suoi occhi umidi, sembrava che avesse una gloria luminosa intorno alla testa. Avrebbe potuto credere che ce l’avesse davvero. E ci credeva, mentre il rumore all’esterno scuoteva la finestra, faceva tremare la porta di sotto e si diffondeva per tutta la casa con clamori e lamenti.
«Quando starà meglio, Stephen, si spera che ti lascerà di nuovo in pace e non ti farà più del male. Comunque adesso lo speriamo. E ora manterrò il silenzio, perché voglio che tu dorma.»
Chiuse gli occhi più per compiacerla che per riposare la sua testa stanca; ma, a poco a poco mentre ascoltava il grande rumore del vento, smise di sentirlo, oppure si trasformò nel lavoro del suo telaio, o addirittura nelle voci della giornata (inclusa la sua) che dicevano ciò che era stato realmente detto. Anche questa coscienza imperfetta svanì infine, e lui sognò un sogno lungo e agitato.
Pensò che lui e una certa persona a cui il suo cuore era da tempo legato — ma non si trattava di Rachael, e questo lo sorprese anche nel mezzo della sua felicità immaginaria — stessero in chiesa per sposarsi. Mentre la cerimonia veniva celebrata, e mentre riconosceva tra i testimoni alcune persone che sapeva essere vive e molte altre che sapeva essere morte, calò l’oscurità, seguita dal bagliore di una luce tremenda. La luce proveniva da una riga della tavola dei comandamenti all’altare e illuminava l’edificio con le parole. Le parole risuonavano anche in chiesa, come se ci fossero voci nelle lettere infuocate. A questo punto, tutta la scena davanti a lui e intorno a lui cambiò, e non rimase nulla com’era prima, tranne lui stesso e il sacerdote. Si trovavano alla luce del giorno di fronte a una folla così immensa che se tutte le persone del mondo fossero state riunite in uno spazio unico, pensava, non avrebbero potuto sembrare più numerose; e tutti lo aborrevano, e non c’era neanche un occhio compassionevole o amichevole tra i milioni che erano fissi sul suo viso. Si trovava su un palco rialzato, sotto il proprio telaio; e guardando la forma del telaio e sentendo distintamente leggere il servizio funebre, capì che era lì per subire morte. In un istante ciò su cui si trovava crollò sotto di lui, ed egli scomparve.
—Non riusciva a capire da quale mistero fosse tornato alla sua vita abituale e ai luoghi che conosceva; ma era di nuovo in quei luoghi per qualche motivo, e su di lui gravava questa condanna: non avrebbe mai più, in questo mondo o nell’altro, attraverso tutti gli immaginabili secoli dell’eternità, potuto vedere il volto di Rachael o sentire la sua voce. Vagando senza sosta, senza speranza e in cerca di chissà cosa (sapeva solo che era condannato a cercarla), era preda di un timore indicibile, orribile, una paura mortale per una forma particolare che ogni cosa assumeva. Qualunque cosa guardasse, prima o poi si trasformava in quella forma. L’obiettivo della sua miserabile esistenza era impedire che qualcuno tra le varie persone che incontrava la riconoscesse. Un lavoro disperato! Se li conduceva fuori dalle stanze dove si trovava, se chiudeva cassetti e armadi dove stava nascosta, se allontanava i curiosi dai luoghi in cui sapeva che era celata e li portava per le strade, anche i comignoli delle fabbriche assumevano quella forma, e intorno a loro c’era la scritta stampata.
Il vento soffiava di nuovo, la pioggia batteva sui tetti della casa, e gli ampi spazi attraverso i quali aveva vagato si riducevano alle quattro pareti della sua stanza. A parte il fatto che il fuoco era spento, tutto era come quando i suoi occhi si erano chiusi su di esso. Rachael sembrava essere caduta in un pisolino sulla sedia accanto al letto. Sedeva avvolta nel suo scialle, perfettamente immobile. Il tavolo stava nello stesso posto, vicino al capezzale, e sopra di esso, nelle sue reali proporzioni e aspetto, c’era la forma così spesso ripetuta.
Gli parve di vedere muoversi la tenda. Guardò ancora e fu sicuro che si era mossa. Vide uscire una mano che frugava un po’ intorno. Poi la tenda si mosse più visibilmente, e la donna nel letto la scostò e si mise a sedere.
Con i suoi occhi afflitti, così smunti e selvaggi, così pesanti e grandi, guardò tutt’intorno nella stanza, passando l’angolo dove lui dormiva sulla sua sedia. I suoi occhi tornarono a quell’angolo, e si coprì gli occhi con la mano come per ripararli dalla luce mentre lo scrutava. Ancora una volta i suoi occhi fecero il giro della stanza, senza quasi badare a Rachael se non del tutto, e tornarono a quell’angolo. Pensò che, quando li coprì di nuovo - guardandolo non tanto con gli occhi quanto cercandolo con un istinto animalesco che lui era lì - non rimaneva più alcuna traccia in quei lineamenti corrotti o nella mente che li accompagnava della donna che aveva sposato diciotto anni prima. Ma se non avesse visto lei arrivare a questo passo dopo passo, mai si sarebbe creduto che fosse la stessa persona.
Per tutto questo tempo, come se fosse stato colpito da un incantesimo, rimase immobile e impotente, tranne che per guardarla.
Stupidamente assopita o intenta a conversare con la sua inetta persona su nulla, rimase seduta per un po’ di tempo con le mani alle orecchie e il capo appoggiato su di esse. Poco dopo riprese a fissare lo sguardo intorno alla stanza. E ora, per la prima volta, i suoi occhi si fermarono sul tavolo con sopra le bottiglie.
Subito rivolse di nuovo lo sguardo verso il suo angolo, con la stessa sfida della scorsa notte, e muovendosi con estrema cautela e delicatezza, allungò la sua mano avida. Tirò una brocca sul letto e rimase per un po’ a riflettere su quale delle due bottiglie scegliere. Alla fine, posò la sua insensata presa sulla bottiglia che conteneva una morte rapida e certa, e davanti ai suoi occhi, tirò il tappo con i denti.
Sogno o realtà, non aveva voce né la forza di muoversi. Se questo è reale e il suo tempo assegnato non è ancora giunto, svegliati, Rachael, svegliati!
She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A moment and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come about her with its utmost power. But in that moment Rachael started up with a suppressed cry. The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair; but Rachael had the cup.
Stephen broke out of his chair. ‘Rachael, am I wakin’ or dreamin’ this dreadfo’ night?’
‘’Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep, myself. ’Tis near three. Hush! I hear the bells.’
The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.
‘I thought it must be near three,’ she said, calmly pouring from the cup into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. ‘I am thankful I stayed! ’Tis done now, when I have put this on. There! And now she’s quiet again. The few drops in the basin I’ll pour away, for ’tis bad stuff to leave about, though ever so little of it.’ As she spoke, she drained the basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the hearth.
She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before going out into the wind and rain.
‘Thou’lt let me walk wi’ thee at this hour, Rachael?’
‘No, Stephen. ’Tis but a minute, and I’m home.’
‘Thou’rt not fearfo’;’ he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the door; ‘to leave me alone wi’ her!’
As she looked at him, saying, ‘Stephen?’ he went down on his knee before her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.
‘Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!’
‘I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not like me. Between them, and a working woman fu’ of faults, there is a deep gulf set. My little sister is among them, but she is changed.’
She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.
‘Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wishfo’ to be more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee when this life is ower, and a’ the muddle cleared awa’. Thou’rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my soul alive!’
She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of his face.
‘I coom home desp’rate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and mad wi’ thinking that when I said a word o’ complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand. I told thee I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I never hurt a livin’ creetur; but happenin’ so suddenly upon ’t, I thowt, “How can I say what I might ha’ done to myseln, or her, or both!”’
She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him from saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:
‘But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha’ seen thee, aw this night. In my troublous sleep I ha’ known thee still to be there. Evermore I will see thee there. I nevermore will see her or think o’ her, but thou shalt be beside her. I nevermore will see or think o’ anything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by th’ side on’t. And so I will try t’ look t’ th’ time, and so I will try t’ trust t’ th’ time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far awa’, beyond the deep gulf, in th’ country where thy little sister is.’
He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him good night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.
The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood bare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.
Anche di questo pensò. Guardò Rachael e con estrema lentezza, con la massima cautela, versò il contenuto. Il liquore era alle sue labbra. Un attimo ancora e sarebbe stata oltre ogni aiuto, anche se tutto il mondo si fosse svegliato e le fosse accorso in aiuto con tutta la sua potenza. Ma proprio in quell’attimo Rachael balzò su con un grido soffocato. La creatura lottò, la colpì, la afferrò per i capelli; ma Rachael aveva il bicchiere.
Stephen balzò in piedi dalla sedia. «Rachel, sto sognando o sono sveglio questa terribile notte?»
«Va tutto bene, Stephen. Anche io ho dormito. Sono quasi le tre. Ssst! Sento le campane.»
Il vento portò i suoni dell’orologio della chiesa alla finestra. Ascoltarono, e batté l’ora terza. Stephen la guardò, vide quanto era pallida, notò il disordine dei suoi capelli e le tracce rosse delle dita sulla sua fronte, e si sentì sicuro che i suoi sensi della vista e dell’udito erano stati svegli. Lei teneva ancora in mano la coppa.
«Pensavo che fosse quasi l’una» disse, versando tranquillamente dal bicchiere nel catino e immergendo il panno come prima. «Sono contenta di essere rimasta! Ora è fatta, quando avrò messo questo. Ecco fatto! E ora lei è di nuovo calma. Le poche gocce che sono rimaste nel catino le verserò via, perché non va bene lasciarle in giro, anche se fossero davvero poche». Mentre parlava, svuotò il catino tra le ceneri del fuoco e ruppe la bottiglia sul focolare.
Non le restava dunque altro da fare che coprirsi con lo scialle prima di uscire nella pioggia e nel vento.
“Mi permetterai di camminare con te ora, Rachael?”
«No, Stephen. È solo un minuto e sono a casa.»
«Non hai paura» disse con voce bassa mentre uscivano dalla porta «di lasciarmi solo con lei!»
Mentre lo guardava e diceva: «Stephen?», egli si inginocchiò davanti a lei, sul povero misero pianerottolo, e portò un lembo del suo scialle alle labbra.
‘Lei è un angelo. Benedetta, benedetta!’
«Sono, come ti ho detto, Stephen, la tua povera amica. Gli angeli non sono come me. Tra loro e una donna che lavora piena di difetti c’è un abisso. La mia sorellina è tra loro, ma è cambiata».
Lei alzò gli occhi per un momento mentre pronunciava le parole; e poi li riabbassò di nuovo, con tutta la loro dolcezza e mitezza, sul suo viso.
«Tu mi cambi da cattivo in buono. Tu fai sì che io desideri umilmente di essere più simile a te e temo di perderti quando questa vita sarà finita, e tutto il caos sarà stato spazzato via. Sei un angelo; può darsi che tu abbia salvato la mia anima!»
Lo guardò mentre era inginocchiato ai suoi piedi con lo scialle ancora tra le mani e la rimproverò che aveva sulle labbra svanì quando vide l’espressione del suo volto.
«Sono tornato a casa disperato. Sono tornato a casa senza una speranza, e furioso al pensiero che quando dicevo una parola di lamento mi consideravano un Operaio irragionevole. Ti ho detto che avevo avuto uno spavento. Era la bottiglia del veleno sul tavolo. Non ho mai fatto male a una creatura vivente; ma trovandola così all’improvviso, pensai: “Come posso dire cosa avrei potuto fare a me stesso, o a lei, o a entrambi!”»
Lei gli mise le due mani sulla bocca con aria spaventata per impedirgli di dire altro. Lui le afferrò con la mano libera e continuando a tenerle strette mentre ancora stringeva il bordo del suo scialle, disse in fretta:
«Ma ti vedo, Rachael, seduta accanto al letto. Ti ho vista tutta la notte. Nel mio turbato sonno ho continuato a sapere che tu c’eri ancora. Ti vedrò sempre lì. Non la rivedrò mai più né penserò più a lei, ma tu starai accanto a lei. Mai più rivedrò o penserò a qualcosa che mi adiri, ma tu, tanto migliore di me, sarai al suo fianco. E così cercherò di guardare al tempo, e così cercherò di fidarmi del tempo, quando noi due finalmente cammineremo insieme lontano, oltre il profondo abisso, nel paese dove è la tua sorellina».
Baciò di nuovo il bordo del suo scialle e la lasciò andare. Gli augurò una buona notte con voce rotta e uscì per strada.
Il vento spirava dalla direzione da cui il giorno sarebbe presto apparso e continuava a soffiare forte. Aveva spazzato via le nuvole davanti a sé, la pioggia si era esaurita o era andata altrove, e le stelle splendevano luminose. Lui stava in piedi sulla strada, senza cappello, osservando la sua rapida scomparsa. Come le scintillanti stelle erano per la pesante candela nella finestra, così Rachael era, nella rozza fantasia di quell’uomo, rispetto alle comuni esperienze della sua vita.
CHAPTER XIV THE GREAT MANUFACTURER
TIME went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made. But, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity.
‘Louisa is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young woman.’
Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot taller than when his father had last taken particular notice of him.
‘Thomas is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young man.’
Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking about it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.
‘Really,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘the period has arrived when Thomas ought to go to Bounderby.’
Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby’s Bank, made him an inmate of Bounderby’s house, necessitated the purchase of his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to number one.
The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his mill, and worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.
‘I fear, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that your continuance at the school any longer would be useless.’
‘I am afraid it would, sir,’ Sissy answered with a curtsey.
‘I cannot disguise from you, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting his brow, ‘that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has greatly disappointed me. You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I looked for. You are extremely deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark.’
‘I am sorry, sir,’ she returned; ‘but I know it is quite true. Yet I have tried hard, sir.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect.’
‘Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;’ Sissy very timid here; ‘that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to try a little less, I might have—’
‘No, Jupe, no,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest and most eminently practical way. ‘No. The course you pursued, you pursued according to the system—the system—and there is no more to be said about it. I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed.’
‘I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her.’
‘Don’t shed tears,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t shed tears. I don’t complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman—and—and we must make that do.’
‘Thank you, sir, very much,’ said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.
‘You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and, indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that you can make yourself happy in those relations.’
‘I should have nothing to wish, sir, if—’
‘I understand you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind; ‘you still refer to your father. I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well! If your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will say no more.’
He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her; otherwise he held her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must have fallen upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an idea that there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular form. Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very low figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not sure that if he had been required, for example, to tick her off into columns in a parliamentary return, he would have quite known how to divide her.
In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy being both at such a stage of their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while Mr. Gradgrind himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no alteration.
Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through the mill. Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in a by-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the respected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the representatives of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honourable gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind honourable gentlemen, lame honourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen, to every other consideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our Master?
All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the grate, and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said she was almost a young woman—which seemed but yesterday—she had scarcely attracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.
‘Quite a young woman,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, musing. ‘Dear me!’
Soon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual for several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject. On a certain night, when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid him good-bye before his departure—as he was not to be home until late and she would not see him again until the morning—he held her in his arms, looking at her in his kindest manner, and said:
‘My dear Louisa, you are a woman!’
She answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night when she was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes. ‘Yes, father.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I must speak with you alone and seriously. Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will you?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well?’
‘Quite well, father.’
‘And cheerful?’
She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. ‘I am as cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been.’
‘That’s well,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and went away; and Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character, and leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks that so soon subsided into ashes.
‘Are you there, Loo?’ said her brother, looking in at the door. He was quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing one.
‘Dear Tom,’ she answered, rising and embracing him, ‘how long it is since you have been to see me!’
‘Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather. But I touch him up with you when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an understanding. I say! Has father said anything particular to you to-day or yesterday, Loo?’
‘No, Tom. But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the morning.’
‘Ah! That’s what I mean,’ said Tom. ‘Do you know where he is to-night?’—with a very deep expression.
‘No.’
‘Then I’ll tell you. He’s with old Bounderby. They are having a regular confab together up at the Bank. Why at the Bank, do you think? Well, I’ll tell you again. To keep Mrs. Sparsit’s ears as far off as possible, I expect.’
With her hand upon her brother’s shoulder, Louisa still stood looking at the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than usual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.
‘You are very fond of me, an’t you, Loo?’
‘Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without coming to see me.’
‘Well, sister of mine,’ said Tom, ‘when you say that, you are near my thoughts. We might be so much oftener together—mightn’t we? Always together, almost—mightn’t we? It would do me a great deal of good if you were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo. It would be a splendid thing for me. It would be uncommonly jolly!’
Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny. He could make nothing of her face. He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek. She returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire.
‘I say, Loo! I thought I’d come, and just hint to you what was going on: though I supposed you’d most likely guess, even if you didn’t know. I can’t stay, because I’m engaged to some fellows to-night. You won’t forget how fond you are of me?’
‘No, dear Tom, I won’t forget.’
‘That’s a capital girl,’ said Tom. ‘Good-bye, Loo.’
She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance lurid. She stood there, looking steadfastly towards them, and listening to his departing steps. They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from Stone Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet. It seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the fiery haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.
CAPITOLO XIV IL GRANDE PRODUTTORE
Il tempo scorreva a Coketown come la sua stessa macchina: tanto materiale lavorato, tanto combustibile consumato, tanti operai logorati, tanto denaro guadagnato. Ma, meno implacabile del ferro, dell’acciaio e dello stagno, portava le sue mutevoli stagioni anche in quel deserto di fumo e mattoni, e faceva l’unica resistenza che mai fu fatta nel luogo contro la sua terribile uniformità.
“La piccola Louisa sta diventando una vera donna”, disse il signor Gradgrind.
Il tempo, con la sua innumerevole potenza di cavalli, continuò il suo lavoro senza badare a quello che diceva chiunque, e presto trasformò il giovane Thomas rendendolo un piede più alto rispetto all’ultima volta in cui suo padre aveva fatto particolare attenzione a lui.
‘Thomas sta diventando’, disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘quasi un giovane uomo.’
Il tempo passò per Thomas nella fabbrica mentre suo padre ci pensava su, e lì si trovò con un lungo cappotto e un rigido colletto di camicia.
«In verità», disse il signor Gradgrind, «è giunto il momento che Tom vada da Bounderby».
Il tempo, attaccandosi a lui, lo portò nella Banca di Bounderby, ne fece un abitante della casa di Bounderby, rese necessario l’acquisto del suo primo rasoio e lo esercitò diligentemente nei suoi calcoli relativi al numero uno.
Lo stesso grande industriale, sempre con un’enorme varietà di lavori in corso, in ogni fase di sviluppo, fece avanzare Sissy nel suo mulino e la trasformò in un articolo davvero molto grazioso.
«Temo, Jupe», disse il signor Gradgrind, «che la tua permanenza a scuola più a lungo sarebbe inutile».
«Temo che lo sia, signore», rispose Sissy con un inchino.
«Non posso nascondervi, Jupe», disse il signor Gradgrind aggrottando la fronte, «che il risultato del vostro periodo di prova vi ha deluso; vi ha deluso grandemente. Non avete acquisito sotto la guida del signor e della signora M’Choakumchild nulla che si possa paragonare a quella quantità di conoscenza esatta che mi aspettavo. Siete estremamente carente nei fatti. La vostra conoscenza dei numeri è molto limitata. Siete in generale indietro e al di sotto del livello atteso».
«Mi dispiace, signore», rispose lei «ma so che è assolutamente vero. Eppure ho fatto del mio meglio, signore».
«Sì», disse il signor Gradgrind, «sì, credo che tu abbia fatto del tuo meglio; ti ho osservato e non posso trovare alcun difetto sotto questo aspetto.»
«Grazie, signore. A volte ho pensato», qui Sissy era molto timida, «che forse cercavo di imparare troppo e che se avessi chiesto il permesso di provare un po’ meno, potrei essere riuscita a—»
«No, Jupe, no», disse il signor Gradgrind scuotendo la testa nel suo modo più profondo e eminentemente pratico. «No. Il corso che hai seguito lo hai seguito secondo il sistema — il sistema — e non c’è altro da dire al riguardo. Posso solo supporre che le circostanze della tua giovinezza fossero troppo sfavorevoli allo sviluppo delle tue capacità di ragionamento, e che abbiamo iniziato troppo tardi. Tuttavia, come ho già detto, sono deluso».
«Vorrei aver potuto dimostrarvi in modo migliore la mia gratitudine per la vostra gentilezza verso una povera ragazza abbandonata che non aveva diritto a nulla da parte vostra e per il vostro aiuto nei suoi confronti.»
«Non versare lacrime», disse il signor Gradgrind «non versare lacrime. Non ho nulla da ridire su di te. Sei una giovane donna affettuosa, seria e buona — e — e dobbiamo accontentarci di questo».
«Grazie mille, signore», disse Sissy con un inchino di gratitudine.
«Siete utile alla signora Gradgrind e (in un modo generale pervasivo) siete anche utile alla famiglia; così ho capito da Miss Louisa e, infatti, lo stesso ho osservato. Spero quindi», disse il signor Gradgrind, «che possiate rendervi felice in tali rapporti».
‘Non avrei nulla da desiderare, signore, se, ’
«Vi capisco», disse il signor Gradgrind; «vi riferite ancora a vostro padre. Ho sentito da Miss Louisa che conservate ancora quella bottiglia. Bene! Se la vostra formazione nella scienza di ottenere risultati esatti fosse stata più efficace, sareste stato più saggio su questi punti. Non aggiungo altro».
Gli piaceva davvero molto anche Sissy per disprezzarla; altrimenti avrebbe considerato le sue capacità di calcolo così poco che non poteva che giungere a quella conclusione. In qualche modo, era pervenuto all’idea che in questa ragazza ci fosse qualcosa che difficilmente si sarebbe potuto esprimere in forma tabellare. La sua capacità di definizione poteva essere facilmente valutata molto bassa, le sue conoscenze matematiche a zero; eppure non era sicuro che se gli avessero chiesto, per esempio, di inserirla in colonne in un rapporto parlamentare, avrebbe saputo come dividerla.
In alcune fasi della sua lavorazione del tessuto umano, i processi del tempo sono molto rapidi. Poiché il giovane Thomas e Sissy si trovavano entrambi in una di queste fasi del loro sviluppo, questi cambiamenti furono realizzati in un anno o due; mentre lo stesso signor Gradgrind sembrava immobile nel suo percorso e non subiva alcuna alterazione.
Tranne uno, che era al di fuori del suo necessario percorso attraverso il mulino. Il tempo lo spinse dentro un piccolo e rumoroso meccanismo piuttosto sporco in un angolo remoto, e lo fece diventare membro del Parlamento per Coketown: uno dei membri rispettabili per i pesi e le misure al minuto, uno dei rappresentanti della tabella pitagorica, uno di quei signori onorevoli sordi, signori onorevoli muti, signori onorevoli ciechi, signori onorevoli zoppi, signori onorevoli morti per ogni altra considerazione. Altrimenti perché vivremmo in una terra cristiana, milleottocento e qualcosa di anni dopo il nostro Maestro?
Tutto questo tempo Louisa era passata avanti così tranquilla e riservata, e tanto dedita ad osservare le braci luminose al crepuscolo mentre cadevano nel focolare ed si spegnevano, che dal momento in cui suo padre aveva detto che lei era quasi una giovane donna — il quale sembrava fosse ieri — non aveva quasi più attirato la sua attenzione quando l’aveva trovata ormai una vera e propria giovane donna.
‘Una donna piuttosto giovane’, disse il signor Gradgrind, pensieroso. ‘Caspita!’
Poco dopo questa scoperta, per diversi giorni divenne più pensieroso del solito e sembrava molto assorbito da un solo argomento. Una certa sera, mentre stava uscendo e Louisa venne a salutarlo prima della sua partenza - dato che non sarebbe stato a casa fino a tardi e lei non lo avrebbe rivisto fino al mattino - la tenne tra le braccia, guardandola con il suo sguardo più gentile, e disse:
‘La mia cara Louisa, sei una donna!’
Rispose con lo sguardo rapido e indagatore della notte in cui era stata trovata al Circo; poi abbassò gli occhi. «Sì, padre».
«Mia cara», disse il signor Gradgrind, «devo parlare con te da solo e seriamente. Vieni da me nella mia stanza dopo colazione domani, vuoi?»
‘Sì, padre.’
«Le tue mani sono piuttosto fredde, Louisa. Non ti senti bene?»
«Abbastanza bene, padre».
’, e allegro?’
Lo guardò di nuovo e sorrise nel suo modo particolare. «Sono allegra, padre, come sono solita essere o come ero solita essere».
«Bene», disse il signor Gradgrind. Così la baciò e se ne andò; e Louisa tornò nel sereno appartamento dal carattere da taglio di capelli, appoggiando il gomito sulla mano, guardò ancora le scintille effimere che così presto si spensero in cenere.
«Sei lì, Loo?» disse suo fratello, guardando dentro dalla porta. Era ormai un giovane signore di piacere e non proprio dei più attraenti.
«Caro Tom», rispose lei alzandosi e abbracciandolo, «è tanto tempo che non vieni a trovarmi!»
«Perché, sono stata impegnata in altro, Loo, la sera; e di giorno il vecchio Bounderby mi ha tenuta piuttosto occupata. Ma gli faccio presente a proposito tuo quando si spinge troppo oltre, e così manteniamo un’intesa. Dico! Ha detto qualcosa di particolare papà a te oggi o ieri, Loo?»
«No, Tom. Ma mi ha detto questa sera che voleva farlo domattina».
«Ah! È proprio questo che intendo», disse Tom. «Sai dove sarà stasera?» — con un’espressione molto seria.
‘No.’
«Allora ve lo dico io. È con il vecchio Bounderby. Stanno tenendo una vera e propria confabulazione insieme alla Banca. Perché alla Banca, secondo voi? Beh, ve lo dico di nuovo. Penso che sia per tenere le orecchie della signora Sparsit il più lontano possibile».
Con la mano sulla spalla del fratello, Louisa rimaneva ancora in piedi a guardare il fuoco. Il fratello le lanciò un’occhiata al volto con più interesse del solito e, cingendole la vita con il braccio, l’attirò dolcemente verso di sé.
‘Sei molto affezionata a me, vero, Loo?’
“Sono davvero io, Tom, anche se lasci passare così tanto tempo senza venire a trovarmi.”
«Beh, mia sorella», disse Tom, «quando dici così, sei vicina ai miei pensieri. Potremmo stare insieme molto più spesso - non credi? Quasi sempre insieme - non sarebbe bello? Mi farebbe un gran bene se ti decidessi a fare quello che so tu, Loo. Sarebbe una cosa splendida per me. Sarebbe davvero fantastico!»
La sua attenzione lo disorientava nella sua astuta osservazione. Non riusciva a capire nulla dal suo volto. La strinse tra le braccia e la baciò sulla guancia. Lei ricambiò il bacio, ma continuò a guardare il fuoco.
«Dico, Loo! Ho pensato di venire e solo accennarti a cosa stava succedendo: anche se supponevo che probabilmente lo avresti indovinato, anche senza saperlo. Non posso restare, perché ho un appuntamento con alcuni amici questa sera. Non dimenticherai quanto sei affezionato a me?»
‘No, caro Tom, non dimenticherò.’
“Che ragazza fantastica”, disse Tom. “Arrivederci, Loo.”
Gli diede una cordiale buona notte e uscì con lui fino alla porta, da cui si potevano vedere i fuochi di Coketown che rendevano il paesaggio sinistro. Rimase lì, guardando fisso verso di loro, ascoltando i suoi passi che si allontanavano. Si ritirarono rapidamente, contenti di andarsene da Stone Lodge; e lei rimase ancora lì quando lui se ne fu andato e tutto era tranquillo. Sembrava che prima nel suo fuoco interiore nella casa, poi nell’alone infuocato all’esterno, cercasse di scoprire quale tipo di trama il vecchio Tempo, il più grande e antico Tessitore di tutti, avrebbe tessuto dai fili che aveva già intrecciato in una donna. Ma la sua fabbrica è un luogo segreto, il suo lavoro è silenzioso e le sue Mani sono mute.
CHAPTER XV FATHER AND DAUGHTER
ALTHOUGH Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove (which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits. In that charmed apartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into exact totals, and finally settled—if those concerned could only have been brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, in his Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
To this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid; Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window looked towards Coketown; and when she sat down near her father’s table, she saw the high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy distance gloomily.
‘My dear Louisa,’ said her father, ‘I prepared you last night to give me your serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have together. You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say, so much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect confidence in your good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and calculation. From that ground alone, I know you will view and consider what I am going to communicate.’
He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. But she said never a word.
‘Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has been made to me.’
Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so far surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, ‘a proposal of marriage, my dear.’ To which she returned, without any visible emotion whatever:
‘I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you.’
‘Well!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the moment at a loss, ‘you are even more dispassionate than I expected, Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have it in charge to make?’
‘I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unprepared, I wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it to me, father.’
Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment as his daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his hand, turned it over, laid it down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the blade of it, considering how to go on.
‘What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I have undertaken then to let you know that—in short, that Mr. Bounderby has informed me that he has long watched your progress with particular interest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the time might ultimately arrive when he should offer you his hand in marriage. That time, to which he has so long, and certainly with great constancy, looked forward, is now come. Mr. Bounderby has made his proposal of marriage to me, and has entreated me to make it known to you, and to express his hope that you will take it into your favourable consideration.’
Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hollow. The distant smoke very black and heavy.
‘Father,’ said Louisa, ‘do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?’
Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected question. ‘Well, my child,’ he returned, ‘I—really—cannot take upon myself to say.’
‘Father,’ pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, ‘do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?’
‘My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing.’
‘Father,’ she still pursued, ‘does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?’
‘Really, my dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘it is difficult to answer your question—’
‘Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?
‘Certainly, my dear. Because;’ here was something to demonstrate, and it set him up again; ‘because the reply depends so materially, Louisa, on the sense in which we use the expression. Now, Mr. Bounderby does not do you the injustice, and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending to anything fanciful, fantastic, or (I am using synonymous terms) sentimental. Mr. Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eyes, to very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to your good sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any such ground. Therefore, perhaps the expression itself—I merely suggest this to you, my dear—may be a little misplaced.’
‘What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?’
‘Why, my dear Louisa,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recovered by this time, ‘I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question, as you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as one of tangible Fact. The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such subjects with irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no existence, properly viewed—really no existence—but it is no compliment to you to say, that you know better. Now, what are the Facts of this case? You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your respective years, but in your means and positions there is none; on the contrary, there is a great suitability. Then the question arises, Is this one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage? In considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom. It is remarkable as showing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the British possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation yet furnished us by travellers, yield similar results. The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears.’
CAPITOLO XV PADRE E FIGLIA
SEBENE il signor Gradgrind non fosse un secondo Barone Azzurro, la sua stanza era una vera e propria camera blu per l’abbondanza di libri azzurri che conteneva. Qualunque cosa potessero dimostrare (di solito tutto quello che si vuole), lo dimostravano là, in un esercito che si rafforzava costantemente con l’arrivo di nuovi recluti. In quell’appartamento incantato, le questioni sociali più complicate venivano risolte, portate a totali precisi e infine sistemate — se solo i diretti interessati avessero potuto saperlo. Come se un osservatorio astronomico dovesse essere costruito senza finestre, e l’astronomo all’interno dovesse organizzare l’universo stellato soltanto con penna, inchiostro e carta, così il signor Gradgrind, nel suo Osservatorio (e ce ne sono molti simili), non aveva bisogno di gettare uno sguardo sulle miriadi brulicanti di esseri umani intorno a lui, ma poteva sistemare tutti i loro destini su una lavagna e cancellare tutte le lacrime con un pezzetto di spugna sporco.
Così dunque all’Osservatorio: una stanza austera con un mortale orologio statistico orologio che scandiva ogni secondo con un ticchettio simile a un colpo battuto sul coperchio di una bara; Louisa si recò lì la mattina stabilita. Una finestra dava su Coketown, e quando si sedette vicino al tavolo del padre vide i camini alti e le lunghe scie di fumo che incombevano in lontananza pesanti e tetri.
«Mia cara Louisa», disse suo padre, «ti ho preparata ieri sera a prestarmi la tua seria attenzione nella conversazione che ora stiamo per avere insieme. Sei stata così bene educata e fai, sono felice di dirlo, tanto onore all’educazione che hai ricevuto, che ho piena fiducia nel tuo buon senso. Non sei impulsiva, non sei romantica, sei abituata a considerare tutto dal solido punto di vista disinteressato della ragione e del calcolo. Da quel punto di vista solo, so che guarderai e considererai ciò che sto per comunicarti».
Aspettò come se sarebbe stato felice che lei dicesse qualcosa; ma non disse una parola.
«Louisa, mia cara, sei oggetto di una proposta di matrimonio che mi è stata fatta.»
E ancora attese e ancora lei non rispose una sola parola. Questo lo sorprese al punto da indurlo a ripetere dolcemente: «Una proposta di matrimonio, mia cara». A cui lei replicò, senza alcuna emozione visibile:
‘Vi ascolto, padre. Sono attento, ve lo assicuro.’
«Bene!», disse il signor Gradgrind, scoppiando a ridere dopo essere rimasto per un momento senza parole, «sei ancora più impassibile di quanto mi aspettassi, Louisa. O forse non sei impreparata all’annuncio che ho l’onore di fare?»
«Non posso dirlo, padre, finché non l’ho sentito. Pronta o impreparata che sia, voglio sentirlo tutto da te. Voglio sentirti esporre la cosa a me, padre».
È strano da raccontare che il signor Gradgrind non fosse così calmo in quel momento come lo era sua figlia. Prese un tagliacarte tra le mani, lo girò e rigirò, lo posò, lo riprese di nuovo, e anche allora dovette guardarlo lungo la lama per riflettere su cosa fare dopo.
«Quello che dici, mia cara Louisa, è perfettamente ragionevole. Mi sono quindi assunto il compito di farti sapere che—insomma, che il signor Bounderby mi ha informato di aver seguito i tuoi progressi con particolare interesse e piacere per molto tempo, e di aver sperato a lungo che il momento potesse infine arrivare in cui ti avrebbe offerto la sua mano in matrimonio. Quel momento, al quale ha guardato così a lungo, e certamente con grande costanza, è ora giunto. Il signor Bounderby mi ha fatto la sua proposta di matrimonio e mi ha pregato di fartela conoscere, esprimendo la sua speranza che tu ne prenderai in seria considerazione».
Silenzio tra loro. L’osceno orologio statistico molto vuoto. Il fumo lontano molto nero e denso.
«Padre», disse Louisa, «credi che io ami il signor Bounderby?»
Il signor Gradgrind fu estremamente imbarazzato da questa inattesa domanda. “Beh, mio piccolo”, rispose, “non mi sento di dire nulla.”
«Padre», proseguì Louisa con esattamente la stessa voce di prima, «mi chiedete di amare il signor Bounderby?»
‘No, mia cara Louisa. Niente.’
«Padre», continuò lei, «il signor Bounderby mi chiede di amare lui?»
‘In verità, mia cara’, disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘è difficile rispondere alla tua domanda, ’
«È difficile rispondere Sì o No, padre?»
«Certamente, mia cara. Perché» qui c’era qualcosa da dimostrare e ciò lo rinvigorì; «perché la risposta dipende così materialmente, Louisa, dal senso in cui usiamo l’espressione. Ora, il signor Bounderby non vi fa un torto, né si fa un torto a se stesso, fingendo qualcosa di fantasioso, fantastico o (sto usando termini sinonimi) sentimentale. Il signor Bounderby avrebbe visto crescere voi sotto i suoi occhi con ben poca utilità, se potesse dimenticare fino a tal punto ciò che è dovuto al vostro buon senso, per non dire al suo, da rivolgervisi su un tale terreno. Pertanto, forse l’espressione stessa — vi suggerisco solo questo, mia cara — può essere un po’ fuori luogo».
‘Che cosa mi consigli di usare al suo posto, padre?’
«Perché, mia cara Louisa», disse il signor Gradgrind, completamente ristabilitosi entro questo tempo, «ti consiglierei (poiché me lo chiedi) di considerare questa questione, come sei stata abituata a considerare ogni altra questione, semplicemente come una questione di fatto tangibile. Gli ignoranti e i frivoli possono complicare tali argomenti con fantasie irrilevanti e altre assurdità che non hanno alcuna esistenza, se guardate correttamente — davvero nessuna esistenza — ma non è un complimento per te dire che sai meglio. Ora, quali sono i fatti di questo caso? Hai, diciamo in numeri arrotondati, vent’anni; il signor Bounderby ne ha, diciamo sempre in numeri arrotondati, cinquanta. C’è una certa disparità nei vostri rispettivi anni, ma nei mezzi e nelle posizioni non ce n’è nessuna; al contrario, c’è una grande adattabilità. Allora sorge la domanda: questa disparità è sufficiente a fungere da ostacolo a un matrimonio del genere? Nel considerare questa questione, non è irrilevante tenere conto delle statistiche sulle nozze, per quanto finora ottenute, in Inghilterra e Galles. Scopro, consultando i numeri, che una grande proporzione di questi matrimoni viene contratta tra parti di età molto disuguali, e che il più anziano dei contraenti è, in poco più di tre quarti di questi casi, lo sposo. È notevole come dimostrazione dell’ampia prevalenza di questa legge, che tra i nativi dei possedimenti britannici in India, così come in una parte considerevole della Cina e tra i Calmucchi della Tartaria, i migliori metodi di calcolo finora fornitici dai viaggiatori producono risultati simili. La disparità da me menzionata cessa quindi quasi di essere tale e (virtualmente) scompare del tutto».
‘What do you recommend, father,’ asked Louisa, her reserved composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results, ‘that I should substitute for the term I used just now? For the misplaced expression?’
‘Louisa,’ returned her father, ‘it appears to me that nothing can be plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think nothing can be plainer than that?’
‘Shall I marry him?’ repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.
‘Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young women.’
‘No, father,’ she returned, ‘I do not.’
‘I now leave you to judge for yourself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among practical minds; I have stated it, as the case of your mother and myself was stated in its time. The rest, my dear Louisa, is for you to decide.’
From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are drowned there.
Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the town, that he said, at length: ‘Are you consulting the chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?’
‘There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!’ she answered, turning quickly.
‘Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the remark.’ To do him justice he did not, at all.
She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concentrating her attention upon him again, said, ‘Father, I have often thought that life is very short.’—This was so distinctly one of his subjects that he interposed.
‘It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of human life is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.’
‘I speak of my own life, father.’
‘O indeed? Still,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I need not point out to you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate.’
‘While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the little I am fit for. What does it matter?’
Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words; replying, ‘How, matter? What matter, my dear?’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ she went on in a steady, straight way, without regarding this, ‘asks me to marry him. The question I have to ask myself is, shall I marry him? That is so, father, is it not? You have told me so, father. Have you not?’
‘Certainly, my dear.’
‘Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that this was my answer. Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I should wish him to know what I said.’
‘It is quite right, my dear,’ retorted her father approvingly, ‘to be exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have you any wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my child?’
‘None, father. What does it matter!’
Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken her hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with some little discord on his ear. He paused to look at her, and, still holding her hand, said:
‘Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one question, because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too remote. But perhaps I ought to do so. You have never entertained in secret any other proposal?’
‘Father,’ she returned, almost scornfully, ‘what other proposal can have been made to me? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my heart’s experiences?’
‘My dear Louisa,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied. ‘You correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my duty.’
‘What do I know, father,’ said Louisa in her quiet manner, ‘of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?’ As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.
‘My dear,’ assented her eminently practical parent, ‘quite true, quite true.’
‘Why, father,’ she pursued, ‘what a strange question to ask me! The baby-preference that even I have heard of as common among children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child’s heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s belief or a child’s fear.’
Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. ‘My dear Louisa,’ said he, ‘you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.’
«Che cosa mi consigliate, padre», chiese Louisa, la cui riservata compostezza non era affatto turbata da questi risultati soddisfacenti, «di sostituire al termine che ho usato poco fa? Per l’espressione inappropriata?»
«Louisa», rispose suo padre, «mi sembra che nulla possa essere più chiaro. Limitandoti rigidamente al Fatto, la domanda di fatto che ti poni è: Il signor Bounderby mi chiede di sposarlo? Sì. La sola questione rimanente è quindi: Lo sposerò? Penso che nulla possa essere più chiaro di così».
«Lo sposerò?» ripeté Louisa con grande ponderazione.
«Esattamente. E mi rallegra, in quanto tuo padre, mia cara Louisa, sapere che non ti accosti a tale questione con gli abituali modi di pensare e le consuete abitudini di vita tipiche di molte giovani donne».
‘No, padre,’ rispose lei, ‘non lo faccio.’
«Ora vi lascio giudicare da voi stessi», disse il signor Gradgrind. «Ho esposto il caso, come tali casi vengono solitamente esposti tra le menti pratiche; l’ho esposto, come fu esposto il caso di vostra madre e mio in quel tempo. Il resto, mia cara Louisa, spetta a te decidere.»
Fin dall’inizio, lei era seduta a fissarlo con sguardo fisso. Mentre ora si appoggiava allo schienale della sua poltrona e rivolgeva i suoi occhi profondamente incassati su di lei a loro volta, forse avrebbe potuto cogliere un momento di esitazione in lei, quando era spinta ad abbandonarsi sul suo petto e a riversargli le confessioni represse del suo cuore. Ma per vederlo, avrebbe dovuto superare d’un balzo i baratri artificiali che aveva eretto da molti anni, tra sé e tutte quelle sottili essenze dell’umanità che sfuggiranno alla massima astuzia dell’algebra fino a quando l’ultimo trombone mai suonato non soffierà anche l’algebra in rovina. I baratri erano troppi e troppo alti per un tale salto. Con il suo volto inflessibile, utilitaristico, pratico, la indurì di nuovo; e il momento sfrecciò via nelle profondità insondabili del passato, a mescolarsi con tutte le opportunità perdute che sono annegate lì.
Distogliendo lo sguardo da lui, rimase seduta a lungo guardando in silenzio verso la città, finché alla fine egli disse: «Stai consultando i camini dello stabilimento di Coketown, Louisa?»
«Non sembra esserci altro che fumo lento e monotono. Eppure quando viene la notte, scoppia il fuoco, padre!» rispose lei, voltandosi in fretta.
«Certo che lo so, Louisa. Non vedo l’applicazione di questa osservazione». Per fare giustizia a lui non la vedeva affatto.
La scacciò con un leggero gesto della mano e concentrando di nuovo la sua attenzione su di lui disse: «Padre, ho spesso pensato che la vita sia molto breve». — Questo era così chiaramente uno dei suoi argomenti preferiti che egli intervenne.
«È breve, senza dubbio, mia cara. Tuttavia, la durata media della vita umana si è dimostrata essere aumentata negli ultimi anni. I calcoli di diverse compagnie di assicurazioni sulla vita e uffici delle rendite vitalizie, tra le altre cifre che non possono sbagliare, hanno stabilito il fatto».
‘Parlo della mia vita, padre.’
«Ah sì? Tuttavia», disse il signor Gradgrind, «non ho bisogno di farti osservare, Louisa, che è regolata dalle leggi che regolano le vite nella loro totalità.»
«Finché dura, vorrei fare quel poco che posso e quel poco per cui sono adatto. Che importa?»
Il signor Gradgrind sembrò piuttosto perplesso nel comprendere le ultime quattro parole, rispondendo: «Come, materia? Quale materia, mia cara?»
«Il signor Bounderby», continuò in modo fermo e diretto, senza badarci, «mi chiede di sposarlo. La domanda che devo pormi è: lo sposerò? È così, padre, non è vero? Me l’avete detto voi stesso, padre. Non è forse vero?»
‘Certo, mia cara.’
«Sia come vuole. Poiché il signor Bounderby preferisce trattarmi così, sono d’accordo ad accettare la sua proposta. Diglielo, padre, non appena ti pare, che questa è stata la mia risposta. Ripetilo, parola per parola, se puoi, perché vorrei che sapesse esattamente cosa ho detto».
«È del tutto giusto, mia cara», ribatté suo padre con approvazione, «essere esatti. Ti accontenterò nella tua richiesta molto appropriata. Hai qualche desiderio in merito al periodo del tuo matrimonio, mio figlio?»
‘Nessuno, padre. Che importa!’
Il signor Gradgrind aveva avvicinato un po’ di più la sua sedia a lei e le prese la mano. Ma il ripetersi di queste parole sembrò colpire con una certa dissonanza il suo orecchio. Si fermò per guardarla, e pur continuando a tenerle la mano, disse:
«Louisa, non ho ritenuto essenziale porvi una domanda perché la possibilità che essa implicava mi sembrava troppo remota. Ma forse avrei dovuto farlo. Non avete mai accettato segretamente un’altra proposta?»
«Padre», rispose lei quasi con disprezzo, «che altro invito avrebbero potuto farmi? Chi ho visto? Dove sono stata? Quali sono le esperienze del mio cuore?»
«Mia cara Louisa», rispose il signor Gradgrind, rassicurato e soddisfatto, «mi correggete giustamente. Volevo semplicemente adempiere al mio dovere».
«Che cosa ne so io, padre», disse Louisa nel suo modo tranquillo, «di gusti e fantasie; di aspirazioni e affetti; di tutta quella parte della mia natura in cui tali cose leggere avrebbero potuto essere nutrite? Che fuga ho avuto dai problemi che potevano essere dimostrati, e dalle realtà che potevano essere afferrate?» Mentre lo diceva, inconsciamente chiuse la mano, come se su un oggetto solido, e lentamente l’aprì come se stesse rilasciando polvere o cenere.
‘Carissima,’ acconsentì il suo genitore estremamente pratico, ‘del tutto vero, del tutto vero.’
«Ma, padre», continuò lei, «che strana domanda da fare a me! La preferenza per i bambini che persino io ho sentito dire essere comune tra i bambini non ha mai trovato il suo innocente rifugio nel mio cuore. Siete stato così premuroso con me, che non ho mai avuto un cuore di bambino. Mi avete educata così bene, che non ho mai sognato i sogni di un bambino. Avete agito con tanta saggezza, padre, dalla mia culla fino a questo momento, che non ho mai avuto la fede o la paura di un bambino, né le sue paure.»
Il signor Gradgrind fu profondamente commosso dal suo successo e da questa testimonianza di esso. “La mia cara Louisa,” disse lui, “mi ripaghi abbondantemente della mia cura. Bacialo, mia cara ragazza.”
So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, he said, ‘I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived. Mr. Bounderby is a very remarkable man; and what little disparity can be said to exist between you—if any—is more than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. It has always been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still in your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age. Kiss me once more, Louisa. Now, let us go and find your mother.’
Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed lady with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while Sissy worked beside her. She gave some feeble signs of returning animation when they entered, and presently the faint transparency was presented in a sitting attitude.
‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, who had waited for the achievement of this feat with some impatience, ‘allow me to present to you Mrs. Bounderby.’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘so you have settled it! Well, I’m sure I hope your health may be good, Louisa; for if your head begins to split as soon as you are married, which was the case with mine, I cannot consider that you are to be envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as all girls do. However, I give you joy, my dear—and I hope you may now turn all your ological studies to good account, I am sure I do! I must give you a kiss of congratulation, Louisa; but don’t touch my right shoulder, for there’s something running down it all day long. And now you see,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the affectionate ceremony, ‘I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and night, to know what I am to call him!’
‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, solemnly, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Gradgrind, when he is married to Louisa! I must call him something. It’s impossible,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness and injury, ‘to be constantly addressing him and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn’t hear of Joe, you very well know. Am I to call my own son-in-law, Mister! Not, I believe, unless the time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my relations. Then, what am I to call him!’
Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable emergency, Mrs. Gradgrind departed this life for the time being, after delivering the following codicil to her remarks already executed:
‘As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is,—and I ask it with a fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet,—that it may take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall never hear the last of.’
When Mr. Gradgrind had presented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy had suddenly turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in doubt, in a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa. Louisa had known it, and seen it, without looking at her. From that moment she was impassive, proud and cold—held Sissy at a distance—changed to her altogether.
Così sua figlia lo baciò. Trattenendola nel suo abbraccio, le disse: «Posso assicurarti ora, mia figlia prediletta, che sono reso felice dalla saggia decisione a cui sei giunta. Il signor Bounderby è un uomo molto straordinario; e la poca disparità che si può dire esista tra voi — se mai ce n’è una — è più che compensata dal tono acquisito dalla tua mente. È sempre stato mio intento educarti in modo tale che tu potessi, pur nella tua giovane età, essere (se mi è lecito esprimermi così) quasi di qualsiasi età. Bacialo ancora una volta, Louisa. Ora andiamo a trovare tua madre».
Di conseguenza scesero nel salotto dove la stimata signora, che non aveva peli sulla lingua, era distesa come al solito mentre Sissy lavorava accanto a lei. Quando entrarono diede alcuni deboli segni di tornare in vita e poco dopo il pallido fantasma si presentò seduto.
«Signora Gradgrind», disse il marito, che aveva atteso con qualche impazienza la realizzazione di questo exploit, «mi permetta di presentarle la signora Bounderby».
«Oh!» disse la signora Gradgrind «allora l’avete deciso! Bene, sono sicura che spero tu stia bene, Louisa; perché se ti viene mal di testa non appena sposata, come è successo a me, non posso pensare che tu sia da invidiare, anche se non ho alcun dubbio che tu lo creda, come tutte le ragazze. Comunque, ti do i miei auguri, mia cara—e spero che ora tu possa mettere a frutto tutti i tuoi studi ologici, ne sono sicura! Devo darti un bacio di congratulazione, Louisa; ma non toccare la mia spalla destra, perché qualcosa continua a scorrervi lungo tutto il giorno. E ora vedi», singhiozzò la signora Gradgrind, sistemando le sue sciarpe dopo la cerimonia affettuosa «mi preoccuperò, al mattino, a mezzogiorno e alla sera, di sapere come chiamarlo!»
“Signora Gradgrind,” disse suo marito solennemente, “cosa vuoi dire?”
«Non importa come lo chiamerò quando sarà sposato a Louisa! Devo pur chiamarlo in qualche modo. È impossibile», disse la signora Gradgrind con un misto di cortesia e offesa, «continuare a rivolgermi a lui senza mai dargli un nome. Non posso chiamarlo Josiah, perché il nome mi è insopportabile. Neanche tu vorresti sentirlo chiamare Joe, lo sai benissimo. Devo forse chiamare mio genero Signore! Credo di no, a meno che non sia arrivato quel momento in cui, da malata, sarò calpestata dai miei parenti. Allora come dovrò chiamarlo!»
Nessuno dei presenti avendo alcun suggerimento da offrire nell’eccezionale emergenza, la signora Gradgrind abbandonò questa vita per il momento, dopo aver espresso il seguente codicillo alle sue osservazioni già formulate:
«Per quanto riguarda il matrimonio, tutto ciò che chiedo, Louisa, è — e lo chiedo con un tremito nel petto che si estende fino alle piante dei piedi — che abbia luogo presto. Altrimenti so bene che sarà uno di quegli argomenti di cui non sentiremo mai la fine».
Quando il signor Gradgrind presentò la signora Bounderby, Sissy si voltò improvvisamente e guardò Louisa con meraviglia, pietà, dolore, dubbio e una miriade di altre emozioni. Louisa lo sapeva e l’aveva visto senza guardarla. Da quel momento in poi fu impassibile, orgogliosa e fredda: tenne Sissy a distanza, cambiò completamente nei suoi confronti.
CHAPTER XVI HUSBAND AND WIFE
MR. BOUNDERBY’S first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Sparsit. He could not make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step might be. Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady Scadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether she would be plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would break her heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr. Bounderby could not all foresee. However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so, after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to do it by word of mouth.
On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose, he took the precaution of stepping into a chemist’s shop and buying a bottle of the very strongest smelling-salts. ‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘if she takes it in the fainting way, I’ll have the skin off her nose, at all events!’ But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he entered his own house with anything but a courageous air; and appeared before the object of his misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of coming direct from the pantry.
‘Good evening, Mr. Bounderby!’
‘Good evening, ma’am, good evening.’ He drew up his chair, and Mrs. Sparsit drew back hers, as who should say, ‘Your fireside, sir. I freely admit it. It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper.’
‘Don’t go to the North Pole, ma’am!’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, and returned, though short of her former position.
Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp pair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connexion with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before she looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her attention with a hitch of his head.
‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the little bottle was ready for use, ‘I have no occasion to say to you, that you are not only a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman.’
‘Sir,’ returned the lady, ‘this is indeed not the first time that you have honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion.’
‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘I am going to astonish you.’
‘Yes, sir?’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the most tranquil manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and she now laid down her work, and smoothed those mittens.
‘I am going, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘to marry Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I hope you may be happy, Mr. Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!’ And she said it with such great condescension as well as with such great compassion for him, that Bounderby,—far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her workbox at the mirror, or swooned on the hearthrug,—corked up the smelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, ‘Now confound this woman, who could have even guessed that she would take it in this way!’
‘I wish with all my heart, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly superior manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to pity him ever afterwards; ‘that you may be in all respects very happy.’
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Bounderby, with some resentment in his tone: which was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, ‘I am obliged to you. I hope I shall be.’
‘Do you, sir!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with great affability. ‘But naturally you do; of course you do.’
A very awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby’s part, succeeded. Mrs. Sparsit sedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a small cough, which sounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.
‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Bounderby, ‘under these circumstances, I imagine it would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here, though you would be very welcome here.’
‘Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!’ Mrs. Sparsit shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed the small cough—coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within her, but had better be coughed down.
‘However, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘there are apartments at the Bank, where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a catch than otherwise; and if the same terms—’
‘I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that you would always substitute the phrase, annual compliment.’
‘Well, ma’am, annual compliment. If the same annual compliment would be acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, unless you do.’
‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘The proposal is like yourself, and if the position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without descending lower in the social scale—’
‘Why, of course it is,’ said Bounderby. ‘If it was not, ma’am, you don’t suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you have moved in. Not that I care for such society, you know! But you do.’
‘Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate.’
‘You’ll have your own private apartments, and you’ll have your coals and your candles, and all the rest of it, and you’ll have your maid to attend upon you, and you’ll have your light porter to protect you, and you’ll be what I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable,’ said Bounderby.
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say no more. In yielding up my trust here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of dependence:’ she might have said the sweetbread, for that delicate article in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite supper: ‘and I would rather receive it from your hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, I accept your offer gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for past favours. And I hope, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an impressively compassionate manner, ‘I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may be all you desire, and deserve!’
Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim. She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary altogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that tenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used to break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.
Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight weeks’ time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted wooer. Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and, on all occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing aspect. Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were made, settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. The Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons. The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his accustomed regularity.
So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid wooden legs—that popular order of architecture—Josiah Bounderby Esquire of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone Lodge, M.P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.
There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of the company.
After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms:
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness, I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and know what I am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech from a man who, when he sees a Post, says “that’s a Post,” and when he sees a Pump, says “that’s a Pump,” and is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you don’t, I can’t help it. I do feel independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At the same time—not to deceive you—I believe I am worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife has found.’
Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting for her—flushed, either with his feelings, or the vinous part of the breakfast.
‘What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!’ whispered Tom.
She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first time.
‘Old Bounderby’s quite ready,’ said Tom. ‘Time’s up. Good-bye! I shall be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo! AN’T it uncommonly jolly now!’
END OF THE FIRST BOOK
CAPITOLO XVI MARITO E MOGLIE
La prima preoccupazione di Mr. Bounderby nel venire a conoscenza della sua felicità fu causata dalla necessità di comunicarla alla signora Sparsit. Non riusciva a decidersi su come farlo, né poteva immaginare quali sarebbero state le conseguenze di tale passo. Se lei se ne sarebbe andata immediatamente con tutti i suoi averi da Lady Scadgers o avrebbe rifiutato categoricamente di spostarsi dai locali; se si sarebbe mostrata piagnucolosa o offensiva, lacrimosa o furiosa; se gli avrebbe spezzato il cuore o lo specchio; Mr. Bounderby non poteva prevedere tutto ciò. Tuttavia, poiché era necessario farlo, non aveva altra scelta che agire; così, dopo aver tentato di scrivere diverse lettere e fallito in tutte, decise di comunicarglielo a voce.
Sulla via del ritorno, la sera che aveva riservato per questo scopo così importante, prese l’accortezza di entrare in una farmacia e comprare un flacone dei sali da smelling più forti. “Perbacco!” disse il signor Bounderby, “se si mette a svenire, le scorticherò il naso, almeno!” Ma nonostante fosse così preparato, entrò nella sua casa tutt’altro che con aria coraggiosa; e apparve davanti all’oggetto dei suoi timori come un cane consapevole di provenire direttamente dalla dispensa.
‘Buonasera, signor Bounderby!’
«Buonasera, signora, buonasera». Si avvicinò con la sedia e la signora Sparsit si ritrasse con la sua come per dire: «Il suo caminetto, signore. Lo ammetto senza riserve. È lei a doverlo occupare tutto, se lo ritiene opportuno».
«Non vada al Polo Nord, signora!» disse il signor Bounderby.
«Grazie, signore», disse la signora Sparsit e tornò indietro, sebbene non al suo precedente posto.
Il signor Bounderby la guardava seduto mentre con le punte di un paio di forbici rigide e acuminate praticava dei fori per qualche inspiegabile scopo ornamentale in un pezzo di batista. Un’operazione che, considerata in relazione alle sopracciglia folte e al naso romano, suggeriva con una certa vivacità l’idea di un falco intento a beccare gli occhi di un uccellino coriaceo. Era così assorbita dal suo lavoro che passarono molti minuti prima che sollevasse lo sguardo; quando lo fece, il signor Bounderby attirò la sua attenzione con uno scatto del capo.
«Signora Sparsit», disse il signor Bounderby mettendo le mani nelle tasche e assicurandosi con la mano destra che il tappo della bottiglietta fosse pronto all’uso, «non ho bisogno di dirle che lei non è solo una signora nata e cresciuta come tale, ma anche una donna dannatamente sensibile.»
«Signore», rispose la signora, «questo non è infatti il primo momento in cui mi avete onorata con espressioni simili della vostra buona opinione».
“Signora Sparsit,” disse il signor Bounderby, “sto per stupirla.”
«Sì, signore?», rispose la signora Sparsit, interrogativa e nel modo più tranquillo possibile. Di solito portava i guanti corti e ora depose il lavoro e lisciò quei guanti.
«Sto per sposare», disse Bounderby, «la figlia di Tom Gradgrind.»
«Sì, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit. «Spero che lei sia felice, signor Bounderby. Oh, davvero spero che lei sia felice, signore!» E lo disse con una condiscendenza così grande e con una compassione per lui altrettanto grande, che Bounderby — molto più sconcertato di quanto non sarebbe stato se gli avesse lanciato il suo nécessaire contro lo specchio o fosse svenuta sul tappeto del caminetto — ripose strettamente nell’astuccio l’acqua odorosa nella tasca e pensò: «Ora maledetta a questa donna, che avrebbe potuto anche solo immaginare che avrebbe reagito in questo modo!»
«Lo desidero con tutto il cuore, signore», disse la signora Sparsit, con un tono di grande superiorità; in qualche modo sembrava che, in un attimo, avesse stabilito il diritto a compatirlo per sempre dopo quel momento; «che possiate essere sotto ogni aspetto molto felice».
«Beh, signora», rispose Bounderby con un certo risentimento nella voce, che era chiaramente abbassata, sebbene suo malgrado, «le sono obbligato. Spero di esserlo».
«Lo fa lei, signore!» disse la signora Sparsit con grande affabilità «Ma naturalmente lo fa; certamente lo fa».
Seguì una pausa molto imbarazzante da parte del signor Bounderby. La signora Sparsit riprese tranquillamente il suo lavoro e di tanto in tanto emetteva un piccolo colpo di tosse, che sembrava la tosse della forza cosciente e della pazienza.
«Beh, signora», riprese Bounderby, «in queste circostanze immagino che non sarebbe gradito per un carattere come il suo rimanere qui, anche se lei sarebbe più che benvenuta.»
“Oh, caro signore no, non potrei assolutamente pensare una cosa del genere!” disse la signora Sparsit scuotendo il capo, sempre con quell’aria di grande superiorità, e cambiò un pochino il suo piccolo colpo di tosse: tossì come se lo spirito della profezia si levasse in lei, ma fosse meglio reprimerlo.
«Tuttavia, signora», disse Bounderby, «alla Banca ci sono degli appartamenti dove una signora nata e cresciuta come custode del posto sarebbe piuttosto un vantaggio che altro; e se le stesse condizioni, »
«Le chiedo scusa, signore. Lei è stato così gentile da promettere che avrebbe sempre sostituito la frase con “complimento annuale”.»
«Bene, signora, i miei migliori auguri per l’anno nuovo. Se gli stessi auguri di buon anno sarebbero graditi anche da parte sua, non vedo motivo di separarci, a meno che lei non lo voglia».
«Signore», rispose la signora Sparsit, «la proposta è come voi siete e se il posto che assumerò alla Banca è tale da poterlo occupare senza scendere più in basso nella scala sociale, »
«Eh sì, certo che lo è», disse Bounderby. «Se non fosse così, signora, lei crede forse che l’avrei offerto a una donna che ha frequentato la società che lei ha frequentato? Non che io tenga a quel tipo di società, sa! Ma lei sì».
‘Il signor Bounderby è molto premuroso.’
«Avrete i vostri appartamenti privati e avrete il carbone e le candele e tutto il resto, e avrete la vostra cameriera che vi servirà, e avrete un facchino per proteggervi, e sarete, mi permetto di dire, comodissima», disse Bounderby.
«Signore», riprese la signora Sparsit, «non dica altro. Rinunciando alla mia posizione qui non sarò esentata dall’obbligo di mangiare il pane della dipendenza:» avrebbe potuto dire il fegato di vitello, poiché quel delicato piatto in una salsa bruna saporita era la sua cena preferita: «e lo preferirei riceverlo dalle sue mani che da chiunque altro. Perciò, signore, accetto con gratitudine la sua offerta e con molti sinceri ringraziamenti per i favori passati. E spero, signore», concluse la signora Sparsit in tono compassionevole e solenne, «spero con tutto il cuore che la signorina Gradgrind possa essere tutto ciò che lei desidera e merita!»
Nulla più allontanò la signora Sparsit da quella posizione. Fu inutile che Bounderby facesse il prepotente o si affermasse con uno dei suoi modi esplosivi; la signora Sparsit era risoluta ad avere compassione di lui, come una Vittima. Era cortese, obbligante, allegra, speranzosa; ma più cortese, più obbligante, più allegra, più speranzosa, più esemplare in tutto lei; più abbandonato Sacrificio e Vittima lui. Aveva tanta tenerezza per il suo destino melanconico, che il suo grande volto rosso era solito coprirsi di sudor freddo quando lo guardava.
Nel frattempo il matrimonio era stato fissato per essere celebrato tra otto settimane, e il signor Bounderby andava ogni sera a Stone Lodge come pretendente accettato. Il amore si manifestava in queste occasioni sotto forma di bracciali; e, in tutte le occasioni durante il periodo delle nozze, assumeva un aspetto industriale. Si cucivano abiti, si fabbricavano gioielli, si preparavano torte e guanti, si stipulavano accordi, e una vasta gamma di Fatti rendeva onore al contratto. Tutto era fatto di Fatti, dall’inizio alla fine. Le Ore non eseguivano nessuna di quelle esibizioni rosa che i poeti sciocchi hanno attribuito loro in tali momenti; né gli orologi andavano più veloci o più lenti rispetto ad altre stagioni. Il mortale registratore statistico nell’osservatorio Gradgrind dava un colpo in testa a ogni secondo appena nato e lo seppelliva con la sua consueta regolarità.
Così arrivò il giorno, come tutti gli altri giorni arrivano alle persone che si attengono solo alla ragione; e quando arrivò, nella chiesa dalle fiorite gambe di legno - quell’ordine popolare di architettura - vennero celebrati i funerali di Josiah Bounderby Esquire di Coketown con Louisa, la figlia maggiore di Thomas Gradgrind Esquire di Stone Lodge, M.P. per quel collegio elettorale. E quando furono uniti in sacro matrimonio, andarono a casa a fare colazione nella già citata Stone Lodge.
C’era un gruppo di persone che si preoccupavano del miglioramento riunite per l’occasione propizia, le quali sapevano di cosa fosse fatto tutto ciò che avevano da mangiare e bere, come venisse importato o esportato, in quale quantità, su quali navi, nazionali o straniere, e tutti i dettagli. Le damigelle d’onore, fino alla piccola Jane Gradgrind, erano, dal punto di vista intellettuale, compagne adatte al ragazzo calcolatore; e non c’era sciocchezza in nessuno degli invitati.
Dopo colazione, lo sposo si rivolse loro nei seguenti termini:
«Signore e signori, io sono Josiah Bounderby di Coketown. Poiché avete reso onore a mia moglie e a me bevendo alla nostra salute e felicità, suppongo che debba ricambiare; anche se, dato che tutti mi conoscete e sapete chi sono e quale fosse la mia estrazione sociale, non vi aspetterete certo un discorso da uno che quando vede una posta dice “questa è una posta”, e quando vede una pompa dice “questa è una pompa”, e a cui non si può far dire di chiamare la posta pompa, o la pompa posta, o l’una o l’altra stuzzicadenti. Se questa mattina desiderate un discorso, il mio amico e suocero Tom Gradgrind è membro del Parlamento, e sapete dove trovarlo. Io non sono l’uomo che fa per voi. Tuttavia, se mi sento un po’ indipendente guardando questo tavolo oggi e riflettendo su quanto poco pensassi di sposare la figlia di Tom Gradgrind quando ero un ragazzino straccione che non si lavava mai il viso a meno che non fosse alla pompa, e nemmeno più di una volta ogni due settimane, spero di essere perdonato. Spero quindi che vi piaccia la mia sensazione di indipendenza; se non vi piace, non posso farci nulla. Mi sento proprio indipendente. Ora ho accennato io e avete accennato voi che oggi sono sposato con la figlia di Tom Gradgrind. Ne sono molto contento. È da tempo che desideravo esserlo. Ho seguito la sua educazione, e credo che sia degna di me. Allo stesso tempo — non voglio ingannarvi — credo di essere degno io di lei. Quindi vi ringrazio, a nome nostro, per il buon volere che avete dimostrato verso di noi; e il miglior augurio che posso fare alla parte celibe della compagnia presente è questo: spero che ogni scapolo possa trovare una moglie brava come quella che ho trovato io. E spero che ogni nubile possa trovare un marito bravo quanto quello che ha trovato mia moglie».
Poco dopo quel discorso, mentre si apprestavano a fare un viaggio nuziale a Lione, affinché il signor Bounderby potesse approfittare dell’occasione per vedere come se la passassero i Manovali in quelle parti e se anche loro avessero bisogno di essere nutriti con cucchiai d’oro; la felice coppia partì per la ferrovia. La sposa, scendendo le scale vestita per il suo viaggio, trovò Tom che l’aspettava - arrossato, sia per i suoi sentimenti, sia per la parte vinosa della colazione.
«Che ragazza in gamba sei, per essere una sorella così di prima qualità, Loo!» sussurrò Tom.
Si aggrappò a lui come avrebbe dovuto aggrapparsi a una natura molto migliore quel giorno e fu un po’ scossa nella sua riservata compostezza per la prima volta.
«Il vecchio Bounderby è pronto», disse Tom. «È ora. Addio! Sarò in attesa di te al tuo ritorno. Dico, mia cara Loo! Non è straordinariamente divertente ora?»
FINE DEL PRIMO LIBRO
BOOK THE SECOND REAPING CHAPTER I EFFECTS IN THE BANK
A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:—Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.
The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used—that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences of any of his acts—he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he would ‘sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.’ This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.
However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.
The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.
Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills. Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets and the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat, which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the things it looks upon to bless.
Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over the public office. Her own private sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of observation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a Victim. He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never released him from her determined pity a moment.
The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr. Bounderby’s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes smaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.
Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the place. With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.
LIBRO SECONDO LA MESSA CAPITOLO I EFFETTI NELLA BANCA
UNA SOLEGGGIATA giornata di metà estate. A volte succedeva anche a Coketown.
Visto da lontano in una giornata del genere, Coketown era avvolta in un’aura tutta sua che sembrava impenetrabile ai raggi del sole. Si capiva che la città c’era solo perché si sapeva che non poteva esserci una macchia così cupa nel paesaggio senza una città. Una confusione di fuliggine e fumo, ora che tendeva in questa direzione, ora in quella, ora che aspirava alla volta del cielo, ora che strisciava opaco lungo la terra, a seconda che il vento soffiasse più forte o si placasse, o cambiasse direzione: un fitto ammasso informe con veli di luce incrociata che non mostravano altro che masse d’ombra. — Coketown da lontano era suggestiva della sua stessa essenza, anche se neanche una delle sue mattonelle si poteva vedere.
La meraviglia era che esistesse ancora. Era stata rovinata così spesso, che era incredibile come avesse resistito a tanti colpi. Non c’era mai stata porcellana così fragile di quella di cui erano fatti i mugnai di Coketown. Toccateli anche con la massima delicatezza, e si sgretolavano con tale facilità che avresti potuto sospettare fossero già stati danneggiati prima. Erano rovinati quando veniva loro richiesto di mandare i bambini lavoratori a scuola; erano rovinati quando venivano nominati ispettori per controllare le loro fabbriche; erano rovinati, quando tali ispettori consideravano dubbio se fossero pienamente giustificati nell’impastoiare la gente con le loro macchine; erano completamente rovinati, quando si insinuava che forse non avrebbero dovuto sempre produrre così tanto fumo. Oltre al cucchiaio d’oro del signor Bounderby, che era generalmente accettato a Coketown, un’altra finzione prevalente era molto popolare lì. Si presentava sotto forma di minaccia. Ogni volta che un cittadino di Coketown si sentiva trattato male - cioè ogni volta che non veniva lasciato del tutto solo, e si proponeva di renderlo responsabile delle conseguenze di uno qualsiasi dei suoi atti - era sicuro di uscire con la terribile minaccia che avrebbe “preferito gettare i suoi beni nell’Atlantico”. Questo aveva terrorizzato il segretario del Casa Reale a un pelo dalla morte, in diverse occasioni.
Tuttavia i proprietari di Coketown erano così patriottici che non avevano ancora gettato le loro proprietà nell’Atlantico ma al contrario si erano dimostrati abbastanza gentili da prenderne una gran cura. Ecco quindi lì, nella foschia laggiù; e continuava ad aumentare e moltiplicarsi.
Le strade erano calde e polverose in quel giorno di estate, e il sole era così luminoso che brillava persino attraverso la pesante nebbia che gravava su Coketown, tanto da non poter essere fissato a lungo. Gli addetti alle fornaci uscivano dalle basse porte sotterranee nei cortili delle fabbriche e si sedevano sui gradini, sui pali e sulle inferriate, asciugandosi i volti scuri e contemplando il carbone. L’intera città sembrava friggere nell’olio. C’era un soffocante odore di olio caldo ovunque. Le macchine a vapore brillavano per quello, gli abiti degli operai erano sporchi di quello, i mulini in tutte le loro numerose stanze ne emanavano e lo facevano fuoriuscire goccia a goccia. L’atmosfera di quei palazzi delle fate era come il respiro del simun: e i loro abitanti, consumati dal calore, lavoravano languidamente nel deserto. Ma nessuna temperatura rendeva gli elefanti malinconici più pazzi o più sani di prima. Le loro noiose teste si alzavano e abbassavano allo stesso ritmo, in tempo caldo e freddo, umido e secco, bello e brutto. Il movimento misurato delle loro ombre sulle pareti era il sostituto che Coketown poteva offrire alle ombre dei boschi fruscianti; mentre, per il ronzio estivo degli insetti, poteva proporre tutto l’anno, dall’alba di lunedì alla notte di sabato, il ronzio di alberi e ruote.
Dormienti ronzavano per tutta questa giornata di sole, rendendo il passeggero più assonnato e più accaldato mentre passava davanti alle mura ronzanti dei mulini. Tende oscuranti e spruzzature d’acqua rinfrescavano un po’ le strade principali e i negozi; ma i mulini, e i cortili e vicoli, cuocevano a una temperatura torrida. Sulla fiume che era nero e denso di colorante, alcuni ragazzi di Coketown in libertà - uno spettacolo raro lì - remavano su un barcone traballante, che lasciava una scia schiumosa sull’acqua mentre avanzava a sobbalzi, e ogni colpo di remo sollevava odori disgustosi. Ma il sole stesso, per quanto benefico in generale, era meno benevolo con Coketown che non la dura gelata, e raramente guardava intensamente in una delle sue zone più strette senza generare più morte che vita. Così l’occhio del Cielo stesso diventa un occhio malvagio, quando mani incapaci o sudicie si frappongono tra esso e le cose su cui guarda per benedirle.
La signora Sparsit sedeva nel suo salotto pomeridiano alla Banca, sul lato più ombreggiato della strada che friggeva al sole. Le ore d’ufficio erano finite: e in quella parte del giorno, quando il tempo era caldo, di solito arricchiva con la sua presenza distinta una sala riunioni dei dirigenti sopra l’ufficio pubblico. Il suo salotto privato si trovava un piano più su, alla finestra del quale posto d’osservazione era pronta ogni mattina ad accogliere il signor Bounderby, mentre attraversava la strada, con il riconoscimento compassionevole appropriato a una Vittima. Era sposato da un anno ormai; e la signora Sparsit non lo aveva mai liberato dalla sua determinata pietà neanche per un momento.
La Banca non offriva alcuna violenza alla sana monotonia della città. Era un’altra casa di mattoni rossi con finestre esterne nere, tende verdi interne, una porta d’ingresso nera su due gradini bianchi, una targhetta dorata e una maniglia dorata punto e a capo. Era di una taglia più grande della casa del signor Bounderby, mentre altre case erano da una taglia fino a mezza dozzina di taglie più piccole; in tutti gli altri particolari, era rigorosamente conforme al modello.
La signora Sparsit era consapevole che venendo al tramonto tra le scrivanie e gli strumenti per scrivere, riversava un’aria femminile, se non addirittura aristocratica, nell’ufficio. Seduta con il suo lavoro a maglia o la sua rete da pesca alla finestra, aveva una sensazione di auto-elogio per aver corretto, con i suoi modi signorili, l’aspetto volgare del posto. Con questa impressione del suo interessante carattere, la signora Sparsit si considerava in qualche modo la Fata della Banca. Gli abitanti della città che, passando e ripassando, la vedevano lì, la guardavano come il Drago della Banca che veglia sui tesori della miniera.
What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks, against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of the current day’s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy—a row of fire-buckets—vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal to bullion, on most beholders.
A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit’s empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her money. It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much offence and disappointment.
Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.
‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a horse, for girl number twenty.
‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘All is shut up, ma’am.’
‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the day? Anything?’
‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’
‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and engaging to stand by one another.’
‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, ‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell through, ma’am.’
‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am sure, ma’am.’
As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into the street.
‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence.
‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?’
‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’
He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown, this excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all gifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man—not a part of man’s duty, but the whole.
Quali fossero quei tesori, la signora Sparsit lo sapeva tanto poco quanto loro. Monete d’oro e d’argento, carta preziosa, segreti che se rivelati avrebbero portato distruzione vaga su persone vaghe (in genere, tuttavia, persone a cui lei non piaceva), erano i principali articoli del suo catalogo ideale. Per il resto, sapeva che dopo l’orario d’ufficio, regnava suprema su tutti gli arredi dell’ufficio e su una stanza di ferro chiusa con tre serrature, contro la porta della quale il portiere deponeva ogni notte la testa su un letto a castello che scompariva all’alba. Inoltre, era signora sovrana di certi scantinati nella cantina, nettamente isolati da qualsiasi comunicazione con il mondo predatorio; e dei resti del lavoro della giornata, costituiti da macchie d’inchiostro, penne consumate, frammenti di wafer e pezzi di carta strappati così piccoli che nulla di interessante poteva mai essere decifrato su di essi quando la signora Sparsit ci provava. Infine, era custode di un piccolo arsenale di sciabole e carabine, disposte in ordine vendicativo sopra uno dei caminetti ufficiali; e di quella rispettabile tradizione che non si deve mai separare da un posto d’affari che pretende di essere ricco: una fila di fuoco-secchi, recipienti calcolati per non avere alcuna utilità fisica in qualsiasi occasione, ma osservati esercitare una fine influenza morale, quasi pari al bullion, sulla maggior parte degli spettatori.
Un’ancella sorda e il facchino leggero completavano l’impero della signora Sparsit. Si diceva che l’ancella sorda fosse ricca; e da anni tra i ceti più bassi di Coketown circolava un detto secondo cui sarebbe stata assassinata una notte in cui la Banca era chiusa, per il suo denaro. Si riteneva anzi generalmente che fosse attesa da qualche tempo, e avrebbe dovuto cadere già da molto; ma aveva conservato la sua vita e la sua posizione con una tenacia sgradevole che provocava grande offesa e delusione.
Il tè della signora Sparsit era appena stato preparato per lei su un grazioso tavolino con tre gambe che assumevano un atteggiamento, il quale ella insinuava dopo l’orario d’ufficio nella compagnia del severo e lungo tavolo da consiglio con il piano di cuoio che si ergeva al centro della stanza. Il facchino leggero posò la teiera su di esso, sfiorandosi la fronte in segno di omaggio.
«Grazie, Bitzer», disse la signora Sparsit.
«Grazie, signora», rispose il facchino leggero. Era davvero un facchino molto leggero; tanto leggero come ai tempi in cui definiva sbattendo le palpebre un cavallo, per la ventesima bambina.
«Tutto è chiuso, Bitzer?» disse la signora Sparsit.
‘È tutto chiuso, signora.’
“Qual è la notizia del giorno?” chiese la signora Sparsit versandosi il tè. “C’è qualcosa di nuovo?”
«Beh, signora, non posso dire di aver sentito nulla di particolare. La nostra gente è una brutta razza, signora; ma purtroppo questo non è certo una novità».
«Che cosa stanno facendo quei miserabili irrequieti?» chiese la signora Sparsit.
«Continuiamo semplicemente come prima, signora. Ci uniamo, ci alleanziamo e promettiamo di sostenerci a vicenda».
«È molto deplorevole», disse la signora Sparsit, rendendo il suo naso più romano e le sue sopracciglia più coriolanee nella forza della sua severità, «che i maestri uniti consentano simili combinazioni di classi.»
«Sì, signora», disse Bitzer.
«Essendo loro stessi uniti, dovrebbero tutti quanti opporsi a impiegare qualsiasi uomo che sia unito con un altro uomo», disse la signora Sparsit.
“L’hanno fatto, signora,” rispose Bitzer; “ma è andato a monte.”
«Non pretendo di capire queste cose», disse la signora Sparsit con dignità, «poiché il mio destino mi ha assegnato una sfera d’azione molto diversa; e il signor Sparsit, in quanto Powler, è del tutto al di fuori di qualsiasi tale dissidio. So solo che queste persone devono essere conquistate e che è ora di farlo una volta per tutte».
«Sì, signora», rispose Bitzer, dimostrando grande rispetto per l’autorità oracolare della signora Sparsit. «Non potrebbe esprimersi più chiaramente, ne sono certo, signora».
Poiché quell’ora era quella in cui di solito si concedeva una piccola chiacchierata confidenziale con la signora Sparsit e poiché aveva già incrociato il suo sguardo e visto che stava per chiedergli qualcosa, fece finta di sistemare le squadre, gli inchiostri e così via, mentre quella signora proseguiva col tè, lanciando occhiate attraverso la finestra aperta giù verso la strada.
«È stata una giornata impegnativa, Bitzer?» chiese la signora Sparsit.
«Non è stata una giornata molto impegnativa, mia signora. Una giornata normale». Di tanto in tanto scivolava nel chiamarla «mia signora» invece di «signora», quasi a riconoscere involontariamente la dignità personale della signora Sparsit e il suo diritto alla riverenza.
«I commessi», disse la signora Sparsit, spazzando con cura un invisibile briciole di pane e burro dal guanto sinistro, «sono affidabili, puntuale e laboriosi, naturalmente?»
‘Sì, signora, abbastanza bene, signora. Con l’eccezione del solito.’
Esercitava l’ufficio rispettabile di spia e informatore generale nell’istituzione, per il quale servizio volontario riceveva un regalo a Natale, oltre al suo stipendio settimanale. Era diventato un giovane estremamente lucido, cauto e prudente, che aveva tutte le carte in regola per fare carriera nel mondo. La sua mente era così esattamente regolata, che non aveva affetti né passioni. Tutte le sue azioni erano il risultato di un calcolo minuzioso e freddo; e non senza motivo la signora Sparsit soleva dire di lui che era il giovane dai principi più saldi che avesse mai conosciuto. Dopo essersi assicurato, alla morte del padre, che sua madre aveva diritto a stabilirsi a Coketown, questo eccellente giovane economista aveva fatto valere quel diritto per lei con tale ferma aderenza al principio della questione, che da allora era stata rinchiusa nel lavoro forzato. Bisogna ammettere che le concedeva mezzo chilo di tè all’anno, il che era debole da parte sua: primo, perché tutti i doni hanno una tendenza inevitabile a impoverire il destinatario; e secondo, perché la sua unica transazione ragionevole in quella merce sarebbe stata comprarla al prezzo più basso possibile e venderla al prezzo più alto possibile; poiché era stato chiaramente accertato dai filosofi che in questo è compreso tutto il dovere dell’uomo, non una parte del dovere dell’uomo, ma l’intero.
‘Pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,’ repeated Bitzer.
‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking a long gulp.
‘Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma’am, I don’t like his ways at all.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, ‘do you recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did object to names being used, and they’re always best avoided.’
‘Please to remember that I have a charge here,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with her air of state. ‘I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby. However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might have deemed it years ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual compliment, I cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect. More, far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, ‘that I should be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under this roof, that are unfortunately—most unfortunately—no doubt of that—connected with his.’
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.
‘No, Bitzer,’ continued Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say an individual, and I will hear you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.’
‘With the usual exception, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, trying back, ‘of an individual.’
‘Ah—h!’ Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again at the point where it had been interrupted.
‘An individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘has never been what he ought to have been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated, extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma’am. He wouldn’t get it either, if he hadn’t a friend and relation at court, ma’am!’
‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.
‘I only hope, ma’am,’ pursued Bitzer, ‘that his friend and relation may not supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma’am, we know out of whose pocket that money comes.’
‘Ah—h!’ sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her head.
‘He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be pitied, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
‘Yes, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I have always pitied the delusion, always.’
‘As to an individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing nearer, ‘he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you know what their improvidence is, ma’am. No one could wish to know it better than a lady of your eminence does.’
‘They would do well,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to take example by you, Bitzer.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma’am. I have put by a little, ma’am, already. That gratuity which I receive at Christmas, ma’am: I never touch it. I don’t even go the length of my wages, though they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done, ma’am? What one person can do, another can do.’
This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?
‘As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘it’s stuff and nonsense. I don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I don’t like ’em. As to their combining together; there are many of them, I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to want.’
‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’
‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? They would say, “While my hat covers my family,” or “while my bonnet covers my family,”—as the case might be, ma’am—“I have only one to feed, and that’s the person I most like to feed.”’
‘To be sure,’ assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in return for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving conversation. ‘Would you wish a little more hot water, ma’am, or is there anything else that I could fetch you?’
‘Nothing just now, Bitzer.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,’ said Bitzer, craning a little to look over into the street from where he stood; ‘but there’s a gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma’am, and he has come across as if he was going to knock. That is his knock, ma’am, no doubt.’
He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again, confirmed himself with, ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you wish the gentleman to be shown in, ma’am?’
‘I don’t know who it can be,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth and arranging her mittens.
‘A stranger, ma’am, evidently.’
‘What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don’t know,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr. Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of the duty I have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion, Bitzer.’
«Abbastanza buono, signora. Con l’eccezione consueta, signora», ripeté Bitzer.
«Ah-h!», disse la signora Sparsit scuotendo il capo sopra la sua tazza di tè e facendone una lunga sorsata.
«Signorina Thomas, signora, io dubito molto della signorina Thomas, signora, non mi piacciono affatto i suoi modi».
«Bitzer», disse la signora Sparsit con grande solennità, «ti ricordi se ti ho detto qualcosa riguardo ai nomi?»
«Chiedo scusa, signora. È assolutamente vero che lei ha obiettato all’uso dei nomi e in effetti è sempre meglio evitarli».
«Vi prego di ricordare che ho un incarico qui», disse la signora Sparsit, con il suo portamento maestoso. «Ho una responsabilità qui, Bitzer, sotto il controllo del signor Bounderby. Per quanto sia improbabile che sia io che il signor Bounderby avremmo potuto immaginare anni fa che lui sarebbe diventato il mio mecenate, facendomi un complimento annuale, non posso far altro che considerarlo in questa luce. Dal signor Bounderby ho ricevuto ogni riconoscimento della mia condizione sociale e ogni ammissione del mio lignaggio familiare, che avrei potuto aspettarmi. Di più, molto di più. Pertanto, al mio mecenate sarò scrupolosamente fedele. E non ritengo, non riterrò, non posso ritenerlo», disse la signora Sparsit, con un ampio stock a disposizione di onore e moralità, «che io dovrei essere scrupolosamente fedele, se permettessi che sotto questo tetto vengano menzionati nomi che sono sfortunatamente—molto sfortunatamente—non c’è dubbio al riguardo—connessi con lui.»
Bitzer si sfregò di nuovo la fronte e chiese nuovamente scusa.
«No, Bitzer», continuò la signora Sparsit, «dica un individuo e la ascolterò; dica il signor Thomas e mi scusi».
“Con l’eccezione consueta, signora,” disse Bitzer, “di un individuo.”
«Ah-h!» ripeté l’esclamazione la signora Sparsit, scuotendo il capo sopra la tazza di tè e facendo un lungo sorso, come per riprendere la conversazione dal punto in cui era stata interrotta.
«Un individuo, signora», disse Bitzer, «non è mai stato quello che avrebbe dovuto essere da quando è venuto in questo posto. È un perdigiorno dissipato e sperperatore. Non vale il suo sale, signora. E non lo otterrebbe nemmeno se non avesse un amico o un parente alla corte, signora!»
«Ah-ah!», disse la signora Sparsit con un altro triste scuotimento della testa.
«Io spero solo, signora», continuò Bitzer, «che il suo amico e parente non gli fornisca i mezzi per proseguire. Altrimenti, signora, sappiamo da quale tasca provengono quei soldi».
«Ah-ah!» sospirò di nuovo la signora Sparsit con un altro scuotimento della testa malinconico.
«Merita pietà, signora. L’ultima persona a cui ho accennato merita pietà, signora», disse Bitzer.
“Sì, Bitzer,” disse la signora Sparsit, “ho sempre compatito l’illusione, sempre.”
«Per quanto riguarda un individuo, signora», disse Bitzer abbassando la voce e avvicinandosi, «è altrettanto spericolato di chiunque altro in questa città. E lei sa bene qual è lo sperpero di costoro, signora. Nessuno potrebbe desiderare di conoscerlo meglio di una signora della sua eminenza».
«Farebbero bene», rispose la signora Sparsit, «a prendere esempio da te, Bitzer».
«Grazie, signora. Ma poiché lei si riferisce a me, ora guardi me, signora. Ho già messo da parte qualcosa, signora. Quella gratifica che ricevo a Natale, signora: non la tocco mai. Non spendo nemmeno tutto il mio stipendio, anche se non è alto, signora. Perché loro non possono fare come ho fatto io, signora? Ciò che una persona può fare, un’altra può farlo».
Anche questo faceva parte delle finzioni di Coketown. Ogni capitalista, che aveva guadagnato sessantamila sterline da un mezzo penny, si dichiarava sempre meravigliato che le sessantamila mani più vicine non riuscissero a fare altrettanto e, in modo più o meno esplicito, rimproverava ciascuna di loro per non aver compiuto questo piccolo miracolo. Io l’ho fatto, voi potete farlo. Perché non andate a farlo?
«Per quanto riguarda il loro desiderio di svaghi, signora», disse Bitzer, «è una sciocchezza. A me gli svaghi non interessano. Non mi sono mai interessati e non mi interesseranno mai; non li voglio. Per quanto riguarda la loro unione in associazioni; molti di loro, ne sono sicuro, potrebbero guadagnare qualcosa, sia in denaro che in buona volontà, spiandosi a vicenda e denunciandosi l’un l’altro, migliorando così le proprie condizioni. Allora perché non lo fanno, signora? È la prima considerazione di una creatura razionale, ed è ciò che fingono di volere».
«Fingere davvero!» disse la signora Sparsit.
«Sono sicuro che sentiamo continuamente parlare, signora, fino a diventare davvero nauseabondi, delle loro mogli e famiglie», disse Bitzer. «Basta guardarmi, signora! Non voglio una moglie e una famiglia. Perché dovrebbero volerle?»
«Perché sono sperperati», disse la signora Sparsit.
«Sì, signora», rispose Bitzer «è proprio questo il punto. Se fossero più previdenti e meno perversi, che cosa farebbero? Direbbero: “Finché il mio cappello copre la mia famiglia”, o “finché il mio cappellino copre la mia famiglia” — a seconda dei casi, signora — “ho solo una persona da sfamare e questa è quella che preferisco nutrire”.»
«Certo», convenne la signora Sparsit mangiando una muffin.
«Grazie, signora», disse Bitzer, sfiorandosi di nuovo la fronte in segno di rispetto per il favore della conversazione edificante della signora Sparsit. «Desidera un po’ più d’acqua calda, signora, o c’è qualcos’altro che posso portarle?»
‘Niente per ora, Bitzer.’
«Grazie, signora. Non vorrei disturbarla durante i suoi pasti, signora, soprattutto il tè, sapendo quanto lo apprezzi», disse Bitzer, allungando un po’ il collo per guardare in strada da dove si trovava; «ma c’è un gentiluomo che ci sta osservando da un minuto o giù di lì, signora, e sembra proprio intenzionato a bussare. Quel colpo alla porta è il suo, signora, senza dubbio.»
Si avvicinò alla finestra; e guardando fuori, e ritirando di nuovo la testa dentro, si confermò con: «Sì, signora. Desidera che mostri il gentiluomo all’interno, signora?»
«Non so chi possa essere», disse la signora Sparsit asciugandosi la bocca e sistemando i suoi guanti corti.
‘Uno sconosciuto, signora, evidentemente.’
«Non so cosa possa volere uno sconosciuto alla Banca a quest’ora della sera, se non che è venuto per una faccenda di cui ormai siamo in ritardo», disse la signora Sparsit, «ma ho un incarico in questa ditta affidatomi dal signor Bounderby e non mi tirerò mai indietro. Se vederlo rientra nel compito che mi sono assunta, lo vedrò. Faccia come crede, Bitzer».
Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous words, repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped up-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.
‘If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,’ said Bitzer, with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, Mrs. Sparsit, who had improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features down-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.
The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive gentility. For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.
‘I believe, sir,’ quoth Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you wished to see me.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, turning and removing his hat; ‘pray excuse me.’
‘Humph!’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. ‘Five and thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding, well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.’ All which Mrs. Sparsit observed in her womanly way—like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of water—merely in dipping down and coming up again.
‘Please to be seated, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you allow me to ask you if it’s always as black as this?’
‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising way.
‘Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?’
‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘It was once my good or ill fortune, as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere. My husband was a Powler.’
‘Beg your pardon, really!’ said the stranger. ‘Was—?’
Mrs. Sparsit repeated, ‘A Powler.’
‘Powler Family,’ said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs. Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued than before.
‘You must be very much bored here?’ was the inference he drew from the communication.
‘I am the servant of circumstances, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I have long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.’
‘Very philosophical,’ returned the stranger, ‘and very exemplary and laudable, and—’ It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.
‘May I be permitted to ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to what I am indebted for the favour of—’
‘Assuredly,’ said the stranger. ‘Much obliged to you for reminding me. I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby, the banker. Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the working people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material—’
Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.
‘—Raw material—where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside. Upon which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank. Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker does not reside in the edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?’
‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘he does not.’
‘Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having the good fortune to observe at the window,’ towards which he languidly waved his hand, then slightly bowed, ‘a lady of a very superior and agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker does live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.’
The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved, to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.
‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’
Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful clues and directions in aid.
‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker well?’
‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards him, I have known him ten years.’
‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had that—honour.’
‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’
Qui il visitatore, ignaro delle magnanime parole della signora Sparsit, bussò così forte che il facchino accorse ad aprire la porta; mentre la signora Sparsit si affrettava a nascondere il suo piccolo tavolo con tutti i suoi utensili in un armadio e poi fuggiva al piano di sopra, per poter apparire, se necessario, con maggiore dignità.
«Se le fa piacere, signora, il gentiluomo desidera vederla», disse Bitzer, con il suo sguardo acuto puntato nella toppa della porta di Mrs Sparsit. Così Mrs Sparsit, che aveva approfittato del tempo a sua disposizione per aggiustarsi la cuffia, scese nuovamente con i suoi tratti classici e entrò nella sala riunioni come una matrona romana uscita dalle mura della città per negoziare con un generale invasore.
Il visitatore, dopo essersi avvicinato alla finestra e avervi appoggiato lo sguardo con noncuranza, rimase impassibile di fronte a quell’imponente ingresso. Stava fischiettando tra sé con la massima calma, il cappello ancora in testa e un certo aspetto esausto dovuto in parte all’eccessivo caldo estivo e in parte alla sua eccessiva gentilezza. Infatti era evidente anche a un occhio distratto che si trattava di un vero gentiluomo, modellato secondo i dettami del tempo; stanco di tutto e che non riponeva più fiducia in nulla, neppure in Lucifero.
“Credo, signore”, disse la signora Sparsit, “che desiderasse vedermi.”
‘La prego di scusarmi,’ disse, voltandosi e togliendosi il cappello.
«Humph!» pensò la signora Sparsit mentre faceva un inchino maestoso. «Trentacinque anni, bello, bella figura, bei denti, bella voce, buona educazione, ben vestito, capelli scuri, occhi audaci.» Tutto ciò la signora Sparsit osservò alla maniera femminile — come il sultano che mise la testa nel secchio di acqua — semplicemente immergendosi e rialzandosi.
«Si accomodi, signore», disse la signora Sparsit.
«Grazie. Permettetemi». Le mise una sedia ma lui rimase appoggiato al tavolo in modo disinvolto. «Ho lasciato il mio domestico alla stazione a guardare le valigie — un treno molto pesante e una quantità enorme di bagagli nel vagone — e sono venuto avanti, guardandomi intorno. Un posto stranissimo. Mi permettete di chiedervi se è sempre così nero?»
«In generale molto più nero», rispose la signora Sparsit nel suo modo irremovibile.
‘È possibile? Scusatemi: non siete nativo, credo?’
«No, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit. «Una volta mi toccò in sorte - per il meglio o per il peggio, non so dirlo - prima di rimanere vedova, di muovermi in un ambiente ben diverso. Mio marito era un Powler».
“Mi scusi davvero!” disse lo sconosciuto. “Era,?”
La signora Sparsit ripeté: ‘Un Powler.’
«Famiglia Powler», disse lo sconosciuto dopo aver riflettuto per qualche istante. La signora Sparsit diede segno di assenso. Lo sconosciuto sembrava un po’ più stanco di prima.
«Dovete annoiarvi moltissimo qui?» fu la conclusione che trasse dalla comunicazione.
«Sono la serva delle circostanze, signore», disse la signora Sparsit, «e mi sono da tempo adattata al potere che governa la mia vita.»
«Molto filosofico», rispose lo sconosciuto, «e molto esemplare e lodevole, e, » Sembrava che non valesse la pena per lui finire la frase, così giocò con il portacatena dell’orologio in modo stanco.
«Posso permettermi di chiedere, signore», disse la signora Sparsit, «a quale circostanza devo il favore di—»
«Certamente», disse lo sconosciuto. «Grazie mille per avermelo ricordato. Sono portatore di una lettera di presentazione per il signor Bounderby, il banchiere. Mentre passeggiavo in questa città straordinariamente nera mentre preparavano la cena all’albergo, ho chiesto a un tizio che ho incontrato; uno dei lavoratori; che sembrava aver fatto una doccia di qualcosa di soffice, che presumo essere la materia prima—»
La signora Sparsit inclinò la testa.
«—Materia prima—dove potrebbe risiedere il signor Bounderby, il banchiere. E così, fuorviato senza dubbio dalla parola Banchiere, mi ha indirizzato alla Banca. Il fatto è che presumo che il signor Bounderby il Banchiere non risieda nell’edificio in cui ho l’onore di offrire questa spiegazione?»
“No, signore,” rispose la signora Sparsit, “non lo fa.”
«Grazie. Non avevo intenzione di consegnare la mia lettera in questo momento, né l’ho ancora. Ma passeggiando fino alla Banca per ammazzare il tempo, e avendo la fortuna di osservare alla finestra», verso cui fece un gesto languido con la mano, poi si inchinò leggermente, «una signora dall’aspetto molto distinto e gradevole, ho pensato che non potessi fare di meglio che permettermi di chiedere a quella signora dove abita il signor Bounderby, il banchiere. E così mi prendo la libertà, con tutte le scuse del caso, di farlo».
L’inattenzione e la indolenza del suo comportamento erano sufficientemente alleviate, secondo il pensiero della signora Sparsit, da una certa galanteria disinvolta che offriva anche a lei omaggio. Ecco che lui era, per esempio, in questo momento, quasi seduto sul tavolo eppure pigramente chino su di lei, come se riconoscesse un fascino in lei che la rendeva affascinante — nel suo modo.
«So che le banche sono sempre sospettose e ufficialmente devono esserlo», disse lo straniero, la cui leggerezza e fluidità nel parlare erano altrettanto piacevoli; suggerendo argomenti molto più sensati e umoristici di quelli che conteneva — il che forse era un’abile trovata del fondatore di questa numerosa setta, chiunque sia stato quel grande uomo: «perciò posso osservare che la mia lettera - eccola qui - è del membro per questo posto - Gradgrind - che ho avuto il piacere di conoscere a Londra.»
La signora Sparsit riconobbe la scrittura, fece capire che una tale conferma era del tutto superflua e fornì l’indirizzo di Bounderby con tutti gli indizi necessari e le istruzioni per arrivarci.
«Mille grazie», disse lo sconosciuto. «Naturalmente conoscete il banchiere bene?»
«Sì, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit. «Nel mio rapporto di dipendenza da lui, lo conosco da dieci anni».
«Un’eternità intera! Penso che abbia sposato la figlia di Gradgrind?»
«Sì», disse la signora Sparsit, comprimendo improvvisamente le labbra, «aveva quell’onore.»
‘La signora è una vera filosofa, mi dicono?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Is she?’
‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and thirty?’
Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she was married.’
‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’
It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’
He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of all the town.
‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter, when he came to take away.
‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’
‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’
‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table, ‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’
‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against the players.’
Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it, when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward, upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs. Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.
‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the sweetbread.
‘Infatti, signore,’ disse la signora Sparsit. ‘Lo è?’
«Scusatemi per la mia impertinente curiosità», proseguì lo sconosciuto, frusciando sopra le sopracciglia della signora Sparsit con aria propiziatoria, «ma voi conoscete la famiglia e conoscete il mondo. Io sto per conoscere la famiglia e potrei avere molto a che fare con loro. La signorina è così terribilmente spaventosa? Suo padre le attribuisce una reputazione di testa dura così portentosamente rigida, che ho un desiderio ardente di saperne di più. È assolutamente inaccessibile? Ripugnantemente e sbalorditivamente intelligente? Vedendo il vostro sorriso pieno di significato, capisco che non pensate così. Avete versato balsamo nella mia ansiosa anima. E ora, per quanto riguarda l’età. Quarant’anni? Trentacinque?»
La signora Sparsit rise apertamente: “Una ragazzina”, disse, “non aveva ancora vent’anni quando si sposò”.
«Le do la mia parola d’onore, signora Powler», rispose lo sconosciuto, staccandosi dal tavolo, «che non sono mai stato così stupito in vita mia!»
Gli sembrava davvero di impressionarlo al massimo della sua capacità di essere colpito. Lo guardò per un quarto d’ora e sembrava avere la sorpresa in mente tutto il tempo. «Le assicuro, signora Powler», disse poi, molto esausto, «che il comportamento del padre mi aveva preparato a una maturità cupa e fredda. Sono obbligato verso di lei per aver corretto un errore così assurdo. La prego di scusare la mia intrusione. Mille grazie. Arrivederci!»
Si congedò e la signora Sparsit, nascosta dietro le tende della finestra, lo vide mentre si allontanava lungo la strada sul lato ombreggiato del marciapiede, osservato da tutti i cittadini.
«Che ne pensi di quell’uomo, Bitzer?» chiese al facchino quando venne a portar via.
‘Spende un sacco di soldi per i suoi vestiti, signora.’
“Devo ammettere,” disse la signora Sparsit, “che è molto elegante.”
“Sì, signora,” rispose Bitzer, “se ne vale la pena.”
«Inoltre, signora», riprese Bitzer mentre lucidava il tavolo, «mi sembra che giochi d’azzardo.»
«È immorale fare il gioco», disse la signora Sparsit.
“È ridicolo, signora,” disse Bitzer, “perché le probabilità sono contro i giocatori.”
Che fosse il caldo a impedire alla signora Sparsit di lavorare o che la sua mano fosse fuori gioco, quella sera non fece nulla. Si sedette alla finestra quando il sole iniziò a tramontare dietro il fumo; rimase lì mentre il fumo ardeva rosso, poi sbiadiva, e infine la notte sembrava salire lentamente dal terreno, strisciando verso l’alto, sempre più su, fino ai tetti delle case, al campanile della chiesa, alle cime dei comini delle fabbriche, fino al cielo. Senza una candela nella stanza, la signora Sparsit rimase alla finestra, con le mani davanti a sé, senza prestare molta attenzione ai suoni della sera: i colpi di tosse dei ragazzi, l’abbaiare dei cani, il rombo delle ruote, i passi e le voci dei passanti, le grida acute per strada, lo scricchiolio dei legacci sul marciapiede quando era ora che passassero, la chiusura degli sportelli dei negozi. Solo quando il facchino annunciò che il suo dolce serale era pronto, la signora Sparsit si risvegliò dalla sua riflessione e portò le sue folte sopracciglia nere—che a quell’ora erano aggrottate in meditazione, come se avessero bisogno di essere stirate—al piano di sopra.
«Oh, tu sciocco!», disse la signora Sparsit quando fu sola a cena. Non precisò chi intendesse con quelle parole, ma difficilmente poteva riferirsi al midollo di vitello.
CHAPTER II MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE
THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the Graces. They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?
Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen; they pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.
Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school, there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors) view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow, and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter.
Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said one day, ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.’ Jem, rather taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as ready to ‘go in’ for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in. He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, ‘If you want to bring in, for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech, look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.’ After a few dashes in the public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his hand; superscribed, ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown. Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’
Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James Harthouse’s card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so disconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to ‘go in’ for something else.
‘My name, sir,’ said his visitor, ‘is Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown.’
Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so) to have a pleasure he had long expected.
‘Coketown, sir,’ said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, ‘is not the kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you something about it before we go any further.’
Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bounderby. ‘I don’t promise it. First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland.’
By way of ‘going in’ to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, ‘Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of thinking. On conviction.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bounderby. ‘Now, you have heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best-paid work there is. More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’
‘Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.’
‘Lastly,’ said Bounderby, ‘as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.’
Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.
‘Why, you see,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, ‘it suits my disposition to have a full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I make his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr. Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s letter of introduction. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive yourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.’
CAPITOLO II IL SIGNOR JAMES HARTHOUSE
Il partito di Gradgrind voleva assistenza per tagliare la gola alle Grazie. Si misero a reclutare; e dove potevano arruolare reclute più adatte che tra i signori distanti che, avendo scoperto che tutto non vale nulla, erano ugualmente pronti per qualsiasi cosa?
Inoltre, gli spiriti sani che erano saliti fino a questa sublime altezza erano attraenti per molti della scuola Gradgrind. A loro piacevano i gentiluomini; facevano finta di no, ma in realtà li apprezzavano. Si esaurivano nell’ imitazione di essi; e sbadigliavano nel parlare come loro; e servivano, con aria affaticata, le piccole razioni ammuffite di economia politica con cui deliziavano i loro discepoli. Mai prima d’ora sulla terra era stata vista una razza ibrida così meravigliosa come quella che fu così prodotta.
Tra i signori di bell’aspetto che non appartenevano regolarmente alla scuola Gradgrind, c’era uno di buona famiglia e con un aspetto ancora migliore, dotato di una felice vena di umorismo che aveva fatto colpo sulla Camera dei Comuni in occasione del suo discorso in cui intrattenne l’assemblea esponendo la sua visione (e quella della Direzione) di un incidente ferroviario, nel quale i più scrupolosi funzionari mai conosciuti, impiegati dai più generosi manager di cui si fosse mai sentito parlare, assistiti dai migliori marchingegni meccanici mai ideati, il tutto in azione sulla migliore linea mai costruita, avevano ucciso cinque persone e ne avevano ferite trentadue, per un incidente senza il quale l’eccellenza dell’intero sistema sarebbe stata positivamente incompleta. Tra le vittime c’era una mucca, e tra gli articoli sparsi non reclamati, un berretto da vedova. E l’onorevole membro aveva così solleticato la Camera (che ha un delicato senso dell’umorismo) mettendo il cappello alla mucca, che essa divenne impaziente di qualsiasi riferimento serio all’autopsia del medico legale, e fece uscire la ferrovia con applausi e risate.
Ora, questo signore aveva un fratello minore di aspetto ancora migliore del suo, che aveva provato la vita come cornetta dei draghi e l’aveva trovata noiosa; poi l’aveva provata nella scia di un ministro inglese all’estero e anche quella gli era sembrata noiosa; quindi si era incamminato verso Gerusalemme, annoiandosi pure là; infine aveva fatto il giro del mondo in yacht, annoiandosi ovunque. A questo fratello così onorevole e scherzoso, un giorno il membro disse fraternamente: ‘Jem, c’è una buona opportunità tra i tipi dei Fatti duri, e cercano uomini. Mi chiedo perché non ti dedichi alle statistiche.’ Jem, piuttosto colpito dalla novità dell’idea e molto bisognoso di un cambiamento, era pronto a dedicarsi alle statistiche come a qualsiasi altra cosa. Così ci si mise. Si preparò con uno o due blue-book; e suo fratello diffuse la voce tra i tipi dei Fatti duri, dicendo: ‘Se volete portare in qualche posto un bell’uomo che può fare un discorso dannatamente buono, cercate mio fratello Jem, perché è l’uomo giusto.’ Dopo alcuni interventi in pubblico, il signor Gradgrind e un consiglio di saggi politici approvarono Jem, e si decise di mandarlo a Coketown, per farsi conoscere là e nei dintorni. Da qui la lettera che Jem aveva mostrato l’ultima notte alla signora Sparsit, ora in mano al signor Bounderby; indirizzata: ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown. Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’
Entro un’ora dal ricevimento di questo dispaccio e del biglietto da visita di Mr. James Harthouse, Mr. Bounderby si mise il cappello e scese all’albergo. Lì trovò Mr. James Harthouse che guardava fuori dalla finestra, in uno stato d’animo così scoraggiato, da essere già mezzo disposto a “entrare” in qualcos’altro.
«Il mio nome, signore», disse il suo visitatore, «è Josiah Bounderby, di Coketown».
Il signor James Harthouse era davvero molto felice (anche se non lo si sarebbe detto) di avere un piacere che aveva tanto atteso.
«Coketown, signore», disse Bounderby, ostinatamente prendendo una sedia, «non è il tipo di posto a cui lei sia abituato. Perciò, se mi permette — o anche se non me lo permette, perché sono un uomo schietto — le dirò qualcosa al riguardo prima che andiamo oltre».
Il signor Harthouse sarebbe incantato.
«Non ne sia troppo sicuro», disse Bounderby. «Non prometto nulla. Prima di tutto, veda il nostro fumo. È pane e carne per noi. È la cosa più salutare del mondo sotto ogni aspetto, e in particolare per i polmoni. Se è uno di quelli che vorrebbero che lo consumassimo, lei si sbaglia. Non abbiamo intenzione di consumare il fondo delle nostre caldaie più velocemente di quanto facciamo ora, nonostante tutto l’ipocrita sentimentalismo della Gran Bretagna e dell’Irlanda».
Per dimostrare di “aderire” al massimo grado, il signor Harthouse replicò: «Signor Bounderby, le assicuro che sono totalmente e completamente della sua stessa opinione. Ne sono convinto».
«Sono contento di saperlo», disse Bounderby. «Ora, avete sentito parlare molto del lavoro nelle nostre fabbriche, senza dubbio. Avete? Benissimo. Ve ne esporrò i fatti. È il lavoro più piacevole che ci sia, ed è il lavoro più leggero che ci sia, ed è il lavoro meglio pagato che ci sia. E non solo: non potremmo migliorare le fabbriche stesse se non mettendo tappeti di Turchia sui pavimenti. Ma questo non lo faremo».
‘Il signor Bounderby ha perfettamente ragione.’
«Infine», disse Bounderby, «per quanto riguarda i nostri Operai. Non c’è un Operaio in questa città, signore, uomo, donna o bambino, che non abbia un obiettivo ultimo nella vita. Questo obiettivo è di essere nutriti con zuppa di tartaruga e cervo con un cucchiaio d’oro. Ora, loro non stanno andando — nessuno di loro — a mangiare mai zuppa di tartaruga e cervo con un cucchiaio d’oro. E ora conoscete il posto.»
Il signor Harthouse si dichiarò istruito e rinfrescato al massimo grado da questo breve riassunto dell’intera questione di Coketown.
«Perché, vede», rispose il signor Bounderby, «mi si addice avere un rapporto chiarissimo con un uomo, in particolare se è una persona pubblica, quando ne faccio la conoscenza. Ho solo un’altra cosa da dirle, signor Harthouse, prima di assicurarle del piacere che proverò nel rispondere, per quanto mi sia possibile, alla lettera di presentazione del mio amico Tom Gradgrind. Lei è un uomo di famiglia. Non si illuda neppure per un momento che io sia un uomo di famiglia. Sono una specie di spazzatura sporca e un autentico pezzo di scarto, straccio e cencio».
If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bounderby, it would have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.
‘So now,’ said Bounderby, ‘we may shake hands on equal terms. I say, equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my independence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself, and I hope you’re pretty well.’
The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby received the answer with favour.
‘Perhaps you know,’ said he, ‘or perhaps you don’t know, I married Tom Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, ‘you anticipate my dearest wishes.’
They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted the new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds, and the black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of which mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr. James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so careless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than in manner. Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite alone—it was of no use ‘going in’ yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.
From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself. There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another, and well matched.
‘This, sir,’ said Bounderby, ‘is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind’s eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined your father’s muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. She has lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better adviser than Loo Bounderby.’
To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.
‘Come!’ said his host. ‘If you’re in the complimentary line, you’ll get on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I have never been in the way of learning compliments myself, and I don’t profess to understand the art of paying ’em. In fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You’re a gentleman, and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am not influenced by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn’t my advantages—disadvantages you would call ’em, but I call ’em advantages—so you’ll not waste your power, I dare say.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, ‘is a noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in which a conventional hack like myself works.’
‘You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,’ she quietly returned. ‘It is natural that you should.’
He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of the world, and thought, ‘Now, how am I to take this?’
‘You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,’ said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped—in all the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease—‘to show the nation the way out of all its difficulties.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he returned, laughing, ‘upon my honour, no. I will make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your respected father’s opinions—really because I have no choice of opinions, and may as well back them as anything else.’
‘Have you none of your own?’ asked Louisa.
‘I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other set, and just as much harm as any other set. There’s an English family with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only truth going!’
Se qualcosa avrebbe potuto accrescere l’interesse di Jem per il signor Bounderby, questa sarebbe stata proprio questa circostanza. O almeno così disse a lui.
«E così ora», disse Bounderby, «possiamo stringerci la mano da pari. Dico da pari perché sebbene io sappia chi sono e conosca meglio di chiunque altro l’esatta profondità del fosso dal quale mi sono tirato fuori, sono orgoglioso quanto te. Sono esattamente altrettanto orgoglioso quanto te. Avendo ora affermato la mia indipendenza in modo appropriato, posso chiederti come ti senti e spero che tu stia abbastanza bene.»
Il miglioramento, gli fece capire il signor Harthouse mentre si stringevano la mano, era dovuto all’aria salubre di Coketown. Il signor Bounderby accolse la risposta con favore.
«Forse lo sapete», disse lui, «o forse non lo sapete, ma ho sposato la figlia di Tom Gradgrind. Se non avete niente di meglio da fare che passeggiare in città con me, sarò lieto di presentarvi alla figlia di Tom Gradgrind».
“Signor Bounderby,” disse Jem, “lei esaudisce i miei più cari desideri.”
Uscirono senza ulteriori discorsi; e il signor Bounderby accompagnò la nuova conoscenza che contrastava così nettamente con lui fino alla sua abitazione privata di mattoni rossi, con le persiane esterne nere, gli interni tendaggi verdi e la porta nera della strada su due gradini bianchi. Nell’atrio di tale dimora, entrarono presto da loro la più notevole ragazza che il signor James Harthouse avesse mai visto. Era così vincolata, eppure così disinteressata; così riservata, eppure così attenta; così fredda e orgogliosa, eppure così sensibilmente imbarazzata per l’ostentata umiltà del marito - da cui si ritraeva come se ogni esempio di essa fosse un taglio o uno schiaffo; che era una sensazione completamente nuova osservarla. Nel volto non era meno notevole che nel comportamento. I suoi tratti erano belli, ma la loro naturale espressione era così chiusa, che sembrava impossibile indovinare la loro genuina espressione. Assolutamente indifferente, perfettamente autonoma, mai in difficoltà eppure mai a suo agio, con la sua figura in compagnia di loro lì, e la sua mente apparentemente del tutto sola - non serviva “entrare” ancora per un po’ per comprendere questa ragazza, perché sfidava ogni penetrazione.
Dalla padrona di casa, lo sguardo del visitatore si spostò sulla casa stessa. Non c’era alcun segno muto di una donna nella stanza. Nessun grazioso piccolo ornamento, nessun fantasioso piccolo accessorio, per quanto banale, esprimeva ovunque la sua influenza. Triste e scomoda, sfacciatamente e ostinatamente ricca, la stanza fissava i suoi attuali occupanti senza ammorbidirsi né essere alleviata dal minimo segno di qualsiasi occupazione femminile. Mentre il signor Bounderby stava in mezzo ai suoi dei domestici, così quegli implacabili divinità occupavano i loro posti attorno al signor Bounderby, e si facevano compagnia a vicenda, e bene assortiti.
«Questo, signore», disse Bounderby, «è mia moglie, la signora Bounderby: la figlia maggiore di Tom Gradgrind. Loo, il signor James Harthouse. Il signor Harthouse si è unito al registro dei membri di suo padre. Se non diventerà presto un collega di Tom Gradgrind, credo che sentiremo parlare di lui in relazione a una delle nostre città vicine. Noterà, signor Harthouse, che mia moglie è più giovane di me. Non so cosa abbia visto in me per sposarmi, ma suppongo che abbia visto qualcosa in me, altrimenti non mi avrebbe sposato. Ha un sacco di conoscenze costose, signore, politiche e di altro tipo. Se vuole prepararsi a fondo su qualcosa, sarei lieto di consigliarle un consulente migliore di Loo Bounderby».
Mr. Harthouse non avrebbe mai potuto trovare un consigliere più piacevole o da cui sarebbe stato più probabile imparare.
«Come!» disse il suo ospite. «Se sei nella linea dei complimenti, qui te la caverai, perché non incontrerai concorrenza. Io non ho mai avuto l’abitudine di imparare i complimenti e non pretendo di conoscere l’arte di farli. In effetti li disprezzo. Ma la tua educazione è stata diversa dalla mia; la mia era una cosa reale, per George! Tu sei un gentiluomo, e io non fingo di esserlo. Io sono Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, e questo mi basta. Tuttavia, anche se io non sono influenzato dai modi e dal rango, Loo Bounderby potrebbe esserlo. Lei non ha avuto i miei vantaggi - svantaggi li chiameresti tu, ma io li chiamo vantaggi - quindi non sprecare il tuo potere, ne sono certo.»
«Il signor Bounderby», disse Jem rivolgendosi con un sorriso a Louisa, «è un animale nobile in uno stato relativamente naturale, del tutto libero dalle redini nelle quali lavora una bestia da soma convenzionale come me».
«Rispetta molto il signor Bounderby», rispose tranquillamente. «È naturale che lo faccia».
Fu cacciato in modo vergognoso, per un gentiluomo che aveva visto tanto mondo e pensò: «E ora, come dovrei prendere questo?»
«Ti dedicherai, come ho capito da quanto ha detto il signor Bounderby, al servizio della tua patria. Hai preso la tua decisione», disse Louisa, rimanendo in piedi davanti a lui dove si era fermata per la prima volta — con tutta quella singolare contraddizione tra il suo autocontrollo e l’evidente disagio — «per mostrare alla nazione la via d’uscita da tutte le sue difficoltà.»
«Signora Bounderby», rispose ridendo, «sul mio onore, no. Non farò nessuna pretesa del genere con voi. Ho visto un po’ di tutto, qua e là, su e giù; ho trovato che tutto è molto privo di valore, come tutti hanno fatto, e come alcuni confessano di aver fatto, mentre altri non lo fanno; e sto per adottare le opinioni del vostro rispettabile padre — davvero perché non ho scelta tra le opinioni, e posso sostenere quelle tanto quanto qualsiasi altra.»
«Non ne avete di vostri?» chiese Louisa.
«Non mi è rimasta la minima predilezione. Ve lo assicuro, non attribuisco alcuna importanza alle opinioni altrui. Il risultato delle varietà di noia che ho sopportato, è una convinzione (a meno che “convinzione” non sia un termine troppo industrioso per il sentimentozio pigro che nutro sull’argomento), che qualsiasi insieme di idee possa fare esattamente lo stesso bene e lo stesso male di qualunque altro. C’è una famiglia inglese con uno splendido motto italiano: “Sarà come Dio vorrà”. È l’unica verità che c’è!»
This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty—a vice so dangerous, so deadly, and so common—seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest manner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased: ‘The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did believe it!’
‘You are a singular politician,’ said Louisa.
‘Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks and were reviewed together.’
Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six, and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity. The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of boredom.
In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the hap’orth of stewed eels he had purchased in the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner, received with ‘charming!’ every now and then; and they probably would have decided him to ‘go in’ for Jerusalem again to-morrow morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.
‘Is there nothing,’ he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; ‘is there nothing that will move that face?’
Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a beaming smile.
A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out her hand—a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her brother’s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.
‘Ay, ay?’ thought the visitor. ‘This whelp is the only creature she cares for. So, so!’
The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not flattering, but not unmerited.
‘When I was your age, young Tom,’ said Bounderby, ‘I was punctual, or I got no dinner!’
‘When you were my age,’ resumed Tom, ‘you hadn’t a wrong balance to get right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, then,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Don’t begin with me.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as it went on; ‘your brother’s face is quite familiar to me. Can I have seen him abroad? Or at some public school, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she resumed, quite interested, ‘he has never been abroad yet, and was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that he never saw you abroad.’
‘No such luck, sir,’ said Tom.
There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some one on whom to bestow it. ‘So much the more is this whelp the only creature she has ever cared for,’ thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it over and over. ‘So much the more. So much the more.’
Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned out with him to escort him thither.
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse dines at the Bounderby’s]
Quell’ipocrita presunzione di onestà nell’inganno - un vizio così pericoloso, così mortale e così comune - sembrava, osservò lui, averla colpita leggermente a suo favore. Approfittando del vantaggio, continuò dicendo nel modo più piacevole: un tono al quale lei poteva attribuire tutto o niente come preferiva: «Il lato che può provare qualsiasi cosa in una serie di unità, decine, centinaia e migliaia, signora Bounderby, mi sembra offrire il massimo divertimento e dare a un uomo la migliore opportunità. Sono altrettanto affezionato ad esso come se ci credessi. Sono pronto a sostenerlo nella stessa misura in cui ci crederei. E che altro potrei fare, se ci credessi!»
«Siete un politico singolare», disse Louisa.
«Mi scusi; non ho nemmeno questo merito. Siamo il partito più numeroso dello stato, glielo assicuro, signora Bounderby, se tutti uscissimo dalle nostre posizioni adottate e fossimo esaminati insieme».
Il signor Bounderby, che era in pericolo di scoppiare nel silenzio, intervenne qui con un progetto per rimandare la cena di famiglia alle sei e mezza, e portare il signor James Harthouse nel frattempo a fare una serie di visite ai notabili votanti e interessanti di Coketown e dintorni. La serie di visite fu fatta; e il signor James Harthouse, con un uso discreto del suo blu da viaggio, uscì trionfalmente, sebbene con una notevole aggiunta di noia.
La sera trovò la tavola apparecchiata per quattro persone, ma si sedettero solo in tre. Fu l’occasione adatta perché il signor Bounderby parlasse del sapore della manciata di anguille stufate che aveva comprato in strada all’età di otto anni; e anche dell’acqua scadente, usata appositamente per abbattere la polvere, con cui aveva lavato giù quel pasto. Allo stesso modo intrattenne il suo ospite durante la zuppa e il pesce raccontando che lui (Bounderby) in gioventù aveva mangiato almeno tre cavalli sotto forma di salsicce polacche e salamini. Jem, con aria languida, accoglieva questi racconti esclamando “incantevole!” ogni tanto; e probabilmente lo avrebbero convinto a riprendere il viaggio per Gerusalemme la mattina seguente, se non fosse stato così curioso riguardo a Louisa.
«Non c’è nulla», pensò, guardandola mentre sedeva a capotavola, dove la sua figura giovanile, piccola e minuta ma molto graziosa, appariva tanto carina quanto fuori posto; «non c’è nulla che possa commuovere quel volto?»
Sì! Per Giove, c’era qualcosa e lì era, in una forma inaspettata. Tom apparve. Lei cambiò quando la porta si aprì ed esplose in un sorriso raggiante.
Un bel sorriso. Il signor James Harthouse non l’avrebbe forse trovato così importante, ma era rimasto a lungo colpito dal suo volto impassibile. Lei tese la mano — una graziosa manina morbida; e le sue dita si chiusero su quelle di suo fratello, come se volesse portarle alle labbra.
“Ay, ay?” pensò il visitatore. “Questo cucciolo è l’unica creatura a cui tiene. Bene, bene!”
Il cucciolo fu presentato e prese posto. L’appellativo non era lusinghiero, ma neppure immotivato.
‘Quando avevo la tua età, giovane Tom,’ disse Bounderby, ‘ero puntuale, altrimenti non mangiavo!’
«Quando avevi la mia età», riprese Tom, «non dovevi correggere un equilibrio sbagliato e non dovevi vestirti dopo.»
«Non importa adesso», disse Bounderby.
«Bene, allora», borbottò Tom. «Non cominciare con me».
«Signora Bounderby», disse Harthouse, che aveva perfettamente udito questo sottofondo mentre proseguiva, «il volto di suo fratello mi è del tutto familiare. L’ho forse visto all’estero? O forse in qualche scuola pubblica?»
«No», riprese lei, molto interessata, «non è mai stato all’estero e ha fatto i suoi studi qui, a casa. Tom, amore, sto dicendo al signor Harthouse che non ti ha mai visto all’estero.»
«Non abbiamo avuto tanta fortuna, signore», disse Tom.
C’era ben poco in lui che potesse illuminare il suo volto, perché era un giovane malinconico e persino con lei si comportava senza grazia. Tanto più grande doveva essere la solitudine del suo cuore e il bisogno di qualcuno a cui donarlo. «Tanto più questo cucciolo è l’unica creatura per cui abbia mai provato affetto», pensò Mr. James Harthouse, riflettendoci su ancora e ancora. «Tanto più. Tanto più.»
Sia in presenza di sua sorella che dopo che lei aveva lasciato la stanza, il marmocchio non si prese alcuna pena per nascondere il suo disprezzo verso il signor Bounderby, ogni volta che poteva permetterselo senza essere osservato da quell’uomo indipendente, facendo smorfie o chiudendo un occhio. Senza rispondere a queste comunicazioni telegrafiche, il signor Harthouse lo incoraggiò molto nel corso della serata e gli dimostrò una simpatia insolita. Alla fine, quando si alzò per tornare al suo hotel e fu un po’ incerto se conoscesse la strada di notte, il marmocchio offrì immediatamente i suoi servigi come guida e uscì con lui per scortarlo fino lì.
[Immagine: Il signor Harthouse cena dai Bounderby]
CHAPTER III THE WHELP
IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.
‘I believe you!’ said Tom.
He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts; Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and took an observation of his friend. ‘He don’t seem to care about his dress,’ thought Tom, ‘and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is!’
Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
‘Thank’ee,’ said Tom. ‘Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.’ Tom said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.
‘A very good fellow indeed!’ returned Mr. James Harthouse.
‘You think so, don’t you?’ said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at him, observed:
‘What a comical brother-in-law you are!’
‘What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,’ said Tom.
‘You are a piece of caustic, Tom,’ retorted Mr. James Harthouse.
There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice; in being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers; that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.
‘Oh! I don’t care for old Bounderby,’ said he, ‘if you mean that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin to be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day.’
‘Don’t mind me,’ returned James; ‘but take care when his wife is by, you know.’
‘His wife?’ said Tom. ‘My sister Loo? O yes!’ And he laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink.
James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.
‘My sister Loo?’ said Tom. ‘She never cared for old Bounderby.’
‘That’s the past tense, Tom,’ returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. ‘We are in the present tense, now.’
‘Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care; third person singular, she does not care,’ returned Tom.
‘Good! Very quaint!’ said his friend. ‘Though you don’t mean it.’
‘But I do mean it,’ cried Tom. ‘Upon my honour! Why, you won’t tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for old Bounderby.’
‘My dear fellow,’ returned the other, ‘what am I bound to suppose, when I find two married people living in harmony and happiness?’
Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would have put it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common face, and not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so potently.
‘You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, ‘and therefore, you needn’t be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him.’
‘Very dutiful in your interesting sister,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.
‘Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come off as easily,’ returned the whelp, ‘if it hadn’t been for me.’
The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go on.
‘I persuaded her,’ he said, with an edifying air of superiority. ‘I was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby’s pipe out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn’t it?’
‘It was charming, Tom!’
‘Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,’ continued Tom coolly, ‘because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at home was like staying in jail—especially when I was gone. It wasn’t as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good thing in her.’
‘Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.’
‘Oh,’ returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, ‘she’s a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire—for an hour at a stretch.’
‘Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,’ said Harthouse, smoking quietly.
‘Not so much of that as you may suppose,’ returned Tom; ‘for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It’s his system.’
‘Formed his daughter on his own model?’ suggested Harthouse.
‘His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed Me that way!’ said Tom.
‘Impossible!’
‘He did, though,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘I mean to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby’s, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster does.’
‘Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke’s a joke.’
‘Upon my soul!’ said the whelp. ‘I am serious; I am indeed!’ He smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a highly complacent tone, ‘Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don’t deny that. But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor.’
‘And your intelligent sister?’
‘My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back upon; and I don’t see how she is to have got over that since. But she don’t mind,’ he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. ‘Girls can always get on, somehow.’
‘Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby’s address, I found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for your sister,’ observed Mr. James Harthouse, throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.
‘Mother Sparsit!’ said Tom. ‘What! you have seen her already, have you?’
His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression, and to tap his nose several times with his finger.
‘Mother Sparsit’s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should think,’ said Tom. ‘Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!’
These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also of a voice saying: ‘Come, it’s late. Be off!’
‘Well!’ he said, scrambling from the sofa. ‘I must take my leave of you though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But it’s too mild.’
‘Yes, it’s too mild,’ returned his entertainer.
‘It’s—it’s ridiculously mild,’ said Tom. ‘Where’s the door! Good night!’
He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into the main street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and influence of his new friend—as if he were lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.
The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters.
CAPITOLO III IL PICCOLO MOSTRO
ERA davvero notevole che un giovane signore cresciuto sotto un sistema continuo di restrizioni innaturali fosse un ipocrita, ma era certamente il caso di Tom. ERA molto strano che un giovane signore che non era mai stato lasciato alla propria guida per cinque minuti consecutivi fosse incapace infine di governare se stesso; ma così era con Tom. ERA del tutto inspiegabile che un giovane signore la cui immaginazione era stata strangolata nella culla, fosse ancora disturbato dal suo fantasma sotto forma di sensualità servili; ma tale mostro, oltre ogni dubbio, era Tom.
«Fuma?», chiese il signor James Harthouse quando arrivarono all’albergo.
«Io ti credo!» disse Tom.
Non poteva fare altro che invitare Tom di sopra; e Tom non poteva fare altro che salire. Tra una bevanda rinfrescante adatta al tempo, ma non troppo leggera; e tra un tabacco più pregiato di quello che si trovava in quelle zone; Tom si ritrovò presto in uno stato di grande libertà e disinvoltura nella sua parte del divano, e più che mai propenso a ammirare il suo nuovo amico all’altra estremità.
Dopo aver fumato per un po’, Tom soffiò via il fumo e osservò il suo amico. “Non sembra preoccuparsi del suo abbigliamento”, pensò Tom, “eppure come lo fa bene. Che tipo elegante è!”
Il signor James Harthouse, capitando di incrociare lo sguardo di Tom, osservò che non beveva nulla e riempì il suo bicchiere con la sua stessa mano negligente.
«Grazie», disse Tom. «Grazie. Beh, signor Harthouse, spero che abbia avuto una buona dose di vecchio Bounderby stasera». Tom disse questo con un occhio chiuso di nuovo e guardando sopra il suo bicchiere con aria saputa verso il suo ospite.
«Un uomo davvero molto in gamba!» rispose il signor James Harthouse.
«Lo pensi anche tu, vero?» disse Tom e richiuse di nuovo l’occhio.
Il signor James Harthouse sorrise; e alzandosi dalla sua estremità del divano, appoggiandosi con la schiena contro il caminetto, così che si trovava davanti alla vuota griglia del camino mentre fumava, di fronte a Tom e guardandolo dall’alto in basso, osservò:
‘Che cognato buffo sei!’
«Che cognato buffo è quel vecchio Bounderby, credo vogliate dire», disse Tom.
«Sei un pezzo di veleno, Tom», replicò il signor James Harthouse.
C’era qualcosa di così piacevole nell’intimità con un simile gilet; nel farsi chiamare Tom in modo così confidenziale da una voce del genere; nel trovarsi a proprio agio quasi subito con quei baffetti, che Tom era straordinariamente soddisfatto di sé.
«Oh! Non mi importa nulla di quel vecchio Bounderby», disse lui, «se è questo che intendi. Ho sempre chiamato quel vecchio Bounderby con lo stesso nome quando ne ho parlato e l’ho sempre pensata allo stesso modo su di lui. Non intendo cominciare ad essere cortese ora riguardo a quel vecchio Bounderby. Sarebbe un po’ tardi, ormai».
‘Non badate a me’, rispose James; ‘ma fate attenzione quando c’è sua moglie, sapete.’
«Sua moglie?» disse Tom. «Mia sorella Loo? Ah sì!» E rise e prese un altro sorso della bevanda rinfrescante.
James Harthouse continuò a starsene in disparte nello stesso posto e nella stessa posa, fumando il suo sigaro alla sua maniera disinvolta e guardando con piacere il giovane, come se sapesse di essere una specie di demone affabile che aveva solo da aleggiargli sopra, e lui avrebbe dovuto cedere tutta la propria anima se richiesto. Era certamente vero che il giovane sembrava cedere a questa influenza. Guardò il suo compagno di nascosto, lo guardò con ammirazione, lo guardò con audacia e mise una gamba sul divano.
‘Mia sorella Loo?’ disse Tom. ‘Lei non ha mai amato il vecchio Bounderby.’
«È il passato remoto, Tom», rispose il signor James Harthouse, battendo la cenere del suo sigaro con il mignolo. «Ora siamo al presente».
«Verbo neutro, non curarsene. Modo indicativo, tempo presente. Prima persona singolare, io non me ne curo; seconda persona singolare, tu non te ne curi; terza persona singolare, lei non se ne cura», rispose Tom.
‘Bravo! Molto pittoresco!’ disse il suo amico. ‘Anche se non lo pensi.’
«Ma lo dico sul serio», esclamò Tom. «Sul mio onore! Ditemi, signor Harthouse, pensate davvero che mia sorella Loo provi qualcosa per il vecchio Bounderby?»
«Mio caro amico», rispose l’altro, «che cosa dovrei supporre quando trovo due persone sposate che vivono in armonia e felicità?»
Tom aveva già messo entrambe le gambe sul divano in quel momento. Se la sua seconda gamba non fosse stata già lì quando lo chiamarono caro amico, l’avrebbe alzata a quell’importante punto della conversazione. Sentendo di dover fare qualcosa allora, si distese più comodamente e, appoggiandosi con la nuca alla fine del divano e fumando con un’incredibile aria di noncuranza, rivolse il suo volto ordinario e i suoi occhi poco sobri verso il viso che lo guardava dall’alto così disinvoltamente ma anche così potentemente.
«Conoscete il nostro governatore, Mr. Harthouse», disse Tom, «e quindi non dovreste sorprendervi che Loo abbia sposato il vecchio Bounderby. Non ha mai avuto un amante, e il governatore le propose il vecchio Bounderby, e lei lo prese».
«Molto devoto alla vostra interessante sorella», disse il signor James Harthouse.
«Sì, ma non sarebbe stata altrettanto devota e non avrebbe funzionato così bene», ribatté il cucciolo, «se non fosse stato per me.»
Il tentatore si limitò ad alzare le sopracciglia; ma il cucciolo fu costretto a continuare.
«Io l’ho persuasa», disse con un edificante atteggiamento di superiorità. «Ero stato infilato nella banca del vecchio Bounderby (dove non volevo assolutamente stare), e sapevo che mi sarei cacciato nei guai se lei avesse spento la pipa del vecchio Bounderby; così le ho detto i miei desideri, ed è andata come volevo io. Avrebbe fatto qualsiasi cosa per me. È stata davvero coraggiosa, non vi pare?»
‘È stato incantevole, Tom!’
«Non che fosse per lei altrettanto importante come lo era per me,» continuò Tom con calma «perché la mia libertà e il mio benessere, e forse anche i miei successi, dipendevano da questo; mentre lei non aveva altri amanti, e rimanere a casa era come stare in prigione - specialmente quando ero io ad essere andato via. Non è che abbia rinunciato ad un altro amante per il vecchio Bounderby; ma comunque sia, questo dimostra qualcosa di buono in lei.»
‘Assolutamente deliziosa. E procede così tranquillamente.’
«Oh», rispose Tom con un tono di protezione sprezzante, «è una ragazza regolare. Una ragazza può cavarsela ovunque. Si è adattata alla vita e lei non se ne preoccupa. Va proprio come bene quanto un altro. Inoltre, anche se Loo è una ragazza, non è una ragazza comune. Sa chiudersi in sé stessa e pensare — come l’ho spesso vista seduta a guardare il fuoco — per un’ora di seguito».
«Ah sì? Ha le sue risorse», disse Harthouse fumando tranquillamente.
«Non ne ha mangiata tanta come pensate», rispose Tom, «perché il nostro padrone le dava da mangiare tutte sorta di ossa secche e segatura. È il suo sistema».
«Ha formato sua figlia secondo il suo stesso modello?» suggerì Harthouse.
«Sua figlia? Ah! e tutti gli altri. Perché mi ha formato così!» disse Tom.
‘Impossibile!’
«Eppure lo ha fatto», disse Tom scuotendo la testa. «Voglio dire, signor Harthouse, che quando lasciai per la prima volta casa e andai da quel vecchio Bounderby, ero piatto come una stufetta e non sapevo nulla della vita più di qualsiasi altra ostrica.»
‘Vieni, Tom! Non riesco quasi a crederci. Uno scherzo è uno scherzo.’
«Per la mia anima!» disse il mascalzone. «Sono serio, lo sono davvero!» Fumò con grande gravità e dignità per un po’, poi aggiunse in tono molto compiaciuto: «Oh! Ho imparato qualcosa da allora. Non lo nego. Ma l’ho fatto da solo; non ringrazierò il governatore».
‘La tua intelligente sorella?’
«Mia sorella intelligente è più o meno come era prima. Si lamentava con me che non aveva nulla su cui fare affidamento, quello su cui di solito le ragazze fanno affidamento; e non vedo come abbia potuto superare questo problema da allora. Ma lei non ci bada», aggiunse sagacemente, aspirando nuovamente il suo sigaro. «Le ragazze riescono sempre a cavarsela in qualche modo».
«Faccendo visita alla Banca ieri sera per avere l’indirizzo del signor Bounderby, ho trovato una vecchia signora che sembra nutrire grande ammirazione per sua sorella», osservò il signor James Harthouse, gettando via l’ultimo piccolo resto del sigaro che aveva appena finito di fumare.
“Madre Sparsit!” disse Tom. “Cosa? L’hai già vista?”
Il suo amico annuì. Tom tolse il sigaro dalla bocca per chiudere l’occhio (che era diventato piuttosto incontrollabile) con maggiore espressione, e per toccarsi più volte il naso con un dito.
«Il sentimento di Madre Sparsit per Loo è più che ammirazione, credo» disse Tom. «Direi affetto e devozione. Madre Sparsit non ha mai messo gli occhi su Bounderby quando era scapolo. Oh no!»
Queste furono le ultime parole pronunciate dal cucciolo prima che sopraggiungesse un torpore vertiginoso seguito da completa oblio. Fu risvegliato da quest’ultimo stato da un sogno inquietante di essere svegliato con uno scarpone e anche dalla voce che diceva: «Su, è tardi. Vattene!»
«Bene!» disse, alzandosi dal divano. «Devo però congedarmi da voi. Dico. Il vostro tabacco è ottimo. Ma è troppo delicato.»
«Sì, è troppo mite», rispose il suo ospite.
«È, è ridicolmente mite», disse Tom. «Dov’è la porta? Buona notte!»
Aveva un altro strano sogno di essere condotto da un cameriere attraverso una nebbia che, dopo avergli procurato qualche difficoltà e problema, si risolse nella via principale, in cui rimase solo. Poi camminò verso casa abbastanza facilmente, sebbene non fosse ancora libero dall’impressione della presenza e dell’influenza del suo nuovo amico - come se questi si stesse rilassando da qualche parte nell’aria, nella stessa atteggiamento negligente, guardandolo con lo stesso sguardo.
Il cucciolo tornò a casa e andò a letto. Se avesse avuto un po’ di senso di ciò che aveva fatto quella notte, se fosse stato meno un cucciolo e più un fratello, forse si sarebbe voltato indietro sulla strada, forse sarebbe sceso fino al fiume dal cattivo odore che era diventato nero, forse ci avrebbe fatto il suo letto per sempre, e si sarebbe coperto la testa per l’eternità con le sue acque luride.
CHAPTER IV MEN AND BROTHERS
‘OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!’
‘Good!’ ‘Hear, hear, hear!’ ‘Hurrah!’ and other cries, arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this and what other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself into a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring at the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists, knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop, and called for a glass of water.
As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage. Judging him by Nature’s evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on which he stood. In many great respects he was essentially below them. He was not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense. An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain working clothes. Strange as it always is to consider any assembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent person, lord or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader.
Good! Hear, hear! Hurrah! The eagerness both of attention and intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of the many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for one moment there. That every man felt his condition to be, somehow or other, worse than it might be; that every man considered it incumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making of it better; that every man felt his only hope to be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened brick walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own breast, that these men, through their very delusions, showed great qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational wills, was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death without birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing.
The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and bitterness.
‘But oh, my friends and brothers! Oh, men and Englishmen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! What shall we say of that man—that working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious name—who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, whatever they may be—what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom and for Right?’
The assembly was divided at this point. There were some groans and hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the condemnation of a man unheard. ‘Be sure you’re right, Slackbridge!’ ‘Put him up!’ ‘Let’s hear him!’ Such things were said on many sides. Finally, one strong voice called out, ‘Is the man heer? If the man’s heer, Slackbridge, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead o’ yo.’ Which was received with a round of applause.
Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and, holding out his right hand at arm’s length (as the manner of all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a profound silence.
‘Oh, my friends and fellow-men!’ said Slackbridge then, shaking his head with violent scorn, ‘I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!’
CAPITOLO IV UOMINI E FRATELLI
«OH, amici miei, operai oppressi di Coketown! Oh, amici e concittadini, schiavi di un dispotismo spietato e senza pietà! Oh, amici che soffrite con me, compagni di lavoro e fratelli in umanità! Vi dico che è giunta l’ora di stringerci insieme come una potenza unita e ridurre in polvere gli oppressori che troppo a lungo si sono saziati del saccheggio delle nostre famiglie, del sudore della nostra fronte, del lavoro delle nostre mani, della forza dei nostri muscoli, dei gloriosi diritti dell’umanità creati da Dio e dei sacri ed eterni privilegi della fratellanza!»
‘Bravo!’ ‘Sentito, sentito, sentito!’ ‘Evviva!’ e altri gridi si levarono in molte voci da varie parti della sala densamente affollata e soffocantemente chiusa, nella quale l’oratore, appollaiato su un palco, si esprimeva con queste parole e con qualsiasi altra schiuma e fumo avesse in sé. Si era declamato fino a mettersi in una violenta agitazione ed era rauco quanto caldo. Per forza di urlare a squarciagola sotto un lampione a gas, stringendo i pugni, aggrottando le sopracciglia, serrando i denti e pestando con le braccia, si era tolto così tanto da sé in questo momento che fu costretto a fermarsi e chiese un bicchiere di acqua.
Mentre stava lì, cercando di placare il suo viso infuocato con un sorso d’acqua, il confronto tra l’oratore e la folla di volti attenti rivolti verso di lui era estremamente sfavorevole. Giudicandolo in base alle prove della Natura, non si distingueva dalla massa se non per il palco su cui stava. In molti aspetti importanti, era essenzialmente inferiore a loro. Non era così onesto, non era così virile, non era così di buon umore; sostituiva l’astuzia alla loro semplicità e la passione al loro sano senso pratico. Un uomo mal fatto, con le spalle alte, sopracciglia aggrottate e i lineamenti schiacciati in un’espressione abitualmente acida, contrastava in modo molto sfavorevole, anche nel suo vestito ibrido, con la grande massa dei suoi ascoltatori nelle loro semplici vesti da lavoro. Strano come sempre sia osservare un’assemblea che si rassegna sottomissamente alla monotonia di qualche persona compiacente, nobile o plebeo, che tre quarti di essa non potrebbe, con nessun mezzo umano, tirar fuori dal pantano dell’inanità per portarlo al proprio livello intellettuale; ma era particolarmente strano, e persino particolarmente commovente, vedere questa folla di volti seri, la cui onestà in generale nessun osservatore competente e imparziale avrebbe potuto dubitare, così agitata da un tale leader.
Bene! Sentito, sentito! Evviva! L’ardore sia dell’attenzione che dell’intenzione, mostrato in tutti i volti, li rendeva uno spettacolo davvero impressionante. Non c’era incuria, né languore, né curiosità oziosa; nessuna delle molte sfumature di indifferenza visibili in tutte le altre assemblee, appariva lì neppure per un istante. Ogni uomo sentiva che la sua condizione era, in qualche modo o nell’altro, peggiore di quanto avrebbe potuto essere; ogni uomo riteneva di dover fare come gli altri, per migliorarla; ogni uomo sentiva che la sua unica speranza fosse nell’allearsi con i compagni che lo circondavano; e in questa convinzione, giusta o sbagliata (purtroppo sbagliata allora), tutta quella folla era seriamente, profondamente, fedelmente impegnata; doveva essere chiaro a chiunque volesse vedere ciò che c’era, come le travi nude del tetto e i muri di mattoni imbiancati. E nessun tale spettatore poteva non sapere nel proprio cuore, che quegli uomini, attraverso le loro stesse illusioni, mostravano grandi qualità, suscettibili di essere rivolte al più felice e migliore scopo; e che fingere (sulla base di assiomi generali, per quanto scontati) che si smarrissero del tutto senza motivo, e per propria irrazionale volontà, era come fingere che potesse esserci fumo senza fuoco, morte senza nascita, raccolto senza seme, qualcosa o tutto prodotto dal nulla.
L’oratore essendosi rinfrescato, si asciugò la fronte corrugata da sinistra verso destra più volte con il fazzoletto ripiegato a guisa di imbottitura e concentrò tutte le sue forze rinforzate in una smorfia di grande disprezzo e amarezza.
«Ma oh, miei amici e fratelli! Oh, uomini e inglesi, gli operai oppressi di Coketown! Che cosa diremo di quell’uomo — quel lavoratore, che io dovrei trovare necessario diffamare in questo modo il glorioso nome — che, essendo praticamente e bene informato delle lamentele e dei torti di voi, la parte offesa e vitale di questa terra, e avendovi sentito, con una nobile e maestosa unanimità che farà tremare i tiranni, risolvere di sottoscrivere ai fondi del Tribunale Aggregato Unito, e di attenervi agli ordini emanati da quel corpo per il vostro beneficio, qualunque essi possano essere — che cosa, vi chiedo, direte di quel lavoratore, poiché tale devo riconoscerlo, che, in un simile momento, abbandona la sua postazione e vende la sua bandiera; che, in un simile momento, diventa un traditore e un codardo e un infame, che, in un simile momento, non ha vergogna di fare a voi la vile e umiliante dichiarazione che si terrà in disparte e non sarà uno di coloro associati nella coraggiosa lotta per la Libertà e per il Diritto?»
L’assemblea era divisa in questo punto. Ci furono alcuni gemiti e fischi, ma il senso generale di onore era troppo forte per condannare un uomo non ascoltato. “Assicurati di avere ragione, Slackbridge!” “Fallo salire!” “Sentiamolo!” Queste cose furono dette da molte parti. Infine, una voce forte gridò: “L’uomo è qui? Se l’uomo è qui, Slackbridge, sentiamo l’uomo stesso, invece di te.” Il che fu accolto con un applauso.
Lo Slackbridge, l’oratore, guardò intorno con un sorriso sprezzante e, tendendo il braccio destro in avanti (come è consuetudine di tutti gli Slackbridge) per calmare il mare che ruggiva, attese finché non ci fu un profondo silenzio.
«Oh, miei amici e compagni di lavoro!» disse Slackbridge allora, scuotendo la testa con violento disprezzo «Non mi meraviglio che voi, prostrati figli del lavoro, siate increduli sull’esistenza di un uomo simile. Ma colui che vendette il suo diritto di primogenitura per una scodella di lenticchie esistette, e Giuda Iscariota esistette, e Castlereagh esistette, e quest’uomo esiste!»
Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man himself standing at the orator’s side before the concourse. He was pale and a little moved in the face—his lips especially showed it; but he stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard. There was a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took the case into his own hands.
‘My friends,’ said he, ‘by virtue o’ my office as your president, I askes o’ our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern. You all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You know him awlung o’ his misfort’ns, and his good name.’
With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead—always from left to right, and never the reverse way.
‘My friends,’ Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; ‘I ha’ hed what’s been spok’n o’ me, and ’tis lickly that I shan’t mend it. But I’d liefer you’d hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny other man’s, though I never cud’n speak afore so monny, wi’out bein moydert and muddled.’
Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his bitterness.
‘I’m th’ one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’ a’ the men theer, as don’t coom in wi’ th’ proposed reg’lations. I canna coom in wi’ ’em. My friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. Licker they’ll do yo hurt.’
Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.
‘But ’t an’t sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I’d coom in wi’ th’ rest. But I ha’ my reasons—mine, yo see—for being hindered; not on’y now, but awlus—awlus—life long!’
Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing. ‘Oh, my friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh, my fellow-countrymen, what warning but this did I give you? And how shows this recreant conduct in a man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy? Oh, you Englishmen, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of yourselves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and to your children’s and your children’s children’s?’
There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the greater part of the audience were quiet. They looked at Stephen’s worn face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in the kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.
‘’Tis this Delegate’s trade for t’ speak,’ said Stephen, ‘an’ he’s paid for ’t, an’ he knows his work. Let him keep to ’t. Let him give no heed to what I ha had’n to bear. That’s not for him. That’s not for nobbody but me.’
There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong voice called out, ‘Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!’ Then the place was wonderfully still.
‘My brothers,’ said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, ‘and my fellow-workmen—for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to this delegate here—I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I was to speak till Strike o’ day. I know weel, aw what’s afore me. I know weel that yo aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi’ a man who is not wi’ yo in this matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i’ th’ road, yo’d feel it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger. What I ha getn, I mun mak th’ best on.’
‘Stephen Blackpool,’ said the chairman, rising, ‘think on ’t agen. Think on ’t once agen, lad, afore thou’rt shunned by aw owd friends.’
There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen’s face. To repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all their minds. He looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain of anger with them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.
‘I ha thowt on ’t, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I mun go th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw heer.’
He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they slowly dropped at his sides.
‘Monny’s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok’n wi’ me; monny’s the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart’n than now. I ha’ never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any o’ my like; Gonnows I ha’ none now that’s o’ my makin’. Yo’ll ca’ me traitor and that—yo I mean t’ say,’ addressing Slackbridge, ‘but ’tis easier to ca’ than mak’ out. So let be.’
He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
‘Haply,’ he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he might as it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and distant; ‘haply, when this question has been tak’n up and discoosed, there’ll be a threat to turn out if I’m let to work among yo. I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo unless it cooms—truly, I mun do ’t, my friends; not to brave yo, but to live. I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer? I mak’ no complaints o’ bein turned to the wa’, o’ bein outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard, but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at aw, my friends, I think ’tis that.’
Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building, but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all bound themselves to renounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going his way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.
Qui, un breve affollamento e confusione vicino al palco si conclusero con l’uomo stesso in piedi accanto all’oratore davanti alla folla. Era pallido e leggermente commosso in volto: le labbra lo tradivano particolarmente; ma rimase tranquillo, con la mano sinistra sul mento, aspettando di essere ascoltato. C’era un presidente per regolare i lavori, e questo funzionario ora prese il caso nelle proprie mani.
«Amici miei», disse lui, «in virtù del mio incarico di vostro presidente, ho chiesto al nostro amico Slackbridge, che potrebbe essere un po’ troppo accalorato in questa faccenda, di prendere posto mentre quest’uomo Stephen Blackpool viene ascoltato. Tutti conoscete questo uomo Stephen Blackpool. Lo conoscete per tutta la sua sfortuna e il suo buon nome».
Detto ciò, il presidente gli strinse cordialmente la mano e si sedette di nuovo. Anche Slackbridge si sedette, asciugandosi la fronte sudata — sempre da sinistra a destra, mai al contrario.
«Amici miei», cominciò Stephen in mezzo a un silenzio di morte; «ho sentito ciò che è stato detto su di me e probabilmente non lo migliorerò. Ma preferirei che udiste la verità riguardo a me stesso dalle mie labbra piuttosto che da quelle di chiunque altro, anche se non sono mai riuscito a parlare davanti a così tanta gente senza essere turbato e confuso».
Slackbridge scosse la testa come se volesse scrollarsela di dosso nella sua amarezza.
«Sono l’unico operaio nella fabbrica di Bounderby che non è d’accordo con le nuove regole proposte. Non posso accettarle. Amici miei, dubito che possano farvi del bene; più probabilmente vi causeranno danni».
Slackbridge rise in un sorriso, si incrociò le braccia e aggrottò la fronte con sarcasmo.
«Ma non è tanto per quello che mi ostino. Se fosse solo questo, mi unirei agli altri. Ma ho le mie ragioni — mie, capite — per essere impedito; non solo adesso, ma sempre — sempre — tutta la vita!»
Slackbridge balzò su e si mise accanto a lui, digrignando i denti e strappandosi i capelli. «Oh, amici miei, non è forse questo che vi ho detto? Oh, compatrioti, non è forse questo l’avvertimento che vi ho dato? E come si manifesta questa condotta infedele in un uomo su cui sappiamo che le leggi diseguali sono ricadute con tutta la loro gravità? Oh, voi inglesi, ve lo chiedo: come si manifesta questa corruzione in uno di voi, che acconsente così alla propria rovina e a quella vostra, e dei vostri figli e dei figli dei vostri figli?»
Ci fu qualche applauso e alcuni gridi di vergogna per quell’uomo, ma la maggior parte del pubblico rimase tranquilla. Guardarono il volto segnato di Stephen, reso ancora più patetico dalle emozioni semplici che manifestava; e, nella bontà della loro natura, furono più dispiaciuti che indignati.
«È mestiere di questo Delegato parlare», disse Stephen, «e gli viene pagato per farlo e sa il suo lavoro. Che continui così. Che non si curi di quello che ho dovuto sopportare io. Non è affar suo. Non è affar di nessuno se non mio».
C’era una correttezza, per non dire una dignità in queste parole che rese gli ascoltatori ancora più silenziosi e attenti. La stessa voce forte gridò: «Slackbridge, lascia che l’uomo sia ascoltato e tieni a freno la lingua!» Poi il luogo divenne straordinariamente tranquillo.
«Fratelli miei», disse Stephen, la cui voce bassa era chiaramente udibile, «e compagni di lavoro - perché tali siete per me, sebbene non lo siate, come so io solo, per questo delegato qui presente - ho solo una parola da dire e non potrei dirne altre anche se dovessi parlare fino all’alba. So bene tutto ciò che mi aspetta. So bene che voi tutti avete deciso di voler avere a che fare con un uomo che non è d’accordo con voi in questa faccenda. So bene che se fossi un mendicante abbandonato sulla strada, vi sembrerebbe giusto passarmi accanto, come uno straniero e un forestiero. Quello che ho ottenuto dovrò farne il meglio possibile».
«Stephen Blackpool», disse il presidente alzandosi, «ci pensa su ancora. Ci ripensi una volta di più, ragazzo, prima che tu sia evitato da tutti i vecchi amici».
Ci fu un mormorio universale nello stesso senso, sebbene nessuno articolasse una parola. Ogni occhio era fisso sul volto di Stephen. Pentirsi della sua determinazione sarebbe stato come togliere un peso da tutte le loro menti. Lui guardò intorno e sapeva che era così. Non c’era in lui nemmeno un briciolo di rabbia nei loro confronti; li conosceva, ben al di sotto delle loro debolezze superficiali e dei loro fraintendimenti, come nessun altro poteva fare se non il loro compagno di lavoro.
«Ci ho pensato un po’, signore. Non posso semplicemente entrare. Devo andare per la strada che mi si para davanti. Devo prendere congedo da tutto qui».
Fece loro una specie di riverenza alzando le braccia e rimase per un momento in quella posizione; non parlò finché lentamente non ricaddero lungo i fianchi.
«Monny è la parola piacevole che qualcuno qui mi ha rivolto; monny sono i volti che vedo qui, e che vidi per la prima volta quando ero giovane e avevo il cuore più leggero di ora. Non ho mai avuto nessuna disputa con chicchessia della mia stessa condizione da quando nacqui; e adesso non ne ho alcuna che io abbia provocato. Mi chiamerete traditore e altro - voi, voglio dire», rivolgendosi a Slackbridge, «ma è più facile accusare che dimostrare. Quindi lasciamo perdere».
Si era allontanato di un passo o due per scendere dal palco quando si ricordò di qualcosa che non aveva detto e tornò indietro.
«Forse», disse, girando lentamente il suo volto solcato da rughe per poter, per così dire, rivolgersi individualmente a tutto l’uditorio, sia ai vicini che agli lontani; «forse, quando questa questione sarà stata presa in considerazione e discussa, ci sarà una minaccia di licenziamento se mi viene permesso di lavorare tra voi. Spero di morire prima che arrivi un tale tempo, e lavorerò da solo tra voi a meno che non arrivi—veramente, devo farlo, miei amici; non per sfidarvi, ma per vivere. Non ho altro che il lavoro per vivere; e dove potrei andare io, che ho lavorato fin da quando non ero alto neanche così, a Coketown qui? Non faccio nessun reclamo per essere stato messo alla porta, per essere stato escluso e trascurato da questo tempo in poi, ma spero di poter continuare a lavorare. Se c’è qualche diritto per me, miei amici, penso che sia quello».
Nessuno proferì parola. Non si udiva alcun rumore nell’edificio, se non il lieve fruscio degli uomini che si spostavano leggermente verso i lati, lungo tutto il centro della stanza, per aprire un passaggio all’uomo con cui tutti si erano impegnati a rinunciare alla compagnia. Senza guardare nessuno e procedendo con una umile fermezza che non affermava nulla né cercava nulla, vecchio Stephen, con tutti i suoi guai sulla testa, lasciò la scena.
Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh, my British countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying children on the points of their enemies’ swords? Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them, to hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a God-like cause? The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east, west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers for the United Aggregate Tribunal!
Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multitude of doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound, and took it up. Private feeling must yield to the common cause. Hurrah! The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.
Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was to be Stephen’s now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By general consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he habitually walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.
He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops through such small means. It was even harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and disgrace.
The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not only did he see no Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for, although he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the women working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he was acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and dreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were seen in his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days, and had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a young man of a very light complexion accosted him in the street.
‘Your name’s Blackpool, ain’t it?’ said the young man.
Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, ‘Yes.’
‘You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?’ said Bitzer, the very light young man in question.
Stephen answered ‘Yes,’ again.
‘I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don’t you?’
Stephen said ‘Yes,’ again.
‘Then go straight up there, will you?’ said Bitzer. ‘You’re expected, and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong to the Bank; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you’ll save me a walk.’
Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant Bounderby.
Poi Slackbridge, che aveva mantenuto il suo braccio oratorio teso durante l’uscita, come se stesse reprimendo con infinita sollecitudine e per mezzo di un meraviglioso potere morale le veementi passioni della moltitudine, si dedicò ad alzare i loro spiriti. Non aveva forse il romano Bruto, o miei concittadini britannici, condannato suo figlio a morte; e non avevano forse le madri spartane, o miei amici presto vittoriosi, spinto i loro figli in fuga sulla punta delle spade dei nemici? Allora non era forse il sacro dovere degli uomini di Coketown, con gli antenati davanti a loro, un mondo ammirato insieme a loro e una posterità che sarebbe venuta dopo di loro, scagliare fuori i traditori dalle tende che avevano piantato in una causa sacra e divina? I venti del cielo risposero Sì; e portarono il Sì verso est, ovest, nord e sud. E di conseguenza tre evviva per il Tribunale Unito Aggregato!
Slackbridge fece da capo-canto e diede il tempo. La moltitudine di volti dubbiosi (un po’ tormentati dalla coscienza) si illuminò al suono, e lo ripeté. I sentimenti personali dovevano cedere alla causa comune. Hurrah! Il tetto vibrava ancora degli evviva quando l’assemblea si sciolse.
Così facilmente Stephen Blackpool cadde nella vita più solitaria, la vita di solitudine in mezzo a una folla familiare. Lo straniero nel paese che cerca tra diecimila volti uno sguardo rispondente e non lo trova, è in allegria se paragonato a colui che passa ogni giorno davanti a dieci volti distolti che un tempo erano i volti di amici. Questa sarebbe stata l’esperienza di Stephen da ora in poi, in ogni momento di veglia della sua vita; al lavoro, andando e tornando dal lavoro, alla porta di casa, alla finestra, ovunque. Di comune accordo, evitavano persino il lato della strada su cui lui camminava abitualmente; e lo lasciavano, tra tutti gli operai, solo a lui.
Per molti anni era stato un uomo tranquillo e silenzioso, che aveva poco rapporto con gli altri uomini e si abituò alla compagnia dei propri pensieri. Non aveva mai saputo prima quanto fosse forte il desiderio nel suo cuore di essere riconosciuto spesso da un cenno, uno sguardo, una parola; o la grande quantità di sollievo che gli era stata versata a gocce attraverso tali piccoli mezzi. Era ancora più difficile di quanto avrebbe potuto credere possibile separare nella propria coscienza l’abbandono da parte di tutti i suoi compagni da un senso infondato di vergogna e disonore.
I primi quattro giorni della sua resistenza furono così lunghi e pesanti che cominciò ad essere spaventato dalla prospettiva davanti a sé. Non solo non vedeva Rachael per tutto il tempo, ma evitava ogni occasione di vederla; perché, sebbene sapesse che la proibizione non si estendeva ancora formalmente alle donne che lavoravano nelle fabbriche, scoprì che alcune di loro con cui era in rapporti erano cambiate nei suoi confronti e temeva di provare con altre, e aveva paura che Rachael potesse essere addirittura presa di mira se fosse stata vista in sua compagnia. Così, durante i quattro giorni fu completamente solo e non parlò con nessuno, quando, mentre stava lasciando il lavoro a notte, un giovane di carnagione molto chiara gli si avvicinò in strada.
«Il suo nome è Blackpool, vero?» disse il giovane.
Stephen arrossì trovandosi con il cappello in mano, per la gratitudine di essere stato rivolto parola o per l’improvvisità dell’evento, o forse per entrambe le ragioni. Fece finta di sistemare il fodero e disse: «Sì».
«Voi siete la Mano che hanno mandato a Coventry, intendo?», disse Bitzer, il giovane molto leggero in questione.
Stephen rispose di nuovo «Sì».
«Lo supponevo dal fatto che tutti sembrano tenersi lontani da voi. Il signor Bounderby vuole parlarvi. Conoscete la sua casa, vero?»
Stefano disse di nuovo «Sì».
«Allora salga dritto lassù, vuole?» disse Bitzer. «La stanno aspettando e basta dire al domestico che è lei. Io lavoro in banca; quindi se sale dritto senza di me (sono stato mandato a prenderla), mi risparmierà una passeggiata.»
Stephen, il cui cammino era stato nella direzione opposta, si voltò e, come gli era doveroso, si diresse verso la rossa costruzione di mattoni castello del gigante Bounderby.
CHAPTER V MEN AND MASTERS
‘WELL, Stephen,’ said Bounderby, in his windy manner, ‘what’s this I hear? What have these pests of the earth been doing to you? Come in, and speak up.’
It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was set out; and Mr. Bounderby’s young wife, and her brother, and a great gentleman from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.
‘This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby. The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, ‘Oh really?’ and dawdled to the hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.
‘Now,’ said Bounderby, ‘speak up!’
After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling of his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested deserter he had been called.
‘What were it, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘as yo were pleased to want wi’ me?’
‘Why, I have told you,’ returned Bounderby. ‘Speak up like a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.’
‘Wi’ yor pardon, sir,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘I ha’ nowt to sen about it.’
Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something in his way here, began to blow at it directly.
‘Now, look here, Harthouse,’ said he, ‘here’s a specimen of ’em. When this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous strangers who are always about—and who ought to be hanged wherever they are found—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips about them?’
‘I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo’ o’ openin’ my lips.’
‘You said! Ah! I know what you said; more than that, I know what you mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry! Quite different things. You had better tell us at once, that that fellow Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and that he is not a regular qualified leader of the people: that is, a most confounded scoundrel. You had better tell us so at once; you can’t deceive me. You want to tell us so. Why don’t you?’
‘I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad,’ said Stephen, shaking his head. ‘They taks such as offers. Haply ’tis na’ the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get no better.’
The wind began to get boisterous.
‘Now, you’ll think this pretty well, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘You’ll think this tolerably strong. You’ll say, upon my soul this is a tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing, sir! You shall hear me ask this man a question. Pray, Mr. Blackpool’—wind springing up very fast—‘may I take the liberty of asking you how it happens that you refused to be in this Combination?’
‘How ’t happens?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite wall: ‘how it happens.’
‘I’d leefer not coom to ’t, sir; but sin you put th’ question—an’ not want’n t’ be ill-manner’n—I’ll answer. I ha passed a promess.’
‘Not to me, you know,’ said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with deceitful calms. One now prevailing.)
‘O no, sir. Not to yo.’
‘As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do with it,’ said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. ‘If only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined and made no bones about it?’
‘Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.’
‘Though he knows,’ said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, ‘that there are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for! Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about in the world some time. Did you ever meet with anything like that man out of this blessed country?’ And Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an angry finger.
‘Nay, ma’am,’ said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Louisa, after glancing at her face. ‘Not rebels, nor yet rascals. Nowt o’ th’ kind, ma’am, nowt o’ th’ kind. They’ve not doon me a kindness, ma’am, as I know and feel. But there’s not a dozen men amoong ’em, ma’am—a dozen? Not six—but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by himseln. God forbid as I, that ha’ known, and had’n experience o’ these men aw my life—I, that ha’ ett’n an’ droonken wi’ ’em, an’ seet’n wi’ ’em, and toil’n wi’ ’em, and lov’n ’em, should fail fur to stan by ’em wi’ the truth, let ’em ha’ doon to me what they may!’
He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character—deepened perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not even raise his voice.
‘No, ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to one another, ’fectionate to one another, e’en to death. Be poor amoong ’em, be sick amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny o’ th’ monny causes that carries grief to the poor man’s door, an’ they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’ yo, comfortable wi’ yo, Chrisen wi’ yo. Be sure o’ that, ma’am. They’d be riven to bits, ere ever they’d be different.’
‘In short,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘it’s because they are so full of virtues that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it while you are about it. Out with it.’
‘How ’tis, ma’am,’ resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural refuge in Louisa’s face, ‘that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us most to trouble an’ misfort’n an’ mistake, I dunno. But ’tis so. I know ’tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke. We’re patient too, an’ wants in general to do right. An’ I canna think the fawt is aw wi’ us.’
CAPITOLO V UOMINI E PADRONI
«BE’, Stephen», disse Bounderby nel suo modo pomposo, «che cosa sento dire? Cosa ti hanno fatto queste piaghe della terra? Entra e parla chiaro.»
Fu così invitato nel salotto. Era apparecchiata una tavola per il tè; e c’erano la giovane moglie del signor Bounderby, suo fratello, e un grande gentiluomo da Londra. A cui Stephen rese omaggio, chiudendo la porta e rimanendo in piedi vicino ad essa, con il cappello in mano.
«Questo è l’uomo di cui ti parlavo, Harthouse», disse il signor Bounderby. Il gentiluomo a cui si rivolgeva, che stava parlando con la signora Bounderby sul divano, si alzò dicendo in modo indolente: «Oh davvero?» e si avvicinò alla moquette del caminetto dove il signor Bounderby era fermo.
‘Ora’, disse Bounderby, ‘parla chiaro!’
Dopo i quattro giorni che aveva trascorso, questo discorso cadde in modo rude e dissonante nell’orecchio di Stephen. Oltre ad essere un trattamento duro per la sua mente ferita, sembrava presupporre che lui fosse davvero il disertore egoista che era stato chiamato.
“Cosa voleva da me, signore?” disse Stephen.
«Ma ve l’ho detto», rispose Bounderby. «Parlate come un uomo, visto che lo siete, e raccontateci di voi e di questa Associazione».
«Con il vostro permesso, signore», disse Stephen Blackpool, «non ho nulla da dire al riguardo.»
Il signor Bounderby, che era sempre più o meno come un vento, trovando qualcosa sul suo cammino qui, cominciò subito a soffiare contro di essa.
«Ora, ascolti qui, Harthouse», disse lui, «ecco un esempio di loro. Quando quest’uomo è venuto qui una volta prima, ho messo in guardia quest’uomo contro gli stranieri pericolosi che sono sempre in giro — e che dovrebbero essere impiccati ovunque li si trovi — e ho detto a quest’uomo che stava andando nella direzione sbagliata. Ora, ci crede o no, che sebbene abbiano messo questo segno su di lui, è ancora tale loro schiavo da aver paura di aprire bocca riguardo a loro?»
«Dissi che non avevo nulla da dire, signore; non perché avessi paura di aprire bocca.»
«L’avete detto! Ah! Io so cosa avete detto; e, oltre a questo, so anche che cosa intendevate dire, capite? Non è sempre la stessa cosa, per il Signore Harry! Cose ben diverse. È meglio che ce lo diciate subito, che quel tale Slackbridge non sia in città ad agitare le persone fino alla rivolta; e che non sia un vero leader qualificato del popolo: cioè, un dannatissimo farabutto. È meglio che ce lo diciate subito; non potete ingannarmi. Volete dircelo. Perché non lo fate?»
«Sono altrettanto dispiaciuto quanto voi, signore, quando i capi della gente sono cattivi», disse Stephen scuotendo la testa. «Accettano qualsiasi offerta. Forse non è il più piccolo dei loro infortuni quando non riescono a trovare di meglio».
Il vento cominciò a diventare burrascoso.
«Ora, penserete che questo sia piuttosto bene, Harthouse», disse il signor Bounderby. «Penserete che questa sia una posizione abbastanza forte. Direte, sulla mia anima, che questo è un esempio chiaro di ciò con cui i miei amici hanno a che fare; ma non è nulla, signore! Sentirete chiedere a quest’uomo una domanda. La prego, signor Blackpool»—il vento si alzava molto velocemente—«posso permettermi di chiederle come mai ha rifiutato di far parte di questa Associazione?»
‘Come succede?’
«Ah!», disse il signor Bounderby con i pollici infilati nelle maniche del cappotto e scuotendo la testa e chiudendo gli occhi in confidenza col muro di fronte, «come succede.»
«Preferirei non parlarne, signore; ma poiché mi pone la domanda — e non voglio essere scortese — le rispondo. Ho fatto una promessa».
«Non a me, sapete», disse Bounderby. (Tempo burrascoso con calme ingannatrici. Una prevale ora).
‘O no, signore. Non per voi.’
«Per quanto mi riguarda, qualsiasi considerazione per me non ha avuto assolutamente nulla a che fare con tutto ciò», disse Bounderby, ancora confidenziale col muro. «Se si fosse trattato solo di Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, l’avreste sostenuto senza esitazioni?»
‘Perché sì, signore. È vero.’
«Anche se sa», disse il signor Bounderby, che ora soffiava come un uragano, «che esiste una banda di furfanti e ribelli per i quali la deportazione sarebbe troppo buona! Ora, signor Harthouse, lei è in giro per il mondo da qualche tempo. Ha mai incontrato qualcosa di simile a quell’uomo fuori da questo benedetto paese?» E il signor Bounderby lo indicò con un dito arrabbiato perché fosse ispezionato.
«Né per sogno, signora», disse Stephen Blackpool, protestando con fermezza contro le parole che erano state usate e rivolgendosi istintivamente a Louisa dopo aver dato un’occhiata al suo viso. «Non sono ribelli né tanto meno canaglie. Niente del genere, signora, niente del genere. Non mi hanno fatto alcuna gentilezza, lo so e lo sento. Ma non c’è una dozzina di uomini tra loro, signora - una dozzina? Neanche sei - che non creda di aver fatto il suo dovere verso gli altri e verso se stessi. Dio mi guardi dal tradire la verità nei loro confronti io, che li ho conosciuti e ho avuto esperienza di questi uomini per tutta la vita; io, che ho mangiato e bevuto con loro, seduto con loro, lavorato con loro e amato loro, dovunque mi abbiano portato!»
Parlò con la rude sincerità del suo ruolo e della sua condizione — accentuata, forse, da una fiera consapevolezza di essere fedele alla propria classe nonostante il loro sospetto; ma ricordava bene dove si trovava e non alzò neppure la voce.
«No, signora, no. Sono fedeli l’uno all’altra, leali l’uno all’altra, affezionati l’uno all’altra, finanche alla morte. Se sei povero tra loro, se sei malato tra loro, se piangi tra loro per una delle tante ragioni che portano il dolore alla porta del povero, saranno teneri con te, gentili con te, confortanti con te, cristiani con te. Ne puoi stare certa, signora. Sarebbero strappati a pezzi prima di essere diversi».
«Insomma», disse il signor Bounderby, «è perché sono così pieni di virtù che vi hanno abbandonato. Andate fino in fondo. Dite tutto».
«È proprio così, signora», riprese Stephen, sembrando ancora trovare il suo rifugio naturale nel volto di Louisa, «che ciò che c’è di meglio in noi poveri mortali, sembra trasformarsi nella nostra più grande fonte di guai e disgrazie e errori. Non lo so. Ma è così. Lo so come so che il cielo è sopra di me oltre al fumo. Siamo anche pazienti e vogliamo in generale fare ciò che è giusto. E non riesco a pensare che la colpa sia tutta nostra».
‘Now, my friend,’ said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have exasperated more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to any one else, ‘if you will favour me with your attention for half a minute, I should like to have a word or two with you. You said just now, that you had nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure of that before we go any further.’
‘Sir, I am sure on ’t.’
‘Here’s a gentleman from London present,’ Mr. Bounderby made a backhanded point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, ‘a Parliament gentleman. I should like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me, instead of taking the substance of it—for I know precious well, beforehand, what it will be; nobody knows better than I do, take notice!—instead of receiving it on trust from my mouth.’
Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes involuntarily to his former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though instantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Bounderby’s face.
‘Now, what do you complain of?’ asked Mr. Bounderby.
‘I ha’ not coom here, sir,’ Stephen reminded him, ‘to complain. I coom for that I were sent for.’
‘What,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, ‘do you people, in a general way, complain of?’
Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind.
‘Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n my share in feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as ’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an’ to card, an’ to piece out a livin’, aw the same one way, somehows, ’twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, and wi’ what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’ yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha growen an’ growen, sir, bigger an’ bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly tell a man ’tis not a muddle?’
‘Of course,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Now perhaps you’ll let the gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re so fond of calling it) to rights.’
‘I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as should be looken to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do’t?’
‘I’ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. We’ll indict the blackguards for felony, and get ’em shipped off to penal settlements.’
Stephen gravely shook his head.
‘Don’t tell me we won’t, man,’ said Mr. Bounderby, by this time blowing a hurricane, ‘because we will, I tell you!’
‘Sir,’ returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty, ‘if yo was t’ tak a hundred Slackbridges—aw as there is, and aw the number ten times towd—an’ was t’ sew ’em up in separate sacks, an’ sink ’em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d leave the muddle just wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers!’ said Stephen, with an anxious smile; ‘when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can call to mind, o’ th’ mischeevous strangers! ’Tis not by them the trouble’s made, sir. ’Tis not wi’ them ’t commences. I ha no favour for ’em—I ha no reason to favour ’em—but ’tis hopeless and useless to dream o’ takin them fro their trade, ’stead o’ takin their trade fro them! Aw that’s now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an’ will be heer when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship an’ pack it off to Norfolk Island, an’ the time will go on just the same. So ’tis wi’ Slackbridge every bit.’
Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, he put his hand upon the lock. But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and he felt it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment to be faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to finish what was in his mind.
‘Sir, I canna, wi’ my little learning an’ my common way, tell the genelman what will better aw this—though some working men o’ this town could, above my powers—but I can tell him what I know will never do ’t. The strong hand will never do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t. Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat’rally awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do ’t. Nor yet lettin alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw’en into the like muddle, and they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ a black unpassable world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’ kindness and patience an’ cheery ways, that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so cherishes one another in their distresses wi’ what they need themseln—like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw his travels can beat—will never do ’t till th’ Sun turns t’ ice. Most o’ aw, rating ’em as so much Power, and reg’latin ’em as if they was figures in a soom, or machines: wi’out loves and likens, wi’out memories and inclinations, wi’out souls to weary and souls to hope—when aw goes quiet, draggin on wi’ ’em as if they’d nowt o’ th’ kind, and when aw goes onquiet, reproachin ’em for their want o’ sitch humanly feelins in their dealins wi’ yo—this will never do ’t, sir, till God’s work is onmade.’
Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything more were expected of him.
‘Just stop a moment,’ said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in the face. ‘I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had better turn about and come out of that. And I also told you, if you remember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-out.’
‘I were not up to ’t myseln, sir; I do assure yo.’
‘Now it’s clear to me,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you are one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about, sowing it and raising crops. That’s the business of your life, my friend.’
Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other business to do for his life.
‘You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will have nothing to do with you. I never thought those fellows could be right in anything; but I tell you what! I so far go along with them for a novelty, that I’ll have nothing to do with you either.’
Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.
‘You can finish off what you’re at,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a meaning nod, ‘and then go elsewhere.’
‘Sir, yo know weel,’ said Stephen expressively, ‘that if I canna get work wi’ yo, I canna get it elsewheer.’
The reply was, ‘What I know, I know; and what you know, you know. I have no more to say about it.’
Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no more; therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, ‘Heaven help us aw in this world!’ he departed.
«Ora, mio caro amico», disse il signor Bounderby, che non avrebbe potuto esasperare di più, anche se ne era del tutto inconsapevole, mostrando di voler fare appello a qualcun altro, «se vorrà avere la cortesia di prestarmi attenzione per mezzo minuto, mi piacerebbe scambiare due parole con lei. Ha detto poco fa che non aveva nulla da dirci riguardo a questa faccenda. Ne è assolutamente sicuro prima di andare oltre».
‘Signore, ne sono sicuro.’
«Ecco un gentiluomo di Londra presente», Mr. Bounderby fece un cenno con il pollice verso Mr. James Harthouse, «un gentiluomo del Parlamento. Mi piacerebbe che ascoltasse un breve dialogo tra voi e me, invece di prendere il succo della cosa — perché lo so fin troppo bene in anticipo, sapete, com’è; nessuno lo sa meglio di me, fateci caso! — invece di prenderlo per buono dalle mie labbra».
Stephen chinò il capo davanti al signore proveniente da Londra e mostrò uno stato d’animo piuttosto turbato rispetto a quello abituale. Girò gli occhi involontariamente verso il suo rifugio di un tempo, ma dopo uno sguardo da quella parte (eloquente sebbene istantaneo) li fissò sul volto del signor Bounderby.
«Ora, di che cosa vi lamentate?» chiese il signor Bounderby.
«Non sono venuto qui, signore», gli ricordò Stephen, «per lamentarmi. Sono venuto perché mi hanno mandato a chiamare».
«Che cosa», ripeté il signor Bounderby incrociando le braccia, «in generale vi lamentate di?»
Stefano lo guardò con un po’ di esitazione per qualche istante e poi sembrò prendere una decisione.
«Signore, non sono mai stato bravo a mostrarlo, anche se ne ho avuto la mia parte di sentimenti. In effetti siamo in un pasticcio, signore. Guardatevi intorno per la città - così ricca com’è - e vedrete il numero di persone che sono state portate alla vita qui, per tessere, cardare e tirare avanti con l’esistenza, tutti allo stesso modo, in qualche modo, tra le loro culle e le loro tombe. Guardate come viviamo, dove viviamo, in quali numeri, per quali occasioni, e con quale monotonia; e guardate come i mulini sono sempre in funzione, e come non ci avvicinano mai a nessun obiettivo lontano - tranne che alla morte. Guardate come pensate di noi, scrivete di noi, parlate di noi, e andate con le vostre delegazioni dai Segretari di Stato per parlare di noi, e come voi avete sempre ragione, e come noi abbiamo sempre torto, e non abbiamo mai avuto un motivo in noi da quando siamo nati. Guardate come questo è cresciuto e cresciuto, signore, più grande e più grande, più ampio e più ampio, più duro e più duro, anno dopo anno, generazione dopo generazione. Chi può guardare tutto ciò, signore, e dire onestamente a un uomo che non sia un pasticcio?»
«Naturalmente», disse il signor Bounderby. «Ora forse vorrete far sapere al gentiluomo come intendete rimettere a posto questo pasticcio (come vi piace tanto chiamarlo).»
«Non lo so, signore. Non posso essere io a farlo. Non sono io quello che dovrebbe fare questo, signore. Sono loro quelli che hanno messo sopra di me e sopra tutti noi. Cosa si assumono loro stessi, signore, se non di farlo?»
«Comunque le dirò qualcosa in proposito», rispose il signor Bounderby. «Faremo un esempio con mezza dozzina di Slackbridge. Li incrimineremo per reato e li spediremo nelle colonie penali».
Stefano scosse solennemente la testa.
«Non dirmi che non lo faremo, uomo», disse il signor Bounderby, che in quel momento stava soffiando come un uragano, «perché lo faremo, te lo dico io!»
«Signore», rispose Stephen con la tranquilla sicurezza di una certezza assoluta, «se prendeste cento Slackbridge - tutti quelli che ci sono, e il numero dieci volte moltiplicato - e li metteste in sacchi separati, e li affondaste nel più profondo oceano mai creato prima che la terraferma venisse a esistere, lasciereste il guaio proprio dove si trova. Intriganti forestieri!», disse Stephen con un sorriso ansioso; «quando non abbiamo sentito, sono sicuro, fin da quando possiamo ricordare, parlare degli intriganti forestieri! Non sono loro a creare i problemi, signore. Non è con loro che tutto inizia. Non ho alcuna simpatia per loro - non ho motivo di favorirli - ma è disperato e inutile sognare di allontanarli dal loro mestiere, invece di togliere il loro mestiere a loro! Tutto ciò che ora mi circonda in questa stanza era qui prima che io arrivassi, e sarà qui quando me ne sarò andato. Mettete quell’orologio su una nave e spedisciatelo all’Isola di Norfolk, e il tempo continuerà a scorrere allo stesso modo. Così è per Slackbridge in ogni dettaglio.»
Tornando per un momento al suo rifugio precedente, notò un movimento di avvertimento dei suoi occhi verso la porta. Indietreggiando, mise la mano sulla serratura. Ma non aveva parlato per sua volontà e desiderio; e sentiva nel cuore che sarebbe stato un nobile ritorno per il suo recente trattamento offensivo essere fedele fino alla fine a coloro che lo avevano rinnegato. Rimase per finire ciò che aveva in mente.
«Signore, io non posso, con la mia poca istruzione e il mio modo comune di parlare, dire al gentiluomo cosa possa risolvere tutto questo — anche se alcuni operai di questa città potrebbero farlo, oltre le mie capacità — ma gli posso dire che so cosa non lo risolverà mai. La mano forte non lo risolverà mai. Vittoria e trionfo non lo risolveranno mai. Mettersi d’accordo per rendere una parte innaturalmente sempre e per sempre giusta, e l’altra parte innaturalmente sempre e per sempre sbagliata, non lo risolverà mai, mai. Né lasciarli soli lo risolverà mai. Lasciare soli migliaia e migliaia di persone, tutti che conducono vite simili e sono caduti nello stesso pasticcio, e saranno come uno, e voi sarete come un altro, con un mondo nero e invalicabile tra voi, per tutto il tempo che una tale miseria può durare. Non avvicinarsi alle persone con gentilezza e pazienza e modi allegri, che li avvicinano così l’uno all’altro nei loro molti problemi, e si sostengono a vicenda nelle loro difficoltà con ciò di cui hanno bisogno — come, umilmente credo, nessun popolo che il gentiluomo abbia visto in tutti i suoi viaggi possa superare — non lo risolverà mai finché il Sole non diventerà ghiaccio. Soprattutto, trattarli come una semplice Forza, e regolarli come se fossero figure in un calcolo, o macchine: senza amori e simpatie, senza ricordi e inclinazioni, senza anime che si stancano e anime che sperano — quando tutto va tranquillo, trascinarseli dietro come se non avessero nulla del genere, e quando tutto va male, rimproverarli per la mancanza di tali sentimenti umani nelle loro interazioni con voi — questo non lo risolverà mai, signore, finché l’opera di Dio non sarà disfatta».
Stephen rimase fermo con la porta aperta in mano, aspettando di sapere se ci si aspettava qualcos’altro da lui.
«Fermati un attimo», disse il signor Bounderby, con la faccia paonazza. «L’ultima volta che sei venuto qui a lamentarti ti ho detto di girare sui tacchi e andartene. E se ricordi bene, ti ho anche detto che ero al corrente della storia del cucchiaio d’oro».
‘Non sarei stato all’altezza da solo, signore; ve lo assicuro.’
«Ora mi è chiaro», disse il signor Bounderby, «che sei uno di quei tipi che hanno sempre un motivo di lamento. E vai in giro a seminare e raccogliere raccolti. Questa è la professione della tua vita, amico mio».
Stefano scosse il capo, protestando in silenzio che aveva davvero altre cose da fare nella sua vita.
«Voi siete un tipo così pungente e irritante, vedete», disse Mr. Bounderby, «che perfino la vostra stessa Unione, gli uomini che vi conoscono meglio di tutti, non vogliono avere nulla a che fare con voi. Non avrei mai pensato che quei tipi potessero avere ragione in qualcosa; ma vi dico una cosa! Io, per una volta, sono così d’accordo con loro che io non voglio neanche io avere niente a che fare con voi».
Stefano alzò rapidamente gli occhi verso il suo volto.
«Puoi finire quello che stai facendo», disse il signor Bounderby con un cenno significativo, «e poi andartene altrove».
«Signore, sapete bene», disse Stephen con enfasi, «che se non posso trovare lavoro da voi, non lo troverò altrove.»
La risposta fu: «Quello che so lo so io e quello che sapete lo sapete voi. Non ho altro da dire al riguardo».
Stefano lanciò un’altra occhiata a Luigia, ma i suoi occhi non si alzarono più verso di lui; quindi, con un sospiro e dicendo appena sopra il fiato: «Che Dio ci aiuti tutti in questo mondo!», se ne andò.
CHAPTER VI FADING AWAY
IT was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Bounderby’s house. The shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look about him when he closed the door, but plodded straight along the street. Nothing was further from his thoughts than the curious old woman he had encountered on his previous visit to the same house, when he heard a step behind him that he knew, and turning, saw her in Rachael’s company.
He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.
‘Ah, Rachael, my dear! Missus, thou wi’ her!’
‘Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must say,’ the old woman returned. ‘Here I am again, you see.’
‘But how wi’ Rachael?’ said Stephen, falling into their step, walking between them, and looking from the one to the other.
‘Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be with you,’ said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply upon herself. ‘My visiting time is later this year than usual, for I have been rather troubled with shortness of breath, and so put it off till the weather was fine and warm. For the same reason I don’t make all my journey in one day, but divide it into two days, and get a bed to-night at the Travellers’ Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and go back Parliamentary, at six in the morning. Well, but what has this to do with this good lass, says you? I’m going to tell you. I have heard of Mr. Bounderby being married. I read it in the paper, where it looked grand—oh, it looked fine!’ the old woman dwelt on it with strange enthusiasm: ‘and I want to see his wife. I have never seen her yet. Now, if you’ll believe me, she hasn’t come out of that house since noon to-day. So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little last bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or three times; and her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she spoke to me. There!’ said the old woman to Stephen, ‘you can make all the rest out for yourself now, a deal shorter than I can, I dare say!’
Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to dislike this old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple as a manner possibly could be. With a gentleness that was as natural to him as he knew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the subject that interested her in her old age.
‘Well, missus,’ said he, ‘I ha seen the lady, and she were young and hansom. Wi’ fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, as I ha never seen the like on.’
‘Young and handsome. Yes!’ cried the old woman, quite delighted. ‘As bonny as a rose! And what a happy wife!’
‘Aye, missus, I suppose she be,’ said Stephen. But with a doubtful glance at Rachael.
‘Suppose she be? She must be. She’s your master’s wife,’ returned the old woman.
Stephen nodded assent. ‘Though as to master,’ said he, glancing again at Rachael, ‘not master onny more. That’s aw enden ’twixt him and me.’
‘Have you left his work, Stephen?’ asked Rachael, anxiously and quickly.
‘Why, Rachael,’ he replied, ‘whether I ha lef’n his work, or whether his work ha lef’n me, cooms t’ th’ same. His work and me are parted. ’Tis as weel so—better, I were thinkin when yo coom up wi’ me. It would ha brought’n trouble upon trouble if I had stayed theer. Haply ’tis a kindness to monny that I go; haply ’tis a kindness to myseln; anyways it mun be done. I mun turn my face fro Coketown fur th’ time, and seek a fort’n, dear, by beginnin fresh.’
‘Where will you go, Stephen?’
‘I donno t’night,’ said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his thin hair with the flat of his hand. ‘But I’m not goin t’night, Rachael, nor yet t’morrow. ’Tan’t easy overmuch t’ know wheer t’ turn, but a good heart will coom to me.’
Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. Before he had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby’s door, he had reflected that at least his being obliged to go away was good for her, as it would save her from the chance of being brought into question for not withdrawing from him. Though it would cost him a hard pang to leave her, and though he could think of no similar place in which his condemnation would not pursue him, perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the endurance of the last four days, even to unknown difficulties and distresses.
So he said, with truth, ‘I’m more leetsome, Rachael, under ’t, than I could’n ha believed.’ It was not her part to make his burden heavier. She answered with her comforting smile, and the three walked on together.
Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, finds much consideration among the poor. The old woman was so decent and contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though they had increased upon her since her former interview with Stephen, that they both took an interest in her. She was too sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her account, but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to talk to any extent: so, when they came to their part of the town, she was more brisk and vivacious than ever.
‘Come to my poor place, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘and tak a coop o’ tea. Rachael will coom then; and arterwards I’ll see thee safe t’ thy Travellers’ lodgin. ’T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha th’ chance o’ thy coompany agen.’
They complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged. When they turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his window with a dread that always haunted his desolate home; but it was open, as he had left it, and no one was there. The evil spirit of his life had flitted away again, months ago, and he had heard no more of her since. The only evidence of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in his room, and the grayer hair upon his head.
CAPITOLO VI SPEGNERSI LENTAMENTE
ERA calata la sera quando Stephen uscì dalla casa del signor Bounderby. Le ombre della notte si erano addensate così rapidamente che non guardò intorno a sé quando chiuse la porta, ma proseguì dritto per strada. Nulla era più lontano dai suoi pensieri di quella curiosa vecchia signora che aveva incontrato durante la sua precedente visita alla stessa casa, quando udì un passo alle sue spalle che riconobbe, e voltandosi, vide lei in compagnia di Rachael.
La vide per la prima volta, come aveva udito solo lei.
‘Ah, Rachael, mia cara! Signora, lei con lei!’
«Bene, e ora siete sorpreso di certo, e con ragione devo dire», replicò la vecchia donna. «Eccomi qui di nuovo, vedete».
«Ma come sta Rachel?» disse Stephen, mettendosi al passo con loro e camminando tra i due, guardandoli l’uno dopo l’altra.
«Beh, vengo a stare con questa brava ragazza più o meno come sono venuta a stare con voi», disse la vecchia allegra, prendendosi la libertà di rispondere. «Il mio tempo di visite quest’anno è un po’ più tardo del solito, perché ho avuto qualche problema di respiro corto e così l’ho rimandato fino a quando il tempo non fosse bello e caldo. Per la stessa ragione non faccio tutto il mio viaggio in un giorno solo, ma lo divido in due giorni e mi prendo una camera per stasera al Travellers’ Coffee House giù vicino alla ferrovia (una bella casa pulita), e torno con il Parlamentare alle sei del mattino. Bene, ma che c’entra tutto questo con questa brava ragazza, direte voi? Ve lo sto per spiegare. Ho saputo che Mr. Bounderby si è sposato. L’ho letto sul giornale, dove sembrava una cosa grandiosa—oh, sembrava davvero bella!» la vecchia insisteva su questo con uno strano entusiasmo: «e voglio vedere sua moglie. Non l’ho mai vista ancora. Ora, se mi credete, non è uscita da quella casa da quando è mezzogiorno di oggi. Così, per non rinunciare troppo facilmente a vederla, stavo aspettando un po’ più a lungo quando mi sono trovata vicino a questa brava ragazza due o tre volte; e dato che il suo viso era così amichevole le ho parlato, e lei ha parlato con me. Ecco!» disse la vecchia a Stephen «adesso potete capire tutto il resto da solo, molto più in fretta di quanto io possa fare, ne sono sicura!»
Stephen dovette ancora una volta vincere la sua propensione istintiva a non simpatizzare con quella vecchia signora, benché il suo comportamento fosse onesto e semplice quanto mai poteva esserlo. Con una gentilezza che gli era altrettanto naturale di quanta lo fosse per Rachael, continuò ad approfondire l’argomento che la interessava nella sua vecchiaia.
«Beh, signora», disse lui, «ho visto la signora e era giovane e bella. Con bei grandi occhi scuri che pensavano, e un modo di fare calmo, Rachael, come non ho mai visto prima».
«Giovane e bella. Sì!» esclamò la vecchia donna, tutta contenta. «Bella come una rosa! E che moglie felice!»
«Sì, signora, immagino che lo sia», disse Stephen. Ma con uno sguardo dubbioso verso Rachael.
«E se lo fosse? Deve esserlo. È la moglie del tuo padrone», rispose la vecchia.
Stephen annuì in segno di assenso. «Per quanto riguarda il padrone», disse lanciando un’altra occhiata a Rachael, «non è più mio padrone. È finita tra noi due».
«Hai lasciato il suo lavoro, Stephen?» chiese Rachael, ansiosamente e in fretta.
«Perché, Rachael», rispose lui, «che sia io ad aver lasciato il suo lavoro o che sia stato il suo lavoro a lasciare me, è la stessa cosa. Il suo lavoro e io siamo separati. È meglio così — sarebbe stato meglio, pensavo quando mi hai raggiunto. Avrebbe portato guai su guai se fossi rimasto lì. Forse è una gentilezza per molti che me ne vada; forse è una gentilezza anche per me stesso; comunque sia, deve essere fatto. Devo voltare le spalle a Coketown per il momento, e cercarmi la fortuna, cara, ricominciando da capo».
‘Dove andrai, Stephen?’
«Non conosco la notte», disse lui, togliendosi il cappello e lisciandosi i capelli radi col palmo della mano. «Ma non andrò via questa notte, Rachael, né domani. Non è facile sapere dove andare, ma un buon cuore mi verrà in aiuto».
Anche il senso di pensare disinteressatamente lo aiutò. Prima ancora di aver chiuso la porta del signor Bounderby, aveva riflettuto che almeno il fatto di essere costretto ad andarsene era un bene per lei, in quanto l’avrebbe salvata dalla possibilità di essere messa in discussione per non essersi allontanata da lui. Anche se gli sarebbe costato una grande sofferenza lasciarla e anche se non riusciva a pensare ad alcun luogo simile dove la sua condanna non lo avrebbe perseguitato, forse era quasi un sollievo essere costretto ad allontanarsi dalla sopportazione degli ultimi quattro giorni, anche verso difficoltà e tribolazioni sconosciute.
Così disse, con verità, “Sono più allegro sotto questo aspetto di quanto avrei mai potuto credere, Rachael.” Non era suo compito rendere il suo fardello più pesante. Lei rispose col suo sorriso confortante e i tre proseguirono insieme.
L’età, soprattutto quando cerca di essere autonoma e allegra, trova molta considerazione tra i poveri. La vecchia signora era così decente e contenta, e faceva così poco caso delle sue infermità, sebbene fossero aumentate da quando aveva incontrato Stephen la prima volta, che entrambi si interessarono a lei. Era troppo vivace per permettere che camminassero lentamente per il suo bene, ma era molto grata di essere ascoltata e molto disposta a parlare a lungo: così, quando arrivarono nella loro parte della città, era più vivace e allegra che mai.
«Venite nella mia povera casa, signora», disse Stephen, «e prendete una tazza di tè. Rachael verrà; e poi ti accompagnerò io fino al tuo alloggio per viaggiatori. »Potrebbe passare molto tempo, Rachael, prima che abbia ancora l’occasione di avere la tua compagnia».
Obbedirono e i tre si diressero verso la casa dove lui alloggiava. Quando svoltarono in una strada stretta, Stephen lanciò un’occhiata alla sua finestra con il timore che lo perseguitava sempre nella sua desolata casa; ma era aperta, come l’aveva lasciata, e non c’era nessuno. Lo spirito maligno della sua vita si era allontanato di nuovo mesi prima, e da allora non aveva più avuto sue notizie. L’unica prova del suo ultimo ritorno ora erano i mobili più scarsi nella sua stanza, e i capelli più grigi sulla sua testa.
He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water from below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, and some butter from the nearest shop. The bread was new and crusty, the butter fresh, and the sugar lump, of course—in fulfilment of the standard testimony of the Coketown magnates, that these people lived like princes, sir. Rachael made the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing of a cup), and the visitor enjoyed it mightily. It was the first glimpse of sociality the host had had for many days. He too, with the world a wide heath before him, enjoyed the meal—again in corroboration of the magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of these people, sir.
‘I ha never thowt yet, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘o’ askin thy name.’
The old lady announced herself as ‘Mrs. Pegler.’
‘A widder, I think?’ said Stephen.
‘Oh, many long years!’ Mrs. Pegler’s husband (one of the best on record) was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler’s calculation, when Stephen was born.
‘’Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one,’ said Stephen. ‘Onny children?’
Mrs. Pegler’s cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, denoted some nervousness on her part. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now, not now.’
‘Dead, Stephen,’ Rachael softly hinted.
‘I’m sooary I ha spok’n on ’t,’ said Stephen, ‘I ought t’ hadn in my mind as I might touch a sore place. I—I blame myseln.’
While he excused himself, the old lady’s cup rattled more and more. ‘I had a son,’ she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of the usual appearances of sorrow; ‘and he did well, wonderfully well. But he is not to be spoken of if you please. He is—’ Putting down her cup, she moved her hands as if she would have added, by her action, ‘dead!’ Then she said aloud, ‘I have lost him.’
Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady pain, when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and calling him to the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs. Pegler was by no means deaf, for she caught a word as it was uttered.
‘Bounderby!’ she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the table. ‘Oh hide me! Don’t let me be seen for the world. Don’t let him come up till I’ve got away. Pray, pray!’ She trembled, and was excessively agitated; getting behind Rachael, when Rachael tried to reassure her; and not seeming to know what she was about.
‘But hearken, missus, hearken,’ said Stephen, astonished. ‘’Tisn’t Mr. Bounderby; ’tis his wife. Yo’r not fearfo’ o’ her. Yo was hey-go-mad about her, but an hour sin.’
‘But are you sure it’s the lady, and not the gentleman?’ she asked, still trembling.
‘Certain sure!’
‘Well then, pray don’t speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,’ said the old woman. ‘Let me be quite to myself in this corner.’
Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was quite unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa into the room. She was followed by the whelp.
Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle on the table. Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table near it, waiting to be addressed.
For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the dwellings of the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women.
Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended; something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand; something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and such another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into its component drops.
She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the few chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two women, and to Stephen.
‘I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now. I should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me. Is this your wife?’
Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped again.
‘I remember,’ said Louisa, reddening at her mistake; ‘I recollect, now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not attending to the particulars at the time. It was not my meaning to ask a question that would give pain to any one here. If I should ask any other question that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you please, for being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.’
As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael. Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.
‘He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband? You would be his first resource, I think.’
‘I have heard the end of it, young lady,’ said Rachael.
‘Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would probably be rejected by all? I thought he said as much?’
Accese una candela, preparò il suo piccolo vassoio per il tè, prese dell’acqua calda dal piano di sotto e portò dentro delle piccole porzioni di tè e zucchero, un pane e del burro dal negozio più vicino. Il pane era fresco e croccante, il burro freschissimo, lo zucchero a zollette, ovviamente — in conformità alla testimonianza standard dei magnati di Coketown, che queste persone vivevano come principi, signore. Rachael preparò il tè (una festa così numerosa richiedeva il prestito di una tazza), e l’ospite lo apprezzò moltissimo. Fu il primo assaggio di socialità che l’anfitrione avesse avuto da giorni. Anche lui, con il mondo un vasto pascolo davanti a sé, gustò il pasto — ancora una volta in conferma dei magnati, come esempio della totale mancanza di calcolo da parte di queste persone, signore.
“Non ho mai pensato,” disse Stephen, “a chiederti il tuo nome.”
La vecchia signora si presentò come ‘Signora Pegler’.
«Una vedova, credo?» disse Stephen.
«Oh, molti lunghi anni!» Il marito della signora Pegler (uno dei migliori mai esistiti) era già morto, secondo i calcoli della signora Pegler, quando nacque Stephen.
“Sarebbe un brutto affare perdere uno così buono”, disse Stephen. “Avete dei bambini?”
La tazza della signora Pegler, che tintinnava contro il piattino mentre lo teneva in mano, indicava un certo nervosismo da parte sua. «No», disse. «Non ora, non ora».
«Morto, Stephen», suggerì dolcemente Rachael.
«Mi dispiace di aver parlato», disse Stephen, «avrei dovuto ricordare che potevo toccare un punto delicato. Io, io mi biasimo».
Mentre si scusava, la tazza della vecchia signora tintinnava sempre di più. «Avevo un figlio», disse con una strana angoscia che non era dovuta alle consuete manifestazioni del dolore; «e lui se la cavava bene, meravigliosamente bene. Ma preferirei non parlarne. Lui è—» Mettendo giù la tazza, fece un gesto con le mani come per dire: «morto!». Poi disse ad alta voce: «L’ho perso».
Stephen non era ancora riuscito a superare il fatto di aver procurato dolore alla vecchietta, quando la sua padrona di casa salì barcollando su per le strette scale e, chiamandolo alla porta, gli sussurrò all’orecchio. La signora Pegler non era affatto sorda, infatti colse una parola mentre veniva pronunciata.
«Bounderby!» esclamò con voce soffocata, alzandosi in piedi dal tavolo. «Oh nascondetemi! Non lasciate che mi veda il mondo intero. Non lasciate che salga finché non sarò andata via. Per favore, per favore!» Tremava e era estremamente agitata; si mise dietro a Rachael quando Rachael cercò di rassicurarla; e sembrava non sapere cosa stesse facendo.
«Ma ascolti, signora, ascolti», disse Stephen, stupito. «Non è il signor Bounderby; è sua moglie. Non ha paura di lei. Un’oretta fa era pazza di gioia per lei».
«Ma è sicura che sia la signora e non il gentiluomo?» chiese lei, ancora tremante.
‘Certamente!’
«Allora, per favore, non mi parlate e nemmeno fate caso a me», disse la vecchia signora. «Lasciatemi completamente da sola in questo angolo».
Stephen annuì; guardò Rachel per una spiegazione che lei non era affatto in grado di dargli; prese la candela, scese le scale e dopo pochi istanti tornò illuminando Louisa mentre entrava nella stanza. La seguiva il cucciolo.
Rachael si era alzata e stava in disparte con lo scialle e il cappello in mano, quando Stephen, profondamente stupito da quella visita, posò la candela sul tavolo. Poi anche lui rimase in piedi, con le mani incrociate sul tavolo vicino alla candela, aspettando di essere interpellato.
Per la prima volta nella sua vita Louisa era entrata in una delle abitazioni degli operai di Coketown; per la prima volta nella sua vita si trovava faccia a faccia con qualcosa che assomigliasse all’individualità in relazione a loro. Ne conosceva l’esistenza a centinaia e a migliaia. Sapeva quali risultati nel lavoro un certo numero di essi avrebbe prodotto in uno spazio determinato di tempo. Li conosceva nelle folle che passavano avanti e indietro dai loro nidi, come formiche o coleotteri. Ma sapeva dalle sue letture infinitamente più dei modi degli insetti che lavorano che di questi uomini e donne che lavorano.
Qualcosa da lavorare tanto e pagare tanto, e finisce lì; qualcosa che veniva infallibilmente regolato dalle leggi dell’offerta e della domanda; qualcosa che sbatteva contro quelle leggi e si impantanava nelle difficoltà; qualcosa che era un po’ in difficoltà quando il grano costava caro, e si abbuffava quando il grano era a buon mercato; qualcosa che aumentava con una certa percentuale, e generava un’altra percentuale di criminalità, e un’altra percentuale di pauperismo; qualcosa all’ingrosso, da cui si facevano enormi fortune; qualcosa che occasionalmente saliva come il mare, e faceva qualche danno e distruzione (principalmente a se stesso), per poi ricadere; questo sapeva essere le Mani di Coketown. Ma non aveva quasi mai pensato di dividerli in unità più piccole, più che a dividere il mare stesso nelle sue singole gocce.
Rimase per alcuni istanti a guardarsi intorno nella stanza. Dalle poche sedie, i pochi libri, le stampe comuni e il letto, passò lo sguardo alle due donne e a Stephen.
«Sono venuto a parlarvi per quanto è successo poco fa. Vorrei esservi utile, se mi permettete. È vostra moglie?»
Rachael alzò gli occhi e li abbassò di nuovo, rispondendo sufficientemente di no.
«Mi ricordo», disse Louisa arrossendo per il suo errore; «ora mi torna alla mente di aver sentito parlare delle vostre disgrazie familiari, sebbene all’epoca non avessi prestato attenzione ai particolari. Non era mia intenzione porre una domanda che potesse dare dolore a qualcuno qui presente. Se dovessi fare altre domande che per caso avranno questo risultato, fatemi il favore di credere che non so come parlare con voi come dovrei».
Come poco prima Stefano si era istintivamente rivolto a lei, così ora lei si rivolgeva istintivamente a Rachael. Il suo modo di fare era brusco e conciso, ma anche esitante e timido.
«Le ha detto quello che è successo tra lui e mio marito? Lei sarebbe la sua prima risorsa, credo.»
«Ho sentito la fine della storia, signorina», disse Rachael.
«Ho capito che, essendo stato rifiutato da un datore di lavoro, sarebbe probabilmente stato respinto da tutti? Mi sembra di averlo sentito dire».
‘The chances are very small, young lady—next to nothing—for a man who gets a bad name among them.’
‘What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?’
‘The name of being troublesome.’
‘Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply separated in this town, that there is no place whatever for an honest workman between them?’
Rachael shook her head in silence.
‘He fell into suspicion,’ said Louisa, ‘with his fellow-weavers, because—he had made a promise not to be one of them. I think it must have been to you that he made that promise. Might I ask you why he made it?’
Rachael burst into tears. ‘I didn’t seek it of him, poor lad. I prayed him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he’d come to it through me. But I know he’d die a hundred deaths, ere ever he’d break his word. I know that of him well.’
Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful attitude, with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a voice rather less steady than usual.
‘No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an’ what love, an’ respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi’ what cause. When I passed that promess, I towd her true, she were th’ Angel o’ my life. ’Twere a solemn promess. ’Tis gone fro’ me, for ever.’
Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that was new in her. She looked from him to Rachael, and her features softened. ‘What will you do?’ she asked him. And her voice had softened too.
‘Weel, ma’am,’ said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; ‘when I ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’—cept laying down and dying.’
‘How will you travel?’
‘Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.’
Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand. The rustling of a bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table.
‘Rachael, will you tell him—for you know how, without offence—that this is freely his, to help him on his way? Will you entreat him to take it?’
‘I canna do that, young lady,’ she answered, turning her head aside. ‘Bless you for thinking o’ the poor lad wi’ such tenderness. But ’tis for him to know his heart, and what is right according to it.’
Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part overcome with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-command, who had been so plain and steady through the late interview, lost his composure in a moment, and now stood with his hand before his face. She stretched out hers, as if she would have touched him; then checked herself, and remained still.
‘Not e’en Rachael,’ said Stephen, when he stood again with his face uncovered, ‘could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder. T’ show that I’m not a man wi’out reason and gratitude, I’ll tak two pound. I’ll borrow ’t for t’ pay ’t back. ’Twill be the sweetest work as ever I ha done, that puts it in my power t’ acknowledge once more my lastin thankfulness for this present action.’
She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much smaller sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor picturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of expressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield could not have taught his son in a century.
Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his walking-stick with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this stage. Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather hurriedly, and put in a word.
‘Just wait a moment, Loo! Before we go, I should like to speak to him a moment. Something comes into my head. If you’ll step out on the stairs, Blackpool, I’ll mention it. Never mind a light, man!’ Tom was remarkably impatient of his moving towards the cupboard, to get one. ‘It don’t want a light.’
Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held the lock in his hand.
‘I say!’ he whispered. ‘I think I can do you a good turn. Don’t ask me what it is, because it may not come to anything. But there’s no harm in my trying.’
His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen’s ear, it was so hot.
‘That was our light porter at the Bank,’ said Tom, ‘who brought you the message to-night. I call him our light porter, because I belong to the Bank too.’
Stephen thought, ‘What a hurry he is in!’ He spoke so confusedly.
‘Well!’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! When are you off?’
‘T’ day’s Monday,’ replied Stephen, considering. ‘Why, sir, Friday or Saturday, nigh ’bout.’
‘Friday or Saturday,’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! I am not sure that I can do you the good turn I want to do you—that’s my sister, you know, in your room—but I may be able to, and if I should not be able to, there’s no harm done. So I tell you what. You’ll know our light porter again?’
‘Yes, sure,’ said Stephen.
‘Very well,’ returned Tom. ‘When you leave work of a night, between this and your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour or so, will you? Don’t take on, as if you meant anything, if he should see you hanging about there; because I shan’t put him up to speak to you, unless I find I can do you the service I want to do you. In that case he’ll have a note or a message for you, but not else. Now look here! You are sure you understand.’
He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of Stephen’s coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight up round and round, in an extraordinary manner.
‘I understand, sir,’ said Stephen.
‘Now look here!’ repeated Tom. ‘Be sure you don’t make any mistake then, and don’t forget. I shall tell my sister as we go home, what I have in view, and she’ll approve, I know. Now look here! You’re all right, are you? You understand all about it? Very well then. Come along, Loo!’
«Le probabilità sono molto scarse, giovane signora — quasi nulle — per un uomo che si guadagna una cattiva reputazione tra di loro.»
‘Che cosa intende per cattivo nome?’
‘Il nome di essere fastidiosi.’
«Allora, per i pregiudizi della sua stessa classe e per quelli dell’altra, è sacrificato allo stesso modo? Le due classi sono così profondamente separate in questa città che non c’è posto alcuno per un onesto lavoratore tra di loro?»
Rachael scosse la testa nel silenzio.
«Cadde in sospetto», disse Louisa, «tra i suoi compagni tessitori, perché—aveva promesso di non essere uno di loro. Penso che quella promessa l’abbia fatta a voi. Posso chiedervi perché l’ha fatta?»
Rachael scoppiò in un pianto dirotto. «Non gliel’ho chiesto io, povero ragazzo. Gli ho pregato di evitare guai per il suo bene, senza minimamente pensare che sarebbe capitato a causa mia. Ma so che morirebbe cento volte piuttosto che mancare alla sua parola. Lo conosco bene.»
Stephen era rimasto tranquillamente attento nella sua solita posizione pensierosa, con la mano sul mento. Ora parlò con una voce un po’ meno ferma del solito.
«Nessuno, tranne me stesso, potrà mai sapere quale onore, e quale amore, e rispetto io porti a Rachael, o per quali ragioni. Quando feci quella promessa, le dissi la verità: era l’Angelo della mia vita. Fu una promessa solenne. È andata via da me, per sempre».
Louisa si voltò verso di lui e gli rivolse un cenno rispettoso che non le era mai stato visto prima. Lo guardò, poi guardò Rachael, e il suo volto si addolcì. «Cosa farai?» gli chiese. E anche la sua voce si era ammorbidita.
«Beh, signora», disse Stephen, facendo del suo meglio con un sorriso, «quando avrò finito, dovrò lasciare questa zona e provarne un’altra. Che sia fortuna o sfortuna, un uomo può solo provare; non si riesce a fare nulla senza provare, tranne sdraiarsi e morire».
‘Come viaggerai?’
‘A piedi, mia gentile signora, a piedi.’
Louisa arrossì e una borsetta apparve nella sua mano. Il fruscio di una banconota fu udibile mentre ne dispiegava una e la posava sul tavolo.
«Rachel, vuoi dirgli tu — perché sai come fare senza offenderlo — che questo è liberamente suo per aiutarlo a proseguire il cammino? Vuoi pregarlo di accettarlo?»
«Non posso farlo, signorina», rispose lei, voltando la testa dall’altra parte. «Dio vi benedica per aver pensato al povero ragazzo con tanta tenerezza. Ma è lui che deve conoscere il proprio cuore e ciò che secondo esso è giusto».
Louisa guardò, in parte incredula, in parte spaventata, in parte sopraffatta da una rapida simpatia, quando quell’uomo di così grande autocontrollo, che era stato tanto chiaro e fermo durante il recente colloquio, perse la calma in un attimo e ora stava lì con la mano davanti al viso. Lei tese la sua, come se volesse toccarlo; poi si trattenne e rimase ferma.
«Neanche Rachael», disse Stephen quando si ritrovò di nuovo con il viso scoperto, «avrebbe potuto fare un’offerta così gentile, con parole più dolci. Per dimostrare che non sono un uomo senza ragione e gratitudine, accetto due sterline. Le prenderò in prestito per restituirle. Sarà il lavoro più dolce che abbia mai fatto, quello che mi dà la possibilità di esprimere ancora una volta la mia eterna gratitudine per questo gesto».
Fu costretta a riprendere il biglietto e a sostituire la somma molto più piccola che lui aveva nominato. Non era né cortese, né bello, né pittoresco sotto alcun aspetto; eppure il suo modo di accettare e di esprimere i suoi ringraziamenti senza troppe parole aveva una grazia che Lord Chesterfield non avrebbe potuto insegnare a suo figlio nemmeno in un secolo.
Tom era rimasto seduto sul letto, dondolando una gamba e succhiando il bastone da passeggio con sufficiente noncuranza fino a quando la visita aveva raggiunto questa fase. Vedendo che sua sorella era pronta per partire, si alzò piuttosto in fretta e intervenne.
«Aspetta un momento, Loo! Prima di andarcene vorrei parlargli per un attimo. Mi è venuto in mente qualcosa. Se vuoi scendere sulle scale, Blackpool, te lo dirò. Non preoccuparti della luce, uomo!» Tom era straordinariamente impaziente nel vederlo avvicinarsi all’armadio per prenderne una. «Non serve la luce».
Stefano lo seguì fuori e Tom chiuse la porta della stanza e tenne la serratura in mano.
«Dico!» sussurrò «Credo di poterle fare un buon servizio. Non mi chieda di che si tratta perché forse non succederà nulla. Ma non c’è danno nel tentare».
Il suo respiro cadde come una fiamma di fuoco nell’orecchio di Stephen, tanto era caldo.
«Quello era il nostro facchino leggero della Banca», disse Tom, «che ti ha portato il messaggio ieri sera. Lo chiamo il nostro facchino leggero perché anch’io appartengo alla Banca».
Stephen pensò: «Che fretta ha!» Parlava così confusamente.
«Bene!» disse Tom. «Ora ascolta: quando parti?»
«Oggi è lunedì», rispose Stephen, riflettendo. «Perbacco, signore, venerdì o sabato, più o meno».
«Venerdì o sabato», disse Tom. «Ora ascolti! Non sono sicuro di poterle fare il favore che vorrei farle — è mia sorella, sa, nella sua stanza — ma forse posso riuscirci e se non dovessi riuscirci, non c’è danno fatto. Quindi le dico questo: riconoscerà di nuovo il nostro facchino?»
«Sì, certo», disse Stephen.
«Benissimo», rispose Tom. «Quando esci dal lavoro la sera, tra ora e il tuo allontanamento, fai un giro intorno alla Banca per un’oretta, va bene? Non fare come se volessi qualcosa, se dovesse vederti aggirarti lì; perché non lo spingerò a parlarti, a meno che non scopra di poterti rendere il servizio che voglio farti. In tal caso avrà un biglietto o un messaggio per te, ma altrimenti no. Ora ascolta! Sei sicuro di aver capito».
Nel buio aveva infilato un dito nell’occhiello di un bottone del cappotto di Stephen e stava torcendo quel lembo di tessuto avvolgendolo stretto su se stesso in modo straordinario.
«Capisco, signore», disse Stephen.
«Ora ascolta bene!» ripeté Tom. «Stai sicuro di non sbagliare, e non dimenticare. Dirò a mia sorella mentre andiamo a casa, cosa ho in mente, e so che approverà. Ora ascolta bene! Sei pronto, vero? Hai capito tutto? Benissimo allora. Andiamo, Loo!»
He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return into the room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. He was at the bottom when she began to descend, and was in the street before she could take his arm.
Mrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister were gone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand. She was in a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. Bounderby, and, like an unaccountable old woman, wept, ‘because she was such a pretty dear.’ Yet Mrs. Pegler was so flurried lest the object of her admiration should return by chance, or anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was ended for that night. It was late too, to people who rose early and worked hard; therefore the party broke up; and Stephen and Rachael escorted their mysterious acquaintance to the door of the Travellers’ Coffee House, where they parted from her.
They walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon them. When they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent meetings always ended, they stopped, still silent, as if both were afraid to speak.
‘I shall strive t’ see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not—’
‘Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. ’Tis better that we make up our minds to be open wi’ one another.’
‘Thou’rt awlus right. ’Tis bolder and better. I ha been thinkin then, Rachael, that as ’tis but a day or two that remains, ’twere better for thee, my dear, not t’ be seen wi’ me. ’T might bring thee into trouble, fur no good.’
‘’Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know’st our old agreement. ’Tis for that.’
‘Well, well,’ said he. ‘’Tis better, onnyways.’
‘Thou’lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?’
‘Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi’ thee, Heaven bless thee, Heaven thank thee and reward thee!’
‘May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee peace and rest at last!’
‘I towd thee, my dear,’ said Stephen Blackpool—‘that night—that I would never see or think o’ onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better than me, should’st be beside it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me see it wi’ a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!’
It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from any one, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before. At the end of the second day, he saw land; at the end of the third, his loom stood empty.
He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each of the two first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or bad. That he might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait full two hours, on this third and last night.
There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby’s house, sitting at the first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the blind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and standing on the steps for a breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the light porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing.
Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day’s labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable character.
Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down the long perspective of the street, until they were blended and lost in the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first-floor window, drew down the blind, and went up-stairs. Presently, a light went up-stairs after her, passing first the fanlight of the door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its way up. By and by, one corner of the second-floor blind was disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit’s eye were there; also the other corner, as if the light porter’s eye were on that side. Still, no communication was made to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were at last accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering.
He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for to-morrow, and all was arranged for his departure. He meant to be clear of the town very early; before the Hands were in the streets.
It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it, rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.
By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway’s crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.
Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.
So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange, to have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer morning! With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.
Aprì la porta mentre le parlava, ma non rientrò nella stanza né attese che lo accompagnasse giù per le strette scale. Era già al piano terra quando lei cominciò a scendere e si trovava in strada prima che potesse prenderlo sottobraccio.
La signora Pegler rimase nel suo angolo finché il fratello e la sorella non se ne furono andati, e finché Stephen non tornò con la candela in mano. Era in uno stato di ammirazione ineffabile per la signora Bounderby, e, come una vecchia inspiegabile, piangeva “perché era così carina”. Eppure la signora Pegler era così agitata all’idea che l’oggetto della sua ammirazione potesse tornare per caso, o che qualcun altro potesse arrivare, che il suo buonumore finì per quella sera. Era anche tardi, per persone che si alzavano presto e lavoravano sodo; quindi la compagnia si sciolse; e Stephen e Rachael accompagnarono la loro misteriosa conoscente fino alla porta del Travellers’ Coffee House, dove si separarono da lei.
Rientrarono insieme all’angolo della strada dove abitava Rachael e, mentre si avvicinavano sempre più a quel punto, il silenzio li avvolse. Quando arrivarono nell’angolo buio in cui finivano sempre i loro rari incontri, si fermarono senza parlare, come se entrambi temessero di aprire bocca.
‘Cercherò di rivederti prima di partire, Rachael, ma se non fosse possibile, ’
«Tu non lo farai, Stephen, lo so. È meglio che ci decidiamo a essere sinceri l’uno con l’altro».
«Hai sempre ragione. È più coraggioso e migliore. Ho pensato allora, Rachael, che poiché non rimane che un giorno o due, sarebbe meglio per te, mia cara, di non farti vedere con me. Potrebbe portarti in difficoltà, senza alcun motivo».
«Non è per questo che mi preoccupo, Stephen. Ma tu conosci il nostro vecchio accordo. È per quello».
«Bene, bene», disse lui «è comunque meglio».
“Mi scriverai e mi dirai tutto ciò che accade, Stephen?”
«Sì. Cosa posso dire adesso se non che il cielo sia con te, ti benedica, ti ringrazi e ti ricompensi!»
«Ti benedica anche te, Stephen, in tutti i tuoi vagabondaggi e ti conceda pace e riposo alla fine!»
«Te l’ho detto, mia cara», disse Stephen Blackpool—«quella notte—che non avrei mai visto o pensato a niente che mi facesse arrabbiare, ma tu, tanto migliore di me, saresti stata al mio fianco. Ora sei qui con me. Mi fai vedere le cose con occhi migliori. Dio ti benedica. Buona notte. Addio!»
Fu solo un affrettato addio in una strada comune, eppure fu un ricordo sacro per queste due persone ordinarie. Economisti utilitaristici, scheletri di maestri di scuola, Commissari dei Fatti, infedeli gentili e logori, ciarlatani di molte piccole credenze consunte ai bordi, i poveri li avrete sempre con voi. Coltivate in loro, finché c’è ancora tempo, le massime grazie delle fantasie e degli affetti, per abbellire la loro vita così bisognosa di ornamento; oppure, nel giorno del vostro trionfo, quando il romanzo sarà stato completamente scacciato dalle loro anime, e loro e una mera esistenza si troveranno faccia a faccia, la Realtà prenderà un aspetto lupesco e metterà fine a voi.
Stephen lavorò il giorno dopo e quello successivo senza essere incoraggiato da una parola di chiunque, ed evitato in tutti i suoi andirivieni come prima. Alla fine del secondo giorno vide terra; alla fine del terzo la sua tela era vuota.
Era rimasto oltre il suo tempo nella strada fuori dalla Banca, durante le due prime sere; e lì non era successo nulla di buono o di cattivo. Per evitare di essere negligente nel suo ruolo nell’appuntamento, decise di aspettare per ben due ore, in questa terza e ultima notte.
C’era la signora che un tempo aveva tenuto in ordine la casa del signor Bounderby, seduta alla finestra al primo piano come lui l’aveva vista prima; e c’era il facchino, a volte che parlava con lei lì, e a volte che guardava oltre la tapparella sottostante su cui era scritto BANCA, e a volte che veniva alla porta e si fermava sui gradini per una boccata d’aria. Quando uscì per la prima volta, Stephen pensò che forse lo stesse cercando, e passò vicino; ma il facchino gli lanciò solo un’occhiata fugace con i suoi occhi strizzati e non disse nulla.
Due ore erano un lungo periodo di ozio dopo una giornata di lavoro. Stephen sedeva sul gradino di una porta, appoggiato contro il muro sotto un portico, passeggiava su e giù, ascoltava la campana della chiesa, si fermava a guardare i bambini che giocavano in strada. Avere uno scopo o un altro è così naturale per tutti, che chi si limita semplicemente ad aggirarsi sempre appare e si sente come una persona fuori dal comune. Quando la prima ora era passata, Stephen aveva addirittura iniziato a provare una sensazione di disagio nell’essere considerato un personaggio disonorevole per il tempo che stava trascorrendo lì.
Poi arrivò l’accenditore di lanterne e due file di luci che si allungavano lungo tutta la strada fino a confondersi e perdersi in lontananza. La signora Sparsit chiuse la finestra del primo piano, abbassò la tenda oscurante e salì le scale. Poco dopo, una luce salì dietro di lei, passando prima sopra il pannello decorato della porta e poi davanti alle due finestre delle scale, lungo il suo percorso verso l’alto. Dopo un po’, un angolo della tenda oscurante del secondo piano si mosse leggermente, come se ci fosse lì l’occhio della signora Sparsit; anche l’altro angolo si mosse, come se dall’altra parte ci fosse l’occhio del facchino. Eppure non fu fatto alcun cenno a Stephen. Molto sollevato quando finalmente le due ore furono trascorse, se ne andò di corsa, per compensare tanta attesa.
Doveva solo salutare la padrona di casa e sdraiarsi sul suo letto temporaneo per terra; perché il suo fagotto era pronto per domani, e tutto era organizzato per la sua partenza. Intendeva lasciare la città molto presto; prima che le Mani fossero nelle strade.
Appena spuntava l’alba quando, dopo un ultimo sguardo alla sua stanza e una triste riflessione su se mai l’avrebbe rivista, uscì. La città era completamente deserta come se gli abitanti l’avessero abbandonata per non dover avere a che fare con lui. Tutto aveva un aspetto pallido in quell’ora. Anche il sole nascente faceva solo una macchia chiara nel cielo, simile ad un mare triste.
Passando per il luogo dove viveva Rachael, anche se non era sulla sua strada; passando tra le strade di mattoni rossi; accanto ai grandi silenziosi stabilimenti che ancora non tremavano; lungo la ferrovia, dove i segnali luminosi di pericolo si attenuavano con l’avanzare del giorno; attraverso il quartiere squilibrato della ferrovia, in parte demolito e in parte costruito; passando davanti a ville sparse di mattoni rossi, dove gli alberi sempreverdi ricoperti di fuliggine erano cosparso di una polvere sporca come se fossero degli snuffisti disordinati; tra i sentieri di polvere di carbone e molte varietà di bruttezza, Stephen raggiunse la cima della collina e si guardò indietro.
La luce del giorno splendeva radiosa sulla città e le campane suonavano per il lavoro mattutino. I focolari domestici non erano ancora accesi e i comignoli alti avevano il cielo tutto per sé. Espellendo i loro volumi avvelenati, non sarebbero passati molti minuti prima che lo nascondessero; ma, per mezz’ora, alcune delle molte finestre erano dorate e mostravano agli abitanti di Coketown un sole eternamente eclissato attraverso uno strato di vetro affumicato.
Così strano passare dai camini agli uccelli. Così strano avere la polvere della strada-polvere sui piedi invece del granaio di carbone. Così strano essere arrivato alla sua età eppure sentirsi come un ragazzo in questa mattina d’estate! Con questi pensieri nella mente, e il suo fagotto sotto al braccio, Stephen si incamminò lungo la strada principale con aria attenta. E gli alberi si arcuavano sopra di lui, sussurrando che lasciava dietro di sé un cuore vero e amorevole.
CHAPTER VII GUNPOWDER
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, ‘going in’ for his adopted party, soon began to score. With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a little more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most patronized of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.
‘Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not believe themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy—never mind the name—is, that we know it is all meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never say so.’
Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so unlike her father’s principles, and her early training, that it need startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with no faith in anything else? What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in its state of innocence!
It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind—implanted there before her eminently practical father began to form it—a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever heard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief and justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter, she had said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter, she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What did anything matter—and went on.
Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet so gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were ‘great fun;’ and further, that the female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their house, in his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby’s gusty way to boast to all his world that he didn’t care about your highly connected people, but that if his wife Tom Gradgrind’s daughter did, she was welcome to their company.
Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.
He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget a word of the brother’s revelations. He interwove them with everything he saw of the sister, and he began to understand her. To be sure, the better and profounder part of her character was not within his scope of perception; for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he soon began to read the rest with a student’s eye.
Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, about fifteen miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two, by a railway striding on many arches over a wild country, undermined by deserted coal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires and black shapes of stationary engines at pits’ mouths. This country, gradually softening towards the neighbourhood of Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, there mellowed into a rustic landscape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of the year, and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer time. The bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus pleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his determination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune, overspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand pounds. These accidents did sometimes happen in the best regulated families of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever with the improvident classes.
It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to instal himself in this snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow cabbages in the flower-garden. He delighted to live, barrack-fashion, among the elegant furniture, and he bullied the very pictures with his origin. ‘Why, sir,’ he would say to a visitor, ‘I am told that Nickits,’ the late owner, ‘gave seven hundred pound for that Seabeach. Now, to be plain with you, if I ever, in the whole course of my life, take seven looks at it, at a hundred pound a look, it will be as much as I shall do. No, by George! I don’t forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could have got into my possession, by any means, unless I stole ’em, were the engravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles that I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and that I sold when they were empty for a farthing a-piece, and glad to get it!’
CAPITOLO VII POLVERE DA SPARO
Il signor JAMES HARTHOUSE, “impegnandosi” per il partito che aveva adottato, cominciò presto a riscuotere successo. Con l’aiuto di un po’ più di istruzione per i saggi politici, un po’ più di languida indifferenza per la società in generale e una gestione accettabile dell’onestà simulata nell’ingiustizia, il peccato mortale più efficace e più favorito tra quelli raffinati, egli venne rapidamente considerato molto promettente. Il fatto di non essere disturbato dall’impegno era un grande vantaggio a suo favore, permettendogli di avvicinarsi ai duri tipi dei Fatti con la stessa disinvoltura come se fosse nato uno della loro tribù e di gettare tutti gli altri gruppi fuoribordo, consapevole ipocrita.
«Di cui nessuno di noi crede, mia cara signora Bounderby, e che non credono neppure loro. L’unica differenza tra noi e i professori di virtù o benevolenza o filantropia - poco importa il nome - è che noi sappiamo che tutto questo è privo di significato e lo diciamo; mentre loro lo sanno altrettanto bene, ma non lo diranno mai.»
Perché mai avrebbe dovuto essere sconvolta o messa in guardia da questa reiterazione? Non era così diverso dai principi di suo padre e dalla sua educazione precoce, tanto da doverla spaventare. Qual era la grande differenza tra le due scuole, quando entrambe la incatenavano alle realtà materiali e non le ispiravano alcuna fede in altro? Cosa c’era nella sua anima che James Harthouse poteva distruggere, che Thomas Gradgrind aveva coltivato lì nel suo stato di innocenza!
La situazione era ancora peggiore per lei in quel momento, perché nella sua mente — dove si era radicata prima che il padre, eminente uomo pratico, cominciasse a plasmarla — una tendenza combattiva a credere in un’umanità più vasta e nobile di quella che aveva mai sentito nominare lottava costantemente con dubbi e risentimenti. Con i dubbi, perché quell’aspirazione era stata così sprecata nella sua giovinezza. Con i risentimenti, a causa del torto che le era stato fatto, se davvero si trattava di un sussurro della verità. Su una natura abituata da tempo alla soppressione di sé, così lacerata e divisa, la filosofia degli Harthouse giunse come sollievo e giustificazione. Se tutto era vuoto e senza valore, non aveva perso nulla né sacrificato nulla. Che importanza aveva, disse a suo padre quando le propose marito. Che importanza ha ancora, diceva ora. Con un’autonomia sprezzante si chiedeva: che importanza ha qualcosa? — e continuava.
Verso cosa? Passo dopo passo, avanti e giù, verso una fine, ma così gradualmente che lei credeva di rimanere immobile. Quanto a Mr. Harthouse, dove lui tendesse, non lo considerava né gli importava. Non aveva alcun disegno o piano particolare davanti: nessuna malvagità energica increspava la sua letargia. Attualmente era divertito e interessato quanto si conveniva a un gentiluomo così raffinato; forse anche più di quanto sarebbe stato coerente con la sua reputazione ammettere. Poco dopo il suo arrivo scrisse languidamente al fratello, l’onorevole e scherzoso membro del parlamento, che i Bounderbys erano “divertenti”; e inoltre, che la signora Bounderby, invece di essere la Gorgone che si aspettava, era giovane e notevolmente carina. Dopo ciò, non scrisse più nulla su di loro, e dedicò il suo tempo libero principalmente alla loro casa. Era molto spesso nella loro casa, nei suoi spostamenti e visite nel distretto di Coketown; e fu molto incoraggiato da Mr. Bounderby. Era proprio nel carattere di Mr. Bounderby vantarsi con tutti i suoi amici che lui non gliene importava nulla delle persone altolocate, ma che se sua moglie Tom Gradgrind’s daughter lo desiderava, era la benvenuta alla loro compagnia.
Il signor James Harthouse cominciò a pensare che sarebbe stata una nuova sensazione se il volto che cambiava così meravigliosamente per quel cucciolo avesse cambiato anche per lui.
Era abbastanza rapido nell’osservare; aveva una buona memoria e non dimenticò neppure una parola delle rivelazioni del fratello. Le intrecciava con tutto ciò che vedeva della sorella, e iniziò a comprenderla. Certo, la parte migliore e più profonda del suo carattere era al di fuori del suo campo di percezione; perché nelle nature, come nei mari, profondità risponde a profondità; ma presto iniziò a leggere il resto con l’occhio di uno studioso.
Il signor Bounderby aveva preso possesso di una casa e dei terreni circostanti, a circa quindici miglia dalla città, raggiungibile in meno di un paio di miglia grazie ad una ferrovia che si snodava su numerosi archi sopra un territorio selvaggio, scavato da pozzi minerari abbandonati e costellato al notte da fuochi e dalle forme nere delle macchine fisse alle bocche dei pozzi. Questo paese, che si faceva gradualmente più dolce avvicinandosi alla residenza del signor Bounderby, sfumava in un paesaggio rurale dorato di brughiera e bianco di biancospino nella primavera dell’anno, tremulo di foglie e delle loro ombre per tutto il tempo dell’estate. La banca aveva chiuso un mutuo stipulato sulla proprietà così piacevolmente situata da uno dei magnati di Coketown, che nella sua determinazione a fare una strada più breve del solito verso una fortuna enorme si era sovraspeculato per circa duecentomila sterline. Questi incidenti capitavano talvolta anche nelle famiglie meglio regolate di Coketown, ma i falliti non avevano alcun rapporto con le classi improvide.
Mr. Bounderby provava una soddisfazione immensa nell’insediarsi in questa piccola proprietà accogliente e nel coltivare cavoli con dimostrativa umiltà nel giardino fiorito. Gli piaceva vivere alla maniera di un caserma tra i mobili eleganti, e intimidiva persino le stesse immagini con la sua origine. ‘Perbacco,’ diceva a un visitatore, ‘mi hanno detto che Nickits,’ il precedente proprietario, ‘ha dato settecento sterline per quel Seabeach. Ora, per essere franco con voi, se mai, in tutta la mia vita, do sette sguardi a quell’opera, a cento sterline lo sguardo, avrò fatto già più di quanto farò. No, accidenti! Non dimentico che sono Josiah Bounderby di Coketown. Per anni e anni, gli unici quadri in mio possesso, o che avrei potuto avere in mio possesso, con qualsiasi mezzo, a meno che non li rubassi, erano le incisioni di un uomo che si radeva in uno stivale sulle bottiglie di lucido da scarpe che ero felice di usare per pulire gli stivali e che vendetti quando erano vuote per un quattrino a testa, contento di averlo!’
Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style.
‘Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring half a dozen more if you like, and we’ll find room for ’em. There’s stabling in this place for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is belied, he kept the full number. A round dozen of ’em, sir. When that man was a boy, he went to Westminster School. Went to Westminster School as a King’s Scholar, when I was principally living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets. Why, if I wanted to keep a dozen horses—which I don’t, for one’s enough for me—I couldn’t bear to see ’em in their stalls here, and think what my own lodging used to be. I couldn’t look at ’em, sir, and not order ’em out. Yet so things come round. You see this place; you know what sort of a place it is; you are aware that there’s not a completer place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere—I don’t care where—and here, got into the middle of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the chief-justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were black in the face, is drivelling at this minute—drivelling, sir!—in a fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.’
It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long sultry summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the face which had set him wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it would change for him.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find you alone here. I have for some time had a particular wish to speak to you.’
It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of day being that at which she was always alone, and the place being her favourite resort. It was an opening in a dark wood, where some felled trees lay, and where she would sit watching the fallen leaves of last year, as she had watched the falling ashes at home.
He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.
‘Your brother. My young friend Tom—’
Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest. ‘I never in my life,’ he thought, ‘saw anything so remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features!’ His face betrayed his thoughts—perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according to its instructions so to do.
‘Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful—Tom should be so proud of it—I know this is inexcusable, but I am so compelled to admire.’
‘Being so impulsive,’ she said composedly.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You know I am a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding whatever.’
‘I am waiting,’ she returned, ‘for your further reference to my brother.’
‘You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog as you will find, except that I am not false—not false. But you surprised and started me from my subject, which was your brother. I have an interest in him.’
‘Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?’ she asked, half incredulously and half gratefully.
‘If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no. I must say now—even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of justly awakening your incredulity—yes.’
She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not find voice; at length she said, ‘Mr. Harthouse, I give you credit for being interested in my brother.’
‘Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness on his account—pardon me again—I am running wide of the subject. I am interested in him for his own sake.’
She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that instant, and she remained.
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he dismissed; ‘it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your brother’s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive—a little dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?’
‘I think he makes bets.’ Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that were not her whole answer, she added, ‘I know he does.’
‘Of course he loses?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of your sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?’
She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly and a little resentfully.
‘Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. I think Tom may be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked experience.—Shall I say again, for his sake? Is that necessary?’
She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.
‘Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,’ said James Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more airy manner; ‘I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many advantages. Whether—forgive my plainness—whether any great amount of confidence is likely to have been established between himself and his most worthy father.’
‘I do not,’ said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in that wise, ‘think it likely.’
‘Or, between himself, and—I may trust to your perfect understanding of my meaning, I am sure—and his highly esteemed brother-in-law.’
She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a fainter voice, ‘I do not think that likely, either.’
Poi si sarebbe rivolto a Mr. Harthouse nello stesso stile.
«Harthouse, hai un paio di cavalli qui. Portane altri sei se vuoi e troveremo posto per loro. In questo posto c’è scuderia per una dozzina di cavalli; e a meno che Nickits non sia stato tradito, ne teneva il numero pieno. Una dozzina intera, signore. Quando quell’uomo era ragazzo, andava alla Westminster School. Andava alla Westminster School come Re’s Scholar, quando io vivevo principalmente di rifiuti e dormivo in cesti del mercato. Perché, se volessi tenere una dozzina di cavalli - cosa che non voglio, perché uno mi basta - non potrei sopportare di vederli nelle loro stalle qui, pensando a come era la mia stanza. Non potrei guardarli, signore, senza farli portar fuori. Eppure le cose girano così. Vedi questo posto; sai che tipo di posto è; sei consapevole che non c’è un luogo più completo della sua dimensione in questo regno o altrove - non mi interessa dove - e qui, nel mezzo di tutto questo, come un verme in una noce, c’è Josiah Bounderby. Mentre Nickits (come mi ha detto un uomo entrato nel mio ufficio ieri), Nickits, che recitava in latino nelle rappresentazioni della Westminster School con i lord cancellieri e la nobiltà di questo paese ad applaudirlo fino a diventare neri in faccia, sta delirando in questo momento - delirando, signore! - al quinto piano, su una stretta strada buia sul retro ad Anversa.»
Fu tra le ombre frondose di quel rifugio, nei lunghi e afosi giorni estivi, che il signor Harthouse iniziò a mettere alla prova il volto che lo aveva lasciato perplesso quando l’aveva visto la prima volta, e a verificare se sarebbe cambiato per lui.
«Signora Bounderby, ritengo che sia un fortunato caso trovarla qui sola. Da qualche tempo ho il particolare desiderio di parlarle.»
Non fu per nessun miracoloso caso che la trovò; era l’ora del giorno in cui lei si trovava sempre sola, e il luogo era il suo rifugio preferito. Era una radura nel bosco scuro, dove giacevano alcuni alberi abbattuti, e dove lei sedeva osservando le foglie cadute dell’anno precedente, come aveva fatto con la cenere che cadeva a casa.
Si sedette accanto a lei, lanciando un’occhiata al suo viso.
‘Il tuo fratello. Il mio giovane amico Tom, ’
Il suo colorito si illuminò e lei gli rivolse uno sguardo di interesse. «Non ho mai visto in vita mia», pensò lui, «niente di così straordinario e affascinante come l’illuminarsi di quei tratti!» Il suo volto tradì i suoi pensieri—ma forse senza tradirlo, perché poteva essere stato istruito a farlo.
«Mi scusi. L’espressione del suo affetto fraterno è così bella — Tom ne sarebbe così orgoglioso — so che questo non si può perdonare, ma mi sento così costretto ad ammirarla».
«Essendo così impulsiva», disse con calma.
«Signora Bounderby, no: sa che non faccio pretese con lei. Sa che sono un sordido pezzo di natura umana, pronto a vendermi in qualsiasi momento per una somma ragionevole e del tutto incapace di qualsiasi comportamento arcadico.»
‘Aspetto’, rispose lei, ‘che tu faccia ulteriori riferimenti a mio fratello.’
«Siete severa con me e lo merito. Sono un cane senza valore come non ne troverete mai, se si esclude il fatto che non sono falso — no, non falso. Ma voi mi avete sorpreso e distolto dal mio argomento, che era vostro fratello. Ho interesse per lui».
«Ha interesse per qualcosa, signor Harthouse?» gli chiese, tra l’incredulità e la gratitudine.
«Se mi aveste chiesto quando sono venuto qui la prima volta, vi avrei detto di no. Ora devo dire — anche se rischio di sembrare fingere e di suscitare giustamente il vostro scetticismo — sì».
Fece un piccolo movimento come se stesse cercando di parlare ma non riuscisse a trovare la voce; infine disse: «Signor Harthouse, le do atto dell’interesse che dimostra per mio fratello».
«Grazie. Pretendo di meritarlo. Sapete quanto poco io pretenda, ma questa volta vado fino in fondo. Avete fatto tanto per lui, gli volete così bene; tutta la vostra vita, signora Bounderby, esprime un incantevole dimenticarsi di sé per il suo bene — scusatemi ancora una volta — mi sto allontanando dall’argomento. Mi interesso a lui per il suo stesso bene».
Aveva fatto il più lieve gesto possibile, come se si fosse alzata di scatto per andarsene. Lui aveva cambiato argomento in quell’istante e lei era rimasta.
«Signora Bounderby», riprese lui con tono più leggero eppure con un’aria di sforzo nel prenderlo che era ancora più espressivo del tono che aveva appena lasciato; «non è un reato irreparabile in un giovane della età di suo fratello se è disattento, insensibile e spendaccione - un po’ scapestrato, come si suol dire. Lo è?»
“Sì, davvero.”
‘Posso essere sincero? Gioca d’azzardo?’
«Penso che faccia scommesse». Il signor Harthouse attese come se non fosse stata una risposta completa e lei aggiunse: «So che lo fa».
‘Naturalmente perde?’
“Sì, davvero.”
«Tutti perdono quando scommettono. Posso insinuare la probabilità che lei gli fornirà talvolta denaro per questi scopi?»
Ella sedeva guardando in basso; ma a questa domanda alzò gli occhi scrutatori e un po’ risentiti.
«Scusatemi per la mia impertinente curiosità, cara signora Bounderby. Penso che Tom possa gradualmente cadere nei guai e desidero tendere una mano amica a lui dalle profondità della mia cattiva esperienza.—Devo ripeterlo ancora, per il suo bene? È necessario?»
Sembrò cercare di rispondere, ma non ne venne fuori nulla.
«Per essere franco, confesserò tutto ciò che mi è venuto in mente», disse James Harthouse, tornando a scivolare con la stessa apparente disinvoltura nel suo modo più leggero; «vi confiderò il mio dubbio se abbia avuto molti vantaggi. Se - perdonatemi la schiettezza - sia probabile che si sia instaurata una grande quantità di fiducia tra lui e suo padre, così degno».
«Non lo credo», disse Louisa arrossendo per il suo grande ricordo in quel senso.
«O tra lui e — posso contare sulla vostra perfetta comprensione del mio pensiero, ne sono certo — il suo altamente stimato cognato.»
Si arrossì sempre più e aveva il viso infuocato quando rispose con voce più debole: «Non credo che sia probabile neanche questo.»
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, after a short silence, ‘may there be a better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a considerable sum of you?’
‘You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,’ she returned, after some indecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self-contained manner; ‘you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know, it is not by way of complaint or regret. I would never complain of anything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret.’
‘So spirited, too!’ thought James Harthouse.
‘When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold them very willingly. I attached no value to them. They were quite worthless to me.’
Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband’s gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would have known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.
‘Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I could spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you at all, on the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by halves. Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so involved, but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to your honour. I have held no confidence with any one, because—you anticipated my reason just now.’ She abruptly broke off.
He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. With all possible respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. Bounderby, I think I perceive that he has not been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into these extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long been forced—with the very best intentions we have no doubt—upon him. Mr. Bounderby’s fine bluff English independence, though a most charming characteristic, does not—as we have agreed—invite confidence. If I might venture to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should express what it presents to my own view.’
As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her application of his very distinctly uttered words.
‘All allowance,’ he continued, ‘must be made. I have one great fault to find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him heavily to account.’
Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?
‘Perhaps,’ he returned, ‘I have said enough. Perhaps it would have been better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.’
‘You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.’
‘To relieve you from needless apprehension—and as this confidence regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible things, has been established between us—I obey. I cannot forgive him for not being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my observation, is a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence.’
The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with acute pain that found no relief in them.
‘In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby, that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction and advice in extricating them—rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a scapegrace on a much larger scale—will give me some influence over him, and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees,’ he added, having lifted up his eyes and looked about; for he had watched her closely until now; ‘is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched—if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too often to believe in them.’
He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter pastime, and his colour changed.
«Signora Bounderby», disse Harthouse dopo un breve silenzio, «non potremmo avere una maggiore confidenza tra noi? Tom ha preso in prestito da lei una somma considerevole?»
«Capirà, signor Harthouse», rispose dopo un po’ di esitazione: era stata più o meno incerta e turbata durante tutta la conversazione, eppure aveva sostanzialmente mantenuto il suo atteggiamento riservato; «capirà che se le dico ciò che insiste per sapere, non è certo per lamentarmi o pentirmene. Non mi lagnerei mai di nulla, e di quanto ho fatto non mi pento affatto».
«E così vivace!», pensò James Harthouse.
«Quando mi sposai, scoprii che mio fratello era già in quel periodo gravato da un pesante debito. Pesante per lui, voglio dire. Così ingente da costringermi a vendere alcuni gioielli. Non furono una rinuncia. Li vendetti con grande piacere. Non attribuivo loro alcun valore. Per me erano del tutto inutili».
O lei vide nel suo volto che lui sapeva, o temeva solo nella sua coscienza che lui sapesse, che stava parlando di alcuni dei doni del marito. Si fermò e arrossì nuovamente. Se non lo avesse saputo prima, l’avrebbe capito in quel momento, anche se fosse stato un uomo molto più ottuso di quanto non fosse.
«Da allora ho dato a mio fratello, in varie occasioni, i soldi che potevo permettermi: insomma, tutti quelli che avevo. Poiché mi confido con voi, sulla fede dell’interesse che professate per lui, non lo farò a metà. Da quando siete solito venire qui, ha voluto in una sola volta fino a cento sterline. Non sono stato in grado di dargliele. Mi sono sentito a disagio per le conseguenze del suo coinvolgimento, ma ho mantenuto questi segreti fino ad ora, quando li affido al vostro onore. Non ho avuto confidenza con nessuno, perché—avete anticipato il mio motivo poco fa.» Si interruppe bruscamente.
Era un uomo pronto e colse l’occasione di presentarle la sua stessa immagine leggermente mascherata da fratello.
«Signora Bounderby, sebbene una persona senza grazia, del mondo mondana, provo il massimo interesse, glielo assicuro, per ciò che mi dice. Non posso essere severa con suo fratello. Comprendo e condivido la saggia considerazione con cui guarda ai suoi errori. Con tutto il rispetto sia per il signor Gradgrind che per il signor Bounderby, credo di percepire che non è stato fortunato nella sua educazione. Cresciuto in condizioni svantaggiose rispetto alla società in cui deve svolgere la sua parte, si lancia in questi estremi per sé stesso, a partire da estremi opposti che gli sono stati imposti—con le migliori intenzioni non ne abbiamo dubbio—da tempo. La squisita indipendenza inglese del signor Bounderby, sebbene sia una caratteristica molto affascinante, non invita—come siamo d’accordo—a confidarsi. Se osassi osservare che è il meno del mondo carente di quella delicatezza a cui un giovane sbagliato, un carattere frainteso e delle capacità deviate potrebbero rivolgersi per sollievo e guida, esprimerei ciò che mi appare alla mia vista.»
Mentre sedeva guardando dritto davanti a sé, attraverso le luci mutevoli sull’erba fino all’oscurità del bosco oltre, egli vide sul suo volto la sua attenzione alle sue parole pronunciate con grande chiarezza.
«Si devono fare tutti i controlli», continuò «ma ho una grande colpa da rimproverare a Tom che non posso perdonargli e per la quale lo biasimo pesantemente.»
Louisa volse gli occhi verso il suo viso e gli chiese quale fosse quel difetto?
«Forse», rispose lui, «ho detto abbastanza. Forse sarebbe stato meglio, in generale, se non ne avessi fatto cenno».
‘Mi allarma, signor Harthouse. La prego di farmelo sapere.’
«Per liberarla da apprensioni inutili — e poiché questa confidenza riguardo suo fratello, che io sono certo io stimo sopra ogni altra cosa possibile, è stata stabilita tra noi — obbedisco. Non posso perdonargli di non essere più consapevole in ogni parola, sguardo e atto della sua vita dell’affetto del suo migliore amico; della devozione del suo migliore amico; del suo altruismo; del suo sacrificio. Il ritorno che le fa, secondo quanto ho osservato io, è davvero misero. Quello che ha fatto per lui richiede il suo costante amore e gratitudine, non il suo mal umore e capriccio. Nonostante sia un tipo trascurato come me, non sono così indifferente, signora Bounderby, da essere insensibile a questo vizio di suo fratello o incline a considerarlo un reato veniale».
Il bosco galleggiava davanti a lei, perché i suoi occhi erano offuscati da lacrime. Essi salivano da un profondo pozzo, a lungo nascosto, e il suo cuore era pieno di acuto dolore che non trovava sollievo in esse.
«In una parola, è per correggere vostro fratello su questo punto, signora Bounderby, che io devo aspirare. La mia migliore conoscenza delle sue circostanze e la mia direzione e consiglio nel districarle — piuttosto preziosi, spero, in quanto provenienti da un scapestrato su scala molto più ampia — mi daranno qualche influenza su di lui, e tutto ciò che guadagnerò lo userò certamente a questo scopo. Ho detto abbastanza, anzi troppo. Mi sembra di protestare che sono una sorta di bravo ragazzo, quando, sulla mia parola, non ho la minima intenzione di fare alcuna dichiarazione in tal senso e annuncio apertamente che non sono affatto così. Là, tra gli alberi», aggiunse, avendo sollevato gli occhi e guardandosi attorno; poiché l’aveva osservata attentamente fino a quel momento; «c’è proprio vostro fratello; senza dubbio, appena arrivato. Poiché sembra che si stia attardando in questa direzione, potrebbe essere altrettanto bene, forse, camminare verso di lui e metterci sulla sua strada. Ultimamente è stato molto silenzioso e triste. Forse la sua fratellana coscienza è stata toccata — se esistono cose come le coscienze. Anche se, sulla mia parola, ne sento parlare troppo spesso per crederci».
La aiutò a rialzarsi e lei prese il suo braccio; si avviarono incontro al marmocchio. Stava distrattamente battendo i rami mentre se ne andava in giro: o si chinava con cattiveria per strappare la muschio dagli alberi col bastone. Si spaventò quando lo sorpresero intento a quest’ultima attività e il suo colorito cambiò.
‘Halloa!’ he stammered; ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Whose name, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house together, ‘have you been carving on the trees?’
‘Whose name?’ returned Tom. ‘Oh! You mean what girl’s name?’
‘You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature’s on the bark, Tom.’
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the garden]
‘Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I’d carve her name as often as she liked.’
‘I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.’
‘Mercenary,’ repeated Tom. ‘Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.’
‘Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?’ said Louisa, showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
‘You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,’ returned her brother sulkily. ‘If it does, you can wear it.’
‘Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and then,’ said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Don’t believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little.’
‘At all events, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, softening in his admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, ‘you can’t tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason. However, never mind this now; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am sick of the subject.’
They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother’s shoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden.
‘Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.’
They had stopped among a disorder of roses—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale—and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.
‘Tom, what’s the matter?’
‘Oh! Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom with a groan, ‘I am hard up, and bothered out of my life.’
‘My good fellow, so am I.’
‘You!’ returned Tom. ‘You are the picture of independence. Mr. Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have got myself into—what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she would only have done it.’
He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man’s. After one exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his lightest air.
‘Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.’
‘Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it? Here’s old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon twopence a month, or something of that sort. Here’s my father drawing what he calls a line, and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here’s my mother who never has anything of her own, except her complaints. What is a fellow to do for money, and where am I to look for it, if not to my sister?’
He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr. Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat.
‘But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it—’
‘Not got it, Mr. Harthouse? I don’t say she has got it. I may have wanted more than she was likely to have got. But then she ought to get it. She could get it. It’s of no use pretending to make a secret of matters now, after what I have told you already; you know she didn’t marry old Bounderby for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake. Then why doesn’t she get what I want, out of him, for my sake? She is not obliged to say what she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough; she could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn’t she choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is? But no. There she sits in his company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable and getting it easily. I don’t know what you may call this, but I call it unnatural conduct.’
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind junior, as the injured men of Coketown threatened to pitch their property into the Atlantic. But he preserved his easy attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone balustrades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little surface-island.
‘My dear Tom,’ said Harthouse, ‘let me try to be your banker.’
‘For God’s sake,’ replied Tom, suddenly, ‘don’t talk about bankers!’ And very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. Very white.
Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the best society, was not to be surprised—he could as soon have been affected—but he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind College.
‘What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what they are.’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: ‘it’s too late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you’re a true friend.’
A true friend! ‘Whelp, whelp!’ thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily; ‘what an Ass you are!’
‘And I take your offer as a great kindness,’ said Tom, grasping his hand. ‘As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Well,’ returned the other, ‘it may be of more use by and by. And, my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find for yourself.’
‘Thank you,’ said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds. ‘I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Now, you see, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland: ‘every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately intent;’ the languor of his desperation being quite tropical; ‘on your softening towards your sister—which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother—which you ought to be.’
‘I will be, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.’
‘Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.’
‘Having made which bargain, Tom,’ said Harthouse, clapping him on the shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer—as he did, poor fool—that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good nature to lessen his sense of obligation, ‘we will tear ourselves asunder until dinner-time.’
When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. ‘I didn’t mean to be cross, Loo,’ he said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. ‘I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.’
After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for some one else. Alas, for some one else!
‘So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,’ thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day’s knowledge of her pretty face. ‘So much the less, so much the less.’
«Ehi!» balbettò «non sapevo che fossi qui».
«Di chi hai intagliato il nome sugli alberi, Tom?», disse Mr. Harthouse, posando la mano sulla sua spalla e voltandolo in modo che tutti e tre camminassero insieme verso la casa.
‘Quale nome?’ rispose Tom. ‘Ah! Volete dire quale nome di ragazza?’
‘Il tuo aspetto sospetto sembra quello di chi sta incidendo il nome di una bella creatura sulla corteccia, Tom.’
[Illustrazione: il signor Harthouse e Tom Gradgrind nel giardino
«Non molto di questo, signor Harthouse, a meno che qualche bella creatura con una fortuna enorme a sua disposizione non si prendesse una cotta per me. O lei potrebbe essere brutta quanto era ricca, senza alcun timore di perdermi. Scolpirei il suo nome tutte le volte che vorrebbe».
‘Purtroppo sei un mercenario, Tom.’
‘Mercenario’, ripeté Tom. ‘Chi non è mercenario? Chiedete a mia sorella.’
«Hai forse dimostrato che è un mio difetto, Tom?» disse Louisa, senza mostrare altro segno del suo malcontento e della sua cattiveria.
«Tu sai se il cappello ti sta bene, Loo», rispose suo fratello con aria burbera. «Se ti sta bene, puoi metterlo».
«Tom è misantropo oggi, come tutti i noiosi sono di tanto in tanto», disse il signor Harthouse. «Non dategli retta, signora Bounderby. Sa benissimo che non è così. Rivelerei alcune delle sue opinioni su di voi, espresse privatamente a me, se non si moderasse un po’.»
«Comunque sia, signor Harthouse», disse Tom, addolcendosi nella sua ammirazione per il suo mecenate, ma scuotendo anche la testa con aria cupa, «non potete dirle che io l’abbia mai lodata per essere mercenaria. Potrei averla lodata per il contrario, e lo rifarei se avessi altrettanto buone ragioni. Comunque, non importa ora; non è molto interessante per voi, e sono stufo dell’argomento».
Si diressero verso la casa, dove Louisa lasciò il braccio del visitatore e entrò. Lui rimase a guardarla mentre saliva i gradini, e si addentrava nella penombra della porta; poi posò di nuovo la mano sulla spalla di suo fratello e con un cenno confidenziale lo invitò a fare una passeggiata nel giardino.
‘Tom, mio caro amico, voglio parlarti.’
Si erano fermati in mezzo a un disordine di rose — faceva parte dell’umiltà del signor Bounderby mantenere le rose di Nickit su scala ridotta — e Tom si sedette su una balaustra del terrazzo, strappando boccioli e smembrandoli; mentre il suo potente Familiar gli stava sopra, con un piede sulla balaustra, e la sua figura riposava comodamente sul braccio appoggiato a quel ginocchio. Erano visibili appena dalla sua finestra. Forse li vedeva.
‘Tom, che succede?’
“Oh! Signor Harthouse,” disse Tom con un gemito, “sono in difficoltà e mi sento sopraffatto.”
‘Anch’io lo sono, mio caro amico.’
«Lei!» rispose Tom. «È l’incarnazione dell’indipendenza. Signor Harthouse, mi trovo in un pasticcio terribile. Non ha idea di quale situazione ho creato per me stesso, di quale situazione mia sorella avrebbe potuto tirarmi fuori se solo lo avesse fatto».
Ora si mise a mordere i boccioli di rosa e a strapparli dai denti con una mano che tremava come quella di un vecchio malfermo. Dopo averlo guardato con estrema attenzione, il suo compagno riprese il tono più leggero.
«Tom, sei insensibile: ti aspetti troppo da tua sorella. Hai preso dei soldi da lei, cane che non sei altro, lo sai benissimo».
«Beh, signor Harthouse, so che l’ho fatto. Come avrei potuto ottenerlo altrimenti? Ecco il vecchio Bounderby che si vanta sempre di aver vissuto con due pence al mese alla mia età, o qualcosa del genere. Ecco mio padre che traccia quello che chiama un confine e mi tiene legato a esso fin da bambino, dal collo ai talloni. Ecco mia madre che non ha mai nulla di suo, se non le sue lamentele. Cosa deve fare un ragazzo per avere dei soldi, e dove devo cercarli, se non dalla mia sorella?»
Era quasi in lacrime e sparpagliava i fiori a decine. Il signor Harthouse lo afferrò con decisione per la giacca.
‘Ma, caro Tom, se tua sorella non l’ha, ’
«Non l’ha ottenuto, signor Harthouse? Non dico che l’abbia ottenuto. Forse ho chiesto più di quanto fosse probabile che lei potesse ottenere. Ma allora avrebbe dovuto ottenerlo. Poteva ottenerlo. Ora non serve fingere di mantenere il segreto, dopo quello che le ho già detto; sa che non ha sposato il vecchio Bounderby per se stessa o per lui, ma per me. Allora perché non ottiene da lui ciò che voglio io, per amor mio? Non è obbligata a dire cosa intende farne; è abbastanza furba; potrebbe riuscire a convincerlo, se lo volesse. Allora perché non lo vuole, quando le dico quanto sia importante? Ma no. Ecco che si siede in sua compagnia come una statua, invece di rendersi piacevole e ottenerlo facilmente. Non so come lei voglia chiamare questo comportamento, ma io lo definisco innaturale».
Subito sotto il parapetto, dall’altra parte, c’era un pezzo d’acqua ornamentale in cui il signor James Harthouse aveva una forte inclinazione a gettare il giovane signor Thomas Gradgrind, proprio come gli uomini offesi di Coketown minacciavano di gettare le loro proprietà nell’Atlantico. Ma egli mantenne la sua postura disinvolta; e nulla di più solido superò i parapetti di pietra se non i boccioli di rosa accumulati che ora galleggiavano intorno, formando una piccola isola sulla superficie.
‘Caro Tom,’ disse Harthouse, ‘lascia che io sia il tuo banchiere.’
«Per l’amor di Dio», rispose Tom all’improvviso, «non parlate di banchieri!» E aveva un aspetto molto pallido, in contrasto con le rose. Molto pallido.
Il signor Harthouse, essendo un uomo di perfetta educazione e abituato alla migliore società, non si lasciò sorprendere - sarebbe stato altrettanto improbabile che ne fosse colpito - ma sollevò le palpebre un po’ più del dovuto, come se fossero state alzate da un debole tocco di meraviglia. Sebbene fosse tanto contro i precetti della sua scuola quanto lo era contro la dottrina del Collegio Gradgrind il provare meraviglia.
‘Qual è l’esigenza attuale, Tom? Tre cifre? Fuori con loro. Di’ quali sono.’
«Signor Harthouse», rispose Tom, che ora piangeva davvero; e le sue lacrime erano migliori delle sue ferite, per quanto pietosa fosse la figura che faceva: «è troppo tardi; i soldi non mi servono più. Avrei dovuto averli prima se volevano essermi utili. Ma le sono molto grato; lei è un vero amico».
Un vero amico! ‘Ragazzo, ragazzo!’, pensò pigramente il signor Harthouse; ‘che asino sei!’
«E considero la sua offerta una grande gentilezza», disse Tom stringendogli la mano. «Una grande gentilezza, signor Harthouse».
«Bene,» rispose l’altro «potrebbe tornare utile più avanti. E, mio buon amico, se vorrai confidarmi i tuoi guai quando ti cadranno addosso a pioggia, potrei mostrarti vie migliori per uscirne di quelle che troveresti da solo.»
«Grazie», disse Tom, scuotendo la testa con aria tetra e masticando boccioli di rosa. «Avrei voluto conoscervi prima, signor Harthouse».
«Ora, vedi, Tom», concluse Mr. Harthouse, lanciando lui stesso una rosa o due come contributo all’isola, che galleggiava sempre verso la parete come se volesse diventare parte della terraferma: «ogni uomo è egoista in tutto ciò che fa e io sono esattamente uguale agli altri miei simili. Sono disperatamente intenzionato»; il languore della sua disperazione era del tutto tropicale; «a farti ammorbidire nei confronti di tua sorella, cosa che dovresti fare, e a farti diventare un fratello più affettuoso e piacevole, cosa che dovresti essere.»
‘Sarò io, signor Harthouse.’
«Non c’è momento migliore del presente, Tom. Inizia subito».
‘Certo che lo farò. E mia sorella Loo lo dirà.’
«Avendo concluso questo accordo, Tom», disse Harthouse, dandogli di nuovo una pacca sulla spalla con un’aria che gli lasciava la libertà di dedurre — come fece, povero stolto — che questa condizione gli era imposta in pura buona e disinteressata natura per diminuire il suo senso di obbligo, «ci separeremo fino all’ora di pranzo-pranzo.»
Quando Tom apparve prima di cena, sebbene il suo animo sembrasse abbastanza turbato, il suo corpo era vigile; e apparve prima che il signor Bounderby entrasse. «Non volevo essere irritabile, Loo», disse, porgendole la mano e baciandola. «So che sei affezionata a me, e tu sai che io sono affezionato a te».
Dopo ciò, quel giorno sul volto di Louisa apparve un sorriso per qualcun altro. Ahimè, per qualcun altro!
«Tanto meno il cucciolo è l’unica creatura per cui si preoccupa», pensò James Harthouse, rivedendo la riflessione del suo primo giorno di conoscenza del suo grazioso viso. «Tanto meno, tanto meno».
CHAPTER VIII EXPLOSION
THE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room, smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could give his mind to it.
He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now and at all times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate recesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him. Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad, than indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to be travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly; but he troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be, will be.
As he had rather a long ride to take that day—for there was a public occasion ‘to do’ at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men—he dressed early and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. There was a look of interest for him again.
He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding back at six o’clock. There was a sweep of some half-mile between the lodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.
‘Harthouse!’ cried Mr. Bounderby. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.
‘Then you haven’t heard!’
‘I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.’
Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
‘The Bank’s robbed!’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with a false key.’
‘Of much?’
Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, ‘Why, no; not of very much. But it might have been.’
‘Of how much?’
‘Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty pound,’ said Bounderby, with impatience. ‘But it’s not the sum; it’s the fact. It’s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that’s the important circumstance. I am surprised you don’t see it.’
‘My dear Bounderby,’ said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to his servant, ‘I do see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view. Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you—which I do with all my soul, I assure you—on your not having sustained a greater loss.’
‘Thank’ee,’ replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. ‘But I tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound.’
‘I suppose it might.’
‘Suppose it might! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head. ‘It might have been twice twenty. There’s no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn’t have been, as it was, but for the fellows’ being disturbed.’
Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer.
‘Here’s Tom Gradgrind’s daughter knows pretty well what it might have been, if you don’t,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘Dropped, sir, as if she was shot when I told her! Never knew her do such a thing before. Does her credit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!’
She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been committed.
‘Why, I am going to tell you,’ said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm to Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If you hadn’t been so mighty particular about the sum, I should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she is a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?’
‘I have already had the honour—’
‘Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same occasion?’ Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer knuckled his forehead.
‘Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank, perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business hours, everything was put away as usual. In the iron room that this young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much. In the little safe in young Tom’s closet, the safe used for petty purposes, there was a hundred and fifty odd pound.’
CAPITOLO VIII ESPLOSIONE
LA mattina seguente era troppo luminosa per dormire e James Harthouse si alzò presto, sedendosi alla piacevole finestra a bovindo della sua stanza da bagno, fumando il raro tabacco che aveva avuto un’influenza così salutare sul suo giovane amico. Riposandosi nella luce del sole, con il profumo della pipa orientale attorno e la nebbia onirica che si dissolveva nell’aria, tanto ricca e dolce di odori estivi, calcolava i suoi vantaggi come un giocatore fortunato potrebbe contare le sue vincite. Non era affatto annoiato per il momento e poteva concentrarsi su questo pensiero.
Aveva instaurato con lei una confidenza dalla quale il marito era escluso. Aveva instaurato con lei una confidenza che si basava assolutamente sulla sua indifferenza verso il marito e sull’assenza, ora e in ogni momento, di qualsiasi affinità tra loro. Aveva abilmente, ma chiaramente, assicurato a lei di conoscere il suo cuore nei suoi recessi più delicati; si era avvicinato a lei attraverso i sentimenti più teneri; si era associato a quel sentimento; e la barriera dietro cui viveva si era sciolta. Tutto molto strano, e molto soddisfacente!
Eppure non aveva ancora, neanche ora, alcuna intenzione malvagia. Pubblicamente e privatamente, sarebbe stato molto meglio per l’epoca in cui viveva che lui e la legione di cui faceva parte fossero volutamente cattivi, piuttosto che indifferenti e senza scopo. Sono gli iceberg alla deriva che seguono qualsiasi corrente a causare il naufragio delle navi.
Quando il Diavolo si aggira come un leone ruggente, assume una forma che attrae solo selvaggi e cacciatori. Ma quando è acconciato, lisciato e verniciato secondo la moda; quando è stanco del vizio e stanco della virtù, esausto per quanto riguarda lo zolfo e esausto per quanto riguarda la beatitudine; allora, sia che si dedichi alla distribuzione di burocrazia o all’accensione di fuochi rossi, è proprio il Diavolo.
Così James Harthouse si adagiò alla finestra, fumando pigramente e calcolando i passi che aveva compiuto sulla strada su cui gli era capitato di viaggiare. La meta verso cui conduceva era davanti a lui, abbastanza chiara; ma non si preoccupava di fare calcoli al riguardo. Sarà quel che sarà.
Dovendo fare piuttosto un lungo viaggio quel giorno, perché c’era una cerimonia pubblica da “fare” in un luogo lontano che offriva una buona occasione per partecipare ai Gradgrind, si vestì presto e scese a colazione. Era ansioso di vedere se lei era ricaduta nella situazione della sera precedente. No. Riprese da dove aveva interrotto. C’era nuovamente un’espressione d’interesse per lui.
Superò la giornata con un livello di soddisfazione (o insoddisfazione) tale da essere prevedibile date le circostanze faticose; e tornò a cavallo alle sei o’clock. C’era una distesa di circa mezzo miglio tra la portineria e la casa, e lui stava cavalcando ad andatura lenta sul ghiaietto levigato, un tempo di Nickits, quando il signor Bounderby irruppe dal viale dei cespugli con tale violenza da far impennare il suo cavallo e fargli attraversare la strada.
‘Harthouse!’ esclamò il signor Bounderby. ‘Avete sentito?’
«Sentito cosa?» disse Harthouse, accarezzando il suo cavallo e interiormente rivolgendo a Mr. Bounderby ogni sorta di auguri poco benevoli.
‘Allora non hai sentito!’
‘Vi ho sentito, e lo ha sentito anche questo bruto. Non ho sentito altro.’
Il signor Bounderby, rosso e accaldato, si piantò al centro del sentiero davanti alla testa della cavalla, per far esplodere la sua bomba con maggiore effetto.
‘La banca è stata derubata!’
‘Non lo pensi davvero!’
«Derubato ieri sera, signore. Derubato in modo straordinario. Derubato con una chiave falsa».
‘Di molto?’
Il signor Bounderby, nel suo desiderio di sfruttare al massimo la situazione, sembrava davvero mortificato dall’obbligo di rispondere: «Beh, no; non molto. Ma avrebbe potuto esserlo».
‘Quanto?’
«Oh! come somma — se si parla di una somma — non superiore a centocinquanta sterline», disse Bounderby con impazienza. «Ma la questione non è la somma; è il fatto. È il fatto che la Banca sia stata derubata, questa è l’importante circostanza. Sono sorpreso che lei non lo capisca».
«Mio caro Bounderby», disse James smontando e consegnando le redini al suo servo, «lo vedo; e sono altrettanto sopraffatto di quanto tu possa desiderare che io sia dallo spettacolo offerto alla mia vista mentale. Tuttavia, spero mi sarà concesso - e lo faccio con tutta la mia anima, te lo assicuro - di congratularmi con te per non aver subito una perdita maggiore».
«Grazie», rispose Bounderby con tono brusco e sgarbato. «Ma le dico una cosa: avrebbe potuto essere di ventimila sterline».
‘Suppongo che potrebbe.’
«Supponiamo che sia così! Per Dio, potete supporlo. Per Giorgio!» disse il signor Bounderby con vari cenni minacciosi e scuotimenti del capo. «Avrebbe potuto essere di quaranta a uno. Non si sa mai cosa sarebbe stato o non sarebbe stato, come è andata, se quei tizi non fossero stati disturbati».
Ormai erano arrivate anche Louisa e la signora Sparsit, e Bitzer.
«Ecco che la figlia di Tom Gradgrind sa benissimo cosa sarebbe potuto succedere se non lo avesse fatto», tuonò Bounderby. «È caduta come se l’avessero sparata, quando gliel’ho detto! Non l’avevo mai vista fare una cosa del genere prima d’ora. Le fa onore, in queste circostanze, secondo me!»
Ella era ancora pallida e sembrava sul punto di svenire. James Harthouse le chiese di prendere il suo braccio; mentre procedevano molto lentamente, le domandò come fosse stato commesso il furto.
«Ebbene, sto per dirglielo», disse Bounderby, irritato, offrendo il braccio alla signora Sparsit. «Se non fosse stata così particolarmente attenta alla cifra, gliel’avrei detto prima. Conosce questa signora (perché è una signora), la signora Sparsit?»
«Ho già avuto l’onore—»
«Molto bene. E questo giovane, Bitzer, l’hai visto anche tu nella stessa occasione?» Il signor Harthouse inclinò il capo in segno di assenso e Bitzer si grattò la fronte.
«Molto bene. Abitano alla Banca. Sapete che abitano alla Banca, forse? Molto bene. Ieri pomeriggio, al termine dell’orario di lavoro, tutto è stato riposto come al solito. Nella stanza blindata dove questo giovane dorme fuori, non importa quanto ci fosse dentro. Nel piccolo cassaforte nell’armadio del giovane Tom, il cassaforte usato per scopi minori, c’erano centocinquanta sterline e rotti».
‘A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,’ said Bitzer.
‘Come!’ retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, ‘let’s have none of your interruptions. It’s enough to be robbed while you’re snoring because you’re too comfortable, without being put right with your four seven ones. I didn’t snore, myself, when I was your age, let me tell you. I hadn’t victuals enough to snore. And I didn’t four seven one. Not if I knew it.’
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of Mr. Bounderby’s moral abstinence.
‘A hundred and fifty odd pound,’ resumed Mr. Bounderby. ‘That sum of money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that’s no matter now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night, while this young fellow snored—Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, you say you have heard him snore?’
‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I cannot say that I have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, ‘that I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my testimony.’
‘Well!’ said the exasperated Bounderby, ‘while he was snoring, or choking, or Dutch-clocking, or something or other—being asleep—some fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not remains to be seen, got to young Tom’s safe, forced it, and abstracted the contents. Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves out at the main door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked, and the key under Mrs. Sparsit’s pillow) with a false key, which was picked up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o’clock to-day. No alarm takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and begins to open and prepare the offices for business. Then, looking at Tom’s safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the money gone.’
‘Where is Tom, by the by?’ asked Harthouse, glancing round.
‘He has been helping the police,’ said Bounderby, ‘and stays behind at the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his time of life. They would have been out of pocket if they had invested eighteenpence in the job; I can tell ’em that.’
‘Is anybody suspected?’
‘Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. Egod!’ said Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit’s arm to wipe his heated head. ‘Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody suspected. No, thank you!’
Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected?
‘Well,’ said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront them all, ‘I’ll tell you. It’s not to be mentioned everywhere; it’s not to be mentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there’s a gang of ’em) may be thrown off their guard. So take this in confidence. Now wait a bit.’ Mr. Bounderby wiped his head again. ‘What should you say to;’ here he violently exploded: ‘to a Hand being in it?’
‘I hope,’ said Harthouse, lazily, ‘not our friend Blackpot?’
‘Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,’ returned Bounderby, ‘and that’s the man.’
Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.
‘O yes! I know!’ said Bounderby, immediately catching at the sound. ‘I know! I am used to that. I know all about it. They are the finest people in the world, these fellows are. They have got the gift of the gab, they have. They only want to have their rights explained to them, they do. But I tell you what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll show you a man that’s fit for anything bad, I don’t care what it is.’
Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been taken to disseminate—and which some people really believed.
‘But I am acquainted with these chaps,’ said Bounderby. ‘I can read ’em off, like books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I appeal to you. What warning did I give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the express object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over, and floor the Established Church? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high connexions, you are on a level with the aristocracy,—did I say, or did I not say, to that fellow, “you can’t hide the truth from me: you are not the kind of fellow I like; you’ll come to no good”?’
‘Assuredly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you did, in a highly impressive manner, give him such an admonition.’
‘When he shocked you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘when he shocked your feelings?’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her head, ‘he certainly did so. Though I do not mean to say but that my feelings may be weaker on such points—more foolish if the term is preferred—than they might have been, if I had always occupied my present position.’
Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Harthouse, as much as to say, ‘I am the proprietor of this female, and she’s worth your attention, I think.’ Then, resumed his discourse.
‘You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him when you saw him. I didn’t mince the matter with him. I am never mealy with ’em. I KNOW ’em. Very well, sir. Three days after that, he bolted. Went off, nobody knows where: as my mother did in my infancy—only with this difference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What did he do before he went? What do you say;’ Mr. Bounderby, with his hat in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his sentences, as if it were a tambourine; ‘to his being seen—night after night—watching the Bank?—to his lurking about there—after dark?—To its striking Mrs. Sparsit—that he could be lurking for no good—To her calling Bitzer’s attention to him, and their both taking notice of him—And to its appearing on inquiry to-day—that he was also noticed by the neighbours?’ Having come to the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put his tambourine on his head.
«Centocinquantaquattro, sette, uno», disse Bitzer.
«Come!» ribatté Bounderby, fermandosi per girarsi verso di lui «non voglio nessuna delle tue interruzioni. È già abbastanza essere derubati mentre russi perché sei troppo comodo, senza dover essere messo a posto con i tuoi quattro sette uno. Non russavo io stesso quando avevo la tua età, lascia che te lo dica. Non avevo viveri sufficienti per russare. E non facevo quattro sette uno. No, se sapevo quello che facevo».
Bitzer si sfregò di nuovo la fronte con l’indice, in modo furtivo, e sembrò essere immediatamente particolarmente colpito e depresso dall’esempio appena dato dell’astinenza morale del signor Bounderby.
«Cento e cinquanta sterline circa», riprese il signor Bounderby. «Quella somma di denaro, giovane Tom la chiuse nella sua cassaforte, non una cassaforte molto robusta, ma ora questo non ha importanza. Tutto fu lasciato in ordine. In qualche momento della notte, mentre quel giovane russava — signora Sparsit, dice che l’ha sentito russare?»
«Signore», rispose la signora Sparsit, «non posso dire di averlo sentito russare esattamente e quindi non posso fare tale affermazione. Ma nelle sere d’inverno, quando si addormentava alla sua scrivania, l’ho sentito emettere suoni che preferirei descrivere come parzialmente soffocati. L’ho sentito in tali occasioni produrre suoni di natura simile a quelli che si possono talvolta udire negli orologi olandesi. Non», disse la signora Sparsit, con un senso elevato di fornire una testimonianza rigorosa, «che io voglia insinuare alcuna imputazione sul suo carattere morale. L’ultima cosa al mondo. Ho sempre considerato Bitzer un giovane uomo dai principi più retti; e a ciò desidero portare la mia testimonianza».
«Bene!» disse il furibondo Bounderby «mentre lui russava, o soffocava, o faceva l’orologio olandese, o altro di simile — essendo addormentato — alcuni tipi, in qualche modo, che fossero stati precedentemente nascosti nella casa oppure no, resta da vedere, sono riusciti ad arrivare alla cassaforte del giovane Tom, l’hanno forzata e hanno sottratto il contenuto. Poi, essendo stati disturbati, se la sono data a gambe; uscendo dalla porta principale, e doppio-chiudendola di nuovo (era stata doppio-chiusa, e la chiave era sotto il cuscino della signora Sparsit) con una chiave falsa, che è stata raccolta in strada vicino alla Banca, verso le dodici o’clock di oggi. Non si dà l’allarme, fino a quando questo tizio, Bitzer, non arriva stamattina e comincia ad aprire e preparare gli uffici per il lavoro. Poi, guardando la cassaforte di Tom, vede la porta socchiusa, e scopre che la serratura è stata forzata, e i soldi sono spariti».
«Dov’è Tom, a proposito?» chiese Harthouse guardandosi intorno.
«Mi ha aiutato la polizia», disse Bounderby, «e rimane dietro alla Banca. Vorrei che questi tizi avessero provato a derubarmi quando ero della sua età. Sarebbero stati in perdita se avessero investito diciotto pence nel lavoro; posso dirglielo io.»
‘Qualcuno è sospettato?’
«Sospettato? Direi che c’è qualcuno sospettato. Egò!» disse Josiah Bounderby, lasciando il braccio della signora Sparsit per asciugarsi la testa accaldata. «Josiah Bounderby di Coketown non può essere derubato e nessuno sospettato. No, grazie!»
Il signor Harthouse potrebbe chiedere Chi era sospettato?
«Bene,» disse Bounderby, fermandosi e voltandosi per affrontarli tutti, «vi dirò. Non è una cosa da menzionare dappertutto; non è una cosa da menzionare da nessuna parte: in modo che i farabutti coinvolti (ce n’è un gruppo) possano abbassare la guardia. Quindi prendete questo con fiducia. Ora aspettate un attimo». Il signor Bounderby si asciugò di nuovo la testa. «Cosa direste se;» qui esplose violentemente: «se ci fosse coinvolto un Operaio?»
«Spero», disse Harthouse con aria svogliata, «che non sia il nostro amico Blackpot?»
‘Dite Pozza invece di Pentola, signore’, rispose Bounderby, ‘e quello è l’uomo.’
Louisa pronunciò debolmente qualche parola di incredulità e sorpresa.
«Oh sì! Lo so!» disse Bounderby, cogliendo subito il suono. «Lo so! Ci sono abituato. Ne so tutto. Sono la gente più fine del mondo, questi tizi. Hanno il dono della chiacchiera, hanno. Vogliono solo che si spieghino loro i loro diritti, vogliono. Ma le dico una cosa: mi mostri un Operaio insoddisfatto e io le mostrerò un uomo capace di fare qualsiasi cosa cattiva, non importa quale sia.»
Un’altra delle popolari finzioni di Coketown, per la cui diffusione si era fatto qualcosa — e nella quale alcune persone credevano davvero.
«Ma io conosco questi tipi», disse Bounderby. «Li leggo come se fossero libri. Signora Sparsit, le chiedo di testimoniare. Qual è stato l’avvertimento che ho dato a quel tizio la prima volta che ha messo piede in questa casa, quando lo scopo dichiarato della sua visita era quello di sapere come si potesse demolire la Religione e mettere al tappeto la Chiesa ufficiale? Signora Sparsit, per quanto riguarda le alte connessioni, lei è alla pari con l’aristocrazia: ho detto o non ho detto a quel tipo «non puoi nascondermi la verità: tu non sei il genere di persona che mi piace; non combinerai nulla di buono»?»
«Certamente, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit, «gli ha fatto una ramanzina davvero impressionante».
‘Quando ti ha scandalizzato, signora’, disse Bounderby; ‘quando ha ferito i tuoi sentimenti?’
«Sì, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con un mite cenno del capo, «certamente lo fece. Anche se non voglio dire che i miei sentimenti possano essere più deboli su tali punti - più sciocchi, se si preferisce il termine - di quanto avrebbero potuto essere, se avessi sempre occupato la mia attuale posizione».
Il signor Bounderby fissò il signor Harthouse con un’orgoglio sfrenato, come a dire: «Sono il proprietario di questa donna e credo che valga la tua attenzione». Poi riprese il suo discorso.
«Puoi ricordare da te stesso, Harthouse, cosa gli ho detto quando lo hai visto. Non ho minimizzato la questione con lui. Non sono mai ambiguo con loro. Li CONOSCO. Molto bene, signore. Tre giorni dopo, è scappato. Se n’è andato, nessuno sa dove: come fece mia madre quando ero bambino—solo che c’è questa differenza, che lui è un soggetto peggiore di mia madre, se possibile. Cosa ha fatto prima di andarsene? Cosa ne pensi;» il signor Bounderby, con il cappello in mano, dava una battuta sulla tesa ad ogni piccola divisione delle sue frasi, come se fosse un tamburello; «che lo si sia visto—notte dopo notte—sorvegliare la Banca?—che si aggirasse lì intorno—dopo il buio?—Che ciò abbia colpito la signora Sparsit—che non potesse essere in giro per niente di buono—Che lei abbia attirato l’attenzione di Bitzer su di lui, e che entrambi lo abbiano notato—E che sia emerso oggi dalle indagini—che è stato notato anche dai vicini?» Avendo raggiunto il culmine, il signor Bounderby, come un danzatore orientale, mise il suo tamburello in testa.
‘Suspicious,’ said James Harthouse, ‘certainly.’
‘I think so, sir,’ said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. ‘I think so. But there are more of ’em in it. There’s an old woman. One never hears of these things till the mischief’s done; all sorts of defects are found out in the stable door after the horse is stolen; there’s an old woman turns up now. An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a broomstick, every now and then. She watches the place a whole day before this fellow begins, and on the night when you saw him, she steals away with him and holds a council with him—I suppose, to make her report on going off duty, and be damned to her.’
There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from observation, thought Louisa.
‘This is not all of ’em, even as we already know ’em,’ said Bounderby, with many nods of hidden meaning. ‘But I have said enough for the present. You’ll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no one. It may take time, but we shall have ’em. It’s policy to give ’em line enough, and there’s no objection to that.’
‘Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as notice-boards observe,’ replied James Harthouse, ‘and serve them right. Fellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences. If there were no consequences, we should all go in for Banks.’ He had gently taken Louisa’s parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked under its shade, though the sun did not shine there.
‘For the present, Loo Bounderby,’ said her husband, ‘here’s Mrs. Sparsit to look after. Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves have been acted upon by this business, and she’ll stay here a day or two. So make her comfortable.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ that discreet lady observed, ‘but pray do not let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do for Me.’
It soon appeared that if Mrs. Sparsit had a failing in her association with that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance. On being shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts as to suggest the inference that she would have preferred to pass the night on the mangle in the laundry. True, the Powlers and the Scadgerses were accustomed to splendour, ‘but it is my duty to remember,’ Mrs. Sparsit was fond of observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any of the domestics were present, ‘that what I was, I am no longer. Indeed,’ said she, ‘if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr. Sparsit was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family; or if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of common descent and ordinary connexions; I would gladly do so. I should think it, under existing circumstances, right to do so.’ The same Hermitical state of mind led to her renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner, until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to take them; when she said, ‘Indeed you are very good, sir;’ and departed from a resolution of which she had made rather formal and public announcement, to ‘wait for the simple mutton.’ She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt; and, feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr. Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back in her chair and silently wept; at which periods a tear of large dimensions, like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must be, for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose.
But Mrs. Sparsit’s greatest point, first and last, was her determination to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions when in looking at him she was involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, ‘Alas, poor Yorick!’ After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of emotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully cheerful, and would say, ‘You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful to find;’ and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr. Bounderby bore up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often apologized, she found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a curious propensity to call Mrs. Bounderby ‘Miss Gradgrind,’ and yielded to it some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest confusion; but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Gradgrind: whereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the happiness of knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs. Bounderby, she found almost impossible. It was a further singularity of this remarkable case, that the more she thought about it, the more impossible it appeared; ‘the differences,’ she observed, ‘being such.’
In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case of the robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town with instructions to recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.
When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, ‘Don’t be low, sir. Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do.’ Mr. Bounderby, upon whom these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in a bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large sea-animal. ‘I cannot bear to see you so, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Try a hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of living under your roof.’ ‘I haven’t played backgammon, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘since that time.’ ‘No, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, soothingly, ‘I am aware that you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no interest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you will condescend.’
«Sospetto», disse James Harthouse, «certamente».
«Penso di sì, signore», disse Bounderby con un cenno di sfida. «Penso di sì. Ma ce ne sono altri coinvolti. C’è una vecchia. Non si sente mai parlare di queste cose finché il danno non è fatto; tutti i tipi di difetti vengono scoperti sulla porta della stalla dopo che il cavallo è stato rubato; ora emerge una vecchia. Una vecchia che sembra essere volata in città su una scopa, ogni tanto. Lei sorveglia il posto per un giorno intero prima che questo tizio cominci, e nella notte in cui l’avete visto, fugge con lui e tiene un consiglio con lui - immagino, per fare la sua relazione al termine del servizio, e dannata sia lei.»
C’era una persona del genere nella stanza quella notte e si ritraeva dall’osservazione, pensò Louisa.
«Questi non sono tutti quelli che già conosciamo», disse Bounderby, con molti cenni del capo pieni di significato nascosto. «Ma per ora ho detto abbastanza. Avrete la bontà di tenerlo per voi e di non parlarne con nessuno. Potrebbe volerci tempo, ma li avremo. È una questione di politica concedere loro abbastanza corda, e non ci sono obiezioni a questo».
«Naturalmente saranno puniti con la massima severità della legge, come si può leggere sui cartelli», rispose James Harthouse, «e giusto così. Chi va in cerca di Banks deve accettare le conseguenze. Se non ci fossero conseguenze, andremmo tutti in cerca di Banks». Aveva delicatamente preso il parasole di Louisa dalla sua mano e lo aveva aperto per lei; e lei camminava sotto la sua ombra, anche se il sole non splendeva lì.
«Per il momento, Loo Bounderby», disse suo marito, «c’è qui la signora Sparsit da accudire. I nervi della signora Sparsit sono stati messi alla prova da questa faccenda e starà qui un giorno o due. Quindi sistemala comodamente».
«La ringrazio molto, signore», osservò quella discreta signora, «ma la prego di non considerare il mio benessere. Qualsiasi cosa andrà bene per me».
Presto apparve che se la signora Sparsit aveva un difetto nella sua associazione con quell’istituzione domestica, era quello di essere così eccessivamente incurante di sé stessa e premurosa degli altri da diventare una seccatura. Quando le fu mostrata la sua camera, ne percepì i comfort in modo così terribile da suggerire che avrebbe preferito passare la notte sul torchio nella lavanderia. È vero, i Powlers e gli Scadgers erano abituati allo sfarzo, ‘ma è mio dovere ricordare’, osservava con grazia elevata la signora Sparsit: in particolare quando uno dei domestici era presente, ‘che ciò che ero non lo sono più. In effetti,’ disse, ‘se potessi cancellare del tutto il ricordo che il signor Sparsit fosse un Powler, o che io stessa sia imparentata con la famiglia Scadgers; o se potessi anche revocare quel fatto e rendermi una persona di comune estrazione e connessioni ordinarie; lo farei volentieri. Penso che in queste circostanze sarebbe giusto farlo.’ Lo stesso stato d’animo eremitico la portò a rinunciare ai piatti preparati e ai vini a cena, finché non fu espressamente invitata dal signor Bounderby ad assumerli; allora disse: ‘In verità siete molto gentile, signore’; e abbandonò una risoluzione di cui aveva fatto un annuncio piuttosto formale e pubblico, per ‘aspettare l’umile montone.’ Si scusava inoltre profondamente per aver chiesto il sale; e sentendosi amabilmente obbligata a sostenere appieno il signor Bounderby nella testimonianza che aveva reso dei suoi nervi, occasionalmente si sedeva all’indietro sulla sua sedia e piangeva in silenzio; durante questi periodi una lacrima di grandi dimensioni, come un orecchino di cristallo, poteva essere osservata (o meglio, doveva esserlo, perché insisteva nel richiedere l’attenzione pubblica) scivolare lungo il suo naso romano.
Ma il punto di forza più grande della signora Sparsit, inizialmente e alla fine, era la sua determinazione a compatire il signor Bounderby. Ci furono occasioni in cui guardandolo si sentiva involontariamente spinta ad agitare la testa, come se volesse dire: ‘Ahimè, povero Yorick!’ Dopo essersi lasciata trascinare da queste manifestazioni di emozione, assumeva un’espressione luminosa e intermittente, si mostrava allegra e diceva: ‘Vedo con piacere che ha ancora buon umore, signore;’ e sembrava considerarlo una benedetta disposizione il fatto che il signor Bounderby reggesse come faceva. Una stranezza per la quale spesso si scusava le risultava estremamente difficile da superare. Aveva una curiosa propensione a chiamare la signora Bounderby ‘Miss Gradgrind,’ e vi cedeva una trentina di volte nel corso della serata. La ripetizione di questo errore avvolgeva la signora Sparsit in modesta confusione; ma davvero, diceva, sembrava così naturale dire Miss Gradgrind: mentre persuadersi che la giovane signorina che aveva avuto la felicità di conoscere fin da bambina potesse essere veramente e propriamente la signora Bounderby le risultava quasi impossibile. Era un’ulteriore singolarità di questo notevole caso, che più ci pensava, più le sembrava impossibile; ‘le differenze,’ osservò, ‘sono tali.’
Nel salotto dopo cena, il signor Bounderby giudicò il caso del furto, interrogò i testimoni, prese nota delle prove, dichiarò colpevoli le persone sospette e le condannò alla massima pena prevista dalla legge. Fatto ciò, Bitzer fu congedato in città con istruzioni di raccomandare a Tom di tornare a casa con il treno postale.
Quando furono portate le candele, la signora Sparsit mormorò: «Non sia abbattuto, signore. La prego di lasciarmi vederla allegro come ero abituata a farlo». Il signor Bounderby, su cui quelle consolazioni avevano cominciato ad avere l’effetto di renderlo sentimentale in un modo testardo e goffo, sospirò come una grossa bestia marina. «Non posso sopportare di vederla così, signore», disse la signora Sparsit. «Proviamo a giocare a trictrac, signore, come facevamo quando avevo l’onore di vivere sotto il suo tetto». «Non ho più giocato a trictrac, signora», rispose il signor Bounderby, «da quel tempo.» «No, signore», disse la signora Sparsit in tono rassicurante, «so bene che non l’ha fatto. Ricordo che la signorina Gradgrind non si interessa a questo gioco. Ma sarò felice, signore, se vorrà concondiscendere».
They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was a fine night: not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr. Harthouse strolled out into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the stillness, though not what they said. Mrs. Sparsit, from her place at the backgammon board, was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the shadows without. ‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you don’t see a Fire, do you?’ ‘Oh dear no, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I was thinking of the dew.’ ‘What have you got to do with the dew, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘It’s not myself, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I am fearful of Miss Gradgrind’s taking cold.’ ‘She never takes cold,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Really, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. And was affected with a cough in her throat.
When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took a glass of water. ‘Oh, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Not your sherry warm, with lemon-peel and nutmeg?’ ‘Why, I have got out of the habit of taking it now, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘The more’s the pity, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘you are losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir! If Miss Gradgrind will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I have often done.’
Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr. Bounderby. ‘It will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir.’ And when Mr. Bounderby said, ‘Your health, ma’am!’ she answered with great feeling, ‘Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also.’ Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was.
Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for her brother’s coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour past midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang on until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.
She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the staircase to her brother’s room. His door being shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.
She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said nothing to him.
He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that was, and what was the matter?
‘Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming.’
‘My dear brother:’ she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: ‘is there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the truth!’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo!’
‘As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘You may be certain;’ in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom as if he were a child; ‘that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only “yes,” and I shall understand you!’
She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.
‘Not a word, Tom?’
‘How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don’t know what you mean? Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin to think of a better brother than I am. But I have nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to bed.’
‘You are tired,’ she whispered presently, more in her usual way.
‘Yes, I am quite tired out.’
‘You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day. Have any fresh discoveries been made?’
‘Only those you have heard of, from—him.’
‘Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those people, and that we saw those three together?’
‘No. Didn’t you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet when you asked me to go there with you?’
‘Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen.’
‘Nor I neither. How could I?’
He was very quick upon her with this retort.
‘Ought I to say, after what has happened,’ said his sister, standing by the bed—she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, ‘that I made that visit? Should I say so? Must I say so?’
‘Good Heavens, Loo,’ returned her brother, ‘you are not in the habit of asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep it to yourself, I shall keep it to _my_self. If you disclose it, there’s an end of it.’
It was too dark for either to see the other’s face; but each seemed very attentive, and to consider before speaking.
‘Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really implicated in this crime?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be.’
‘He seemed to me an honest man.’
‘Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so.’ There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.
‘In short,’ resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, ‘if you come to that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour, that I took him outside the door to tell him quietly, that I thought he might consider himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from my sister, and that I hoped he would make good use of it. You remember whether I took him out or not. I say nothing against the man; he may be a very good fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is.’
‘Was he offended by what you said?’
‘No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough. Where are you, Loo?’ He sat up in bed and kissed her. ‘Good night, my dear, good night.’
‘You have nothing more to tell me?’
‘No. What should I have? You wouldn’t have me tell you a lie!’
‘I wouldn’t have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the nights in your life; many and much happier as I hope they will be.’
‘Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I wonder I don’t say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to bed.’
Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and lay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him. She stood for some time at the bedside before she slowly moved away. She stopped at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if he had called her? But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and returned to her room.
Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again: tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world.
Giocavano vicino a una finestra che si apriva sul giardino. Era una bella serata: non c’era luna, ma faceva caldo e profumava. Louisa e il signor Harthouse si erano incamminati nel giardino, dove le loro voci si udivano nella quiete, anche se non ciò che dicevano. La signora Sparsit, dal suo posto al tavoliere da trictrac, continuava a tendere gli occhi per scrutare l’oscurità. “Che succede, signora?” disse il signor Bounderby; “non vedrà un incendio, vero?” “Oh no, signore,” rispose la signora Sparsit, “pensavo alla rugiada.” “Cosa c’entra lei con la rugiada, signora?” chiese il signor Bounderby. “Non è per me, signore,” replicò la signora Sparsit, “temo che la signorina Gradgrind prenda freddo.” “Lei non prende mai freddo,” disse il signor Bounderby. “Davvero, signore?” disse la signora Sparsit. E fu colta da una tosse in gola.
Quando si avvicinò l’ora di ritirarsi, il signor Bounderby prese un bicchiere d’acqua. «Oh, signore?» disse la signora Sparsit. «Non prende più il suo sherry caldo con scorza di limone e noce moscata?» «Beh, ho perso l’abitudine a prenderlo ora, signora», rispose il signor Bounderby. «Peccato, signore», replicò la signora Sparsit; «sta perdendo tutte le sue buone vecchie abitudini. Su, coraggio, signore! Se la signorina Gradgrind me lo permette, mi offro di prepararglielo io, come ho fatto spesso in passato».
La signorina Gradgrind permettendo senza difficoltà alla signora Sparsit di fare tutto ciò che voleva, quella premurosa signora preparò la bevanda e la porse al signor Bounderby. «Le farà bene, signore. La scalderà il cuore. È proprio quello che le occorre e dovrebbe prendere, signore». E quando il signor Bounderby disse: «Alla sua salute, signora!», lei rispose con grande sentimento: «Grazie, signore. Lo stesso a lei, e anche felicità». Infine, gli augurò una buona notte, con grande pathos; e il signor Bounderby andò a letto, con la persuasione sentimentale che fosse stato deluso in qualcosa di tenero, sebbene non avrebbe potuto, per la sua vita, dire cosa fosse.
Molto tempo dopo che Louisa si era spogliata e coricata, continuava a vegliare e ad aspettare il ritorno a casa di suo fratello. Questo non poteva avvenire, lo sapeva bene, prima dell’una passata la mezzanotte; ma nel silenzio della campagna, che faceva qualsiasi cosa tranne calmare il tumulto dei suoi pensieri, il tempo si trascinava stancamente. Infine, quando l’oscurità e la quiete sembrarono per ore addensarsi a vicenda, udì il campanello del cancello. Ebbe la sensazione che sarebbe stata felice se avesse continuato a suonare fino all’alba; ma si fermò, e gli anelli dell’ultimo rintocco si diffusero nell’aria più deboli e più ampi, e tutto fu di nuovo morto.
Aspettò ancora un quarto d’ora circa, secondo il suo calcolo. Poi si alzò, indossò una vestaglia ampia e uscì dalla sua stanza al buio, salendo la scala fino alla camera di suo fratello. La porta era chiusa, così l’aprì dolcemente e gli parlò, avvicinandosi al letto con passo silenzioso.
Si inginocchiò accanto a lui, gli passò il braccio intorno al collo e lo attirò verso di sé. Sapeva che fingeva solo di dormire, ma non gli disse nulla.
Cominciò a poco a poco come se fosse appena stato svegliato e chiese chi era quello e che cosa succedeva.
«Tom, hai qualcosa da dirmi? Se mi hai mai amato nella tua vita e hai nascosto qualcosa a tutti gli altri, dimmelo.»
‘Non so cosa intendi, Loo. Hai sognato.’
«Mio caro fratello:» si appoggiò la testa sul suo cuscino e i suoi capelli gli ricaddero addosso come se volesse nasconderlo a tutti tranne che a lei stessa: «non hai nulla da dirmi? Non puoi dirmi nulla, se lo vuoi? Non potrai mai dirmi nulla che mi cambi. O Tom, dimmi la verità!»
‘Non so cosa intendi, Loo!’
«Come giaci qui sola, mia cara, nella malinconica notte, così dovrai giacere da qualche parte una notte, quando anche io, se sarò ancora in vita allora, ti avrò lasciata. Come sono qui accanto a te, scalzo, svestito, indistinguibile nell’oscurità, così dovrò giacere per tutta la notte del mio deperimento, finché non sarò polvere. Nel nome di quel tempo, Tom, dimmi la verità ora!»
‘Che cosa vuoi sapere?’
«Ne sei certo;» nella forza del suo amore lo strinse al seno come se fosse un bambino; «che non ti rimprovererò. Ne sei certo che sarò compassionevole e fedele a te. Ne sei certo che ti salverò a qualunque costo. O Tom, non hai nulla da dirmi? Sussurra molto piano. Di’ solo “sì” e ti capirò!»
Lei gli avvicinò l’orecchio alle labbra, ma lui rimase ostinatamente silenzioso.
‘Niente da dire, Tom?’
«Come posso dire Sì o come posso dire No se non so cosa intendi? Loo, sei una ragazza coraggiosa e gentile, degna, comincio a pensare, di un fratello migliore di me. Ma non ho altro da dire. Vai a letto, vai a letto».
«Sei stanca», sussurrò poco dopo, più nel suo solito modo.
‘Sì, sono completamente esausto.’
‘È stato un giorno così frenetico e agitato. Sono state fatte nuove scoperte?’
‘Solo quelli di cui avete sentito parlare da lui.’
«Tom, hai detto a qualcuno che siamo andati a far visita a quelle persone e che li abbiamo visti tutti e tre insieme?»
«No. Non sei stato tu stesso a chiedermi in particolare di tenerlo nascosto quando mi hai chiesto di andarci con te?»
‘Sì. Ma allora non sapevo cosa sarebbe successo.’
‘Nemmeno io. Come avrei potuto?’
Le rispose con questa battuta molto prontamente.
«Dovrei dire, dopo quello che è successo», disse sua sorella, in piedi accanto al letto - si era gradualmente ritirata e alzata, «che ho fatto quella visita? Dovrei dirlo? Devo dirlo?»
«Buon Dio, Loo», rispose suo fratello, «non sei solita chiedermi consiglio. Di’ quello che vuoi. Se lo tieni per te, io lo terrò per me. Se lo rivelerai, la cosa finirà lì».
Era troppo buio perché l’uno potesse vedere il volto dell’altro; ma sembravano entrambi molto attenti e riflettevano prima di parlare.
‘Tom, credi che l’uomo a cui ho dato i soldi sia davvero coinvolto in questo crimine?’
‘Non lo so. Non vedo perché non dovrebbe essere.’
Mi sembrava un uomo onesto.
«Un’altra persona può sembrarvi disonesta e non esserlo affatto». Ci fu una pausa perché aveva esitato e si era fermato.
«In breve», riprese Tom come se avesse preso una decisione, «se ci si mette così, forse ero talmente lontano dall’essere del tutto dalla sua parte che lo portai fuori dalla porta per dirgli tranquillamente che pensavo potesse considerarsi molto ben messo a ricevere un colpo di fortuna come quello che aveva avuto da mia sorella, e che speravo facesse buon uso di esso. Ricordate se lo portai fuori o no. Non dico nulla contro quell’uomo; potrebbe essere una brava persona, per quel che ne so; spero lo sia».
‘È stato offeso da quello che hai detto?’
«No, l’ha presa abbastanza bene; è stato abbastanza gentile. Dove sei, Loo?» Si sedette sul letto e la baciò. «Buona notte, mia cara, buona notte.»
‘Non hai altro da dirmi?’
‘No. Cosa avrei dovuto fare? Non vorrai che ti dica una bugia!’
«Non vorrei che lo facessi questa sera, Tom, di tutte le sere della tua vita; molte e molto più felici come io spero che saranno.»
«Grazie, mia cara Loo. Sono così stanco che sono sicuro di meravigliarmi di non dire nulla per andare a dormire. Vai a letto, vai a letto».
Baciandola di nuovo, si voltò, tirò la coperta sopra la testa e rimase immobile come se fosse giunto quel momento in cui lei lo aveva pregato. Lei rimase per qualche tempo accanto al letto prima di allontanarsi lentamente. Si fermò sulla porta, si guardò indietro dopo averla aperta e gli chiese se l’avesse chiamata? Ma lui rimase immobile, e lei chiuse dolcemente la porta e tornò nella sua stanza.
Allora il povero ragazzo guardò cautamente e vide che era sparita; si alzò dal letto, chiuse la porta a chiave e si gettò di nuovo sul cuscino: strappandosi i capelli, piangendo con rabbia, amandola controvoglia, respingendosi con odio ma senza pentimento e respingendo non meno odiosamente e inutilmente tutto il bene del mondo.
CHAPTER IX HEARING THE LAST OF IT
MRS. SPARSIT, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold rock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers would have been constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hook-beaked order.
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
She took very kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before breakfast.
‘It appears but yesterday, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that I had the honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby’s address.’
‘An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of Ages,’ said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs. Sparsit with the most indolent of all possible airs.
‘We live in a singular world, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically expressed.’
‘A singular world, I would say, sir,’ pursued Mrs. Sparsit; after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet tones; ‘as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals we were quite ignorant of, at another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind.’
‘Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I availed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs. Sparsit’s talent for—in fact for anything requiring accuracy—with a combination of strength of mind—and Family—is too habitually developed to admit of any question.’ He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took him so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution.
‘You found Miss Gradgrind—I really cannot call her Mrs. Bounderby; it’s very absurd of me—as youthful as I described her?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly.
‘You drew her portrait perfectly,’ said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Presented her dead image.’
‘Very engaging, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to revolve over one another.
‘Highly so.’
‘It used to be considered,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that Miss Gradgrind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and indeed here is Mr. Bounderby!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as if she had been talking and thinking of no one else. ‘How do you find yourself this morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir.’
Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, ‘You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table,’ Mr. Bounderby replied, ‘If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma’am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I’ll trouble you to take charge of the teapot.’ Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table.
This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she had had the honour of making Mr. Bounderby’s breakfast, before Mrs. Gradgrind—she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Bounderby—she hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to become familiar with it by and by—had assumed her present position. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby’s time was so very precious, and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request; long as his will had been a law to her.
‘There! Stop where you are, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘stop where you are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe.’
CAPITOLO IX SENTENDO L’ULTIMO DI TUTTO QUESTO
La signora SPARSIT, che si ritirava per riprendere il tono dei suoi nervi nel rifugio del signor Bounderby, teneva un tale sguardo acuto, notte e giorno, sotto le sue sopracciglia coriolanee, che i suoi occhi, come due fari su una costa di ferro, avrebbero potuto mettere in guardia tutti i marinai prudenti da quella roccia audace del suo naso romano e dalla regione oscura e frastagliata nelle sue vicinanze, se non fosse stato per la placidità del suo comportamento. Sebbene fosse difficile credere che il suo ritiro per la notte potesse essere altro che una formalità, tanto severamente svegli erano quei suoi occhi classici e tanto impossibile sembrava che quel naso rigido potesse cedere a qualsiasi influenza rilassante, tuttavia il suo modo di sedere, lisciando i guanti scomodi, per non dire ruvidi (erano fatti di un tessuto fresco come una dispensa per la carne), o di amblare verso destinazioni ignote con il piede nella staffa di cotone, era così perfettamente sereno che la maggior parte degli osservatori sarebbe stata costretta a supporre che fosse una colomba, incarnata da qualche capriccio della natura, nel tabernacolo terrestre di un uccello dell’ordine dei becchi ad uncino.
Era una donna davvero straordinaria nel girovagare per la casa. Come riuscisse ad andare da un piano all’altro era un mistero irrisolvibile. Una signora così rispettabile e di altolocata non poteva essere sospettata di saltare giù dalle ringhiere o scivolarvi lungo, eppure la sua straordinaria facilità di movimento suggeriva l’idea più assurda. Un’altra circostanza degna di nota in Mrs Sparsit era che non si affrettava mai. Scendeva dal tetto all’atrio con una velocità consumata, eppure al momento del suo arrivo aveva pienamente il controllo del respiro e della dignità. Non fu mai vista da occhio umano andare a gran velocità.
Si dimostrò molto gentile con il signor Harthouse e intrattenne una piacevole conversazione con lui poco dopo il suo arrivo. Gli fece un elegante inchino nel giardino una mattina prima di colazione.
«Mi sembra ieri, signore», disse la signora Sparsit, «che io avessi l’onore di riceverla in banca quando fu così gentile da voler conoscere il recapito del signor Bounderby.»
«Un’occasione che sono sicuro non dimenticherò mai nel corso dei secoli», disse il signor Harthouse, inchinandosi verso la signora Sparsit con l’aria più svogliata possibile.
«Viviamo in un mondo singolare, signore», disse la signora Sparsit.
«Ho avuto l’onore, per una coincidenza di cui vado fiero, di aver fatto un’osservazione simile nel suo effetto, sebbene non espressa in modo così epigrammatico.»
«Un mondo singolare, direi, signore», proseguì la signora Sparsit; dopo aver accettato il complimento con un abbassamento delle sue sopracciglia scure, non del tutto così miti nella loro espressione come la sua voce era nei suoi toni dolci; «per quanto riguarda le intimità che formiamo in un momento, con individui di cui eravamo completamente ignari, in un altro. Ricordo, signore, che in quell’occasione lei è arrivato a dire addirittura di essere effettivamente preoccupato per la signorina Gradgrind.»
«La vostra memoria mi rende più onore di quanto la mia insignificanza meriti. Ho approfittato dei vostri gentili suggerimenti per correggere la mia timidezza, e non è necessario aggiungere che erano perfettamente accurati. Il talento della signora Sparsit per—infatti per qualsiasi cosa richieda precisione—con una combinazione di forza d’animo—e Famiglia—è troppo abitualmente sviluppato per ammettere qualsiasi dubbio». Era quasi sul punto di addormentarsi su questo complimento; ci mise così tanto a finirlo, e la sua mente vagò molto nel corso della sua esecuzione.
«Avete trovato la signorina Gradgrind — non riesco proprio a chiamarla signora Bounderby, è davvero molto assurdo da parte mia — giovane come l’avevo descritta?» domandò dolcemente la signora Sparsit.
‘Lei ha ritratto perfettamente,’ disse il signor Harthouse, ‘la sua immagine morta.’
«Molto affascinante, signore», disse la signora Sparsit facendo ruotare lentamente le sue muffole l’una sull’altra.
‘Assolutamente sì.’
«Si era soliti pensare», disse la signora Sparsit, «che la signorina Gradgrind mancasse di vivacità, ma confesso che mi sembra notevolmente e sorprendentemente migliorata sotto questo aspetto. Ay, ed ecco qui il signor Bounderby!» esclamò la signora Sparsit, annuendo molte volte con la testa, come se non avesse fatto altro che parlare e pensare a lui. «Come si sente questa mattina, signore? La prego di mostrarsi allegro, signore».
Ora, questi persistenti lenimenti della sua miseria e alleggerimenti del suo fardello avevano cominciato a questo punto ad avere l’effetto di rendere il signor Bounderby più mite del solito nei confronti della signora Sparsit, e più duro del solito con quasi tutti gli altri dalla sua moglie in giù. Così, quando la signora Sparsit disse con un forzato leggerezza d’animo: «Desidera fare colazione, signore, ma sono sicura che la signorina Gradgrind sarà presto qui per presiedere a tavola», il signor Bounderby rispose: «Se aspettassi di essere curato da mia moglie, signora, credo che lei sappia benissimo che dovrei aspettare fino al Giorno del Giudizio, quindi la prego lei di occuparsi della teiera». La signora Sparsit acconsentì e riprese il suo vecchio posto a tavola.
Questo rese di nuovo l’eccellente donna immensamente sentimentale. Era così umile che quando apparve Louisa, si alzò, protestando che non avrebbe mai potuto pensare di sedersi in quel posto nelle circostanze attuali, anche se aveva spesso avuto l’onore di preparare la colazione per il signor Bounderby prima della signora Gradgrind — chiedo scusa, volevo dire la signorina Bounderby — spero che mi si possa perdonare, ma non riesco ancora a fare bene i nomi anche se confido di abituarmici presto — aveva assunto la sua attuale posizione. Era solo (come osservò) perché la signorina Gradgrind era un po’ in ritardo e il tempo del signor Bounderby era così prezioso, e sapeva che da sempre era essenziale che lui facesse colazione all’ora giusta, per cui si era presa la libertà di acconsentire alla sua richiesta; anche se la volontà di lui era stata una legge per lei.
«Ecco! Si fermi lì, signora», disse il signor Bounderby, «si fermi lì! Credo che la signora Bounderby sarà molto contenta di essere sollevata da questo disturbo.»
‘Don’t say that, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity, ‘because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be unkind is not to be you, sir.’
‘You may set your mind at rest, ma’am.—You can take it very quietly, can’t you, Loo?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way to his wife.
‘Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to me?’
‘Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. ‘You attach too much importance to these things, ma’am. By George, you’ll be corrupted in some of your notions here. You are old-fashioned, ma’am. You are behind Tom Gradgrind’s children’s time.’
‘What is the matter with you?’ asked Louisa, coldly surprised. ‘What has given you offence?’
‘Offence!’ repeated Bounderby. ‘Do you suppose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn’t name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don’t go beating about for side-winds.’
‘I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate,’ Louisa answered him composedly: ‘I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don’t understand what you would have.’
‘Have?’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘Nothing. Otherwise, don’t you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it?’
She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought. ‘You are incomprehensible this morning,’ said Louisa. ‘Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter?’
Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if she tried. But whether she ever tried or no, lay hidden in her own closed heart.
Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured ‘My benefactor!’ and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said ‘Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it.’
Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches that bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She had never been well within her daughter’s knowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to get out of it, allowed.
Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at Death’s door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown, over the coal-pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old home.
She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was usually sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without being observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and was still hard at it in the national dust-yard. Her mother had taken it rather as a disturbance than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined upon her sofa; young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she had never softened to again, since the night when the stroller’s child had raised her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby’s intended wife. She had no inducements to go back, and had rarely gone.
Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood—its airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise—what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these? Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.
«Non dica questo, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit quasi con severità «perché è molto crudele verso la signora Bounderby. E non essere gentile non è da lei, signore».
«Può stare tranquilla, signora — può stare molto tranquilla, vero, Loo?» disse il signor Bounderby con tono arrogante alla moglie.
‘Naturalmente. Non ha importanza. Perché dovrebbe essere importante per me?’
«Perché dovrebbe essere importante per qualcuno, signora Sparsit?» disse il signor Bounderby, gonfiandosi di offesa. «Lei attribuisce troppa importanza a queste cose, signora. Giorgio! Si lascerà corrompere in alcune delle sue idee qui. Lei è antiquata, signora. È indietro rispetto ai figli di Tom Gradgrind’s time.»
«Che cosa ti succede?» chiese Louisa, fredda e sorpresa. «Cosa ti ha offeso?»
«Offesa!» ripeté Bounderby. «Credete che se qualcuno mi avesse offeso non lo direi e chiederei di essere ristabilito nei miei diritti? Io sono un uomo diretto, credo. Non vado a cercare scuse per aggirare il problema».
«Suppongo che nessuno abbia mai avuto motivo di pensare che tu fossi troppo diffidente o troppo delicato», rispose Louisa con calma: «Non ho mai fatto questa obiezione a te, né come bambina né come donna. Non capisco cosa vorresti.»
«Avere?» rispose il signor Bounderby. «Nulla. Altrimenti non sapresti tu, Loo Bounderby, perfettamente bene che io, Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, l’avrei voluto?»
Lo guardò mentre batteva il pugno sul tavolo e faceva tintinnare le tazze, con un’espressione orgogliosa in volto che era una novità, pensò Mr. Harthouse. «Questa mattina siete incomprensibile», disse Louisa. «Vi prego di non prendervi ulteriori disturbi per spiegarvi. Non sono curiosa di conoscere il vostro significato. Che importanza ha?»
Non si disse più nulla su questo argomento e ben presto Mr. Harthouse tornò a essere allegramente distratto sui temi più indifferenti. Ma da quel giorno l’influenza esercitata dalla signorina Sparsit su Mr. Bounderby avvicinò sempre di più Louisa e James Harthouse e rafforzò la pericolosa alienazione dal marito e la confidenza contro di lui con un altro, in cui era caduta a poco a poco così finemente che non avrebbe potuto ritracciarli neanche se ci avesse provato. Ma se mai ci avesse provato o no, rimaneva nascosto nel suo cuore chiuso.
La signora Sparsit fu così colpita in questa particolare occasione che, aiutando il signor Bounderby con il cappello dopo la colazione e rimanendo poi sola con lui nell’atrio, gli stampò un casto bacio sulla mano, mormorò “il mio benefattore!” e si ritirò, sopraffatta dal dolore. Eppure è un fatto indubitabile, noto a questa storia, che cinque minuti dopo che lui aveva lasciato la casa con lo stesso cappello, la stessa discendente degli Scadgers e parente per matrimonio dei Powler, agitò il guanto destro in direzione del suo ritratto, fece una smorfia di disprezzo a quell’opera d’arte e disse “ti serve proprio, stupido, e mi fa piacere.”
Il signor Bounderby non era ancora lontano quando apparve Bitzer. Bitzer era arrivato in treno, fischiando e cigolando lungo la lunga fila di archi che attraversavano il selvaggio territorio delle miniere di carbone passate e presenti, con un espresso da Stone Lodge. Era una nota affrettata per informare Louisa che la signora Gradgrind era gravemente malata. Non era mai stata bene in tutta la vita della figlia; ma negli ultimi giorni aveva peggiorato, continuando a declinare durante tutta la notte, e ora era quasi morta, almeno quanto le permettevano le sue limitate capacità di trovarsi in uno stato che implicasse anche il più vago desiderio di uscirne.
Accompagnata dal più leggero dei facchini, un servitore pallido e adatto alla porta della morte quando la signora Gradgrind bussò, Louisa si diresse rombando verso Coketown, oltre le miniere di carbone passate e presenti, ed fu trascinata nelle sue fumose fauci. Mandò via il messaggero ai suoi affari e partì a cavallo per la sua vecchia casa.
Da quando si era sposata, vi era stata raramente. Suo padre di solito setacciava e setacciava la sua discarica parlamentare a Londra (senza che si notasse avesse tirato fuori molti oggetti preziosi tra le immondizie) ed era ancora impegnato nella cava nazionale di polvere. Sua madre aveva considerato la visita più un disturbo che altro, mentre giaceva sul suo divano; i giovani, Louisa si sentiva del tutto inadatta a frequentarli; non era mai più riuscita ad ammorbidirsi verso Sissy da quando, quella notte, la figlia dell’attrice itinerante aveva alzato gli occhi per guardare la futura moglie del signor Bounderby. Non aveva alcun motivo di tornarci e vi era andata raramente.
Né, mentre si avvicinava alla sua vecchia casa ora, nessuna delle migliori influenze della vecchia casa scese su di lei. I sogni dell’infanzia—le sue favole aeree; i suoi adornamenti eleganti, belli, umani e impossibili del mondo oltre: così buoni da essere creduti una volta, così buoni da essere ricordati quando superati, perché allora il più piccolo tra loro raggiunge la statura di una grande Carità nel cuore, soffrendo poco i bambini a venire in mezzo ad essa e a mantenere con le loro mani pure un giardino nei sentieri pietrosi di questo mondo, dove sarebbe meglio per tutti i figlioli d’Adamo che si riscaldassero più spesso al sole, semplici e fiduciosi, e non sapienti del mondo—cosa aveva a che fare lei con questi? Ricordi di come avesse viaggiato verso il poco che sapeva, per le strade incantate di ciò che lei e milioni di creature innocenti avevano sperato e immaginato; di come, venendo prima alla Ragione attraverso la tenera luce della Fantasia, avesse visto in essa un dio benefico, che deferenziava a dei altrettanto grandi quanto se stesso; non un grimido Idolo, crudele e freddo, con le sue vittime legate mani e piedi, e la sua grande forma muta eretta con uno sguardo cieco, mai da muoversi per nulla tranne che per tanti calcolati tonnellaggi di leva—cosa aveva a che fare lei con questi? I suoi ricordi di casa e infanzia erano ricordi dell’essiccamento di ogni sorgente e fontana nel suo giovane cuore mentre sgorgava. Le acque dorate non c’erano. Scorreva per la fertilizzazione della terra dove l’uva viene raccolta dalle spine, e le fighe dai cardi.
She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house and into her mother’s room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy had lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. Sissy was at her mother’s side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room.
There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up, from mere habit, on a couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so helpless could be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her bed; on the ground that if she did, she would never hear the last of it.
Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had much to do with it.
On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he married Louisa; that pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had called him J; and that she could not at present depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to it all at once.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘and I hope you are going on satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father’s doing. He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know.’
‘I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself.’
‘You want to hear of me, my dear? That’s something new, I am sure, when anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, Louisa. Very faint and giddy.’
‘Are you in pain, dear mother?’
‘I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘but I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.’
After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, holding her hand, could feel no pulse; but kissing it, could see a slight thin thread of life in fluttering motion.
‘You very seldom see your sister,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘She grows like you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her here.’
She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister’s. Louisa had observed her with her arm round Sissy’s neck, and she felt the difference of this approach.
‘Do you see the likeness, Louisa?’
‘Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But—’
‘Eh! Yes, I always say so,’ Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with unexpected quickness. ‘And that reminds me. I—I want to speak to you, my dear. Sissy, my good girl, leave us alone a minute.’ Louisa had relinquished the hand: had thought that her sister’s was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been: had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the gentleness of the other face in the room; the sweet face with the trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, by the rich dark hair.
Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the shadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.
‘You were going to speak to me, mother.’
‘Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know your father is almost always away now, and therefore I must write to him about it.’
‘About what, mother? Don’t be troubled. About what?’
‘You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have long left off saying anything.’
‘I can hear you, mother.’ But, it was only by dint of bending down to her ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they moved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of connexion.
‘You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name.’
‘I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.’ This, to keep her from floating away.
‘But there is something—not an Ology at all—that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find out for God’s sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.’
Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which could just turn from side to side.
She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs.
Entrò nella casa con un pesante e indurito dolore addosso, e nella stanza di sua madre. Da quando aveva lasciato la casa, Sissy era vissuta con il resto della famiglia in condizioni di parità. Sissy era al fianco di sua madre; e Jane, sua sorella, ora di dieci o dodici anni, si trovava nella stanza.
Ci furono grandi difficoltà prima che si potesse far sapere a Mrs Gradgrind che il suo figlio maggiore era lì. Era distesa, appoggiata su un divano, per puro automatismo: quasi nella sua vecchia posizione abituale, quanto più era possibile mantenere una persona così indifesa. Aveva rifiutato in modo assoluto di andare a letto; sostenendo che se lo avesse fatto non ne avrebbe mai sentito parlare per il resto della vita.
La sua voce debole sembrava così lontana tra i suoi panni, e il suono di un’altra voce che le parlava impiegava tanto tempo ad arrivare alle sue orecchie, che avrebbe potuto essere sdraiata in fondo a un pozzo. La povera signora era più vicina alla Verità di quanto non fosse mai stata: e questo aveva molto a che fare con la cosa.
Quando le fu detto che la signora Bounderby era lì, lei rispose, in modo equivoco, di non averlo mai chiamato con quel nome da quando si era sposato con Louisa; che, in attesa della sua scelta di un nome obiettivo, lo aveva chiamato J; e che al momento non poteva allontanarsi da quella regola, non essendo ancora provvista di una sostituta permanente. Louisa era seduta accanto a lei da alcuni minuti e le aveva parlato spesso prima che arrivasse a capire chi fosse. Poi sembrò comprendere tutto in un attimo.
«Beh, mia cara», disse la signora Gradgrind, «e spero che tu stia andando avanti in modo soddisfacente per te stessa. È stato tutto opera di tuo padre. Ci ha messo il cuore. E dovrebbe saperlo».
‘Voglio sentire parlare di te, mamma; non di me.’
«Volete sapere qualcosa di me, mia cara? Sono sicuro che è una novità, se c’è qualcuno che vuole saperne di me. Non sto affatto bene, Louisa. Molto debole e stordito».
«Soffre, cara mamma?»
«Penso che ci sia un dolore da qualche parte nella stanza», disse la signora Gradgrind, «ma non potrei dire con certezza di averlo io».
Dopo questo strano discorso, rimase silenziosa per qualche tempo. Louisa, tenendole la mano, non poteva sentire alcun polso; ma baciandola, poteva vedere un leggero e sottile filo di vita in movimento tremolante.
«Non vedete quasi mai vostra sorella», disse la signora Gradgrind. «Cresce come voi. Vorrei che la guardaste. Cissy, portala qui».
La portarono dentro e lei rimase lì con la mano di sua sorella nella propria. Louisa aveva visto che teneva il braccio attorno al collo di Sissy, e sentiva la differenza di questo approccio.
‘Vedi la somiglianza, Louisa?’
‘Sì, mamma. Penso che le somiglio. Ma, ’
«Eh! Sì, lo dico sempre», esclamò la signora Gradgrind con una vivacità inaspettata. «E questo mi ricorda. Io, voglio parlarti, mia cara. Sissy, brava ragazza, lasciaci sole un minuto». Louisa aveva lasciato la mano: aveva pensato che il volto di sua sorella fosse migliore e più luminoso di quanto non lo fosse mai stato il suo; vi aveva visto, non senza una crescente sensazione di risentimento, anche in quel luogo e a quell’ora, qualcosa della dolcezza dell’altro volto nella stanza; il dolce volto dagli occhi fiduciosi, reso più pallido dal vegliare e dalla compassione che non dai riccioli scuri.
Rimasta sola con sua madre, Louisa la vide giacere con un’espressione terribilmente calma sul volto, come se stesse galleggiando via su qualche grande corso d’acqua, ogni resistenza finita, contenta di lasciarsi trasportare dalla corrente. Le portò nuovamente l’ombra della mano alle labbra e la richiamò in sé.
‘Volevi parlarmi, mamma.’
«Eh? Sì, certo, mia cara. Sai che tuo padre è quasi sempre via in questi giorni e quindi devo scrivergliene».
‘Su cosa, mamma? Non preoccuparti. Su cosa?’
«Dovete ricordare, mia cara, che ogni volta che ho detto qualcosa su qualsiasi argomento non ho mai smesso di sentirne parlare: e quindi da tempo ho smesso di dire qualunque cosa.»
«Vi sento, madre». Ma solo abbassandosi fino al suo orecchio e allo stesso tempo osservando con attenzione le labbra mentre si muovevano, riusciva a collegare quei suoni così deboli e spezzati in una qualsiasi catena di connessione.
«Avete imparato un sacco di cose, Louisa, e così ha fatto tuo fratello. Ologie di ogni tipo dalla mattina alla notte. Se c’è ancora qualche Ologia, di qualsiasi genere, che non sia stata consumata in questa casa, tutto quello che posso dire è che spero di non dover mai sentire il suo nome.»
«Vi sento, mamma, quando avrete la forza di continuare». Questo per impedirle di allontanarsi fluttuando.
«Ma c’è qualcosa — non una scienza — che tuo padre ha trascurato o dimenticato, Louisa. Non so cosa sia. Sono spesso seduto accanto a Sissy e ci ho pensato. Non ne saprò mai il nome. Ma forse lo scoprirà tuo padre. Mi rende inquieto. Voglio scrivergli, per l’amor di Dio, per capire che cos’è. Dammi una penna, dammi una penna».
Anche il potere del riposo era svanito, tranne per la povera testa, che riusciva appena a girarsi da una parte e dall’altra.
Lei immaginò tuttavia che la sua richiesta fosse stata esaudita e che la penna che non avrebbe potuto tenere fosse nella sua mano. Non ha importanza quali figure di meraviglioso nulla significhino abbia iniziato a tracciare sui suoi involucri. La mano si fermò presto nel mezzo di esse; la luce che era sempre stata debole e fioca dietro la debole trasparenza, si spense; e persino la signora Gradgrind, emersa dall’ombra in cui l’uomo cammina e si agita invano, assunse la solenne maestà dei saggi e dei patriarchi.
CHAPTER X MRS. SPARSIT’S STAIRCASE
MRS. SPARSIT’S nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, where, notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and contempt.
Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was), and further that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything he chose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming sweetbreads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, ‘I tell you what, ma’am; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday.’ To which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mahomedan persuasion: ‘To hear is to obey.’
Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life, to look up at her staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never turning back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief.
She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
‘And pray, sir,’ said she, ‘if I may venture to ask a question appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve—which is indeed hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do—have you received intelligence respecting the robbery?’
‘Why, ma’am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect it yet. Rome wasn’t built in a day, ma’am.’
‘Very true, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head.
‘Nor yet in a week, ma’am.’
‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon her.
‘In a similar manner, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I can wait, you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were better off in their youth than I was, however. They had a she-wolf for a nurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn’t give any milk, ma’am; she gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that.’
‘Ah!’ Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered.
‘No, ma’am,’ continued Bounderby, ‘I have not heard anything more about it. It’s in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business at present—something new for him; he hadn’t the schooling I had—is helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over. Do what you like under the rose, but don’t give a sign of what you’re about; or half a hundred of ’em will combine together and get this fellow who has bolted, out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves will grow in confidence by little and little, and we shall have ’em.’
‘Very sagacious indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Very interesting. The old woman you mentioned, sir—’
‘The old woman I mentioned, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, cutting the matter short, as it was nothing to boast about, ‘is not laid hold of; but, she may take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her villainous old mind. In the mean time, ma’am, I am of opinion, if you ask me my opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better.’
The same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting from her packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Louisa still descending.
She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low; he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face almost touched her hair. ‘If not quite!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, straining her hawk’s eyes to the utmost. Mrs. Sparsit was too distant to hear a word of their discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly, otherwise than from the expression of their figures; but what they said was this:
‘You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse?’
‘Oh, perfectly!’
‘His face, and his manner, and what he said?’
‘Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be. Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to hold forth, in the humble-virtue school of eloquence; but, I assure you I thought at the time, “My good fellow, you are over-doing this!”’
‘It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man.’
‘My dear Louisa—as Tom says.’ Which he never did say. ‘You know no good of the fellow?’
‘No, certainly.’
‘Nor of any other such person?’
‘How can I,’ she returned, with more of her first manner on her than he had lately seen, ‘when I know nothing of them, men or women?’
‘My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive representation of your devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his excellent fellow-creatures—for excellent they are, I am quite ready to believe, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to what they can get hold of. This fellow talks. Well; every fellow talks. He professes morality. Well; all sorts of humbugs profess morality. From the House of Commons to the House of Correction, there is a general profession of morality, except among our people; it really is that exception which makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the case. Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my esteemed friend Mr. Bounderby—who, as we know, is not possessed of that delicacy which would soften so tight a hand. The member of the fluffy classes was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody who proposed to him to go in for some share in this Bank business, went in, put something in his pocket which had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind extremely. Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an opportunity. Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the cleverness.’
‘I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,’ returned Louisa, after sitting thoughtful awhile, ‘to be so ready to agree with you, and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say.’
‘I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over with my friend Tom more than once—of course I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom—and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk?’
They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the twilight—she leaning on his arm—and she little thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase.
Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it.
And always gliding down, down, down!
Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant’s Staircase.
With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down.
CAPITOLO X LA SCALA DI SIGNORA SPARSIT
I nervi della signora Sparsit tardando a ritrovare il loro tono abituale, la degna donna si fermò per alcune settimane nella ritirata del signor Bounderby, dove, nonostante il suo carattere da ancella basato sulla consapevolezza della sua condizione mutata, si rassegnò con nobile forza a vivere, come si suol dire, nel lusso e ad alimentarsi delle prelibatezze del paese. Durante tutto questo periodo di riposo dalla tutela della Banca, la signora Sparsit fu un esempio di coerenza; continuando a compatire il signor Bounderby in sua presenza come raramente si compatisce un uomo e chiamando il suo ritratto un “Noodle” in faccia al dipinto con la massima acrimonia e disprezzo.
Il signor Bounderby, avendo deciso nella sua esplosiva composizione che la signora Sparsit era una donna di gran lunga superiore a rendersi conto che aveva quella croce generale addosso per i suoi meriti (perché non aveva ancora stabilito quale fosse), e inoltre che Louisa avrebbe obiettato contro di lei come visitatrice abituale se si fosse accordato con la sua grandezza che ella potesse obiettare a qualcosa che lui sceglieva di fare, decise di non perdere facilmente di vista la signora Sparsit. Così quando i suoi nervi furono tesi fino al punto di consumare di nuovo fette biscottate in solitudine, le disse a tavola il giorno prima della sua partenza: «Le dico una cosa, signora; verrà qui da me di sabato, finché dura questo bel tempo, e resterà fino a lunedì». A cui la signora Sparsit rispose in sostanza, sebbene non fosse del credo maomettano: «Udito è obbedito».
Ora, la signora Sparsit non era una donna poetica; ma le venne in mente un’idea del tipo di una fantasia allegorica. Molte osservazioni su Louisa e molte conseguenti considerazioni sul suo comportamento imperscrutabile, che acuivano e affilavano l’astuzia della signora Sparsit, dovevano averle dato come un aiuto in termini di ispirazione. Si costruì nella mente una maestosa Scala, con un oscuro pozzo di vergogna e rovina alla base; e su quegli scalini, giorno dopo giorno e ora dopo ora, vedeva Louisa scendere.
Divenne l’occupazione della vita di Mrs. Sparsit guardare verso la sua scala e osservare Louisa che scendeva. A volte lentamente, a volte velocemente, a volte facendo più gradini alla volta, a volte fermandosi, ma mai tornando indietro. Se fosse tornata indietro anche una sola volta, sarebbe potuta essere la morte di Mrs. Sparsit per sconforto e dolore.
Era in costante declino fino al giorno in cui il signor Bounderby lanciò l’invito settimanale sopra riportato. La signora Sparsit era di buon umore e incline alla conversazione.
«E prego, signore», disse lei, «se posso permettermi di fare una domanda riguardante un argomento su cui dimostri riservatezza - il che è davvero audace da parte mia, poiché ben so che hai una ragione per tutto ciò che fai - hai ricevuto notizie relative al furto?»
«Perché, signora, no; non ancora. Date le circostanze, non me lo aspettavo ancora. Roma non fu costruita in un giorno, signora».
«Molto vero, signore», disse la signora Sparsit scuotendo il capo.
‘Neanche tra una settimana, signora.’
«No davvero, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con una dolce malinconia.
«Nel medesimo modo, signora», disse Bounderby, «posso aspettare, sa? Se Josiah Bounderby può aspettare, Romolo e Remo potevano aspettare. Erano però più fortunati di me in giovinezza. Avevano una lupa per balia; io avevo solo una lupa per nonna. Non dava latte, signora; dava lividi. Era un vero Alderney, all’epoca».
«Ah!» sospirò e rabbrividì la signora Sparsit.
«No, signora», continuò Bounderby, «non ho saputo altro al riguardo. È però già nelle mani giuste; e il giovane Tom, che ultimamente si sta dedicando più agli affari — una novità per lui; non ha avuto l’istruzione che io ho avuto — ci sta dando una mano. La mia direttiva è: tenetelo nascosto e fate in modo che sembri passato. Fate quello che volete sotto la rosa, ma non lasciate trapelare nulla; altrimenti mezza dozzina di loro si metterà insieme e tirerà fuori dalla portata questo tizio che è scappato per sempre. Tenetelo nascosto, e i ladri pian piano diventeranno più fiduciosi, e noi li prenderemo».
«Davvero molto perspicace, signore», disse la signora Sparsit. «Molto interessante. La vecchia di cui ha parlato, signore —»
«La vecchia di cui ho parlato, signora», disse Bounderby, accorciando la questione, poiché non c’era nulla di cui vantarsi, «non è stata ancora presa; ma può giurare che lo sarà, se questo le dà qualche soddisfazione alla sua vecchia mente malvagia. Nel frat tempo, signora, sono dell’opinione, se mi chiede il mio parere, che meno si parla di lei e meglio è».
La stessa sera, la signora Sparsit, alla finestra della sua camera, riposandosi dalle sue operazioni di imballaggio, guardò verso la grande scala e vide che Louisa continuava a scendere.
Ella sedeva accanto al signor Harthouse in un angolo del giardino, parlando a voce molto bassa; egli stava chino su di lei, mentre sussurravano insieme e il suo volto quasi sfiorava i suoi capelli. «Se non proprio!» disse la signora Sparsit, tendendo al massimo gli occhi da falco. La signora Sparsit era troppo lontana per sentire una sola parola del loro discorso o anche solo sapere che stavano parlando a bassa voce, se non dallo sguardo delle loro figure; ma ciò che dissero fu questo:
‘Vi ricordate quell’uomo, signor Harthouse?’
‘Oh, perfettamente!’
‘Il suo volto, il suo comportamento e ciò che ha detto?’
«Perfettamente. E mi sembrò una persona infinitamente noiosa. Eccessivamente prolisso e pedante. Era esperto nel fare lunghi discorsi, nella scuola dell’eloquenza delle umili virtù; ma, ve lo assicuro, pensai in quel momento, “Mio caro amico, stai esagerando!”»
‘È stato molto difficile per me pensare male di quell’uomo.’
‘Mia cara Louisa - come dice Tom.’ Che non ha mai detto. ‘Non sai nulla di buono su quel ragazzo?’
‘No, assolutamente.’
‘Né di nessun’altra persona simile?’
«Come potrei», replicò lei con più della sua prima maniera di quando lui l’aveva vista ultimamente, «quando non so nulla di loro, uomini o donne?»
«Mia cara Louisa, allora acconsenti a ricevere la sottomessa rappresentazione del tuo devoto amico, che conosce qualcosa di diverse varietà dei suoi eccellenti simili — poiché eccellenti sono, e io sono ben disposto a crederlo, nonostante certi piccoli difetti come quello di appropriarsi sempre di ciò che possono mettere le mani su. Questo tizio parla. Bene; ogni tizio parla. Professa la moralità. Bene; tutti i tipi di impostori professano la moralità. Dalla Camera dei Comuni alla Casa di Correzione, c’è una generale professione di moralità, tranne tra le nostre persone; è davvero questa eccezione che rende le nostre persone così rigogliose. Hai visto e sentito il caso. Ecco uno dei ceti piumati fermato bruscamente dal mio stimato amico Mr. Bounderby — che, come sappiamo, non possiede quella delicatezza che addolcirebbe una mano così stretta. Il membro del ceto piumato è stato ferito, esasperato, ha lasciato la casa brontolando, ha incontrato qualcuno che gli ha proposto di entrare in qualche modo in questa faccenda della Banca, è entrato, ha messo qualcosa nel suo taschino che prima non conteneva nulla e si è sollevato enormemente. Davvero sarebbe stato un tizio fuori dal comune, invece che comune, se non avesse approfittato di una tale opportunità. O forse l’ha addirittura ideata lui per intero, se era abbastanza furbo».
«Mi sembra quasi di essere cattiva», rispose Louisa dopo aver seduto pensierosa per un po’, «per essere così pronta a concordare con te e sentirmi tanto sollevata nel cuore da ciò che dici.»
«Io dico solo ciò che è ragionevole; niente di peggio. Ne ho parlato più volte con il mio amico Tom — naturalmente rimango in rapporti di perfetta confidenza con Tom — e lui è completamente della mia opinione, e io sono completamente della sua. Vuoi fare una passeggiata?»
Si allontanarono passeggiando tra i vicoli che cominciavano a confondersi nel crepuscolo — lei appoggiata al suo braccio — e lei non immaginava minimamente come stesse scendendo, scendendo, scendendo, per le scale della signora Sparsit.
Di notte e di giorno, la signora Sparsit lo teneva in piedi. Quando Louisa era arrivata al fondo e scomparsa nel golfo, poteva crollarle addosso se voleva; ma fino ad allora, lì doveva rimanere, un Edificio davanti agli occhi della signora Sparsit. E là Louisa era sempre, sopra di esso.
E sempre scivolando giù, giù, giù!
La signora Sparsit vide venire e andare James Harthouse; lo sentì nominare qua e là; osservò i cambiamenti del volto che lui aveva studiato; anche lei notò con precisione come e quando si rannuvolava, come e quando si serenava; mantenne i suoi occhi neri spalancati, senza un’ombra di pietà, senza un’ombra di rimorso, completamente assorbita dall’interesse. Nell’interesse di vederla avvicinarsi sempre più, con nessuna mano che la fermasse, al fondo di questa nuova Scala del Gigante.
Nonostante tutto il rispetto che nutriva per il signor Bounderby, distinto dal suo ritratto, la signora Sparsit non aveva alcuna intenzione di interrompere la discesa. Desiderosa di vederla compiersi eppure paziente, attendeva l’ultima caduta come se fosse la maturazione e il compimento del raccolto delle sue speranze. Immersa nell’attesa, manteneva lo sguardo vigile sulle scale; e raramente faceva altro che scuotere oscuramente il suo guanto destro (con dentro il pugno) verso la figura che scendeva.
CHAPTER XI LOWER AND LOWER
THE figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily; always verging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.
Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife’s decease, made an expedition from London, and buried her in a business-like manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes of other people who wanted other odds and ends—in fact resumed his parliamentary duties.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs. ‘Your foot on the last step, my lady,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, ‘and all your art shall never blind me.’
Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character or the graft of circumstances upon it,—her curious reserve did baffle, while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to help her.
So the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding: ‘But you’ll go down to-morrow, ma’am, all the same. You’ll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you.’
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, ‘let me beg you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I think you very well know.’
‘Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,’ said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ retorted Mrs. Sparsit, ‘your will is to me a law, sir; otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you shall say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation.’
‘Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, opening his eyes, ‘I should hope you want no other invitation.’
‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I should hope not. Say no more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ blustered Bounderby.
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘there was wont to be an elasticity in you which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!’
Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on his journey, and the Bank was closing, ‘present my compliments to young Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop and walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?’ Young Mr. Thomas being usually ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and followed on its heels. ‘Mr. Thomas,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘these plain viands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.’
‘Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.
‘How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Tom.
‘Where may he be at present?’ Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies for being so uncommunicative.
‘He is shooting in Yorkshire,’ said Tom. ‘Sent Loo a basket half as big as a church, yesterday.’
‘The kind of gentleman, now,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, ‘whom one might wager to be a good shot!’
‘Crack,’ said Tom.
He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching his looks, if she were so inclined.
‘Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘as indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr. Tom?’
‘Why, I expect to see him to-morrow,’ returned the whelp.
‘Good news!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly.
‘I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the station here,’ said Tom, ‘and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so, being due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn’t wonder if he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.’
‘Which reminds me!’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Would you remember a message to your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?’
‘Well? I’ll try,’ returned the reluctant whelp, ‘if it isn’t a long un.’
‘It is merely my respectful compliments,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I fear I may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.’
‘Oh! If that’s all,’ observed Tom, ‘it wouldn’t much matter, even if I was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of you unless she sees you.’
Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left, when he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off!’ and went off.
CAPITOLO XI SEMPRE PIU’ IN BASSO
LA figura scese le grandi scale, con passo fermo, sempre più vicina; come un peso nell’acqua profonda, che tende verso l’abisso nero in fondo.
Il signor Gradgrind, informato della morte di sua moglie, fece un viaggio da Londra e la seppellì in modo pratico. Poi tornò con prontezza alla discarica nazionale e riprese a setacciare per trovare i pezzi che gli servivano e a spargere il polvere negli occhi di altre persone che volevano altri pezzi - in effetti riprese i suoi doveri parlamentari.
Nel frattempo, la signora Sparsit manteneva una vigilanza ininterrotta e attenta. Separata dalla sua scala per tutta la settimana dalla lunghezza di ferro della ferrovia che divideva Coketown dalla casa di campagna casa, riusciva comunque a mantenere la sua osservazione felina su Louisa, attraverso suo marito, suo fratello, James Harthouse, le esternità di lettere e pacchi, attraverso tutto ciò che era animato e inanimato che si avvicinava alle scale. «Il vostro piede sull’ultimo gradino, mia signora», disse la signora Sparsit, apostrofando la figura discendente con l’aiuto del suo guanto minaccioso, «e tutta la vostra arte non riuscirà mai a ingannarmi.»
Che si trattasse di arte o natura, del ceppo originario del carattere di Louisa o dell’influenza delle circostanze su di esso, la sua curiosa riservatezza sconcertava e al tempo stesso stimolava una persona perspicace come la signora Sparsit. Ci furono momenti in cui il signor James Harthouse non era sicuro di lei. Ci furono momenti in cui non riusciva a decifrare il volto che aveva studiato così a lungo; e quando questa ragazza solitaria gli appariva un mistero più grande di qualsiasi donna del mondo con una schiera di satelliti pronti ad aiutarla.
Così il tempo passò; finché accadde che Mr. Bounderby fu chiamato lontano da casa per affari che richiedevano la sua presenza altrove, per tre o quattro giorni. Fu di venerdì che comunicò questo a Mrs. Sparsit alla Banca, aggiungendo: «Ma lei scenderà domani lo stesso, signora. Scenderà come se ci fossi io. Non farà alcuna differenza per lei».
«La prego, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit con rimprovero, «mi permetta di chiederle di non dire questo. La sua assenza farà una grande differenza per me, signore, come penso lei sappia benissimo.»
«Bene, signora, allora dovete cavartela durante la mia assenza nel modo migliore possibile», disse il signor Bounderby, non del tutto scontento.
«Signor Bounderby», ribatté la signora Sparsit, «la sua volontà è per me una legge, signore; altrimenti potrei essere incline a contestare i suoi gentili ordini, non essendo sicura che sarà altrettanto gradito alla signorina Gradgrind ricevermi come lo è sempre la sua munifica ospitalità. Ma lei non dirà altro, signore. Andrò, su suo invito».
«Perché, quando vi invito nella mia casa, signora», disse Bounderby, spalancando gli occhi, «dovrei sperare che non ne vogliate un’altra».
«No davvero, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit, «non lo spererei mai. Non dica altro, signore. Vorrei, signore, poterla vedere di nuovo allegra».
«Che cosa intende dire, signora?» si inalberò Bounderby.
«Signore», replicò la signora Sparsit, «in lei c’era un tempo una certa elasticità che ora mi duole di non trovare più. Sia vivace, signore!»
Sotto l’influenza di questa difficile esortazione, sostenuta dal suo occhio compassionevole, il signor Bounderby non poté fare altro che grattarsi la testa in modo debole e ridicolo, per poi affermarsi da lontano, facendosi sentire mentre molestava i piccoli impiegati tutta la mattina.
«Bitzer», disse la signora Sparsit quel pomeriggio, quando il suo mecenate era partito per il suo viaggio e la Banca stava chiudendo, «presenti i miei complimenti al giovane signor Thomas e chieda se vuole salire a gustare una costoletta di agnello con salsa di noci e un bicchiere di birra indiana?» Il giovane signor Thomas essendo solitamente sempre pronto per qualsiasi cosa del genere, rispose in modo cortese e la seguì. «Signor Thomas», disse la signora Sparsit, «avendo questi semplici cibi sul tavolo, ho pensato che potesse essere tentato».
«Grazie, signora Sparsit», disse il cucciolo. E si mise al lavoro con aria cupa.
«Come sta il signor Harthouse, signor Tom?» chiese la signora Sparsit.
«Oh, sta bene», disse Tom.
«Dove potrebbe essere al momento?» chiese la signora Sparsit con tono leggero e conversazionale, dopo aver mentalmente dedicato il cucciolo alle Furie per essere così poco comunicativo.
«È andato a caccia nello Yorkshire», disse Tom. «Ieri ha mandato a Loo un paniere grande come mezza chiesa».
«Il tipo di gentiluomo», disse dolcemente la signora Sparsit «su cui si potrebbe scommettere che è un buon tiratore!»
«Scricchiolio», disse Tom.
Era da tempo un giovane dall’aria abbattuta, ma questa caratteristica si era così accentuata di recente che non alzava gli occhi verso nessun volto per più di tre secondi consecutivi. La signora Sparsit aveva quindi ampie possibilità di osservare i suoi sguardi, se lo avesse desiderato.
«Il signor Harthouse è uno dei miei grandi preferiti», disse la signora Sparsit, «come del resto lo è per la maggior parte della gente. Possiamo aspettarci di rivederlo presto, signor Tom?»
«Ebbene, io mi aspetto di vederlo domani», rispose il cucciolo.
«Buone notizie!» esclamò la signora Sparsit con dolcezza.
«Ho un appuntamento con lui per incontrarlo stasera alla stazione qui», disse Tom, «e credo che dopo mangerò con lui. Non verrà in campagna nella villa per una settimana circa, perché è atteso altrove. Almeno, così dice; ma non mi sorprenderei se dovesse fermarsi qui oltre domenica e passare da quelle parti».
«Questo mi ricorda!» disse la signora Sparsit «ti ricorderesti di un messaggio per tua sorella, signorino Tom, se io te lo affidassi?»
«Bene? Ci proverò», rispose il riluttante marmocchio, «se non è troppo lungo.»
«Sono solo i miei rispettosi saluti», disse la signora Sparsit, «e temo che non potrò disturbarla con la mia compagnia questa settimana; essendo ancora un po’ agitata e forse meglio da sola.»
«Oh! Se è tutto qui», osservò Tom, «non importerebbe molto anche se lo dimenticassi, perché Loo non penserà a te a meno che non ti veda.»
Avendo pagato il suo intrattenimento con questo piacevole complimento, egli ricadde in un silenzio da cane bastonato finché non rimase più birra indiana, quando disse: «Beh, signora Sparsit, devo andarmene!» e se ne andò.
Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long looking at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye on the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind, but, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her reasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a passenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room windows, to appearing in its precincts openly.
Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had dispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, he strolled away idly, stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty minutes hence.
‘This is a device to keep him out of the way,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last. ‘Harthouse is with his sister now!’
It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy; but she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in darting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of coal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and whirled away.
All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down. Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.
An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its drooping eyelids Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches. One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Sparsit heard or saw until she very softly closed a gate.
She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.
Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment was a device to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled tree.
Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer to them. She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that no great one, she could have touched them both. He was there secretly, and had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horseback, and must have passed through the neighbouring fields; for his horse was tied to the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.
‘My dearest love,’ said he, ‘what could I do? Knowing you were alone, was it possible that I could stay away?’
‘You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; I don’t know what they see in you when you hold it up,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but you little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!’
That she hung her head, was certain. She urged him to go away, she commanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the amiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life. Her hands rested in one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her manner of speaking was not hurried.
‘My dear child,’ said Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit saw with delight that his arm embraced her; ‘will you not bear with my society for a little while?’
‘Not here.’
‘Where, Louisa?
‘Not here.’
‘But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far, and am altogether so devoted, and distracted. There never was a slave at once so devoted and ill-used by his mistress. To look for your sunny welcome that has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen manner, is heart-rending.’
‘Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?’
‘But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet?’
They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought there was another listener among the trees. It was only rain, beginning to fall fast, in heavy drops.
‘Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?’
Il giorno dopo, sabato, la signora Sparsit rimase seduta alla sua finestra per tutto il giorno a guardare i clienti che entravano e uscivano, osservando i postini, tenendo d’occhio il traffico generale della strada, rivolgendo molti pensieri nella sua mente, ma soprattutto mantenendo la sua attenzione sulla scala. La sera arrivò, si mise il cappello e lo scialle e uscì tranquillamente: aveva le sue ragioni per aggirarsi in modo furtivo intorno alla stazione da cui sarebbe arrivato un passeggero dello Yorkshire, e preferiva sbirciare dentro girando attorno a pilastri e angoli, e dalle finestre della sala d’attesa delle signore, piuttosto che apparire apertamente nei suoi pressi.
Tom era presente e gironzolava nei paraggi fino a quando non arrivò il treno atteso. Non portò alcun signor Harthouse. Tom aspettò finché la folla si disperse e l’agitazione cessò; poi consultò un elenco di treni affisso al muro e chiese consiglio ai facchini. Fatto ciò, se ne andò a zonzo senza meta, fermandosi in strada per guardare su e giù, togliersi il cappello e rimetterselo, sbadigliare e stiracchiarsi, mostrando tutti i sintomi di una stanchezza mortale che ci si poteva aspettare da chi doveva ancora attendere l’arrivo del treno successivo, tra un’ora e quaranta minuti.
«Questo è un espediente per tenerlo lontano», disse la signora Sparsit, alzandosi dalla noiosa finestra dell’ufficio da cui lo aveva visto l’ultima volta. «Harthouse ora è con sua sorella!»
Fu un’idea che le venne in un momento di ispirazione e lei partì con la massima velocità per realizzarla. La stazione per il castello era all’estremità opposta della città, il tempo era poco, la strada non facile; ma fu così rapida nel trovare una carrozza libera, così veloce a scendere da essa, tirare fuori i soldi, prendere il biglietto e infilarsi sul treno che venne trasportata lungo gli archi che attraversavano le terre di miniere passate e presenti come se fosse stata catturata in una nuvola e trascinata via.
Tutto il viaggio, immobile nell’aria pur mai lasciato indietro; chiaro agli occhi oscuri della sua mente, come i fili elettrici che governavano una striscia colossale di carta musicale fuori dal cielo serale erano chiari agli occhi oscuri del suo corpo; la signora Sparsit vide le sue scale con la figura che scendeva. Molto vicino al fondo ora. Sul bordo dell’abisso.
Una sera di settembre coperta da nuvole basse vide sotto le sue palpebre cadenti la signora Sparsit scivolare fuori dalla sua carrozza, scendere i gradini di legno della piccola stazione su una strada ghiaiosa, attraversarla in un viottolo erboso e nascondersi tra il fogliame estivo di rami e foglie. Uno o due uccelli tardi che cinguettavano assonnati nei loro nidi, una pipistrello che pesantemente le volava incontro e ripartiva, e l’odore dei suoi passi nel fitto polvere che sembrava velluto, furono tutto ciò che la signora Sparsit udì o vide finché non chiuse molto dolcemente un cancello.
Si avvicinò alla casa, tenendosi all’interno del boschetto, e la girò, spiando tra le foglie dalle finestre più basse. La maggior parte di esse era aperta, come accadeva solitamente in un clima così caldo, ma non c’erano ancora luci e tutto era silenzioso. Provò con il giardino senza ottenere risultati migliori. Pensò al bosco e si diresse verso di esso, incurante dell’erba alta e delle spine: dei vermi, dei lumachi e delle chiocciole, e di tutte le cose striscianti che ci sono. Con i suoi occhi scuri e il suo naso adunco in avanscoperta, la signora Sparsit si aprì delicatamente un varco attraverso il fitto sottobosco, così concentrata sul suo obiettivo da fare probabilmente lo stesso se il bosco fosse stato pieno di vipere.
Ascolta!
I più piccoli uccelli avrebbero potuto cadere dai loro nidi, affascinati dal bagliore degli occhi della signora Sparsit nel buio, mentre si fermava e ascoltava.
Voci basse vicino a lui. La sua voce e la sua. L’appuntamento era davvero un trucco per tenere lontano il fratello! Eccoli là in fondo, accanto all’albero abbattuto.
Curvandosi tra l’erba bagnata di rugiada, la signora Sparsit si avvicinò loro. Si raddrizzò e si mise dietro un albero, come Robinson Crusoe nella sua imboscata contro i selvaggi; così vicino a loro che con uno scatto, e non neanche tanto grande, li avrebbe potuti toccare entrambi. Lui era lì segretamente, e non si era mostrato alla casa. Era venuto a cavallo, e doveva essere passato attraverso i campi vicini; perché il suo cavallo era legato al lato del prato della recinzione, a pochi passi.
«Mia carissima amore», disse lui, «cosa avrei potuto fare? Sapendo che eri sola, era possibile che rimanessi lontano?»
«Puoi abbassare la testa per renderti più attraente; io non so cosa vedano in te quando la tieni alta», pensò Mrs. Sparsit, «ma tu non immagini nemmeno, mia cara amore, chi ti sta osservando!»
Che lei avesse abbassato la testa era certo. Lo esortò ad andarsene, gli ordinò di andarsene; ma non volse il viso verso di lui né lo alzò. Eppure era strano che sedesse immobile come l’indimenticabile donna in agguato l’aveva sempre vista sedere, in qualsiasi periodo della sua vita. Le mani riposavano una sull’altra, come le mani di una statua; e persino il suo modo di parlare non era affrettato.
«Mia cara bambina», disse Harthouse; la signora Sparsit vide con piacere che il suo braccio l’abbracciava, «non vorresti sopportare la mia compagnia per un po’?»
‘Non qui.’
«Dove, Louisa?
‘Non qui.’
«Ma abbiamo così poco tempo da sfruttare al meglio, e io ho fatto un viaggio tanto lungo, e sono così devoto e distratto. Non è mai esistito uno schiavo allo stesso tempo così devoto e maltrattato dalla sua padrona. Aspettarsi il tuo caloroso benvenuto che mi ha riscaldato fino a darmi la vita, e essere accolto nel tuo modo gelido, è straziante.»
‘Devo ripetere che voglio essere lasciato solo qui?’
‘Do dobbiamo incontrarci, mia cara Louisa. Dove ci vediamo?’
Entrambe trasalirono. Anche l’ascoltatrice trasalì, colpevole, perché pensò che ci fosse un altro ascoltatore tra gli alberi. Era solo la pioggia, che cominciava a cadere fitta in pesanti gocce.
«Posso cavalcare fino alla casa tra qualche minuto, fingendo ingenuamente che il suo padrone sia a casa e sarà felice di ricevermi?»
‘No!’
‘Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to all other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of the most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious. My dearest Louisa, I cannot go myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of your power.’
Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away all that he had in life. The objects he had lately pursued, turned worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he flung away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its pursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it took him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she commanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that she was true to him,—the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she had inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of which he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received into her confidence, who was devoted to her and adored her. All this, and more, in his hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in the dread of being discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of heavy rain among the leaves, and a thunderstorm rolling up—Mrs. Sparsit received into her mind, set off with such an unavoidable halo of confusion and indistinctness, that when at length he climbed the fence and led his horse away, she was not sure where they were to meet, or when, except that they had said it was to be that night.
But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her; and while she tracked that one she must be right. ‘Oh, my dearest love,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you little think how well attended you are!’
Mrs. Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the house. What to do next? It rained now, in a sheet of water. Mrs. Sparsit’s white stockings were of many colours, green predominating; prickly things were in her shoes; caterpillars slung themselves, in hammocks of their own making, from various parts of her dress; rills ran from her bonnet, and her Roman nose. In such condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the shrubbery, considering what next?
Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled, and stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf.
Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.
When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Sparsit stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went by the way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the stony road, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad. A train for Coketown would come through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so she understood Coketown to be her first place of destination.
In Mrs. Sparsit’s limp and streaming state, no extensive precautions were necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a new shape, and put it on over her bonnet. So disguised she had no fear of being recognized when she followed up the railroad steps, and paid her money in the small office. Louisa sat waiting in a corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another corner. Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to the rain, as it washed off the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two or three lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw the lightning to advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron tracks.
The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another: the little station a desert speck in the thunderstorm.
Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs. Sparsit exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice, and she felt herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could she, who had been so active in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do less than exult? ‘She will be at Coketown long before him,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, ‘though his horse is never so good. Where will she wait for him? And where will they go together? Patience. We shall see.’
The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train stopped at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed, and streets were under water. In the first instant of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting coaches, which were in great request. ‘She will get into one,’ she considered, ‘and will be away before I can follow in another. At all risks of being run over, I must see the number, and hear the order given to the coachman.’
But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into no coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the railroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a moment too late. The door not being opened after several minutes, Mrs. Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and found it empty. Wet through and through: with her feet squelching and squashing in her shoes whenever she moved; with a rash of rain upon her classical visage; with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig; with all her clothes spoiled; with damp impressions of every button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon her highly connected back; with a stagnant verdure on her general exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a mouldy lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of bitterness and say, ‘I have lost her!’
‘No!’
«I vostri crudeli comandi devono essere obbediti senza esitazione; anche se sono il più sfortunato dei mortali, credo di non aver mai provato nulla per nessuna donna e di essermi infine prostrato ai piedi della più bella, affascinante e imperiosa. Mia adorata Louisa, non posso andare io stesso o lasciare che tu vada in questo crudele abuso del tuo potere».
La signora Sparsit lo vide trattenerla con il suo braccio che la cingeva e lo udì, lì per lì, all’interno del suo (della signora Sparsit) avido orecchio, dirle come l’amava e come lei fosse la posta per cui desiderava ardentemente giocarsi tutto ciò che aveva nella vita. Gli oggetti che aveva recentemente inseguito, divennero privi di valore al suo fianco; un successo quasi alla sua portata, lo scagliò lontano da sé come fosse la sporcizia che era, paragonato a lei. La sua ricerca, nondimeno, se lo teneva vicino a lei, o il suo rifiuto se lo allontanava da lei, o la fuga se ne condivideva, o il segreto se glielo ordinava, o qualsiasi destino, o ogni destino, tutto era uguale per lui, purché lei fosse fedele a lui,—l’uomo che aveva visto quanto lei fosse abbandonata, colui che lei aveva ispirato al loro primo incontro con un’ammirazione, un interesse, di cui si credeva incapace, colui che l’aveva accolta nella sua fiducia, che le era devoto e la adorava. Tutto questo, e di più, nella sua fretta, e nella sua, nel vortice della propria malizia soddisfatta, nel terrore di essere scoperti, nel rumore rapidamente crescente della pioggia battente tra le foglie, e una tempesta che si avvicinava—la signora Sparsit ricevette nella sua mente, accompagnato da un alone di confusione e indistinzione inevitabile, tanto che quando alla fine lui scavalcò il recinto e condusse via il suo cavallo, non era sicura dove si sarebbero incontrati, o quando, se non che avevano detto che sarebbe stato quella notte.
Ma uno di loro rimaneva ancora nell’oscurità davanti a lei; e mentre lo inseguiva doveva avere ragione. «Oh, mio caro amore,» pensò la signora Sparsit, «non hai idea di quanto tu sia ben accompagnato!»
La signora Sparsit la vide uscire dal bosco e la vide entrare nella casa. Cosa fare dopo? Adesso pioveva a dirotto, una cascata di acqua. Le calze bianche della signora Sparsit erano diventate multicolori, con il verde predominante; le scarpe si erano riempite di spine; bruchi appesi alle loro amache improvvisate pendevano da vari punti del suo abito; rigagnoli d’acqua scendevano dal suo cappello e dal suo naso romano. In queste condizioni, la signora Sparsit si nascose tra il fitto fogliame dei cespugli, chiedendosi cosa fare dopo?
Ecco, Louisa esce dalla casa! Si veste frettolosamente e si avvolge nel mantello, scappando via di nascosto. Fugge con l’amante! Scivola dall’ultimo gradino della scala ed è inghiottita dal baratro.
Indifferente alla pioggia e camminando con un passo rapido e deciso, lei si diresse su un sentiero laterale parallelo al viale. La signora Sparsit la seguì nella penombra degli alberi, a poca distanza; perché non era facile tenere d’occhio una figura che procedeva velocemente nell’oscurità ombrosa.
Quando si fermò per chiudere il cancello laterale senza far rumore, la signora Sparsit si fermò. Quando riprese a camminare, la signora Sparsit riprese a camminare. Prese la strada che la signora Sparsit aveva fatto venendo, uscì dal viottolo verde, attraversò la strada sterrata e salì i gradini di legno fino alla ferrovia. Un treno per Coketown sarebbe passato a breve, lo sapeva la signora Sparsit; così capì che Coketown era il suo primo luogo di destinazione.
Nello stato di mollezza e umidità in cui versava la signora Sparsit, non erano necessarie precauzioni particolari per cambiare il suo solito aspetto; tuttavia si fermò al riparo del muro della stazione, rimboccò lo scialle dandogli una nuova forma e se lo mise sopra il cappello. Così mascherata non aveva paura di essere riconosciuta quando salì i gradini della ferrovia e pagò in contanti nell’ufficio. Louisa era seduta ad aspettare in un angolo. La signora Sparsit era seduta ad aspettare in un altro angolo. Entrambe ascoltavano il tuono, che era forte, e la pioggia, mentre lavava via dal tetto e tamburellava sui parapetti degli archi. Due o tre lampade furono spente dalla pioggia e soffiate via; così entrambe videro bene i lampi che tremolavano e zigzagavano sulle rotaie di ferro.
La presa della stazione con un attacco di tremore, che gradualmente si approfondiva fino a diventare una lamentazione del cuore, annunciava il treno. Fuoco e vapore, fumo e luce rossa; uno sibilo, un boato, una campana e un urlo; Louisa messa in un vagone, la signora Sparsit messa in un altro: la piccola stazione un deserto punto nella tempesta.
Anche se i denti le battevano in testa per il freddo e l’umidità, la signora Sparsit era immensamente esultante. La figura si era precipitata giù dal dirupo, e lei si sentiva come se fosse al seguito del corpo. Poteva forse non esultare lei che aveva contribuito così attivamente all’organizzazione di quel trionfo funebre? «Sarà a Coketown molto prima di lui», pensò la signora Sparsit, «anche se il suo cavallo fosse davvero ottimo. Dove lo aspetterà? E dove andranno insieme? Pazienza. Vedremo».
La pioggia torrenziale causò un’infinita confusione quando il treno si fermò a destinazione. Gli scoli e i tubi erano scoppiati, le fogne traboccavano e le strade erano allagate. Nel primo istante in cui scese dal treno, la signora Sparsit rivolse i suoi occhi distratti verso le carrozze in attesa, che erano molto richieste. «Entrerà in una di quelle», pensò, «e se ne andrà prima che io possa seguirla con un’altra. A tutti i rischi di essere investita, devo vedere il numero e sentire l’ordine dato al cocchiere».
Ma la signora Sparsit si era sbagliata nei suoi calcoli. Louisa non salì su nessuna carrozza e se n’era già andata. Gli occhi neri continuarono a seguire il vagone ferroviario in cui aveva viaggiato, ma si soffermarono un attimo troppo tardi. Dopo diversi minuti la porta non venne aperta, così la signora Sparsit passò davanti e ripassò davanti ad essa, non vide nulla, guardò dentro e trovò il vagone vuoto. Fradicia dalla testa ai piedi: con i piedi che schioccavano e si appiccicavano nelle scarpe ogni volta che si muoveva; con una pioggia battente sul suo volto classico; con un cappello come un fico troppo maturo; con tutti i vestiti rovinati; con le impronte umide di ogni bottone, fiocco e gancetto che indossava stampate sulla sua schiena altolocata; con una vegetazione stagnante sul suo aspetto generale, tale da accumularsi su un vecchio recinto di parco in un vicolo muffoso; la signora Sparsit non aveva altra risorsa se non scoppiare in lacrime di amarezza e dire: «L’ho persa!».
CHAPTER XII DOWN
THE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.
He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt—probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not disturb him much; but it attracted his attention sufficiently to make him raise his head sometimes, as if he were rather remonstrating with the elements. When it thundered very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind that some of the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.
The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked round the lamp upon his table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest daughter.
‘Louisa!’
‘Father, I want to speak to you.’
‘What is the matter? How strange you look! And good Heaven,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, wondering more and more, ‘have you come here exposed to this storm?’
She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. ‘Yes.’ Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall where they might, stood looking at him: so colourless, so dishevelled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.
‘What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter.’
She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.
‘Father, you have trained me from my cradle?’
‘Yes, Louisa.’
‘I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.’
He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: ‘Curse the hour? Curse the hour?’
‘How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!’
She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.
‘If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this room?’
He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with difficulty he answered, ‘Yes, Louisa.’
‘What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you had given me a moment’s help. I don’t reproach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but O! if you had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much better and much happier creature I should have been this day!’
On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and groaned aloud.
‘Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I feared while I strove against it—as it has been my task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is,—would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I hate?’
He said, ‘No. No, my poor child.’
‘Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me—for no one’s enrichment—only for the greater desolation of this world—of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?’
‘O no, no. No, Louisa.’
‘Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say.’
He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they stood close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his face.
‘With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.’
‘I never knew you were unhappy, my child.’
‘Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.’
‘And you so young, Louisa!’ he said with pity.
‘And I so young. In this condition, father—for I show you now, without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it—you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.’
As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.
‘When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul.’
‘Louisa!’ he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had passed between them in their former interview.
‘I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am here with another object.’
‘What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.’
‘I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.’
‘For you, Louisa!’
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
‘I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.’
Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
‘I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know.’
She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed them both upon her side; while in her face, not like itself—and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say—the feelings long suppressed broke loose.
‘This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means!’
He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, ‘I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground!’ And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.
END OF THE SECOND BOOK
CAPITOLO XII IN DISCESA
I netturbini nazionali, dopo essersi intrattenuti con molti piccoli e rumorosi scontri tra di loro, si erano dispersi per il momento, e il signor Gradgrind era a casa per le vacanze.
Egli sedeva scrivendo nella stanza con l’orologio statistico mortale, dimostrando qualcosa senza alcun dubbio — probabilmente, in generale, che il Buon Samaritano fosse un Cattivo Economista. Il rumore della pioggia non lo disturbava molto; ma attirava la sua attenzione sufficientemente da fargli alzare a volte la testa, come se stesse piuttosto rimproverando gli elementi. Quando tuonava molto forte, egli lanciava uno sguardo verso Coketown, pensando che alcuni dei camini alti potessero essere colpiti dal fulmine.
Il tuono si allontanava rimbombando e la pioggia cadeva a dirotto come un diluvio quando la porta della sua stanza si aprì. Si voltò verso la lampada sul tavolo e vide, stupito, la figlia maggiore.
‘Luigia!’
‘Padre, voglio parlarle.’
«Che succede? Come mai avete un’aria così strana? E buon Dio», disse il signor Gradgrind, sempre più stupito, «siete venuto qui esposto a questa tempesta?»
Si mise le mani sul vestito come se non sapesse bene cosa fare. «Sì». Poi si tolse il cappuccio e lasciò cadere mantello e copricapo dove capitava, rimanendo a guardarlo: così pallida, così disordinata, così sfacciata e disperata che lui ne ebbe paura.
‘Che succede? Ti prego, Louisa, dimmi che cosa c’è’.
Si lasciò cadere su una sedia davanti a lui e gli posò la mano fredda sul braccio.
‘Padre, mi hai educato fin dalla culla?’
‘Sì, Louisa.’
‘Maledico l’ora in cui sono nato per un destino simile.’
La guardò con dubbio e terrore, ripetendo svogliatamente: «Maledire l’ora? Maledire l’ora?»
«Come hai potuto darmi la vita e togliermi tutte le cose inestimabili che la elevano dallo stato di morte consapevole? Dove sono i doni della mia anima? Dove sono i sentimenti del mio cuore? Cosa hai fatto, o padre, cosa hai fatto con il giardino che avrebbe dovuto fiorire una volta in questo grande deserto qui!»
Si colpì il petto con entrambe le mani.
«Se fosse mai stato qui, le sue ceneri sole mi salverebbero dal vuoto nel quale affonda tutta la mia vita. Non intendevo dire questo; ma, padre, ricordate l’ultima volta che abbiamo conversato in questa stanza?»
Era stato così del tutto impreparato a ciò che aveva appena udito, che con fatica rispose: «Sì, Louisa».
«Ciò che ora mi è salito alle labbra sarebbe risalito allora se solo mi aveste dato un attimo di aiuto. Non vi rimprovero nulla, padre. Quello che non avete mai coltivato in me non l’avete mai coltivato nemmeno in voi stessi; ma oh! se lo aveste fatto tanto tempo fa o se almeno mi aveste trascurato, oggi sarei una creatura molto migliore e più felice!»
Udendo ciò, dopo tutte le sue premure, si chinò la testa sulla mano e gemette ad alta voce.
«Padre, se aveste saputo, quando fummo insieme qui l’ultima volta, ciò che persino io temevo mentre mi sforzavo di contrastarlo — poiché è stato mio compito fin dall’infanzia oppormi a ogni istinto naturale che si presentasse nel mio cuore; se aveste saputo che nel mio petto rimanevano sensibilità, affetti, debolezze capaci di essere coltivati fino alla forza, sfidando tutti i calcoli mai fatti dall’uomo e non più noti alla sua aritmetica del suo Creatore — mi avreste data in sposa all’uomo che ora sono sicura di odiare?»
Disse: «No. No, mio povero bambino».
«Mi avreste condannato, in qualsiasi momento, alla gelida desolazione che mi ha indurito e rovinato? Mi avreste derubato — senza arricchire nessuno — solo per aumentare la desolazione di questo mondo — della parte immateriale della mia vita, della primavera e dell’estate delle mie convinzioni, del mio rifugio da ciò che è sordido e cattivo nelle cose reali intorno a me, della scuola in cui avrei dovuto imparare ad essere più umile e fiducioso con loro, e a sperare di migliorarli nel mio piccolo mondo?»
‘O no, no. No, Louisa.’
«Eppure, padre, se fossi stata completamente cieca; se mi fossi fatta strada a tentoni con il mio senso del tatto e avessi potuto esercitare un po’ la mia fantasia riguardo alle cose, pur conoscendone le forme e le superfici; sarei stata milioni di volte più saggia, felice, amorevole, contenta, più innocente e umana in tutti i buoni aspetti, che non sono con gli occhi che ho. Ora, ascolta ciò che sono venuta a dire».
Si mosse per sostenerla con il braccio. Mentre si alzava, rimasero vicini: lei, con una mano sulla sua spalla, lo guardava fisso in faccia.
«Con una fame e sete dentro di me, padre, che non sono mai state placate neanche per un momento; con un impulso ardente verso qualche regione dove regole, numeri e definizioni non fossero del tutto assolute; sono cresciuto combattendo ogni centimetro del mio cammino.»
«Non sapevo che fossi infelice, mio bambino.»
«Padre, lo sapevo da sempre. In questa lotta ho quasi respinto e schiacciato il mio angelo migliore trasformandolo in un demone. Quello che ho imparato mi ha lasciato pieno di dubbi, incredulo, sprezzante, pentito per quello che non ho imparato; e la mia triste risorsa è stata pensare che la vita sarebbe presto finita, e che nulla in essa potesse valere il dolore e la fatica di una lotta.»
«E tu così giovane, Louisa!» disse con pietà.
«E io così giovane. In questo stato d’animo, padre — perché vi mostro ora, senza paura né favoritismi, il comune stato di torpore della mia mente come lo conosco voi — mi avete proposto mio marito. L’ho preso. Non ho mai fatto finta con lui o con voi che lo amassi. Lo sapevo e, padre, lo sapevate anche voi, e lo sapeva lui, che non l’ho mai amato. Non ero del tutto indifferente perché nutrivo una speranza di essere piacevole e utile a Tom. Mi sono abbandonata a quella fuga selvaggia in qualcosa di visionario e ho scoperto lentamente quanto fosse folle. Ma Tom era stato l’oggetto di tutta la piccola tenerezza della mia vita; forse è diventato tale perché sapevo bene come compatirlo. Ora non ha molta importanza, se non per il fatto che potrebbe indurvi a considerare con più indulgenza i suoi errori».
Mentre suo padre la teneva tra le braccia, lei posò l’altra mano sulla sua altra spalla e continuando a fissarlo negli occhi proseguì.
«Quando fui irrevocabilmente sposato, contro il vincolo si sollevò la vecchia discordia in ribellione, resa più aspra da tutte quelle cause di disparità che derivano dalle nostre due nature individuali e che nessuna legge generale potrà mai regolare o stabilire per me, padre, finché non sapranno dire all’anatomista dove conficcare il coltello nei segreti della mia anima.»
«Louisa!», disse e aggiunse supplichevole; perché ricordava bene ciò che era stato detto tra loro nel precedente colloquio.
‘Non ti rimprovero, padre, non ho nulla da obiettare. Sono qui per un altro motivo.’
«Che posso fare, bambino? Chiedimi quello che vuoi».
«Ci sto arrivando. Padre, la sorte mi fece incontrare un nuovo conoscente; un uomo di cui non avevo esperienza; abituato al mondo; leggero, raffinato, disinvolto; che non faceva pretese; ammetteva il basso valore di tutto, che io stesso temevo di formulare in segreto; mi fece capire quasi subito, anche se non so come o per gradi, che mi comprendeva e leggeva i miei pensieri. Non riuscivo a trovare che fosse peggiore di me. Sembrava esserci una stretta affinità tra noi. Mi chiedevo solo perché dovesse valerne la pena, per uno che non si curava di nulla altro, preoccuparsi così tanto di me».
‘Per te, Louisa!’
Suo padre avrebbe potuto istintivamente allentare la presa, ma sentiva che le sue forze l’abbandonavano e vedeva un selvaggio fuoco dilatato negli occhi che lo fissavano con fermezza.
«Non dico nulla della sua richiesta di ottenere la mia fiducia. Non ha molta importanza come l’abbia conquistata. Padre, l’ha conquistata. Quello che sapete voi della storia del mio matrimonio, lui lo seppe presto, proprio come bene.»
Il volto di suo padre era pallido come cenere e la teneva tra le sue braccia.
«Non ho fatto nulla di peggio, non vi ho disonorato. Ma se mi chiedete se l’ho amato o se lo amo, ve lo dico chiaro e tondo, padre: potrebbe essere così. Non lo so».
Lei improvvisamente tolse le mani dalle sue spalle e le premette entrambe sul fianco; mentre nel suo volto, non più simile a se stesso — e nella sua figura, ritta, risoluta a concludere con un ultimo sforzo ciò che aveva da dire — i sentimenti a lungo repressi si liberarono.
«Questa notte, mio marito essendo assente, è stato con me, dichiarandosi il mio amante. In questo momento mi aspetta, perché non potevo liberarmi della sua presenza in altro modo. Non so se sono pentita, non so se ho vergogna, non so se mi sento degradata ai miei stessi occhi. Tutto ciò che so è che la tua filosofia e il tuo insegnamento non mi salveranno. Ora, padre, tu mi hai portata a questo. Salva me con altri mezzi!»
Le strinse più forte in tempo per impedirle di cadere a terra, ma lei gridò con voce terribile: «Morirò se mi tieni! Lasciami cadere a terra!» E lui la depose lì, e vide il orgoglio del suo cuore e il trionfo del suo sistema giacere, un mucchio insensibile, ai suoi piedi.
FINE DEL SECONDO LIBRO
BOOK THE THIRD GARNERING CHAPTER I ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL
LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed at home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all that had happened since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the shadows of a dream, but gradually, as the objects became more real to her sight, the events became more real to her mind.
She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention had such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she asked:
‘When was I brought to this room?’
‘Last night, Louisa.’
‘Who brought me here?’
‘Sissy, I believe.’
‘Why do you believe so?’
‘Because I found her here this morning. She didn’t come to my bedside to wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her. She was not in her own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until I found her here taking care of you and cooling your head. Will you see father? Sissy said I was to tell him when you woke.’
‘What a beaming face you have, Jane!’ said Louisa, as her young sister—timidly still—bent down to kiss her.
‘Have I? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be Sissy’s doing.’
The arm Louisa had begun to twine around her neck, unbent itself. ‘You can tell father if you will.’ Then, staying her for a moment, she said, ‘It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of welcome?’
‘Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was—’
Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards the door, until it opened and her father entered.
He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady, trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial manner; and was often at a loss for words.
‘My dear Louisa. My poor daughter.’ He was so much at a loss at that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again.
‘My unfortunate child.’ The place was so difficult to get over, that he tried again.
‘It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last night. The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet. The only support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed, and still does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant. I am stunned by these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say; but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be very heavy indeed.’
She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck of her whole life upon the rock.
‘I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been a part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind. I had proved my—my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my favourite child, that I have meant to do right.’
He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
‘I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall.’
He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.
‘My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and again on what has so painfully passed between us. When I consider your character; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours, has been concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust myself.’
He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. Such little actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him; and his daughter received them as if they had been words of contrition.
‘But,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a wretched sense of happiness, ‘if I see reason to mistrust myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am far from feeling convinced now, however differently I might have felt only this time yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how to respond to the appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have the right instinct—supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that nature—how to help you, and to set you right, my child.’
She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had subsided; but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father was changed in nothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her in tears.
LIBRO TERZO LA MESSA A POSTO CAPITOLO I UN ALTRO BISOGNO NECESSARIO
LOUISA si risvegliò da un torpore e i suoi occhi si aprirono languidamente sul suo vecchio letto a casa e nella sua vecchia stanza. All’inizio sembrava che tutto ciò che era accaduto dai tempi in cui questi oggetti le erano familiari fossero le ombre di un sogno, ma gradualmente, man mano che gli oggetti diventavano più reali alla sua vista, gli eventi divenivano più reali nella sua mente.
A stento poteva muovere la testa per il dolore e la pesantezza, gli occhi le bruciavano e si sentiva molto debole. Un curioso stato di passività aveva preso possesso di lei al punto che la presenza della sorellina nella stanza non attirò la sua attenzione per qualche tempo. Anche quando i loro sguardi si incontrarono e la sorella si avvicinò al letto, Louisa rimase a guardarla in silenzio per alcuni minuti, permettendole timidamente di tenerle la mano inerte prima di chiedere:
‘Quando sono stato portato in questa stanza?’
«Ieri sera, Luigia».
‘Chi mi ha portato qui?’
‘Sissy, credo.’
‘Perché ci credi?’
«Perché l’ho trovata qui questa mattina. Non è venuta al mio capezzale per svegliarmi, come fa sempre; e sono andato a cercarla. Non era nemmeno nella sua stanza; e l’ho cercata in tutta la casa, finché l’ho trovata qui che si prendeva cura di te e ti raffreddava la testa. Vuoi vedere papà? Sissy ha detto che dovevo dirglielo quando ti fossi svegliato».
«Che faccia raggiante hai, Jane!» disse Louisa mentre la sua giovane sorella — ancora timida — si chinava per baciarla.
‘Ho fatto così? Mi fa molto piacere che lo pensiate. Di sicuro è merito di Sissy.’
Il braccio che Louisa aveva cominciato ad avvolgere intorno al suo collo si distese. «Se vuoi puoi dirlo a papà». Poi, trattendo un attimo la ragazza, disse: «È stato lei a rendere così accogliente la mia stanza e a darle questo aspetto di benvenuto?»
‘Oh no, Louisa, era già fatto prima che arrivassi. Era, ’
Louisa si girò sul cuscino e non udì più nulla. Quando la sorella se ne fu andata, rivolse di nuovo il capo e rimase con il viso verso la porta finché questa si aprì ed entrò suo padre.
Aveva un’espressione stanca e preoccupata, e la sua mano, di solito ferma, tremava tra le sue. Si sedette accanto al letto, chiedendole con dolcezza come stesse, insistendo sulla necessità che rimanesse molto tranquilla dopo l’agitazione e l’esposizione alle intemperie della scorsa notte. Parlava a voce bassa e turbata, molto diverso dal suo solito modo autoritario; e spesso faticava a trovare le parole.
«Mia cara Louisa. Mia povera figlia». Era così smarrito in quel punto che si fermò del tutto. Ci riprovò.
«Mio sfortunato figlio». Il luogo era così difficile da attraversare che ci riprovò.
«Sarebbe inutile per me, Louisa, tentare di dirti quanto sia stato sopraffatto e lo sia ancora da ciò che mi è piombato addosso ieri sera. Il terreno su cui cammino non è più solido sotto ai miei piedi. L’unico sostegno a cui mi aggrappavo, la cui forza sembrava e sembra ancora impossibile mettere in dubbio, si è sgretolato in un istante. Sono sbalordito da queste scoperte. Non ho intenzioni egoistiche nel dire ciò che dico; ma trovo il colpo di ciò che mi ha travolto ieri sera davvero molto forte».
Non poteva dargli alcun conforto in proposito. Aveva subito il naufragio della sua intera vita su quella scogliera.
«Non dirò, Louisa, che se tu mi avessi disingannato per qualche felice caso qualche volta fa, sarebbe stato meglio per entrambi; meglio per la tua pace e meglio per la mia. Perché sono consapevole che non poteva far parte del mio sistema invitare una confidenza di quel genere. Avevo provato il mio—il mio sistema su me stesso, e l’ho amministrato rigidamente; e devo sopportare la responsabilità dei suoi fallimenti. Ti prego solo di credere, mia figlia prediletta, che ho voluto fare ciò che è giusto».
Lo disse con serietà e, per rendergli giustizia, lo pensava davvero. Misurando le profondità insondabili col suo piccolo misero bastone da dogana e barcollando sull’universo coi suoi compassi arrugginiti dalle gambe rigide, aveva voluto fare grandi cose. Nei limiti del suo corto raggio d’azione si era agitato qua e là annientando i fiori dell’esistenza con una maggiore concentrazione di intenti che molti dei personaggi chiassosi la cui compagnia frequentava.
«Sono pienamente convinta di quello che dice, padre. So di essere stata la sua figlia prediletta. So che ha voluto rendermi felice. Non l’ho mai incolpata e non lo farò mai».
Le prese la mano tesa e continuò a tenerla nella sua.
«Mia cara, sono rimasto tutta la notte al mio tavolo, riflettendo più e più volte su ciò che è accaduto tra noi in modo così doloroso. Quando considero il tuo carattere; quando considero che ciò che io ho saputo da ore tu l’hai tenuto nascosto per anni; quando considero sotto quale pressione immediata sia stato finalmente strappato da te, giungo alla conclusione di non poter fare a meno di diffidare di me stesso.»
Avrebbe potuto aggiungere più di tutto ciò quando vide il volto che ora lo guardava. In effetti forse lo fece, mentre con mano delicata le spostava i capelli scompigliati dalla fronte. Azioni così piccole, insignificanti in un altro uomo, erano molto notabili in lui; e sua figlia le riceveva come se fossero state parole di pentimento.
«Ma», disse il signor Gradgrind lentamente e con esitazione, nonché con un povero senso di felicità, «se vedo ragione per diffidare di me stesso per il passato, Louisa, dovrei anche diffidare di me stesso per il presente e il futuro. Per parlarti senza riserve, lo faccio. Sono lontano dal sentirmi convinto ora, per quanto diversamente potrei aver sentito solo questa volta ieri, che io sia adatto alla fiducia che riponi in me; che io sappia come rispondere all’appello che sei venuta a casa a fare a me; che io abbia l’istinto giusto - supponendolo per il momento una qualità di quella natura - su come aiutarti e metterti a posto, mia figlia.»
Si era girata sul cuscino e giaceva con il viso appoggiato al braccio, così che lui non poteva vederlo. Tutta la sua selvaggia passione si era placata; ma, sebbene addolcita, lei non era in lacrime. Suo padre era cambiato soprattutto nel senso che sarebbe stato felice di vederla in lacrime.
‘Some persons hold,’ he pursued, still hesitating, ‘that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I venture this morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa—’
He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to admit it even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on her bed, still half-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last night.
‘Louisa,’ and his hand rested on her hair again, ‘I have been absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your sister’s training has been pursued according to—the system,’ he appeared to come to that word with great reluctance always, ‘it has necessarily been modified by daily associations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you—ignorantly and humbly, my daughter—for the better, do you think?’
‘Father,’ she replied, without stirring, ‘if any harmony has been awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my way.’
‘O my child, my child!’ he said, in a forlorn manner, ‘I am an unhappy man to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself!’ He bent his head, and spoke low to her. ‘Louisa, I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly working about me in this house, by mere love and gratitude: that what the Head had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it be so?’
She made him no reply.
‘I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be arrogant, and you before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?’ He looked upon her once more, lying cast away there; and without another word went out of the room. He had not been long gone, when she heard a light tread near the door, and knew that some one stood beside her.
She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.
It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause of them.
As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that she stood placidly near the bedside.
‘I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me stay with you?’
‘Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are everything to her.’
‘Am I?’ returned Sissy, shaking her head. ‘I would be something to you, if I might.’
‘What?’ said Louisa, almost sternly.
‘Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let me?’
‘My father sent you to ask me.’
‘No indeed,’ replied Sissy. ‘He told me that I might come in now, but he sent me away from the room this morning—or at least—’
She hesitated and stopped.
‘At least, what?’ said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
‘I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very uncertain whether you would like to find me here.’
‘Have I always hated you so much?’
‘I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so little, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other friends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.’
Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
‘May I try?’ said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that was insensibly drooping towards her.
Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
‘First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me. Does not that repel you?’
‘No!’
‘I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that repel you?’
‘No!’
In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon the darkness of the other.
Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller’s child looked up at her almost with veneration.
‘Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!’
‘O lay it here!’ cried Sissy. ‘Lay it here, my dear.’
«Alcuni sostengono», continuò, ancora esitante, «che esista una saggezza della testa e che ne esista una del cuore. Io non ho mai pensato così; ma come vi dicevo ora diffido di me stesso. Ho sempre creduto che la testa fosse sufficiente da sola. Forse non lo è; come posso affermarlo questa mattina! Se quella diversa saggezza fosse ciò che io ho trascurato, e se fosse l’istinto che manca, Louisa—»
Lo suggerì con grande dubbio, come se fosse ancora a metà riluttante ad ammetterlo. Lei non gli rispose, sdraiata davanti a lui sul letto, ancora mezza vestita, proprio come l’aveva vista distesa sul pavimento della sua stanza la scorsa notte.
«Louisa», e la sua mano si posò di nuovo sui suoi capelli, «sono stato assente da qui, mia cara, parecchio ultimamente; e sebbene l’educazione di tua sorella sia stata seguita secondo—il sistema», sembrava che arrivasse a quella parola con grande riluttanza sempre, «è stata necessariamente modificata dalle associazioni quotidiane iniziate, nel suo caso, in tenera età. Ti chiedo—ignorantemente e umilmente, figlia mia—per il meglio, credi?»
«Padre», rispose lei senza muoversi, «se in petto a lei giovane è stata suscitata qualche armonia che nel mio rimase muta fino a trasformarsi in dissonanza, allora sia grata al Cielo per questo e prosegua sulla sua via più felice, considerando la sua più grande benedizione il fatto di non aver seguito la mia.»
«O mia figlia, mia figlia!» disse in tono disperato «sono un uomo infelice a vederti così! Che mi importa che tu non mi rimproveri, se io stesso mi rimprovero tanto amaramente?» Si chinò e le parlò sottovoce. «Louisa, ho il timore che in questa casa possano essersi lentamente operati dei cambiamenti per puro amore e gratitudine: che ciò che la Ragione non ha fatto e non avrebbe potuto fare, il Cuore abbia fatto silenziosamente. È possibile?»
Non gli rispose.
«Non sono troppo orgoglioso per crederlo, Louisa. Come potrei essere arrogante davanti a te! È possibile? È vero, mia cara?» La guardò ancora una volta, abbandonata lì; e senza dire altro uscì dalla stanza. Non era passato molto tempo da quando se ne andò, che lei udì un leggero passo vicino alla porta e capì che qualcuno stava accanto a lei.
Non alzò la testa. Una rabbia sorda per essere stata vista nel suo dolore e perché lo sguardo involontario che aveva tanto risentito si fosse realizzato in questo modo, le ardeva dentro come un fuoco malsano. Tutte le forze strettamente imprigionate lacerano e distruggono. L’aria che sarebbe salutare per la terra, l’acqua che la arricchirebbe, il calore che la farebbe maturare, la straziano quando sono rinchiusi. Così ora nel suo petto; le qualità più forti che possedeva, da tempo rivolte contro se stesse, divennero un cumulo di ostinazione che si levò contro un amico.
Fu un bene che quella carezza delicata le sfiorasse il collo e che lei capisse di essere considerata addormentata. La mano comprensiva non meritava il suo risentimento. Lasciatela lì, lasciatela stare.
Rimase lì, riscaldando di vita una folla di pensieri più gentili; e lei riposò. Mentre si ammorbidiva con il silenzio e la consapevolezza di essere così osservata, alcune lacrime le sgorgarono negli occhi. Il volto toccò il suo, e lei seppe che c’erano anche delle lacrime su quello, e che ne era la causa.
Mentre Louisa fingeva di svegliarsi e si sedette, Sissy indietreggiò, rimanendo tranquillamente vicino al letto.
«Spero di non averla disturbata. Sono venuto a chiederle se mi permetterebbe di restare con lei?»
‘Perché dovresti rimanere con me? Mia sorella ti mancherà. Sei tutto per lei.’
“Sono qualcosa per te?” rispose Sissy, scuotendo la testa. “Vorrei esserlo.”
«Cosa?», disse Louisa quasi severamente.
«Qualunque cosa tu voglia di più, se potessi essere quella. In ogni caso, mi piacerebbe provare ad avvicinarmici il più possibile. E per quanto lontano possa essere, non mi stancherò mai di provarci. Mi permetterai?»
‘Mio padre ti ha mandato a chiedermelo.’
«Niente affatto», rispose Sissy. «Mi ha detto che potevo entrare adesso, ma mi ha mandata via dalla stanza questa mattina — o almeno —»
Esitò e si fermò.
«Almeno che cosa?», disse Louisa con i suoi occhi scrutatori puntati su di lei.
«Pensavo fosse meglio che mi allontanassi, perché non ero affatto sicuro che vi sarebbe piaciuto trovarmi qui.»
‘Vi ho sempre odiato così tanto?’
«Spero di no, perché ti ho sempre amato e ho sempre desiderato che tu lo sapessi. Ma sei cambiata un po’ nei miei confronti poco prima di lasciare casa. Non mi stupivo, però. Tu sapevi tanto e io così poco, ed era del tutto naturale sotto molti aspetti, dato che stavi per andare tra altri amici, quindi non avevo nulla da rimproverarti e non ero affatto ferita».
Il suo colorito si fece rosso mentre lo diceva con modestia e in fretta. Louisa comprese la tenera finzione e il cuore le diede un tuffo.
«Posso provare?» disse Sissy, incoraggiata a portare la mano al collo che si stava impercettibilmente inclinando verso di lei.
Louisa, abbassando la mano che l’avrebbe abbracciata un attimo dopo, la tenne stretta nella sua e rispose:
«Prima di tutto, Sissy, sai chi sono? Sono così orgoglioso e così indurito, così confuso e turbato, così risentito e ingiusto con tutti e con me stesso che ogni cosa mi appare tempestosa, oscura e malvagia. Non ti respinge questo?»
‘No!’
«Sono così infelice e tutto ciò che avrebbe dovuto rendermi diverso è così devastato, che se fossi stato privato di senno fino a questo momento, e invece di essere colto come pensate voi, dovessi iniziare ad acquisire le verità più semplici, non potrei desiderare una guida alla pace, al contentamento, all’onore, tutto il bene di cui sono completamente privo, più umilmente di quanto faccia. Non vi respinge questo?»
‘No!’
Nell’innocenza del suo coraggioso affetto e nel traboccare del suo vecchio spirito devoto, la ragazza un tempo abbandonata brillava come una luce splendida nell’oscurità dell’altra.
Louisa alzò la mano perché potesse cingere il suo collo e unirsi all’altra lì. Si lasciò cadere in ginocchio, e aggrappandosi a questo bambino di strada lo guardò quasi con venerazione.
«Perdonatemi, compatitemi, aiutatemi! Abbiate pietà del mio grande bisogno e lasciate che io posso questa mia testa su un cuore amorevole!»
“Posalo qui!” gridò Sissy. “Posalo qui, tesoro mio.”
CHAPTER II VERY RIDICULOUS
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely have recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.
After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor letter coming with either, he went down to the country house. There, the report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of message, importing that her return was not to be expected for the present.
In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there. He looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin!
‘Well! I don’t know,’ said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy about it. ‘She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.’
‘Where were you last night, Tom?’
‘Where was I last night!’ said Tom. ‘Come! I like that. I was waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it come down before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.’
‘I was prevented from coming—detained.’
‘Detained!’ murmured Tom. ‘Two of us were detained. I was detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all.’
‘Where?’
‘Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’s.’
‘Did you see your sister?’
‘How the deuce,’ returned Tom, staring, ‘could I see my sister when she was fifteen miles off?’
Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been premature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest—What will be, will be.
‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner—which would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs—I’ll dine,’ said Mr. James Harthouse. ‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training.’
Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa, ordered ‘Some dinner at six—with a beefsteak in it,’ and got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound interest.
However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once. ‘It wouldn’t be bad,’ he yawned at one time, ‘to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.’ At another time it occurred to him, ‘Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.’ But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.
It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, ‘like the Holy Office and slow torture.’ However, still true to his conviction that indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a newspaper.
He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and apologetically:
‘Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.’
A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by ‘wanted’?
CAPITOLO II
MOLTO RIDICOLA
Il signor JAMES HARTHOUSE passò un’intera notte e un giorno in uno stato di tale agitazione che il mondo, anche con l’occhio più attento puntato su di lui, difficilmente lo avrebbe riconosciuto durante quell’intervallo folle come il fratello Jem del membro onorevole e scherzoso. Era positivamente turbato. Più volte parlò con enfasi, in modo simile a quello volgare. Entrava ed usciva in un modo inspiegabile, come un uomo senza uno scopo. Cavalcava come un bandito. In una parola, era così terribilmente annoiato dalle circostanze esistenti che dimenticò di dedicarsi all’annoiamento nel modo prescritto dalle autorità.
Dopo aver fatto attraversare la tempesta a Coketown al suo cavallo, come se fosse un salto, rimase sveglio tutta la notte: di tanto in tanto suonava il campanello con la massima furia, accusando l’inserviente che faceva la guardia di negligenza nel trattenere lettere o messaggi che non potevano essere stati affidati ad altri, e chiedendo il risarcimento immediato. Con l’avvicinarsi dell’alba, del mattino e del giorno, senza che né un messaggio né una lettera arrivassero con uno di essi, scese alla casa di campagna. Lì si seppe che il signor Bounderby era assente e la signora Bounderby in città. Era partita per la città all’improvviso la sera prima. Non si sapeva nemmeno che fosse andata via fino alla ricezione del messaggio, che annunciava che il suo ritorno non era atteso per il momento.
In tali circostanze non gli restò altro che seguirla in città. Andò alla casa in città. La signora Bounderby non c’era. Diede un’occhiata alla banca. Il signor Bounderby era assente e anche la signora Sparsit era assente. La signora Sparsit assente? Chi mai avrebbe potuto essere ridotto a una tale estremità da aver bisogno della compagnia di quella grifona!
«Beh! Non lo so», disse Tom, che aveva le sue ragioni per sentirsi inquieto al riguardo. «Se n’è andata chissà dove all’alba questa mattina. È sempre piena di misteri; la odio. E così faccio con quel tizio bianco; ha sempre i suoi dannati occhi addosso a uno».
«Dove eri la scorsa notte, Tom?»
«Dove ero la scorsa notte!» disse Tom. «Su, mi piace questa. Ti stavo aspettando, signor Harthouse, finché non è venuta giù come io non l’avevo mai vista venire prima. Dove ero anch’io! Dove eri tu, vuoi dire».
Sono stato impedito di venire - trattenuto.
«Detenuto!» mormorò Tom. «Due di noi sono stati detenuti. Sono stato trattenuto mentre ti cercavo, fino a perdere tutti i treni tranne quello postale. Non sarebbe stata una bella avventura andare giù con quello in una notte del genere e dover camminare a casa attraverso uno stagno. Alla fine sono stato costretto a dormire in città».
‘Dove?’
‘Dove? Niente meno che nel mio letto a casa di Bounderby.’
‘Avete visto vostra sorella?’
«Come diavolo», rispose Tom, fissandolo, «avrei potuto vedere mia sorella quando era a quindici miglia di distanza?»
Maledicendo quelle pronte risposte del giovane gentiluomo a cui era così fedele amico, il signor Harthouse si liberò di quell’incontro con la minima quantità immaginabile di cerimonie e rifletté per la centesima volta su cosa potesse significare tutto ciò? Fece solo una cosa chiara. Era che, se lei fosse in città o fuori città, se lui si fosse dimostrato prematuro con lei che era così difficile da comprendere, oppure se lei avesse perso il coraggio, o se fossero stati scoperti, o se qualche disgrazia o errore, attualmente incomprensibile, fosse accaduto, lui doveva rimanere per affrontare la sua sorte, qualunque essa fosse. L’hotel dove era noto che viveva quando era condannato a quella regione di oscurità, era il palo al quale era legato. Per quanto riguarda tutto il resto—Sarà quel che sarà.
«Dunque, sia che io stia aspettando un messaggio ostile o un appuntamento, o una remonstranza penitente, o uno scontro improvvisato con il mio amico Bounderby alla maniera del Lancashire — cosa che sembrerebbe altrettanto probabile di qualsiasi altra in questa situazione attuale — mangerò», disse James Harthouse. «Bounderby ha l’advantaggio dal punto di vista del peso; e se dovesse succedere qualcosa di natura britannica tra noi, potrebbe essere altrettanto bene mettersi in allenamento.»
Perciò suonò il campanello e, buttandosi con nonchalance su un divano, ordinò “Una cena per le sei - con dentro una bistecca” e passò il tempo intermedio come poté. Non andò particolarmente bene; perché rimase nella più grande perplessità, e man mano che le ore passavano, e nessun tipo di spiegazione si presentava, la sua perplessità aumentava a interesse composto.
Tuttavia, prendeva le cose con la massima calma di cui fosse capace l’umanità e si divertiva con l’idea scherzosa dell’allenamento più di una volta. «Non sarebbe male», sbadigliò in un momento, «dare al cameriere cinque scellini e buttarlo fuori». In un altro momento gli venne in mente: «Oppure si potrebbe assumere un tizio di circa tredici o quattordici pietre all’ora». Ma questi scherzi non influenzarono materialmente il pomeriggio, né la sua attesa; e, a dire il vero, entrambi trascorrevano terribilmente lenti.
Era impossibile, anche prima di cena, evitare di camminare spesso sul motivo del tappeto, guardando fuori dalla finestra, tendendo l’orecchio alla porta per sentire dei passi e, occasionalmente, arrossire quando si avvicinavano dei passi a quella stanza. Ma dopo cena, quando il giorno divenne crepuscolo e il crepuscolo si trasformò in notte, e ancora non gli era stata fatta alcuna comunicazione, cominciò ad essere, come lui stesso lo esprimeva, “come l’Ufficio Santo e la tortura lenta”. Tuttavia, rimanendo fedele alla sua convinzione che l’indifferenza fosse il vero sangue blu (l’unica convinzione che avesse), colse questa crisi come l’occasione per ordinare delle candele e un giornale.
Aveva cercato invano per mezz’ora di leggere quel giornale, quando apparve il cameriere e disse, in tono insieme misterioso e scusante:
‘Chiedo scusa, signore. Sono venuto a cercarla, se è così gentile.’
Un ricordo generale che questo era il tipo di cosa che la Polizia diceva ai gentiluomini della malavita indusse Mr. Harthouse a chiedere al cameriere in cambio, con indignazione crescente, che diavolo intendesse per “cercato”?
‘Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.’
‘Outside? Where?’
‘Outside this door, sir.’
Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-head duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that consideration for herself.
‘I speak to Mr. Harthouse?’ she said, when they were alone.
‘To Mr. Harthouse.’ He added in his mind, ‘And you speak to him with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so quiet) I ever heard.’
‘If I do not understand—and I do not, sir’—said Sissy, ‘what your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:’ the blood really rose in his face as she began in these words: ‘I am sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust—’
‘You may, I assure you.’
‘I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.’ He thought, ‘But that is very strong,’ as he followed the momentary upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, ‘This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see where we are going.’
‘I think,’ said Sissy, ‘you have already guessed whom I left just now!’
‘I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),’ he returned, ‘on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.’
‘I left her within an hour.’
‘At—!’
‘At her father’s.’
Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his perplexity increased. ‘Then I certainly,’ he thought, ‘do not see where we are going.’
‘She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you live.’
Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his easily given promise—which in itself shamed him—presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word could he rally to his relief.
At last he said:
‘So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak?’
‘I have no charge from her.’
‘The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.’
‘There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when she came home last night.’
‘Must believe? But if I can’t—or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be obstinate—and won’t—’
‘It is still true. There is no hope.’
James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown away.
He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
‘Well! If it should unhappily appear,’ he said, ‘after due pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you had no commission from her?’
‘I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!’
He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.
‘I am not a moral sort of fellow,’ he said, ‘and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with—in fact with—the domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, ‘that it is really in several volumes.’
‘Chiedo scusa, signore. C’è una giovane signora fuori che desidera vederla.’
‘Fuori? Dove?’
‘Fuori di questa porta, signore.’
Consegnando il cameriere al personaggio sopra menzionato come un testone debitamente qualificato per tale consegna, il signor Harthouse si affrettò nella galleria. Una giovane donna che non aveva mai visto prima stava lì. Vestita semplicemente, molto tranquilla, molto carina. Mentre la accompagnava nella stanza e le metteva una sedia, osservò alla luce delle candele che era ancora più carina di quanto avesse inizialmente creduto. Il suo volto era innocente e giovanile, e la sua espressione notevolmente piacevole. Non aveva paura di lui o non era per nulla turbata; sembrava che la sua mente fosse completamente presa dall’occasione della sua visita e avesse sostituito quella considerazione a se stessa.
«Parlo con il signor Harthouse?» disse quando furono soli.
«A Mr. Harthouse». Aggiunse tra sé: «E lei gli parla con gli occhi più fiduciosi che io abbia mai visto e la voce più sincera (anche se così calma) che io abbia mai sentito».
«Se non capisco — e non capisco, signore» — disse Sissy, «quello che il vostro onore di gentiluomo vi obbliga a fare in altre questioni:» il sangue gli salì davvero al viso quando lei cominciò con queste parole: «Sono sicura di poter contare sul fatto che manterrete segreta la mia visita e che terrete nascosto quello che sto per dire. Mi baserò su questo, se mi direte che posso fidarmi fino a questo punto —»
‘Potete farlo, ve lo assicuro.’
«Sono giovane, come vedete; sono solo, come vedete. Venendo da voi, signore, non ho consigli né incoraggiamenti oltre la mia stessa speranza.» Pensò: «Ma questa è molto forte», mentre seguiva il rapido sguardo alzato dei suoi occhi. Pensò anche: «Questo è un inizio davvero strano. Non vedo dove andremo a parare».
Penso che tu abbia già indovinato chi ho appena lasciato!
«Sono stato in preda alla più grande apprensione e agitazione nelle ultime ventiquattro ore (che mi sono sembrate altrettanti anni)», riprese, «a causa di una signora. Le speranze che ho nutrito che lei venga da quella signora non mi ingannano, confido».
‘L’ho lasciata dopo un’ora.’
‘At—!’
‘In casa del padre.’
Il volto del signor Harthouse si allungò nonostante la sua freddezza e il suo smarrimento aumentò. «Allora io certamente», pensò, «non vedo dove stiamo andando».
«Si è precipitata là ieri sera. È arrivata in grande agitazione e ha passato tutta la notte senza conoscenza. Vivo a casa di suo padre ed ero con lei. Sarà certo, signore, che non la rivedrà mai più finché vivrà».
Mr. Harthouse tirò un lungo respiro; e se mai uomo si trovò nella condizione di non sapere cosa dire, scoprì senza ombra di dubbio che era proprio la sua situazione. L’ingenuità infantile con cui la sua visitatrice parlava, il suo modesto coraggio, la sua sincerità che metteva da parte ogni artificio, il suo completo oblio di sé stessa nel tener fermo e tranquillo l’obiettivo per cui era venuta; tutto ciò, insieme alla fiducia riposta nella sua promessa facilmente concessa — che già lo faceva vergognare — presentava qualcosa in cui lui era così inesperto, e contro cui sapeva che tutte le sue solite armi sarebbero risultate del tutto inefficaci; tanto che non riuscì a trovare una sola parola per tirarsi fuori d’impiccio.
Alla fine disse:
«Un annuncio così sorprendente, fatto con tanta sicurezza e da labbra tanto autorevoli è davvero sconcertante al massimo grado. Posso permettermi di chiedere se sei incaricato a trasmettermi questa informazione in questi termini senza speranza per conto della signora di cui stiamo parlando?»
‘Non ho ricevuto alcun incarico da lei.’
«Un uomo che sta annegando si aggrappa alla paglia. Senza mancare di rispetto al suo giudizio e senza dubitare della sua sincerità, mi scusi se le dico che mi attacco alla convinzione che ci sia ancora speranza che io non sia condannato all’esilio perpetuo dalla presenza di quella signora.»
«Non c’è la minima speranza. Lo scopo principale del mio arrivo qui, signore, è assicurarle che deve credere che non ci sia più speranza di poter mai riparlare con lei, più di quanta ce ne sarebbe se fosse morta quando è tornata a casa ieri sera.»
«Devo credere? Ma se non posso — o se dovessi, per debolezza di natura, essere ostinato e non volessi —»
«È ancora vero. Non c’è alcuna speranza.»
James Harthouse la guardò con un sorriso incredulo sulle labbra; ma il suo pensiero lo scavalcava e si spingeva oltre, e quel sorriso fu del tutto inutile.
Si morse il labbro e si concesse un po’ di tempo per riflettere.
«Bene! Se dovesse sfortunatamente accadere», disse, «dopo aver fatto il mio dovere e aver messo in atto ogni sforzo da parte mia, che io venga portato a una condizione così desolata come questa di esilio, non diventerò il persecutore della signora. Ma avete detto di non avere alcuna commissione da parte sua?»
«Non ho altro che la commissione del mio amore per lei e il suo amore per me. Non ho altra fiducia se non quella di essere stato con lei da quando è tornata a casa, e che mi ha dato la sua confidenza. Non ho altra fiducia, se non quella di conoscere qualcosa del suo carattere e del suo matrimonio. O Signor Harthouse, penso che anche lei avesse questa fiducia!»
Fu colpito nella cavità dove avrebbe dovuto trovarsi il suo cuore — in quel nido di uova marce, dove gli uccelli del cielo avrebbero vissuto se non fossero stati allontanati con un fischio — dalla fermezza di questo rimprovero.
«Non sono un tipo morale», disse, «e non ho mai fatto alcuna pretesa di essere un tipo morale. Sono immorale quanto basta. Allo stesso tempo, nel causare qualche sofferenza alla signora che è l’argomento della presente conversazione, o nel comprometterla sfortunatamente in qualche modo, o nell’impegnarmi con espressioni di sentimenti nei suoi confronti non perfettamente compatibili — in effetti con — il focolare domestico; o nel trarre vantaggio dal fatto che suo padre è una macchina, o dal fatto che suo fratello è un cucciolo, o dal fatto che suo marito è un orso; vi prego di permettermi di assicurarvi che non ho avuto intenzioni particolarmente malvagie, ma sono scivolato da un passo all’altro con una fluidità così perfettamente diabolica, che non avevo la minima idea che l’elenco fosse lungo la metà fino a quando non ho iniziato a sfogliarlo. Mentre invece», disse il signor James Harthouse, in conclusione, «scopro che è davvero in diversi volumi».
Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.
‘After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it impossible to doubt—I know of hardly any other source from which I could have accepted it so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in whom the confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this—and—and, I cannot say,’ he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, ‘that I have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.’
Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.
‘You spoke,’ he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, ‘of your first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you oblige me by confiding it?’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular disadvantage, ‘the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it is the only compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do not say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other authority than I have given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under an obligation never to return to it.’
If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as affect her.
‘But do you know,’ he asked, quite at a loss, ‘the extent of what you ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the fact.’
It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
‘Besides which,’ said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the room, dubiously, ‘it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an incomprehensible way.’
‘I am quite sure,’ repeated Sissy, ‘that it is the only reparation in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.’
He glanced at her face, and walked about again. ‘Upon my soul, I don’t know what to say. So immensely absurd!’
It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.
‘If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,’ he said, stopping again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, ‘it could only be in the most inviolable confidence.’
‘I will trust to you, sir,’ returned Sissy, ‘and you will trust to me.’
His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at all.
‘I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,’ he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. ‘But I see no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine—in short, I engage to do it.’
Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in it, and her face beamed brightly.
‘You will permit me to say,’ continued Mr. James Harthouse, ‘that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy’s name?’
‘My name?’ said the ambassadress.
‘The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.’
‘Sissy Jupe.’
‘Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?’
‘I am only a poor girl,’ returned Sissy. ‘I was separated from my father—he was only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr. Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.’
She was gone.
‘It wanted this to complete the defeat,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a little while. ‘The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl—only a stroller—only James Harthouse made nothing of—only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.’
The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:
Dear Jack,—All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in for camels.
Affectionately, JEM.
He rang the bell.
‘Send my fellow here.’
‘Gone to bed, sir.’
‘Tell him to get up, and pack up.’
He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.
The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous—a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew it—so oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of himself.
Anche se disse tutto ciò nel suo modo frivolo, il modo sembrava, per una volta, una lucidatura consapevole di una superficie brutta. Rimase in silenzio per un momento; e poi continuò con un’aria più padrona di sé, sebbene con tracce di irritazione e delusione che non si sarebbero levate.
«Dopo quanto mi è stato appena rappresentato, in un modo che trovo impossibile da dubitare—non conosco quasi nessun’altra fonte dalla quale avrei potuto accettarlo così prontamente—mi sento obbligato a dirvi, voi in cui è stata riposta la fiducia di cui avete parlato, che non posso rifiutarmi di contemplare la possibilità (per quanto inaspettata) di non vedere più quella signora. Sono esclusivamente io il responsabile del fatto che le cose siano arrivate a questo punto—e—e, non riesco a dire», aggiunse, piuttosto in difficoltà per una perorazione generale, «che nutra qualche speranza ottimistica di diventare un tipo morale, o che abbia fede in qualsiasi tipo di persona morale.»
Il volto di Sissy mostrava abbastanza chiaramente che la sua richiesta non era ancora finita.
«Avete parlato», riprese lui mentre lei di nuovo alzava gli occhi su di lui, «del vostro primo obiettivo. Posso presumere che ce ne sia un secondo da menzionare?»
“Sì, davvero.”
‘Vuoi farmi il favore di confidarmelo?’
«Signor Harthouse», rispose Sissy con un misto di dolcezza e fermezza che lo sbaragliò completamente, e con una semplice fiducia nel fatto che lui avrebbe fatto ciò che lei gli chiedeva, che lo teneva in uno strano svantaggio, «l’unica riparazione che le rimane è quella di partire da qui immediatamente e definitivamente. Sono sicura che non può attenuare in nessun altro modo il torto e il danno che ha fatto. Sono sicura che è l’unico risarcimento che le resta in suo potere di fare. Non dico che sia molto, o che sia sufficiente; ma è qualcosa, ed è necessario. Perciò, anche senza alcun’altra autorità se non quella che le ho dato io, e persino senza la conoscenza di nessun’altra persona se non lei e me stessa, le chiedo di partire da questo posto stasera, con l’obbligo di non farvi mai più ritorno.»
Se avesse esercitato su di lui un’influenza diversa dalla semplice fede nella verità e giustezza delle sue parole; se si fosse lasciata sfuggire il minimo dubbio o esitazione, o avesse nutrito per quanto buoni motivi un qualsiasi riserbo o simulacro; se gli avesse mostrato, o provato, anche solo la più lieve traccia di sensibilità alle sue prese in giro o al suo stupore, o a qualunque obiezione potesse avanzare; l’avrebbe sconfitta su questo punto. Ma era tanto facile influenzarla quanto cambiare un cielo sereno guardandolo con aria sorpresa.
«Ma sapete», chiese, del tutto smarrito, «fino a che punto arriva ciò che mi chiedete? Probabilmente non vi rendete conto che sono qui per una specie di affare pubblico, già abbastanza assurdo in sé, ma al quale mi sono dedicato e ho giurato fedeltà, ed è noto che ci sono devoto in modo disperato. Probabilmente non lo sapete, ma ve lo assicuro: è la verità».
Non ebbe alcun effetto su Sissy, fatto o non fatto.
«A parte questo», disse il signor Harthouse, facendo un paio di giri per la stanza con aria dubbiosa, «è così allarmantemente assurdo. Un uomo che si sia messo a frequentare questi tipi sarebbe ridicolo se poi facesse marcia indietro in modo tanto incomprensibile».
«Ne sono assolutamente certa», ripeté Cecilia, «che è l’unica riparazione che lei può fare, signore. Ne sono assolutamente certa, altrimenti non sarei venuta qui».
Le lanciò un’occhiata al volto e riprese a camminare avanti e indietro. «Per la mia anima, non so cosa dire. È così immensamente assurdo!»
Ora gli spettava il compito di richiedere la segretezza.
«Se dovessi fare una cosa così ridicola», disse, fermandosi di nuovo e appoggiandosi al caminetto, «sarebbe solo nel più assoluto segreto.»
‘Confido in lei, signore,’ rispose Sissy, ‘e lei confiderà in me.’
Il suo appoggiarsi al caminetto gli ricordò la notte con il cucciolo. Era lo stesso identico caminetto, e in qualche modo si sentiva come se lui fosse il cucciolo di stasera. Non riusciva a fare alcun progresso.
«Suppongo che un uomo non sia mai stato messo in una posizione più ridicola», disse dopo aver guardato giù e poi su, ridendo e aggrottando la fronte, allontanandosi e tornando indietro. «Ma non vedo via d’uscita. Sarà quel che sarà. Questo sarà, immagino. Devo togliere di mezzo me stesso, credo — insomma, mi impegno a farlo».
Sissy si alzò. Non fu sorpresa dal risultato, ma ne fu felice e il suo viso si illuminò di un largo sorriso.
«Mi permetterà di dire», continuò il signor James Harthouse, «che io dubito che qualsiasi altro ambasciatore, o ambasciatrici, avrebbe potuto rivolgersi a me con lo stesso successo. Non posso che considerarmi non solo in una posizione molto ridicola, ma sconfitto su tutti i fronti. Mi concederà il privilegio di ricordare il nome del mio nemico?»
«Il mio nome?» disse l’ambasciatricessa.
«L’unico nome che potrei desiderare di conoscere, questa sera».
‘Perdoni la mia curiosità nel congedarmi. Parente della famiglia?’
«Sono solo una povera ragazza», rispose Sissy. «Fui separata da mio padre, che era solo un girovago, e presi in simpatia dal signor Gradgrind. Da allora ho vissuto nella casa.»
Era sparita.
«Voleva questo per completare la sconfitta», disse il signor James Harthouse, sedendosi, con aria rassegnata, sul divano dopo essere rimasto immobile un po’ di tempo. «La sconfitta può ora dirsi perfettamente compiuta. Solo una povera ragazza — solo una vagabonda — solo James Harthouse che non ha fatto nulla — solo James Harthouse una Grande Piramide di fallimenti».
La Grande Piramide gli fece venire in mente di risalire il Nilo. Prese subito una penna e scrisse la seguente nota (in geroglifici appropriati) a suo fratello:
Caro Jack, — Tutto finito a Coketown. Mi annoio da morire e sto per mettermi con i cammelli.
Con affetto, JEM.
Suonò il campanello.
“Mandatemi il mio compagno.”
‘Andato a letto, signore.’
‘Ordinategli di alzarsi e fare i bagagli.’
Scrisse altri due biglietti. Uno per il signor Bounderby, annunciando la sua ritirata da quella parte del paese e indicando dove lo si sarebbe potuto trovare nelle successive due settimane. L’altro, di contenuto simile, era indirizzato al signor Gradgrind. Appena l’inchiostro delle buste fu asciutto, lasciò alle spalle i camini altissimi di Coketown e si trovava in un vagone ferroviario, sfrecciando e scrutando il paesaggio buio.
I tipi morigerati potrebbero supporre che il signor James Harthouse abbia tratto in seguito qualche confortante riflessione da questa pronta ritirata, come uno dei suoi pochi atti che riparassero a qualcosa e come un segno per lui stesso di essere sfuggito al culmine di una faccenda davvero spiacevole. Ma non fu affatto così. Un senso segreto di aver fallito ed essersi reso ridicolo, il timore di ciò che avrebbero detto a sue spese altri tipi coinvolti in cose simili se lo avessero saputo, lo opprimevano talmente che quel momento, uno dei migliori della sua vita, era l’unico tra tutti quelli che non avrebbe voluto riconoscere per nulla al mondo e l’unico che gli faceva vergogna di sé.
CHAPTER III VERY DECIDED
THE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her patron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James’s Street, exploded the combustibles with which she was charged, and blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. Bounderby’s coat-collar.
Mr. Bounderby’s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, and leave her to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the administration of potent restoratives, such as screwing the patient’s thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When these attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead than alive.
Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting spectacle on her arrival at her journey’s end; but considered in any other light, the amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone Lodge.
‘Now, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law’s room late at night; ‘here’s a lady here—Mrs. Sparsit—you know Mrs. Sparsit—who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.’
‘You have missed my letter!’ exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, surprised by the apparition.
‘Missed your letter, sir!’ bawled Bounderby. ‘The present time is no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it’s in now.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, ‘I speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to Louisa.’
‘Tom Gradgrind,’ replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several times with great vehemence on the table, ‘I speak of a very special messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, stand forward!’
That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr. Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.
‘If you can’t get it out, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘leave me to get it out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs. Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious gentleman-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.’
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Ah! Indeed!’ cried Bounderby. ‘And in that conversation—’
‘It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what passed.’
‘You do? Perhaps,’ said Bounderby, staring with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, ‘you know where your daughter is at the present time!’
‘Undoubtedly. She is here.’
‘Here?’
‘My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud out-breaks, on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from that interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received her—here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to be more quiet.’
Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every direction except Mrs. Sparsit’s direction; and then, abruptly turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:
‘Now, ma’am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma’am!’
‘Sir,’ whispered Mrs. Sparsit, ‘my nerves are at present too much shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.’ (Which she did.)
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘without making any observation to you that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I have got to add to that, is that there is something else in which it appears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach. And the coach in which we came here being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.’ With these words, Mr. Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady, and escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone.
‘Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to speak to me,’ he resumed, ‘here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable state, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business, even as it is, and not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively treated by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine, I know. If you mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against this candid remark, you had better let it alone.’
CAPITOLO III MOLTO DECISO
L’infaticabile signora Sparsit, con un violento raffreddore che le aveva ridotto la voce a un sussurro e scuoteva il suo maestoso corpo con continui starnuti fino al punto da sembrare in pericolo di dismembramento, inseguì il suo mecenate finché lo trovò nella metropoli; e lì, irrompendo magnificamente nel suo hotel a St. James’s Street, fece esplodere i combustibili con cui era carica e saltò in aria. Dopo aver portato a termine la sua missione con infinita soddisfazione, questa donna di alto lignaggio svenne sul colletto del cappotto del signor Bounderby.
La prima cosa che fece il signor Bounderby fu di scrollarsi di dosso la signora Sparsit e lasciarla progredire come poteva attraverso vari stadi di sofferenza sul pavimento. Poi ricorse all’amministrazione di potenti rimedi, quali torcere i pollici della paziente, batterle le mani, innaffiare abbondantemente il suo viso e metterle del sale in bocca. Quando questi accorgimenti l’ebbero fatta rinvenire (il che avvenne rapidamente), la spinse su un treno veloce senza offrirle altro nutrimento e la riportò a Coketown più morta che viva.
Considerata come una rovina classica, la signora Sparsit era uno spettacolo interessante al suo arrivo alla fine del viaggio; ma considerata sotto qualsiasi altro aspetto, il danno che aveva subito a quel tempo era eccessivo e ne pregiudicava i meriti di ammirazione. Completamente incurante dell’usura dei suoi vestiti e della sua costituzione, e irremovibile nei suoi patetici starnuti, il signor Bounderby la infilò immediatamente in una carrozza e la portò via a Stone Lodge.
«Ora, Tom Gradgrind», disse Bounderby, irrompendo nella stanza del suocero tardi a notte; «c’è qui una signora - la signora Sparsit - conosci la signora Sparsit - che ha qualcosa da dirti che ti lascerà senza parole.»
«Avete perso la mia lettera!» esclamò il signor Gradgrind, sorpreso dall’apparizione.
«Non ho ricevuto la sua lettera, signore!» tuonò Bounderby. «Il presente momento non è un momento adatto alle lettere. Nessuno potrà parlare a Josiah Bounderby di Coketown di lettere, con la mente nello stato in cui si trova ora».
«Bounderby», disse il signor Gradgrind con tono di moderata protesta, «mi riferisco a una lettera molto particolare che ti ho scritto riguardo a Louisa.»
«Tom Gradgrind», rispose Bounderby, battendo più volte il palmo della mano sul tavolo con grande veemenza, «parlo di un messaggero molto particolare che mi è venuto a trovare riguardo a Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit, signora, faccia un passo avanti!»
Quella sventurata signora tentò quindi di testimoniare senza voce e con dolorosi gesti che esprimevano una gola infiammata, divenne così irritante e subì tante contorsioni facciali da indurre il signor Bounderby a non poterne più, afferrarla per un braccio e scuoterla.
«Se non riesce a farlo uscire, signora», disse Bounderby, «lasci fare a me. Questo non è un momento per una signora, anche altamente connessa, di essere completamente inudibile e sembrare che stia ingoiando delle pietre. Tom Gradgrind, la signora Sparsit si è recentemente trovata, per caso, nella situazione di ascoltare una conversazione all’aperto tra sua figlia e il suo prezioso amico gentiluomo, il signor James Harthouse.»
«Davvero!» disse il signor Gradgrind.
‘Ah! Proprio così!’ esclamò Bounderby. ‘E in quella conversazione, ’
‘Non è necessario ripetere il contenuto, Bounderby. So cosa è successo.’
«Lo sapete? Forse», disse Bounderby, fissando con tutta la sua forza il suocero così tranquillo e persuasivo, «sapete dove si trova vostra figlia in questo momento!»
‘Indubbiamente. È qui.’
‘Qui?’
«Mio caro Bounderby, ti prego di contenere questi scoppi rumorosi, per ogni ragione. Louisa è qui. Non appena ha potuto liberarsi da quel colloquio con la persona di cui parli e che mi dispiace profondamente averle presentato, Louisa si è precipitata qui in cerca di protezione. Io stesso non ero a casa da molte ore quando l’ho ricevuta, qui, in questa stanza. È venuta in treno dalla città, ha corso dalla città a questa casa, attraverso una furiosa tempesta, e si è presentata davanti a me in uno stato di disperazione. Naturalmente, da allora è rimasta qui. Ti prego, per il tuo bene e per il suo, di essere più calmo».
Il signor Bounderby rimase a guardarsi intorno per alcuni istanti, in tutte le direzioni tranne che verso la signora Sparsit; e poi, voltandosi bruscamente verso la nipote della lady Scadgers, disse a quella povera donna:
«Ora, signora! Saremo felici di ascoltare qualsiasi piccola scusa lei possa ritenere opportuno offrire per essersi spostata in giro per il paese a tutta velocità, senza altro bagaglio che una storia alquanto fantasiosa, signora!»
«Signore», sussurrò la signora Sparsit, «i miei nervi sono attualmente troppo scossi e la mia salute è attualmente troppo compromessa nel vostro servizio per permettermi di fare altro che rifugiarmi nelle lacrime.» (E così fece.)
«Beh, signora», disse Bounderby, «senza fare osservazioni che non si possano rivolgere con decoro a una donna di buona famiglia, ciò che ho da aggiungere è che c’è qualcos’altro in cui mi sembra lei possa trovare rifugio, e cioè un calesse. E dato che il calesse con cui siamo venuti qui è alla porta, mi permetterà di accompagnarla fino a esso e spedirla a casa alla Banca: dove la cosa migliore che lei possa fare sarà mettere i piedi nell’acqua più calda che riesce a sopportare e prendere un bicchiere di rum bollente con burro dopo essere andata a letto». Con queste parole, il signor Bounderby tese la mano destra alla donna in lacrime e l’accompagnò fino al mezzo di trasporto in questione, emettendo per strada molti lamentosi starnuti. Tornò presto da solo.
«Ora che mi avete mostrato in volto, Tom Gradgrind, di voler parlare con me», riprese, «eccomi qui. Ma non sono in uno stato molto piacevole, ve lo dico chiaro: questa faccenda non mi va giù neanche così com’è, e ritengo che Josiah Bounderby di Coketown non sia trattato da sua moglie con la dovuta deferenza e sottomissione. Avete il vostro parere, presumo; io ho il mio, lo so. Se intendete dirmi qualcosa stasera che va contro questa schietta osservazione, è meglio che ve ne asteniate.»
Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his amiable nature.
‘My dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind began in reply.
‘Now, you’ll excuse me,’ said Bounderby, ‘but I don’t want to be too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am not polite. If you like politeness, you know where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends, you know, and they’ll serve you with as much of the article as you want. I don’t keep it myself.’
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we are all liable to mistakes—’
‘I thought you couldn’t make ’em,’ interrupted Bounderby.
‘Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes and I should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in connecting him with mine.’
‘I never mentioned his name!’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, well!’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering. ‘Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa.’
‘Who do you mean by We?’
‘Let me say I, then,’ he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted question; ‘I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her education.’
‘There you hit it,’ returned Bounderby. ‘There I agree with you. You have found it out at last, have you? Education! I’ll tell you what education is—To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of everything except blows. That’s what I call education.’
‘I think your good sense will perceive,’ Mr. Gradgrind remonstrated in all humility, ‘that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would be difficult of general application to girls.’
‘I don’t see it at all, sir,’ returned the obstinate Bounderby.
‘Well,’ sighed Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we will not enter into the question. I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much distressed.’
‘I don’t understand you, yet,’ said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy, ‘and therefore I won’t make any promises.’
‘In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, ‘I appear to myself to have become better informed as to Louisa’s character, than in previous years. The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I think there are—Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this—I think there are qualities in Louisa, which—which have been harshly neglected, and—and a little perverted. And—and I would suggest to you, that—that if you would kindly meet me in a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while—and to encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration—it—it would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, ‘has always been my favourite child.’
The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, and said:
‘You’d like to keep her here for a time?’
‘I—I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.’
‘I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, standing up with his hands in his pockets, ‘that you are of opinion that there’s what people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself.’
‘I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa, and—and—and almost all the relations in which I have placed her,’ was her father’s sorrowful reply.
‘Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby the flushed, confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was boisterous. ‘You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six. That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I hoped, after my entreaty, you would have taken a different tone.’
‘Just wait a bit,’ retorted Bounderby; ‘you have said your say, I believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude—to be summed up in this—that your daughter don’t properly know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain speaking, I hope.’
Si noterà che il signor Gradgrind essendo molto addolcito, il signor Bounderby si prese particolare cura di indurirsi in tutti i sensi. Era la sua amabile natura.
«Mio caro Bounderby», cominciò a rispondere il signor Gradgrind.
«Ora, mi scuserete», disse Bounderby, «ma non voglio essere troppo gentile. Questo è il punto di partenza. Quando comincio a essere gentile con un uomo, generalmente scopro che la sua intenzione è quella di approfittarsene. Non vi parlo in modo cortese; ma, come sapete, non sono cortese. Se gradite la cortesia, sapete dove trovarla. Avete i vostri amici gentiluomini, lo sapete, e loro vi serviranno quanta ne volete di quella roba. Io non ce l’ho».
‘Bounderby,’ insistette il signor Gradgrind, ‘siamo tutti soggetti a errori, ’
«Pensavo che non sapessi farli», interruppe Bounderby.
«Forse ho pensato così. Ma dico che siamo tutti soggetti a errori e apprezzerei la vostra delicatezza, e ne sarei grata, se mi risparmiaste questi riferimenti ad Harthouse. Non lo includerò nelle nostre conversazioni con la vostra intimità e incoraggiamento; vi prego di non insistere nel collegarlo al mio.»
«Non ho mai menzionato il suo nome!» disse Bounderby.
«Bene, bene!», rispose il signor Gradgrind con aria paziente, anzi sottomessa. E rimase seduto per un po’ a riflettere. «Bounderby, vedo ragione di dubitare che abbiamo mai capito del tutto Louisa».
‘Chi intendi con Noi?’
«Permettetemi di dire io, allora», rispose, in risposta alla domanda brutalmente espressa; «Dubito di aver capito Louisa. Dubito di essere stato del tutto giusto nel modo in cui l’ho educata.»
«Ecco dove hai centrato il bersaglio», rispose Bounderby. «Su questo punto sono d’accordo con te. Alla fine l’hai scoperto, eh? Istruzione! Ti dirò io cos’è l’istruzione: essere cacciati fuori di casa a calci e messi alla fame, tranne che per le botte. Questo è quello che io chiamo istruzione.»
«Penso che il vostro buonsenso vi faccia comprendere», obiettò Gradgrind con tutta la sua umiltà, «che qualunque siano i meriti di un tale sistema, sarebbe difficile applicarlo in generale alle ragazze.»
«Non lo vedo affatto, signore», rispose l’ostinato Bounderby.
«Bene,» sospirò il signor Gradgrind «non entreremo nel merito della questione. Vi assicuro che non ho alcun desiderio di essere polemico. Cerco di riparare a ciò che è sbagliato, se posso; e spero che mi aiuterete con spirito positivo, Bounderby, perché sono stato molto turbato».
«Non vi capisco ancora», disse Bounderby con ostinata determinazione, «e quindi non voglio fare promesse».
«Nel corso di poche ore, mio caro Bounderby», proseguì il signor Gradgrind nello stesso tono abbattuto e propiziatorio, «mi sembra di essermi informato meglio sul carattere di Louisa che negli anni precedenti. L’illuminazione mi è stata dolorosamente imposta e la scoperta non è mia. Penso che ci siano - Bounderby, sarai sorpreso nel sentirmelo dire - penso che in Louisa ci siano delle qualità che sono state trascurate con durezza e un po’ pervertite. E vorrei suggerirti di volermi cortesemente incontrare in uno sforzo tempestivo per lasciarla alla sua migliore natura per un po’ - e incoraggiarla a svilupparsi con tenerezza e considerazione - sarebbe meglio per la felicità di tutti noi. Louisa», disse il signor Gradgrind, coprendosi il volto con una mano, «è sempre stata la mia figlia preferita».
Il pomposo Bounderby divenne cremisi e si gonfiò fino a tal punto nel sentire queste parole che sembrava, ed era probabilmente, sull’orlo di un attacco. Con le orecchie stesse di un vivido porpora striato di cremisi, egli trattenne la propria indignazione e disse:
«Vorreste tenerla qui per un po’?»
«Io — io avevo inteso di consigliare, mio caro Bounderby, che permetteste a Louisa di rimanere qui come ospite e di essere assistita da Sissy (intendo naturalmente Cecilia Jupe), che la comprende e in cui lei ha fiducia.»
«Deduco da tutto questo, Tom Gradgrind», disse Bounderby alzandosi e mettendo le mani nelle tasche, «che lei è dell’opinione che esista quella che si chiama una certa incompatibilità tra Loo Bounderby e me».
«Temo che attualmente esista una generale incompatibilità tra Louisa e—e—e quasi tutte le relazioni nelle quali l’ho inserita», fu la triste risposta di suo padre.
«Ora, ascoltami bene, Tom Gradgrind», disse Bounderby arrossato, fronteggiandolo con le gambe larghe, le mani infilate ancora più in profondità nelle tasche e i capelli come un campo di grano nel quale la sua rabbia ventosa soffiava impetuosa. «Hai detto la tua; ora dirò io la mia. Sono un uomo di Coketown. Sono Josiah Bounderby di Coketown. Conosco i mattoni di questa città, conosco le fabbriche di questa città, conosco i camini di questa città, conosco il fumo di questa città e conosco gli operai di questa città. Li conosco tutti piuttosto bene. Sono reali. Quando un uomo mi dice qualcosa riguardo alle qualità immaginative, io dico sempre a quell’uomo, chiunque egli sia, che so cosa intende dire. Vuol dire zuppa di tartaruga e cervo con cucchiaio d’oro, e vuole avere una carrozza con sei cavalli. Questo è ciò che vuole tua figlia. Poiché tu ritieni che debba avere ciò che desidera, ti consiglio di procurarglielo. Perché, Tom Gradgrind, non lo avrà mai da me».
«Bounderby», disse il signor Gradgrind, «speravo che dopo la mia supplica avresti assunto un tono diverso».
«Aspetti un attimo», ribatté Bounderby; «credo che lei abbia detto la sua. L’ho ascoltata fino in fondo; ora mi ascolti anche lei, per favore. Non si renda ridicolo per l’ingiustizia oltre che per l’incoerenza, perché, sebbene mi dispiaccia vedere Tom Gradgrind ridotto alla sua attuale condizione, sarei doppiamente dispiaciuto di vederlo cadere così in basso. Ora, esiste un’incompatibilità di un tipo o dell’altro, mi è stato fatto capire da lei, tra sua figlia e me. Le farò capire io, in risposta a questo, che c’è senza dubbio un’incompatibilità della prima grandezza — riassumibile nel fatto — che sua figlia non conosce adeguatamente i meriti di suo marito, e non è impressionata da quel senso che le si addice, accidenti!, dell’onore della sua alleanza. Questo è parlare chiaro, spero.»
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘this is unreasonable.’
‘Is it?’ said Bounderby. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Because when Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies—born ladies—belonging to families—Families!—who next to worship the ground I walk on.’
He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head.
‘Whereas your daughter,’ proceeded Bounderby, ‘is far from being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well aware I don’t; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?’
‘Not, I fear,’ observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, ‘to spare me.’
‘Hear me out,’ said Bounderby, ‘and refrain from cutting in till your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.’
‘Bounderby,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, ‘the less we say to-night the better, I think.’
‘On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, the better, I think. That is,’ the consideration checked him, ‘till I have said all I mean to say, and then I don’t care how soon we stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal you made just now?’
‘What do I mean, Bounderby?’
‘By your visiting proposition,’ said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk of the hayfield.
‘I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.’
‘To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?’ said Bounderby.
‘If you put it in those terms.’
‘What made you think of this?’ said Bounderby.
‘I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid in trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of her; for better for worse, for—’
Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.
‘Come!’ said he, ‘I don’t want to be told about that. I know what I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her for; that’s my look out.’
‘I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Louisa.’
‘I think differently,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘I am going to finish this business according to my own opinions. Now, I don’t want to make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the truth, I don’t think it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject. As to your gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes best. If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don’t fall in my way, I shan’t, for it won’t be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, if she don’t come home to-morrow, by twelve o’clock at noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you’ll take charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in general, of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing-up; she’s the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn’t pull together. I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, I believe; and most people will understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up to my mark.’
‘Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘before you commit yourself to such a decision.’
‘I always come to a decision,’ said Bounderby, tossing his hat on: ‘and whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom Gradgrind’s addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after his making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given you my decision, and I have got no more to say. Good night!’
So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five minutes past twelve o’clock next day, he directed Mrs. Bounderby’s property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind’s; advertised his country retreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.
‘Bounderby,’ insistette il signor Gradgrind, ‘questo è irragionevole.’
«È così?» disse Bounderby. «Sono contento di sentirvelo dire. Perché quando Tom Gradgrind, con le sue nuove idee, mi dice che quello che dico è irragionevole, sono subito convinto che debba essere dannatamente sensato. Con il vostro permesso continuo. Sapete da dove vengo; e sapete che per molti anni della mia vita non ho avuto bisogno di un bavero per scarpe, in quanto non avevo scarpe. Eppure potete credere o no, come preferite, che ci sono signore — signore nate — appartenenti a famiglie — Famiglie! — che mi adorano quasi fino al punto di venerare il terreno su cui cammino».
E sparò questa come un razzo contro la testa del suocero.
«Mentre vostra figlia», continuò Bounderby, «è tutt’altro che una signora di nascita. Lo sapete bene anche voi. Non che io me ne importi un accidente, perché sapete benissimo che non è così; ma i fatti sono questi e voi, Tom Gradgrind, non potete cambiarli. Perché lo dico?»
«Non per risparmiare me, temo», osservò il signor Gradgrind con voce bassa, «temo.»
«Sentitemi», disse Bounderby, «e astenetevi di interrompere finché non arriva il vostro turno. Lo dico perché donne altamente collegate si sono mostrate sorprese nel vedere come si è comportata vostra figlia e nel constatarne l’insensibilità. Si sono chieste come io abbia potuto tollerarlo. E ora mi domando anch’io la stessa cosa, e non lo tollererò più».
«Bounderby», rispose il signor Gradgrind alzandosi, «meno diciamo questa sera e meglio è, credo».
«Al contrario, Tom Gradgrind, più ne parliamo stasera e meglio è, credo. Cioè», la riflessione lo frenò, «fino a quando non avrò detto tutto quello che intendo dire, dopodiché non mi importa quanto presto ci fermiamo. Arrivo a una domanda che potrebbe abbreviare il discorso. Che cosa intendi con la proposta che hai fatto poco fa?»
‘Che intendo, Bounderby?’
«Per quanto riguarda la sua proposta di visita», disse Bounderby con un gesto deciso verso il campo da fieno.
«Voglio dire che spero possiate essere indotto ad accordarvi amichevolmente per concedere a Louisa un periodo di riposo e riflessione qui, che potrebbe portare a una graduale trasformazione in meglio sotto molti aspetti.»
«A un addolcimento delle sue idee sull’incompatibilità?» disse Bounderby.
‘Vediamo le cose da questo punto di vista.’
«Che cosa le ha fatto venire in mente questo?» disse Bounderby.
«Ho già detto che temo che Louisa non sia stata compresa. È chiedere troppo, Bounderby, che tu, essendo così tanto più anziano di lei, la aiuti a mettersi sulla retta via? Hai accettato una grande responsabilità nei suoi confronti; per il meglio o per il peggio, per—»
Il signor Bounderby potrebbe essere stato infastidito dalla ripetizione delle sue stesse parole a Stephen Blackpool, ma interruppe la citazione con un brusco sussulto di rabbia.
«Che cosa!» disse lui «Non voglio che mi si parli di questo. So per quale motivo l’ho presa con me, tanto bene quanto lo sai tu. Non ti preoccupare del motivo per cui l’ho presa; è affar mio».
«Stavo semplicemente continuando a dire, Bounderby, che potremmo tutti avere più o meno torto, senza escludere nemmeno lei; e che una certa disponibilità da parte sua, ricordando la fiducia che ha accettato, non solo potrebbe essere un atto di vera gentilezza, ma forse anche un debito contratto nei confronti di Louisa.»
«Io penso diversamente», sbottò Bounderby. «Intendo concludere questa faccenda secondo le mie opinioni. Ora, non voglio fare una questione personale con te, Tom Gradgrind. Per dirti la verità, non credo che sarebbe degno della mia reputazione litigare su un tale argomento. Quanto al tuo amico gentiluomo, può andarsene dove preferisce. Se mi capita di incontrarlo, gli dirò quello che penso; se non lo incontro, non lo farò, perché non ne varrebbe la pena. Per quanto riguarda tua figlia, che ho reso Loo Bounderby e avrei fatto meglio lasciando Loo Gradgrind, se non tornerà a casa domani entro le dodici o’clock di mezzogiorno, capirò che preferisce rimanere lontana e manderò qui i suoi abiti e così via, e tu ti prenderai cura di lei in futuro. Quello che dirò alla gente in generale sull’incompatibilità che mi ha portato a stabilire queste regole sarà questo: io sono Josiah Bounderby e ho avuto la mia educazione; lei è la figlia di Tom Gradgrind e ha avuto la sua educazione; e i due cavalli non tiravano insieme. Sono abbastanza noto per essere piuttosto un uomo fuori dal comune, credo; e la maggior parte delle persone capirà abbastanza in fretta che deve trattarsi di una donna anch’essa alquanto fuori dal comune, che alla fine sarebbe arrivata al mio livello.»
«Le chiedo seriamente di ripensarci, Bounderby», insistette il signor Gradgrind, «prima di impegnarsi in una tale decisione.»
«Io prendo sempre una decisione», disse Bounderby, gettando il cappello su: «e qualunque cosa faccia, la faccio subito. Sarei sorpreso se Tom Gradgrind rivolgesse un tale commento a Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, sapendo quello che sa di lui, se potessi essere sorpreso da qualcosa che Tom Gradgrind facesse, dopo essersi reso complice di una mistificazione sentimentale. Vi ho dato la mia decisione e non ho altro da dire. Buona notte!»
Così il signor Bounderby tornò a casa nella sua villa cittadina per coricarsi. Alle cinque minuti dopo le dodici del giorno seguente, ordinò che i beni della signora Bounderby fossero meticolosamente imballati e inviati a Tom Gradgrind; mise in vendita la sua residenza di campagna con contratto privato; e riprese una vita da scapolo.
CHAPTER IV LOST
THE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour. Consequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout in renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.
They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred. No implicated man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying step. More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and the mysterious old woman remained a mystery.
Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby’s investigations was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in the robbery of Coketown Bank on such a night; he described the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and manner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and in what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon the sight of the whole population at one blow.
The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud—there was always some such ready to help them—stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirling wheels, for hours afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into the streets, there were still as many readers as before.
Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night; and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had brought it in his pocket. Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow-brothers and fellow-workmen and fellow-citizens and fellow-men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge unfolded what he called ‘that damning document,’ and held it up to the gaze, and for the execration of the working-man community! ‘Oh, my fellow-men, behold of what a traitor in the camp of those great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and of Union, is appropriately capable! Oh, my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden—oh, my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and about five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and disgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious placard, this abominable advertisement; and with what majesty of denouncement will you crush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame upon the God-like race that happily has cast him out for ever! Yes, my compatriots, happily cast him out and sent him forth! For you remember how he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst us: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the avenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and scar! And now, my friends—my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma—my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive, with a price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character of the Coketown operative! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to which your children and your children’s children yet unborn have set their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the United Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve: That Stephen Blackpool, weaver, referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly disowned by the community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the shame of his misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions!’
Thus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort. A few stern voices called out ‘No!’ and a score or two hailed, with assenting cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ the caution from one man, ‘Slackbridge, y’or over hetter in’t; y’or a goen too fast!’ But these were pigmies against an army; the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slackbridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively panting at them.
CAPITOLO IV SMARRITI
LA rapina alla Banca non era stata dimenticata prima e continuò ad occupare un posto di primo piano nell’attenzione del direttore dell’istituto anche ora. A dimostrazione della sua prontezza e attività, come uomo straordinario, uomo autodidatta e meraviglia commerciale più ammirevole di Venere, che era emerso dal fango invece che dal mare, gli piaceva mostrare quanto poco le sue faccende domestiche attenuassero il suo fervore lavorativo. Di conseguenza, nelle prime settimane del suo ritorno alla vita da scapolo, aumentò persino la sua solita ostentazione di trambusto e ogni giorno faceva un tale baccano rinnovando le indagini sulla rapina che gli agenti incaricati quasi desideravano che non fosse mai stata commessa.
Anche loro erano in torto e fuorviati. Sebbene fossero stati così tranquilli da quando era scoppiata la faccenda che la maggior parte delle persone aveva davvero creduto che fosse stata abbandonata come senza speranza, non accadde nulla di nuovo. Nessun uomo o donna implicato prese un coraggio sconsiderato né fece un passo auto-traditore. Ancora più notevole, si era persa ogni traccia di Stephen Blackpool e la misteriosa vecchia rimaneva un mistero.
Le cose essendo arrivate a questo punto, e non mostrando alcun segno latente di andare oltre, il risultato delle indagini del signor Bounderby fu che decise di rischiare un’audace mossa. Redasse un manifesto in cui offriva una ricompensa di Venti Sterline per l’apprensione di Stephen Blackpool, sospettato di complicità nel furto alla Banca di Coketown in una certa notte; descrisse detto Stephen Blackpool per abbigliamento, carnagione, altezza stimata e modo di fare, con la massima minuzia possibile; raccontò come avesse lasciato la città e in quale direzione fosse stato visto andare l’ultima volta; fece stampare il tutto in grandi lettere nere su un manifesto appariscente; e fece affiggere i manifesti sui muri nel cuore della notte, così che colpissero la vista di tutta la popolazione in un solo colpo.
I campanelli della fabbrica dovettero suonare più forte quel mattino per disperdere i gruppi di operai che si trovavano nella tarda alba, radunati intorno ai manifesti e li divoravano con occhi avidi. Gli occhi meno ansiosi tra quelli riuniti erano quelli di coloro che non sapevano leggere. Queste persone, mentre ascoltavano la voce amichevole che leggeva ad alta voce - c’era sempre qualcuno così disponibile a dar loro una mano - fissavano i caratteri che significavano tanto con un vago timore e rispetto che sarebbe stato in parte ridicolo, se qualche aspetto dell’ignoranza pubblica potesse mai essere diverso da minaccioso e pieno di mali. Per ore dopo molti occhi e orecchie furono impegnati a immaginare il contenuto dei manifesti tra i fusi che giravano, i telai che tintinnavano e le ruote che vorticavano; e quando gli operai uscirono di nuovo per le strade c’erano ancora tanti lettori come prima.
Slackbridge, il delegato, quella sera dovette pure rivolgersi al suo uditorio; e Slackbridge aveva ottenuto un certificato di buona salute dal tipografo, e lo portava in tasca. Oh, miei amici e concittadini, gli operai oppressi di Coketown, oh, miei fratelli nella fede e nel lavoro, cittadini e uomini, che confusione ci fu quando Slackbridge srotolò quel che chiamava “quel documento accusatorio”, e lo mostrò alla vista e per l’abominio della comunità degli operai! “Oh, miei fratelli, guardate di che cosa è capace un traditore accampato tra quegli spiriti grandi che sono iscritti sul rotolo sacro della Giustizia e dell’Unione, è veramente degno! Oh, miei amici prostrati, con il giogo dei tiranni sul collo e il piede di ferro del dispotismo che calpesta le vostre forme cadute nella polvere della terra, sulla quale i vostri oppressori sarebbero ben contenti di vedervi strisciare sulla pancia tutti i giorni della vostra vita, come il serpente nel giardino—oh, miei fratelli, e posso aggiungere, mie sorelle anche, che ne dite, ora, dello Stephen Blackpool, con una leggera curvatura sulle spalle e circa cinque piedi e sette pollici di altezza, come descritto in questo documento degradante e disgustoso, questo provvedimento deleterio, questa perniciosa affiggione, questo abominevole annuncio; e con quale maestà di denuncia schiaccerete il veleno che vorrebbe portare questa macchia e vergogna sulla razza divina da cui è stato fortunatamente scacciato per sempre! Sì, miei connazionali, fortunatamente scacciato ed espulso! Perché ricordate come stette qui davanti a voi su questo palco; ricordate come, faccia a faccia e piede a piede, lo inseguii attraverso tutti i suoi intricati giri; ricordate come si nascose e sgusciò, e si fece da parte, e spaccò il capello in quattro, finché, senza un pollice di terreno a cui aggrapparsi, lo scagliai fuori tra noi: un oggetto per l’eterna dita del disprezzo da indicare, e per il fuoco vendicatore di ogni mente libera e pensante da bruciare e segnare! E ora, miei amici—miei amici lavoratori, perché mi rallegro e trionfo in questo stigma— miei amici le cui dure ma oneste lettiere sono fatte nel lavoro, e i cui scarsi ma indipendenti pentoloni bollono nella difficoltà; ed ora, dico, miei amici, quale appellativo si è preso questo codardo vigliacco, quando, con la maschera strappata dal suo volto, sta davanti a noi in tutta la sua deformità nativa? Un che? Un ladro! Un saccheggiatore! Un fuggitivo proscritto, con un prezzo sulla testa; una piaga e una ferita sul nobile carattere dell’operaio di Coketown! Pertanto, mia banda di fratelli in un legame sacro, al quale i vostri figli e i figli dei vostri figli ancora non nati hanno posto le loro mani infantili e sigilli, vi propongo a nome del Tribunale Aggregato Unito, sempre vigilante per il vostro benessere, sempre zelante per il vostro beneficio, che questa riunione Risolva: Che Stephen Blackpool, tessitore, menzionato in questo manifesto, avendo già solennemente rinnegato dalla comunità delle Mani di Coketown, gli stessi sono liberi dalla vergogna dei suoi misfatti, e non possono come classe essere rimproverati per le sue azioni disoneste!”
Così Slackbridge, digrignando e sudando in maniera prodigiosa. Alcune voci severe gridarono «No!» e una ventina di persone acclamarono con approvazione, tra gli «Evviva!», l’avvertimento di un uomo: «Slackbridge, sei troppo accalorato; stai andando troppo veloce!». Ma questi erano pigmei contro un esercito; la folla in generale sottoscrisse il vangelo secondo Slackbridge e gli fece i tre evviva mentre lui sedeva dimostrativamente ansimante davanti a loro.
These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa some minutes before, returned.
‘Who is it?’ asked Louisa.
‘It is Mr. Bounderby,’ said Sissy, timid of the name, ‘and your brother Mr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you know her.’
‘What do they want, Sissy dear?’
‘They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems angry.’
‘Father,’ said Louisa, for he was present, ‘I cannot refuse to see them, for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come in here?’
As he answered in the affirmative, Sissy went away to bring them. She reappeared with them directly. Tom was last; and remained standing in the obscurest part of the room, near the door.
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said her husband, entering with a cool nod, ‘I don’t disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young woman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary. Tom Gradgrind, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am obliged to confront her with your daughter.’
‘You have seen me once before, young lady,’ said Rachael, standing in front of Louisa.
Tom coughed.
‘You have seen me, young lady,’ repeated Rachael, as she did not answer, ‘once before.’
Tom coughed again.
‘I have.’
Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Bounderby, and said, ‘Will you make it known, young lady, where, and who was there?’
‘I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He was there too; and an old woman who did not speak, and whom I could scarcely see, stood in a dark corner. My brother was with me.’
‘Why couldn’t you say so, young Tom?’ demanded Bounderby.
‘I promised my sister I wouldn’t.’ Which Louisa hastily confirmed. ‘And besides,’ said the whelp bitterly, ‘she tells her own story so precious well—and so full—that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!’
‘Say, young lady, if you please,’ pursued Rachael, ‘why, in an evil hour, you ever came to Stephen’s that night.’
‘I felt compassion for him,’ said Louisa, her colour deepening, ‘and I wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him assistance.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby. ‘Much flattered and obliged.’
‘Did you offer him,’ asked Rachael, ‘a bank-note?’
‘Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold.’
Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Bounderby again.
‘Oh, certainly!’ said Bounderby. ‘If you put the question whether your ridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it’s confirmed.’
‘Young lady,’ said Rachael, ‘Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a meeting to-night where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen! The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!’ Her indignation failed her, and she broke off sobbing.
‘I am very, very sorry,’ said Louisa.
‘Oh, young lady, young lady,’ returned Rachael, ‘I hope you may be, but I don’t know! I can’t say what you may ha’ done! The like of you don’t know us, don’t care for us, don’t belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha’ come that night. I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some aim of your own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I said then, Bless you for coming; and I said it of my heart, you seemed to take so pitifully to him; but I don’t know now, I don’t know!’
Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.
‘And when I think,’ said Rachael through her sobs, ‘that the poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him—when I mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there—Oh, I hope you may be sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it; but I don’t know, I don’t know!’
‘You’re a pretty article,’ growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark corner, ‘to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by rights.’
She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke.
‘Come!’ said he, ‘you know what you have engaged to do. You had better give your mind to that; not this.’
‘’Deed, I am loath,’ returned Rachael, drying her eyes, ‘that any here should see me like this; but I won’t be seen so again. Young lady, when I had read what’s put in print of Stephen—and what has just as much truth in it as if it had been put in print of you—I went straight to the Bank to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise that he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr. Bounderby then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill to-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’ pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr. Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.’
‘So far, that’s true enough,’ assented Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on. ‘But I have known you people before to-day, you’ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!’
‘I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I have written to him once before sin’ he went away,’ said Rachael; ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,’ retorted Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account of most people being judged according to the company they keep. The post-office hasn’t been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no letter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mistaken, and never wrote any.’
Questi uomini e donne erano ancora per strada, dirigendosi tranquillamente verso casa, quando Sissy, che era stata chiamata via da Louisa alcuni minuti prima, tornò indietro.
«Chi è?» chiese Louisa.
«È il signor Bounderby», disse Sissy, timorosa del nome, «e tuo fratello il signor Tom e una giovane donna che dice di chiamarsi Rachael e che tu la conosci.»
‘Che cosa vogliono, cara Sissy?’
‘Vogliono vederti. Rachael ha pianto e sembra arrabbiata.’
«Padre», disse Louisa, poiché egli era presente, «non posso rifiutarmi di vederli per un motivo che si spiegherà da sé. Entreranno qui?»
Poiché rispose affermativamente, Sissy se ne andò per portarli. Riapparve subito dopo con loro. Tom fu l’ultimo e rimase in piedi nella parte più oscura della stanza, vicino alla porta.
«Signora Bounderby», disse il marito entrando con un cenno del capo freddo, «non la disturbo, spero. È un’ora inopportuna, ma ecco una giovane donna che ha fatto delle dichiarazioni che rendono necessaria la mia visita. Tom Gradgrind, poiché suo figlio, il giovane Tom, rifiuta per qualche ragione ostinata di dire qualcosa su quelle dichiarazioni, buono o cattivo che sia, sono costretto a confrontarla con sua figlia».
«Mi ha già visto una volta prima d’ora, signorina», disse Rachael, fermandosi davanti a Louisa.
Tom tossì.
“Mi ha già visto, signorina,” ripeté Rachel, poiché lei non rispondeva, “una volta prima.”
Tom tossì di nuovo.
‘Ho fatto.’
Rachael lanciò uno sguardo orgoglioso verso il signor Bounderby e disse: «Vuoi forse far sapere a tutti, giovane donna, dove sei stata e chi c’era?»
«Sono andato alla casa dove alloggiava Stephen Blackpool, la notte del suo licenziamento dal lavoro, e vi ho visto voi. C’era anche lui; e una vecchia che non parlava, e che a malapena riuscivo a vedere, stava in un angolo buio. Mio fratello era con me».
«Perché non hai potuto dirlo, giovane Tom?» chiese Bounderby.
«Ho promesso a mia sorella che non l’avrei fatto.» E Louisa confermò in fretta. «E poi,» disse il marmocchio amaramente «lei racconta la sua storia così bene — e con tanti particolari — che perché avrei dovuto toglierle le parole di bocca!»
«Ditemi, signorina, se non vi dispiace», continuò Rachael, «perché, in un’ora disgraziata, siate mai venuta da Stephen quella sera.»
«Provavo compassione per lui», disse Louisa arrossendo, «e volevo sapere cosa avrebbe fatto e offrirgli il mio aiuto.»
‘Grazie, signora,’ disse Bounderby. ‘Molto lusingato e obbligato.’
«Gli hai offerto», chiese Rachael, «una banconota?»
“Sì, ma lui ha rifiutato e ha preso solo due sterline in oro.”
Rachael di nuovo volse lo sguardo verso il signor Bounderby.
«Oh, certamente!» disse Bounderby «Se si pone la domanda se il suo racconto ridicolo e improbabile sia vero o no, sono costretto a dire che è confermato.»
«Signorina», disse Rachael, «Stephen Blackpool è stato ora chiamato un ladro in pubblico stampa per tutta questa città e altrove! Si è tenuta una riunione stasera dove di lui si è parlato nello stesso modo vergognoso. Stephen! Il ragazzo più onesto, il ragazzo più sincero, il migliore!» La sua indignazione l’abbandonò e scoppiò in singhiozzi.
«Mi dispiace moltissimo», disse Louisa.
«Oh, giovane signorina, giovane signorina», rispose Rachael, «spero che lei lo sia, ma non ne sono sicura! Non posso dire cosa potrebbe aver fatto! Gente come lei non ci conosce, non si cura di noi, non fa parte del nostro mondo. Non so bene perché sia venuta quella notte. Potrebbe essere venuta per qualche suo scopo personale, senza pensare ai guai che avrebbe portato a un povero ragazzo come lui. Allora le ho detto: “Dio la benedica per essere venuta”; e lo dicevo con tutto il cuore, perché sembrava provasse tanta compassione per lui; ma ora non ne sono più così sicura, no, non ne sono più sicura!»
Louisa non poteva rimproverarla per i suoi sospetti ingiusti; era così fedele alla sua idea dell’uomo e così afflitta.
«E quando penso», disse Rachael tra i singhiozzi, «che il povero ragazzo era così grato, pensando che tu fossi così buono con lui—quando mi ricordo che si copriva il viso stanco con la mano per nascondere le lacrime che hai fatto salire lì—Oh, spero che tu possa pentirtene e non abbia motivo di farlo; ma non lo so, non lo so!»
«Sei un bell’esemplare», ringhiò il cucciolo, muovendosi irrequieto nel suo angolo buio, «a venire qui con queste preziose imputazioni! Dovresti essere cacciato via per non sapere come comportarti e lo sarebbe giusto.»
Non rispose nulla; e il suo pianto sommesso fu l’unico suono che si udì, fino a quando non parlò il signor Bounderby.
«Eh?» disse lui «sai benissimo a cosa ti sei impegnato. È meglio che ci pensi su; non a questo».
«È vero che mi dispiace», rispose Rachael asciugandosi gli occhi, «che qualcuno qui mi veda in questo stato; ma non permetterò di essere vista così ancora. Giovane signora, quando ho letto ciò che è stato stampato su Stephen — e che ha tanto verità quanto se fosse stato scritto su di te — sono andata subito alla Banca per dire che sapevo dove si trovava Stephen, e per dare una promessa sicura e certa che sarebbe stato qui entro due giorni. Non ho potuto incontrare il signor Bounderby allora, e tuo fratello mi ha mandato via, e ho cercato di trovarti, ma non eri da nessuna parte, e sono tornata al lavoro. Appena uscita dal Mulino stasera, mi sono affrettata ad ascoltare ciò che si diceva di Stephen — perché so con orgoglio che tornerà per vergognarsene! — e poi sono andata di nuovo a cercare il signor Bounderby, e l’ho trovato, e gli ho detto ogni parola che sapevo; e non ha creduto una sola parola di ciò che ho detto, e mi ha portata qui.»
«Fin qui è vero», ammise Mr. Bounderby con le mani in tasca e il cappello in testa. «Ma vi ho già visto prima d’oggi, ve ne renderete conto, e so che non siete mai morti per aver parlato troppo. Ora, vi consiglio di non preoccuparvi tanto di parlare adesso, quanto di fare. Avete intrapreso qualcosa; tutto ciò che osservo al riguardo è: fatelo!»
«Ho scritto a Stephen con la posta di questa mattina, come gli ho già scritto una volta da quando se n’è andato», disse Rachael; «e lui sarà qui al più tardi tra due giorni.»
«Allora le dirò una cosa: forse non è a conoscenza», ribatté il signor Bounderby, «del fatto che lei stesso è stato tenuto d’occhio di tanto in tanto, dato che non si era escluso del tutto che fosse coinvolto in questa faccenda, considerato che la gente viene giudicata dal tipo di compagnia che frequenta. Non è stata trascurata nemmeno la posta. Quello che le dico è che nessuna lettera per Stephen Blackpool vi è mai finita dentro. Perciò, cosa sia successo alla sua, gli lascio il compito di indovinarlo. Forse si sbaglia e non ne ha mai scritta alcuna».
‘He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,’ said Rachael, turning appealingly to Louisa, ‘as much as a week, when he sent me the only letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in another name.’
‘Oh, by George!’ cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, ‘he changes his name, does he! That’s rather unlucky, too, for such an immaculate chap. It’s considered a little suspicious in Courts of Justice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names.’
‘What,’ said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, ‘what, young lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this side, or must he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a hare?’
‘Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,’ returned Louisa; ‘and I hope that he will clear himself.’
‘You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!’
‘All the surer, I suppose,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for your refusing to tell where he is? Eh?’
‘He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been done against him,’ said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off the sea, ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Notwithstanding which,’ added Mr. Bounderby, ‘if he can be laid hold of any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself. As to you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out to be true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and there’s an end of it. I wish you good night all! I must be off to look a little further into this.’
Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bounderby moved, moved with him, kept close to him, and went away with him. The only parting salutation of which he delivered himself was a sulky ‘Good night, father!’ With a brief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.
Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had been sparing of speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said:
‘Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.’
‘It goes against me,’ Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, ‘to mistrust any one; but when I am so mistrusted—when we all are—I cannot keep such things quite out of my mind. I ask your pardon for having done you an injury. I don’t think what I said now. Yet I might come to think it again, wi’ the poor lad so wronged.’
‘Did you tell him in your letter,’ inquired Sissy, ‘that suspicion seemed to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the Bank at night? He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back, and would be ready.’
‘Yes, dear,’ she returned; ‘but I can’t guess what can have ever taken him there. He never used to go there. It was never in his way. His way was the same as mine, and not near it.’
Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and whether she might come to-morrow night, to inquire if there were news of him.
‘I doubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if he can be here till next day.’
‘Then I will come next night too,’ said Sissy.
When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Gradgrind lifted up his head, and said to his daughter:
‘Louisa, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man. Do you believe him to be implicated?’
‘I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty. I do not believe it now.’
‘That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing him to be suspected. His appearance and manner; are they so honest?’
‘Very honest.’
‘And her confidence not to be shaken! I ask myself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, musing, ‘does the real culprit know of these accusations? Where is he? Who is he?’
His hair had latterly began to change its colour. As he leaned upon his hand again, looking gray and old, Louisa, with a face of fear and pity, hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side. Her eyes by accident met Sissy’s at the moment. Sissy flushed and started, and Louisa put her finger on her lip.
Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that Stephen was not come, she told it in a whisper. Next night again, when she came home with the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke in the same low frightened tone. From the moment of that interchange of looks, they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor ever pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Gradgrind spoke of it.
The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of. On the fourth day, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to have miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with his address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road, sixty miles away. Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town looked for Stephen to be brought in next day.
During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Bounderby like his shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was greatly excited, horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard rattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up. At the hour when the suspected man was looked for, the whelp was at the station; offering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who were sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.
The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. Rachael’s letter had gone, Rachael’s letter had been delivered. Stephen Blackpool had decamped in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him. The only doubt in Coketown was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing that he really would come back, or warning him to fly. On this point opinion was divided.
Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The wretched whelp plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant. ‘Was the suspected fellow the thief? A pretty question! If not, where was the 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.
«Non era andato via da qui, signorina», disse Rachael rivolgendosi con aria supplichevole a Louisa, «da nemmeno una settimana quando mi mandò l’unica lettera che ho mai ricevuto da lui, dicendo di essere costretto a cercare lavoro sotto un altro nome.»
«Oh, per tutti i diavoli!» esclamò Bounderby scuotendo la testa e fischiando «Cambia nome, eh? È piuttosto sfortunato anche questo, per un tipo così immacolato. Credo che sia considerato un po’ sospetto davanti ai tribunali quando un innocente si ritrova a possedere molti nomi.»
«Che cosa», disse Rachael, con le lacrime di nuovo negli occhi, «che cosa, giovane signora, in nome della Misericordia, poteva fare quel povero ragazzo? I padroni contro di lui da una parte, gli operai contro di lui dall’altra, mentre lui voleva solo lavorare sodo in pace e fare ciò che riteneva giusto. Un uomo non può avere un anima sua propria, una mente sua propria? Deve sbagliare tutto il tempo da questo lato o deve sbagliare tutto il tempo dall’altro, oppure essere perseguitato come una lepre?»
«In effetti, in effetti, lo compatisco con tutto il cuore», rispose Louisa; «e spero che si giustificherà.»
«Non dovete avere alcuna paura di questo, giovane signora. È sicuro!»
«Tanto più sicuro, immagino», disse il signor Bounderby, «perché lei si rifiuta di dire dove sia? Ehm?»
«Non tornerà mai, per colpa mia, con la riprovazione ingiustificata di essere stato riportato indietro. Tornerà di sua spontanea volontà a scagionarsi e mettere alla vergogna tutti coloro che hanno offeso il suo buon nome, mentre lui non c’era per difenderlo. Gli ho detto tutto ciò che è stato fatto contro di lui», disse Rachael, scrollandosi di dosso ogni sospetto come una roccia respinge il mare, «e sarà qui al più tardi tra due giorni».
«Nonostante ciò», aggiunse il signor Bounderby, «se riusciremo a catturarlo prima, avrà l’opportunità di scagionarsi. Quanto a voi, non ho nulla contro di voi; quello che mi avete detto si è rivelato vero e vi ho dato i mezzi per provarlo, e qui finisce tutto. Vi auguro una buona notte a tutti! Devo andarmene a dare un’occhiata più da vicino a questa faccenda».
Tom uscì dal suo angolo quando il signor Bounderby si mosse, lo seguì da vicino e se ne andò con lui. L’unica salutazione di commiato che gli rivolse fu un brontolante “Buona notte, papà!” Con una breve frase e uno sguardo torvo alla sorella, lasciò la casa.
Da quando il suo ancore più solido era tornato a casa, il signor Gradgrind aveva parlato poco. Era ancora seduto in silenzio quando Louisa disse con dolcezza:
“Rachel, non mi tradirai un giorno, quando mi conoscerai meglio.”
«Mi rincresce», rispose Rachael in tono più mite, «di diffidare di qualcuno; ma quando io stessa sono così sospettata — e lo siamo tutti — non posso fare a meno di pensarci. Vi chiedo scusa per avervi offeso. Non penso più quello che ho detto prima. Eppure potrei tornarci, con quel povero ragazzo così maltrattato».
«Gli hai detto nella tua lettera», chiese Sissy, «che i sospetti sembravano essersi concentrati su di lui perché era stato visto in giro per la Banca a notte? Allora saprebbe che cosa dovrà spiegare al suo ritorno e sarebbe preparato.»
«Sì, caro», rispose lei «ma non riesco a immaginare cosa mai lo abbia portato là. Non ci è mai stato prima. Non gli passava mai per la testa di farlo. La sua strada era la stessa della mia e non c’entrava niente».
Sissy era già al suo fianco e le chiedeva dove abitasse e se poteva venire domani sera per sapere se c’erano notizie di lui.
«Dubito», disse Rachael, «che possa essere qui fino al giorno dopo.»
«Allora verrò anche la prossima notte», disse Sissy.
Quando Rachel, acconsentendo a ciò, se ne fu andata, il signor Gradgrind alzò la testa e disse alla figlia:
«Louisa mia cara, non ho mai, per quanto ne sappia, visto quest’uomo. Credi che sia coinvolto?»
«Penso di averlo creduto, padre, anche se con grande difficoltà. Non ci credo più adesso».
«Voglio dire che vi siete persuaso a crederlo perché sapevate che era sospettato. Il suo aspetto e il suo comportamento sono così onesti?»
‘Onestissimo.’
«E la sua sicurezza non vacilla! Mi chiedo», disse il signor Gradgrind pensieroso, «se il vero colpevole conosce queste accuse? Dove si trova? Chi è?»
I suoi capelli avevano ultimamente iniziato a cambiare colore. Mentre si appoggiava di nuovo alla mano, sembrando grigio e vecchio, Louisa, con un’espressione di paura e pietà, gli corse vicino e si sedette accanto a lui. I suoi occhi incontrarono per caso quelli di Sissy in quel momento. Sissy arrossì e trasalì, e Louisa le mise un dito sulle labbra.
La sera dopo, quando Sissy tornò a casa e disse a Louisa che Stephen non era venuto, lo disse sussurrando. La sera successiva, quando tornò a casa con la stessa notizia, e aggiunse che di lui non si avevano notizie, parlò nello stesso tono basso e spaventato. Dal momento in cui si erano scambiate quelle occhiate, non pronunciarono mai il suo nome ad alta voce né fecero riferimento a lui; né mai ripresero l’argomento del furto quando ne parlava il signor Gradgrind.
I due giorni stabiliti passarono, trascorsero tre giorni e tre notti, e Stephen Blackpool non era arrivato, e rimaneva senza notizie. Il quarto giorno, Rachael, con fiducia immutata, ma ritenendo che la sua lettera fosse andata persa, si recò alla Banca e mostrò la lettera di lui, con il suo indirizzo in una colonia operaia, una delle tante non sulla strada principale ma a sessanta miglia di distanza. Furono inviati messaggeri in quel luogo, e l’intero paese aspettava che Stephen fosse portato in città il giorno dopo.
Durante tutto questo periodo il marmocchio si muoveva con il signor Bounderby come la sua ombra, assistendolo in tutte le procedure. Era molto agitato, terribilmente febbricitante, si mangiava le unghie fino all’osso, parlava con una voce dura e raucata e con labbra nere e secche. All’ora in cui l’uomo sospettato veniva cercato, il marmocchio era alla stazione; offrendosi di scommettere che se ne fosse andato prima dell’arrivo di coloro che erano stati mandati in ricerca di lui e che non si sarebbe presentato.
Il cucciolo aveva ragione. I messaggeri erano tornati da soli. La lettera di Rachael era partita, la lettera di Rachael era stata consegnata. Stephen Blackpool era fuggito in quell’ora stessa; e nessuna anima ne sapeva più nulla. L’unica dubbio a Coketown era se Rachael avesse scritto in buona fede, credendo che lui sarebbe davvero tornato, o ammonendolo di fuggire. Su questo punto le opinioni erano divise.
Sei giorni, sette giorni, ben oltre l’inizio di un’altra settimana. Il povero cucciolo raccolse uno spaventoso coraggio e cominciò a diventare sfacciato. «Era il sospetto individuo il ladro? Una bella domanda! Se no, dov’era l’uomo, e perché non tornava?»
Dov’era l’uomo e perché non tornava? Nel cuore della notte gli echi delle sue stesse parole, che erano rimbombate chissà dove durante il giorno, tornarono invece indietro e lo accompagnarono fino al mattino.
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.
CAPITOLO V TROVATO
Giorno e notte ancora, giorno e notte ancora. Nessun Stephen Blackpool. Dov’era l’uomo, e perché non tornava?
Ogni sera, Sissy si recava all’alloggio di Rachael e le faceva compagnia nella sua piccola stanza ordinata. Tutto il giorno, Rachael lavorava sodo come devono fare queste persone, qualunque fosse la loro preoccupazione. I serpenti di fumo erano indifferenti a chi si perdesse o si trovasse, a chi andasse male o bene; i malinconici elefanti pazzi, come gli uomini dei Fatti Incontrastabili, non alteravano minimamente la loro routine stabilita, qualunque cosa accadesse. Giorno e notte, ancora giorno e notte. La monotonia era ininterrotta. Anche la scomparsa di Stephen Blackpool stava cadendo nella normale routine, diventando un meraviglia monotono come qualsiasi macchinario a Coketown.
«Dubito», disse Rachael, «che ci siano ancora venti persone in tutto questo posto che abbiano fiducia nel povero ragazzo.»
Lo disse a Sissy mentre sedevano nel suo alloggio illuminato solo dalla lampada all’angolo della strada. Sissy era venuta lì quando già era buio per aspettare il suo ritorno dal lavoro; e da allora erano rimaste sedute alla finestra dove Rachael l’aveva trovata, senza volere che una luce più forte brillasse sulla loro triste conversazione.
«Se non fosse stato per la misericordia che mi ha fatto avere te con cui parlare», continuò Rachael, «ci sono momenti in cui penso che la mia mente non avrebbe retto. Ma prendo speranza e forza da te; e tu credi che anche se le apparenze possono essere contro di lui, alla fine sarà assolto?»
«Lo credo davvero», rispose Sissy, «con tutto il cuore. Ne sono così certa, Rachael, che la fiducia che tu hai in lui nonostante ogni scoraggiamento, è tale da non poter essere sbagliata, e quindi non ho più dubbio su di lui di quanti ne avrei se lo conoscessi attraverso altrettanti anni di prove come te.»
«E io, mia cara», disse Rachel con un tremito nella voce, «l’ho sempre conosciuto attraverso tutto questo come uno che, secondo i suoi modi tranquilli, è stato così fedele a tutto ciò che è onesto e buono, che se non si dovesse più sapere nulla di lui, e io dovessi vivere fino a cent’anni, potrei dire con il mio ultimo respiro: Dio sa cosa c’è nel mio cuore. Non ho mai smesso di fidarmi di Stephen Blackpool!»
«Noi tutti crediamo alla Lodge, Rachael, che prima o poi verrà liberato dai sospetti.»
«Più ne sono convinta, mia cara», disse Rachael, «e più mi sembra gentile che tu venga via da lì apposta per consolarmi e farmi compagnia e farti vedere con me quando non sono ancora del tutto libera da ogni sospetto, più mi dispiace di aver mai detto quelle parole di sfiducia alla giovane signora. Eppure io—»
‘Non la sospetti più, Rachael?’
«Ora che ci ha riuniti più strettamente, no. Ma non riesco sempre a tenere lontano dalla mia mente, »
La sua voce si abbassò tanto in un lento e sommesso dialogo con se stessa che Sissy, seduta al suo fianco, fu costretta a prestare attenzione per ascoltare.
«Non riesco sempre a tenere lontani dalla mia mente dei sospetti su qualcuno. Non so chi sia, non capisco come o perché possa essere stato fatto, ma temo che qualcuno abbia tolto di mezzo Stephen. Sospetto che, tornando di sua spontanea volontà e dimostrandosi innocente davanti a tutti, qualcuno sarebbe rimasto confuso, e per evitare ciò lo ha fermato e messo fuori gioco».
«Questo è un pensiero terribile», disse Sissy impallidendo.
‘È un pensiero terribile pensare che potrebbe essere assassinato.’
Cecilia rabbrividì e impallidì ancora di più.
«Quando mi entra in mente, caro», disse Rachael, «e ci entrerà a volte, anche se faccio tutto il possibile per tenerlo fuori, contando fino a numeri altissimi mentre lavoro e ripetendo più e più volte brani che conoscevo quando ero un bambino—mi prende una tale fretta selvaggia e febbrile che, anche se sono stanca, voglio camminare in fretta per miglia e miglia. Devo superare questo prima di andare a letto-time. Ti accompagno a casa».
«Potrebbe ammalarsi durante il viaggio di ritorno», disse Sissy, offrendo debolmente un logoro frammento di speranza; «e in tal caso ci sono molti posti sulla strada dove potrebbe fermarsi».
‘Non si trova in nessuno di questi luoghi. Lo abbiamo cercato ovunque e non c’è.’
«È vero», ammise controvoglia Sissy.
«Avrebbe fatto il viaggio in due giorni. Se avesse i piedi doloranti e non potesse camminare, gli ho mandato, nella lettera che ha ricevuto, dei soldi per viaggiare, nel caso non ne avesse da spendere lui stesso».
«Speriamo che domani ci porti qualcosa di meglio, Rachael. Vieni a prendere un po’ d’aria!»
La sua mano gentile sistemò lo scialle di Rachael sui suoi capelli neri e lucenti nel solito modo in cui lo indossava, e uscirono. La notte era bella, piccoli gruppi di Mani erano qua e là a sostare agli angoli delle strade; ma per la maggior parte di loro era l’ora della cena, e c’erano poche persone in giro.
‘Non sei più così di fretta ora, Rachael, e la tua mano è più fresca.’
«Mi sento meglio, cara, se posso solo camminare e respirare un po’ d’aria fresca.
«Quando non riesco, mi vengono debolezze e confusione».
«Ma non dovete cominciare a vacillare, Rachael, perché potreste essere necessaria in qualsiasi momento per stare accanto a Stephen. Domani è sabato. Se domani non arrivano notizie, passeggeremo in campagna la mattina di domenica e vi rafforzerò per un’altra settimana. Volete venire?»
‘Sì, caro.’
Erano ormai nella strada dove si trovava la casa del signor Bounderby. Il percorso verso la destinazione di Sissy li portò davanti alla porta e stavano andando dritti verso di essa. Un treno era appena arrivato a Coketown, mettendo in moto un certo numero di veicoli e diffondendo una notevole attività per tutta la città. Mentre si avvicinavano alla casa del signor Bounderby, diversi calessi stavano sfrecciando davanti e dietro di loro; uno di questi ultimi si fermò con tale vivacità proprio mentre stavano passando accanto alla casa, che non poterono fare a meno di voltarsi. La luce del gas sopra i gradini della casa del signor Bounderby mostrò loro la signora Sparsit nel calesso, in preda a un’estasi di eccitazione mentre si sforzava di aprire lo sportello; la signora Sparsit li vide nello stesso istante e li chiamò per fermarli.
‘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 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!’
«È una coincidenza», esclamò la signora Sparsit mentre veniva rilasciata dal cocchiere. «È una Provvidenza! Esci, signora!» disse poi la signora Sparsit a qualcuno all’interno, «esci o ti trascineremo fuori!»
A questo punto scese nientemeno che la misteriosa vecchia signora, che la signora Sparsit immediatamente afferrò per il collo.
«Lasciatela in pace, tutti quanti!» gridò la signora Sparsit con grande energia. «Non deve toccarla nessuno. È mia. Entri, signora!», disse poi la signora Sparsit, contraddicendo le sue precedenti parole di comando. «Entri, signora, o faremo in modo che sia trascinata dentro!»
Lo spettacolo di una matrona dall’portamento classico che afferra per la gola un’anziana signora e la trascina dentro a una casa, sarebbe stato, in qualsiasi circostanza, sufficiente tentazione per tutti i veri inglesi così fortunati da assistervi, per costringersi ad entrare in quella casa e vedere come andava a finire. Ma quando il fenomeno era esaltato dalla notorietà e dal mistero che ormai erano associati in tutta la città al furto alla Banca, avrebbe attirato i curiosi con un’attrazione irresistibile, anche se si fosse saputo che il tetto sarebbe crollato sulle loro teste. Di conseguenza, i testimoni occasionali presenti sul posto, costituiti dai vicini più disponibili in numero di una ventina e mezza, seguirono Sissy e Rachael mentre seguivano la signora Sparsit e il suo trofeo; e l’intero gruppo fece un disordinato irruzione nel salotto del signor Bounderby, dove le persone che erano dietro non persero neanche un attimo a salire sulle sedie per avere una visuale migliore rispetto alle persone davanti.
«Portate giù il signor Bounderby!» gridò la signora Sparsit. «Rachael, ragazza, tu sai chi è questo?»
«È la signora Pegler», disse Rachael.
«Certo che lo è!» esclamò la signora Sparsit trionfante. «Portate qui il signor Bounderby. Allontanatevi tutti!» Qui la vecchia signora Pegler, avvolgendosi nel suo scialle e ritraendosi per non essere osservata, sussurrò una parola di supplica. «Non dirmi niente», disse ad alta voce la signora Sparsit. «Te l’ho detto venti volte mentre venivamo qui che non ti lascerò finché non ti avrò consegnata a lui in persona.»
Apparve ora il signor Bounderby accompagnato dal signor Gradgrind e dal cucciolo, con cui aveva tenuto consiglio al piano di sopra. Il signor Bounderby appariva più sorpreso che ospitale alla vista di questa compagnia non invitata nel suo salotto da pranzo.
“Ma che succede adesso?” disse lui. “Signora Sparsit, signora?”
«Signore», spiegò quella degna donna, «spero che sia mia buona sorte di presentarle una persona che lei desiderava molto trovare. Spinta dal mio desiderio di alleviare la sua mente, signore, e collegando insieme indizi così imperfetti sulla parte del paese in cui si poteva supporre risiedesse quella persona, come sono stati forniti dalla giovane donna, Rachael, fortunatamente ora presente per identificarla, ho avuto la felicità di riuscire e di portare con me quella persona - non è necessario che dica quanto malvolentieri da parte sua. Non è stato, signore, senza alcune difficoltà che sono riuscita a farlo; ma le difficoltà al suo servizio sono per me un piacere, e la fame, la sete e il freddo una vera soddisfazione».
Qui la signora Sparsit si fermò; perché il volto del signor Bounderby mostrava una combinazione straordinaria di tutti i colori e le espressioni possibili di disorientamento, quando la vecchia signora Pegler gli apparve alla vista.
«Ebbene, che cosa intende fare?» fu la sua domanda del tutto imprevista, con grande calore. «Le chiedo, che cosa intende fare, signora Sparsit, signora?»
«Signore!» esclamò la signora Sparsit con voce flebile.
«Perché non si occupa dei fatti suoi, signora?» ruggì Bounderby. «Come osa ficcare il suo naso indiscreto nelle faccende della mia famiglia?»
Questa allusione al suo tratto preferito sopraffece la signora Sparsit. Si sedette rigida su una sedia, come se fosse congelata; e fissando il signor Bounderby con uno sguardo fisso, strofinò lentamente i suoi guanti l’uno contro l’altro, come se anche loro fossero congelati.
«Mio caro Josiah!» esclamò la signora Pegler tremando «mio dolce ragazzo, non ne sono responsabile. Non è colpa mia, Josiah. Ho ripetuto più volte a questa signora che sapevo che stava facendo qualcosa che non ti sarebbe piaciuto, ma lei ha voluto farlo».
«Perché l’hai lasciata fare? Non potevi tirarle giù il cappello o spezzarle un dente o graffiarla o farle qualcosa del genere?» chiese Bounderby.
«Il mio ragazzo! Mi ha minacciato che se mi fossi opposto avrei dovuto essere portato dai poliziotti e che era meglio venire tranquillamente piuttosto che fare tutto quel trambusto in una’—la signora Pegler lanciò un’occhiata timida ma orgogliosa alle pareti—‘in una così bella casa come questa. In verità, in verità, non è colpa mia! Il mio caro ragazzo nobile e imponente! Ho sempre vissuto tranquilla e segretamente, Josiah, mio caro. Non ho mai infranto la condizione neanche una volta. Non ho mai detto di essere tua madre. Ti ammiravo da lontano; e se a volte sono venuta in città, con lunghi intervalli tra un viaggio e l’altro, per dare uno sguardo orgoglioso a te, lo facevo senza farti sapere, mio amore, e poi me ne andavo via di nuovo.»
Il signor Bounderby, con le mani in tasca, camminava su e giù impaziente e mortificato lungo il lato del lungo tavolo da pranzo, mentre gli spettatori inghiottivano avidamente ogni sillaba dell’appello della signora Pegler, e ad ogni sillaba successiva diventavano sempre più occhi rotondi. Il signor Bounderby continuava a camminare su e giù quando la signora Pegler ebbe finito, il signor Gradgrind si rivolse a quella vecchia signora calunniata:
«Sono sorpreso, signora», osservò con severità, «che nella vostra vecchiaia abbiate il coraggio di rivendicare il signor Bounderby come vostro figlio dopo il trattamento innaturale e disumano che gli avete inflitto.»
“Non naturale io!” gridò la povera vecchia signora Pegler. “Io disumana? Con il mio caro ragazzo?”
«Caro!» ripeté il signor Gradgrind. «Sì; caro nella sua prosperità auto-costruita, signora, oserei dire. Non così caro, tuttavia, quando lo abbandonaste in tenera età e lo lasciaste alla brutalità di una nonna ubriacona».
«Io ho abbandonato il mio Josiah!» esclamò la signora Pegler, stringendosi le mani. «Ora, Signore, perdonatelo, signore, per le sue malvage fantasie e per lo scandalo che ha gettato sulla memoria di mia povera madre, che morì tra le mie braccia prima ancora che Josiah nascesse. Possiate pentirvene, signore, e vivere abbastanza a lungo da conoscere meglio!»
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?
Era così seria e offesa che il signor Gradgrind, sconvolto dalla possibilità che gli si presentava, disse con tono più dolce:
‘Negate dunque, signora, di aver lasciato suo figlio a crescere per strada?’
«Josiah nel fosso!» esclamò la signora Pegler. «Niente affatto, signore. Mai! Che vergogna per voi! Il mio caro ragazzo sa e vi farà sapere che, sebbene sia figlio di umili genitori, questi lo hanno amato come se fossero i migliori tra i padri, e non hanno mai considerato un sacrificio privarsi di qualcosa affinché lui potesse scrivere e fare di conto in modo splendido, e io ho a casa i suoi libri per dimostrarlo! Sì che li ho!» disse la signora Pegler con orgogliosa indignazione. «E il mio caro ragazzo sa e vi farà sapere, signore, che dopo la morte del suo amato padre, quando aveva otto anni, anche sua madre poteva privarsi di qualcosa, poiché era suo dovere e piacere e orgoglio farlo per aiutarlo nella vita e metterlo in apprendistato. E lui è stato un ragazzo serio, e ha avuto un padrone gentile che gli dava una mano, e si è bene guadagnato la sua strada fino a diventare ricco e prospero. E vi farò sapere io, signore—perché questo il mio caro ragazzo non lo dirà—che sebbene sua madre avesse solo un piccolo negozio di villaggio, lui non l’ha mai dimenticata, ma mi ha dato una pensione di trenta sterline all’anno—più di quanto ne abbia bisogno, perché metto da parte qualcosa—con la sola condizione che rimanessi nella mia parte e non facessi vanto di lui né lo disturbassi. E io non l’ho mai fatto, se non guardandolo una volta all’anno senza che lui lo sapesse. Ed è giusto», disse la povera vecchia signora Pegler con affettuoso appoggio, «che io rimanga nella mia parte, e non ho dubbi che se fossi qui farei molte cose inadeguate, e sono bene contenta, e posso tenere il mio orgoglio per Josiah solo per me, e posso amare per amore del amore! E mi vergogno di voi, signore», disse infine la signora Pegler, «per le vostre calunnie e sospetti. Non sono mai stata qui prima d’ora né ho mai voluto esserlo quando mio caro figlio diceva di no. E non ci sarei nemmeno ora se non fossi stata portata qui. E vergogna a voi, oh, vergogna, ad accusarmi di essere una cattiva madre per mio figlio con mio figlio qui presente a dirvi il contrario!»
I presenti, sopra e sotto le sedie della sala da pranzo, sollevarono un mormorio di simpatia per la signora Pegler, e il signor Gradgrind si sentì innocente in una situazione molto penosa quando il signor Bounderby, che non aveva mai smesso di camminare avanti e indietro ed era diventato ogni momento più grosso e più rosso, si fermò bruscamente.
«Non so esattamente», disse il signor Bounderby, «come mai mi sia stato fatto l’onore della presenza dell’assemblea qui riunita, ma non indago. Quando saranno del tutto soddisfatti, forse avranno la bontà di disperdersi; che siano soddisfatti o no, forse avranno la bontà di disperdersi. Non sono obbligato a tenere una lezione sui fatti miei, non mi sono impegnato a farlo e non ho intenzione di farlo. Quindi coloro che si aspettano qualsiasi spiegazione su questo ramo dell’argomento rimarranno delusi — in particolare Tom Gradgrind, e lui non può saperlo troppo presto. Per quanto riguarda la rapina alla Banca, è stato commesso un errore a proposito di mia madre. Se non ci fosse stata sovraffettuosità l’errore non sarebbe stato commesso, e io odio la sovraffettuosità in ogni momento, che sia o no giustificata. Buona sera!»
Anche se il signor Bounderby si comportò così, tenendo aperta la porta affinché gli ospiti potessero andarsene, c’era in lui un misto di arroganza e imbarazzo che lo rendeva al tempo stesso estremamente abbattuto e assolutamente ridicolo. Scoperto come il Bullo dell’umiltà, che aveva costruito la sua reputazione gonfiata su bugie, e nella sua ostentazione aveva allontanato da sé l’onesta verità quanto se avesse avanzato la meschina pretesa (non ce n’è una più meschina) di attaccarsi a un albero genealogico, si ritrovò in una situazione assai ridicola. Con le persone che uscivano dalla porta che lui teneva aperta, e che sapeva avrebbero raccontato quanto era successo in tutta la città, per poi diffonderlo ai quattro venti, non poteva avere un’aria più spocchiosa e abbandonata, come se gli fossero stati tagliati le orecchie. Anche quella sfortunata donna, la signora Sparsit, caduta dal suo picco di esultanza nel pantano della disperazione, non era in una situazione così brutta quanto quell’uomo notevole e auto-proclamato imbroglione, il Josiah Bounderby di Coketown.
Rachael e Sissy, lasciando la signora Pegler a occupare un letto presso suo figlio per quella notte, si diressero insieme verso il cancello di Stone Lodge dove poi si separarono. Il signor Gradgrind le raggiunse prima che avessero fatto molta strada e parlò con grande interesse di Stephen Blackpool; per il quale pensava che questo clamoroso fallimento dei sospetti contro la signora Pegler sarebbe stato probabilmente un bene.
Per quanto riguarda il cucciolo; durante questa scena come in tutte le altre occasioni recenti, era rimasto sempre vicino a Bounderby. Sembrava sentire che finché Bounderby non avesse potuto fare scoperte senza la sua conoscenza, era al sicuro. Non aveva mai visitato sua sorella e l’aveva vista solo una volta da quando era tornata a casa: cioè nella sera in cui si era ancora tenuto vicino a Bounderby, come già raccontato.
C’era un vago e informe timore che aleggiava nella mente di sua sorella, di cui non osava mai parlare, che avvolgeva il ragazzo ingrato e senza grazia in un mistero terribile. La stessa cupa possibilità si era presentata nello stesso aspetto indefinito proprio quel giorno a Sissy, quando Rachael aveva accennato a qualcuno che sarebbe stato confuso dal ritorno di Stephen, avendolo allontanato. Louisa non aveva mai parlato di nutrire sospetti su suo fratello in relazione al furto; lei e Sissy non si erano scambiate confidenze sull’argomento, se non in quell’unica occasione in cui il padre inconsapevole appoggiava la sua testa grigia sulla mano; ma tra loro era chiaro, e lo sapevano entrambe. Questo altro timore era così terribile che aleggiava intorno a ciascuna di loro come un’ombra spettrale; nessuna osava pensare che fosse vicino a sé stessa, figuriamoci se fosse vicino all’altra.
Eppure lo spirito forzato che il cucciolo aveva suscitato prosperava in lui. Se Stephen Blackpool non era il ladro, facesse vedere sé stesso. Perché no?
Un’altra notte. Un altro giorno e una notte. Nessun Stephen Blackpool. Dove era l’uomo, e perché non tornava?
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.
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all round her, seeing no help. ‘Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!’
She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. And after standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran, she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she had never run before.
CAPITOLO VI LA LUCE DELLE STELLE
LA domenica era una luminosa domenica d’autunno, limpida e fresca, quando all’inizio della mattina Sissy e Rachael si incontrarono per fare un giro in campagna.
Poiché Coketown non solo si copriva di cenere la testa ma anche quella dei dintorni—alla maniera di quelle persone pie che fanno penitenza per i propri peccati mettendo gli altri in sacco di capra—era consuetudine per coloro che ogni tanto desideravano una sorsata d’aria pura, che non è assolutamente la più malvagia tra le vanità della vita, allontanarsi di qualche miglio con il treno e poi iniziare a camminare o a passeggiare nei campi. Sissy e Rachael si liberarono dal fumo col solito sistema e furono lasciate alla stazione a metà strada tra la città e il rifugio del signor Bounderby.
Sebbene il paesaggio verde fosse macchiato qua e là da cumuli di carbone, era verde altrove, c’erano alberi da vedere, e ciuffolotti che cantavano (sebbene fosse domenica), e nell’aria si sentivano profumi piacevoli, e tutto era sovrastato da un luminoso cielo azzurro. In lontananza in una direzione, Coketown appariva come una nebbia nera; in un’altra distanza cominciavano ad alzarsi delle colline; in una terza c’era un lieve cambiamento nella luce dell’orizzonte dove brillava sul mare lontano. Sotto i loro piedi, l’erba era fresca; le ombre belle dei rami vi danzavano sopra e la macchiavano; gli siepi erano rigogliose; tutto era in pace. Le macchine alle bocche delle miniere e i vecchi cavalli magri che avevano scavato il cerchio del loro lavoro quotidiano nel terreno, erano ugualmente tranquilli; le ruote avevano smesso per poco tempo di girare; e la grande ruota della terra sembrava ruotare senza gli scossoni e i rumori di un altro tempo.
Camminarono attraverso i campi e lungo i viali ombrosi, a volte superando un frammento di recinto così marcio che crollava al solo tocco del piede, a volte passando vicino a un ammasso di mattoni e travi ricoperti d’erba, segno di opere abbandonate. Seguivano sentieri e piste, per quanto deboli fossero. Evitavano sempre i tumuli dove l’erba era alta e fitta, e dove more, erbe malerbe e vegetazione simile si ammassavano confusamente; perché in quella regione circolavano storie lugubri di vecchie fosse nascoste sotto tali segni.
Il sole era alto quando si sedettero a riposare. Non avevano visto nessuno, vicino o lontano, per un lungo periodo; e la solitudine rimaneva ininterrotta. «È così tranquillo qui, Rachael, e il sentiero è così poco battuto che penso dovessimo essere i primi ad esserci stati tutto l’estate.»
Mentre Sissy lo diceva, i suoi occhi furono attratti da un altro di quei pezzi marci del recinto sul terreno. Si alzò per guardarlo meglio. «Eppure non so. Questo non è rotto da molto tempo. Il legno è ancora fresco dove si è spezzato. Ci sono anche delle impronte.—Oh, Rachael!»
Corse indietro e la afferrò al collo. Rachel si era già rialzata.
‘Qual è il problema?’
«Non lo so. C’è un cappello che giace nell’erba». Andarono avanti insieme. Rachael lo raccolse, tremando dalla testa ai piedi. Scoppiò in un fiume di lacrime e lamentazioni: Stephen Blackpool era scritto di suo pugno all’interno.
“Povero ragazzo, povero ragazzo! È stato ucciso. Giace qui assassinato!”
«C’è, c’è del sangue sul cappello?» balbettò Sissy.
Avevano paura di guardare; ma lo esaminarono e non trovarono segni di violenza, dentro né fuori. Era lì da alcuni giorni, perché la pioggia e la rugiada lo avevano macchiato, e il segno della sua forma era sull’erba dove era caduto. Guardarono timorosamente intorno a loro, senza muoversi, ma non videro altro. «Rachael», sussurrò Sissy, «andrò avanti un po’ da sola».
Aveva aperto la mano e stava per fare un passo avanti quando Rachael l’afferrò tra le braccia con un urlo che risuonò nell’ampio paesaggio. Ai loro piedi, davanti a loro, c’era il bordo di una voragine nera e frastagliata nascosta dall’erba alta. Saltarono indietro e caddero in ginocchio, nascondendo ognuna il viso sul collo dell’altra.
«Oh, mio buon Signore! È laggiù! Laggiù!» All’inizio questo era tutto ciò che si poteva ottenere da Rachael, con qualsiasi lacrima, preghiera, rappresentazione o mezzo. Era impossibile calmarla; e pericoloso lasciarla andare, altrimenti si sarebbe gettata giù nel pozzo.
«Rachael, cara Rachael, buona Rachael, per l’amore del Cielo, non questi terribili lamenti! Pensa a Stephen, pensa a Stephen, pensa a Stephen!»
Con una fervente ripetizione di questa preghiera, pronunciata con tutta l’angoscia di un simile momento, alla fine Sissy riuscì a farla tacere e a farle rivolgere verso di sé uno sguardo immobile senza lacrime.
«Rachel, forse Stephen è ancora vivo. Non lo lasceresti giacere mutilato in fondo a questo terribile luogo neanche per un momento, se potessi portargli aiuto?»
‘No, no, no!’
‘Non ti muovere da qui, per il suo bene! Lascia che vada io ad ascoltare.’
Tremava all’idea di avvicinarsi al pozzo; ma strisciò verso di esso sulle mani e sulle ginocchia, chiamandolo a squarciagola. Ascoltò, ma nessun suono le rispose. Lo chiamò ancora e ascoltò; sempre senza alcuna eco in risposta. Ripeté questo gesto venti, trenta volte. Prese un piccolo grumo di terra dal terreno smosso dove lui era inciampato e lo gettò dentro. Non riuscì a sentirlo cadere.
Il vasto panorama, così bello nella sua tranquillità solo pochi minuti fa, quasi portò la disperazione nel suo coraggioso cuore, mentre si alzava e guardava tutto intorno a sé, senza vedere alcun aiuto. «Rachael, non dobbiamo perdere un solo istante. Dobbiamo andare in direzioni diverse, cercando aiuto. Tu tornerai per la strada da cui siamo venuti, e io andrò avanti lungo il sentiero. Di’ a chiunque incontri e a tutti cosa è successo. Pensa a Stephen, pensa a Stephen!»
Capì dal volto di Rachael che poteva fidarsi di lei in quel momento. E dopo essere rimasta per un istante a guardarla mentre correva, torcendosi le mani mentre correva, si voltò e riprese la sua ricerca; si fermò al cespuglio per legarvi lo scialle come guida al luogo, poi gettò da parte il cappello e corse più veloce di quanto avesse mai fatto prima.
Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name! Don’t stop for breath. Run, run! Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had never run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.
First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of the men was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade’s shouting to him that a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.
With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and she got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole village was up: and windlasses, ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place, to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.
It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain away from it any longer—it was like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man whom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it. The men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until the implements they wanted should come up.
Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting. After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation among the people that the man would be found alive was very slight indeed.
There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in the day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, and Mr. Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there.
The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend securely was rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the construction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found wanting, and messages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in the afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, attentively watching it: the man at the windlass lowering as they were told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and then some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on; and the sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word ‘Lower away!’
As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on, that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval ensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women shrieked that another accident had happened! But the surgeon who held the watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, when the windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and that only one was returning.
The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There was an universal cry of ‘Alive or dead?’ and then a deep, profound hush.
When he said ‘Alive!’ a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in them.
‘But he’s hurt very bad,’ he added, as soon as he could make himself heard again. ‘Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno how to get him up.’
They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The sun was setting now; and the red light in the evening sky touched every face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its rapt suspense.
The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime, under the surgeon’s directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was dark now, and torches were kindled.
Corri, Sissy, corri, per amor del cielo! Non fermarti a riprendere fiato. Corri, corri! Accelerando il passo portando con sé tali suppliche nei suoi pensieri, lei corse da un campo all’altro, e da una stradina all’altra, e da un luogo all’altro, come non aveva mai fatto prima; finché arrivò a un capanno vicino a una casa di macchine dove due uomini giacevano all’ombra, addormentati su della paglia.
Svegliarli e poi raccontare loro, con tutto il suo aspetto selvaggio e affannoso, cosa l’avesse portata li’, presentava delle difficoltà; ma non appena la compresero, il loro spirito prese fuoco come il suo. Uno degli uomini era in un sonno ubriaco, ma quando il suo compagno gli gridò che un uomo era caduto nella Vecchia Fossa dell’Inferno, si alzò di scatto verso una pozza d’acqua sporca, ci mise la testa dentro e tornò sobrio.
Con questi due uomini corse per altri ottocento metri circa, e con quello per altri ancora, mentre loro correvano altrove. Poi trovarono un cavallo; e lei fece montare un altro uomo a cavalcare tra la vita o la morte fino alla ferrovia per inviare un messaggio a Louisa, che scrisse e gli consegnò. A quell’ora tutto il villaggio era in piedi: e argani, corde, pali, candele, lanterne, tutti gli oggetti necessari si stavano rapidamente radunando e venivano portati in un luogo, per essere trasportati alla Vecchia Galleria dell’Inferno.
Le sembrava ormai passate ore e ore da quando aveva lasciato l’uomo smarrito disteso nella fossa dove era stato sepolto vivo. Non poteva sopportare di restare più a lungo lontana da quel luogo: sarebbe stato come abbandonarlo, e così tornò indietro in tutta fretta accompagnata da una mezza dozzina di operai, tra cui anche l’uomo ubriaco che era ormai sobrio per via della notizia e si dimostrava il più utile di tutti. Quando arrivarono alla Vecchia Fossa dell’Inferno la trovarono deserta come quando l’aveva lasciata lei. Gli uomini chiamarono e ascoltarono, proprio come aveva fatto lei, esaminarono il bordo del baratro e cercarono di capire come fosse successo tutto ciò, per poi sedersi ad attendere che arrivassero gli attrezzi necessari.
Ogni suono di insetti nell’aria, ogni fruscio delle foglie, ogni bisbiglio tra quegli uomini faceva tremare Sissy, perché pensava che fosse un grido proveniente dal fondo della voragine. Ma il vento soffiava pigramente sopra di essa e nessun suono giungeva in superficie; così rimasero seduti sull’erba, aspettando e aspettando. Dopo che ebbero atteso per un po’ di tempo, cominciarono ad arrivare persone sparse che avevano saputo dell’incidente; poi iniziarono a giungere i veri soccorsi con gli strumenti. Nel frattempo, Rachael tornò indietro e nel suo gruppo c’era un chirurgo che portava del vino e delle medicine. Ma l’aspettativa della gente di trovare quell’uomo ancora vivo era davvero molto scarsa.
Essendoci ormai abbastanza persone presenti da ostacolare i lavori, l’uomo sobrio si mise alla testa degli altri o fu messo lì di comune accordo e fece un grande cerchio intorno al vecchio pozzo dell’inferno, assegnando uomini per sorvegliarlo. Oltre ai volontari accettati per lavorare, inizialmente solo Sissy e Rachael furono ammesse all’interno di questo cerchio; ma più tardi nel giorno, quando il messaggio portò un espresso da Coketown, anche il signor Gradgrind e Louisa, e il signor Bounderby e il cucciolo erano lì.
Il sole era quattro ore più basso di quando Sissy e Rachael si erano sedute per la prima volta sull’erba, prima che venisse allestita con pali e corde una struttura che permettesse a due uomini di scendere in sicurezza. Erano sorte difficoltà nella costruzione di questa macchina, semplice com’era; si erano rivelati mancanti alcuni requisiti, ed era stato necessario inviare e ricevere messaggi. Erano le cinque del pomeriggio di quella luminosa domenica autunnale prima che una candela venisse calata per saggiare l’aria, mentre tre o quattro volti ruvidi si affollavano vicini a osservarla attentamente: l’uomo alla carrucola la calava come gli era stato detto. La candela fu riportata su, bruciando debolmente, e poi vi venne gettata dentro un po’ di acqua. Poi il secchio fu agganciato; e l’uomo sobrio e un altro entrarono con delle luci, dando l’ordine “Calate!”.
Mentre la corda si tendeva e il verricello cigolava, non c’era un solo respiro tra i cento o duecento uomini e donne che osservavano, che veniva come era solito venire. Il segnale fu dato e il verricello si fermò, con abbondante corda di riserva. Apparentemente trascorse così tanto tempo con gli uomini al verricello inattivi, che alcune donne gridarono che era successo un altro incidente! Ma il chirurgo che teneva l’orologio dichiarò che non erano ancora passati cinque minuti e li ammonì severamente di mantenere silenzio. Non aveva bene finito di parlare, quando il verricello fu invertito e messo in funzione nuovamente. Gli occhi esperti sapevano che non andava così pesantemente come sarebbe stato se entrambi i lavoratori fossero risaliti, e che solo uno stava tornando.
La corda si tese e si strinse; e gli anelli uno dopo l’altro si avvolsero sul tamburo della carrucola, mentre tutti gli occhi erano fissi sulla fossa. L’uomo rianimato fu tirato su e saltò agilmente sull’erba. Si levò un grido generale: «Vivo o morto?», seguito da un profondo silenzio.
Quando disse «Vivo!», si levò un grande grido e molti occhi avevano lacrime negli occhi.
«Ma è molto ferito», aggiunse non appena poté farsi di nuovo sentire. «Dov’è il dottore? È così gravemente ferito, signore, che non sappiamo come portarlo su.»
Tutti si consultarono insieme e guardarono ansiosamente il chirurgo mentre faceva alcune domande e scuoteva la testa ricevendo le risposte. Il sole stava tramontando; e la luce rossa nel cielo serale toccò ogni volto presente, facendolo distinguere chiaramente in tutta la sua rapita sospensione.
La consultazione si concluse con gli uomini che tornarono alla carrucola e il minatore che scese di nuovo, portando con sé il vino e alcuni altri piccoli oggetti. Poi salì l’altro uomo. Nel frattempo, sotto la direzione del chirurgo, alcuni uomini portarono una barella su cui altri prepararono un letto spesso di vestiti di ricambio coperti da paglia sciolta, mentre lui stesso improvvisò alcune bende e sospensori con scialli e fazzoletti. Man mano che venivano preparati, questi furono appesi a un braccio del minatore che era salito per ultimo, con istruzioni su come usarli: e mentre stava lì, illuminato dalla luce che portava, appoggiando la sua potente mano sciolta su uno dei pali, talvolta guardando giù nel pozzo e talvolta lanciando occhiate intorno alla gente, non era affatto una figura poco appariscente nella scena. Era ormai buio e furono accese delle torce.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He lay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and meat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a little water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his work, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on his way to Mr. Bounderby’s country house after dark, when he fell. He was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn’t rest from coming the nearest way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of him.
When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him, disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from it now. Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward.
For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way. But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two men holding on at the sides—a sight to make the head swim, and oppress the heart—and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.
A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but the best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.
They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, ‘Rachael.’ She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look at her.
‘Rachael, my dear.’
She took his hand. He smiled again and said, ‘Don’t let ’t go.’
‘Thou’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?’
‘I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear—but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a muddle!’
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.
‘I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge o’ old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives—fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em fro’ want and hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Firedamp crueller than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may read, fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n and pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need; when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!’
He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.
‘Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient, suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!’
Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face turned up to the night sky.
‘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.
Dalle poche parole che quell’uomo disse ai presenti, rapidamente ripetute in tutto il circolo, si evinceva che l’uomo smarrito era caduto su un ammasso di detriti con cui la voragine era mezzo ostruita e che la sua caduta era stata ulteriormente attenuata da qualche sporgenza di terra sul lato. Era disteso sulla schiena con un braccio ripiegato sotto di sé, e secondo quanto affermava non si era quasi mosso dalla caduta, se non per portare la mano libera a una tasca laterale in cui ricordava di aver messo del pane e della carne (di cui aveva ingerito qualche briciola) e con la quale aveva pure raccolto un po’ d’acqua di tanto in tanto. Era venuto direttamente dal suo lavoro, dopo essere stato avvisato per iscritto, ed aveva compiuto tutto il viaggio a piedi; e stava andando verso la campagna alla casa di Mr. Bounderby quando era caduto. Attraversava quel paese così pericoloso in un momento tanto rischioso perché si dichiarava innocente dell’accusa che gli veniva mossa, e non poteva riposare finché non avesse preso la via più breve per consegnarsi. Il vecchio pozzo dell’Inferno, disse il minatore con una bestemmia contro di esso, era degno fino in fondo della sua cattiva reputazione; perché sebbene Stephen potesse parlare ora, credeva che ben presto si sarebbe scoperto che gli aveva strappato la vita.
Quando tutto fu pronto, quell’uomo, ancora mentre riceveva le ultime istruzioni affrettate dai suoi compagni e dal chirurgo dopo che il verricello aveva cominciato a calarlo, scomparve nella fossa. La corda si allungò come prima, il segnale fu dato come prima, e il verricello si fermò. Ora nessuno ritirava la mano da esso. Tutti aspettavano con le mani pronte, e i corpi piegati verso il lavoro, pronti a invertire e a avvolgere. Alla fine il segnale fu dato, e tutto l’anello si inclinò in avanti.
Perché ora la corda entrò in tensione e si strinse al massimo, come sembrava, e gli uomini si girarono pesantemente, e il verricello protestò. Era quasi insopportabile guardare la corda e pensare che potesse cedere. Ma, anello dopo anello fu avvolto sul tamburo del verricello in sicurezza, e apparvero le catene di collegamento, e infine il secchio con i due uomini aggrappati ai lati - una vista che faceva girare la testa e opprimeva il cuore - e sostenevano teneramente tra loro, appeso e legato all’interno, la figura di una povera creatura umana schiacciata.
Un basso mormorio di pietà si diffuse tra la folla e le donne scoppiarono in lacrime quando questa forma, quasi senza forma, fu estratta molto lentamente dalla sua prigione di ferro e adagiata su un letto di paglia. All’inizio solo il chirurgo si avvicinò. Fece del suo meglio per sistemarla sul giaciglio, ma la cosa migliore che poté fare fu coprirla. Fatto ciò con delicatezza, chiamò a sé Rachael e Sissy. E in quel momento apparve il volto pallido, provato, paziente, rivolto verso il cielo, con la mano destra rotta che giaceva scoperta all’esterno degli indumenti di copertura, come se aspettasse di essere presa da un’altra mano.
Gli diedero da bere, gli bagnarono il viso con acqua e gli somministrarono alcune gocce di cordiale e vino. Anche se giaceva immobile a guardare in su verso il cielo, sorrise e disse: «Rachael». Lei si chinò sull’erba accanto a lui e si piegò sopra di lui finché i suoi occhi non furono tra quelli di lui e il cielo, perché lui non poteva neanche voltare gli occhi per guardarla.
‘Rachel, mia cara.’
Lei gli prese la mano. Lui sorrise di nuovo e disse: “Non lasciarla andare.”
«Sei in grande dolore, mio caro Stephen?»
«Sono stato, ma non ora. Sono stato — terribile e triste e lungo, mia cara — ma è finita adesso. Ah, Rachael, tutto un pasticcio! Dall’inizio alla fine, un pasticcio!»
Lo spettro del suo vecchio sguardo sembrò passare mentre pronunciava la parola.
«Sono caduto nella fossa, mia cara, che ha già costato, secondo la conoscenza degli anziani ancora vivi, centinaia e centinaia di vite umane: padri, figli, fratelli, cari a migliaia e migliaia di persone, e che li tenevano lontani dalla fame. Sono caduto in una fossa dove il gas infuocato è stato più crudele della battaglia. Ho letto tutto sulle petizioni pubbliche, che chiunque può leggere, firmate dagli uomini che lavorano nelle miniere, e in cui hanno pregato e pregato i legislatori per l’amor di Cristo di non lasciare che il loro lavoro diventi un omicidio, ma di risparmiarli per le mogli e i figli che amano tanto quanto gli aristocratici amano i propri. Quando era in funzione, uccideva senza necessità; quando è lasciato solo, uccide senza necessità. Guardate come moriamo senza bisogno, in un modo o nell’altro, nel caos, ogni giorno!»
Lo disse debolmente, senza alcuna rabbia contro nessuno. Semplicemente come la verità.
«Non hai dimenticato tua sorella piccola, Rachael. Non rischi di dimenticarla ora che io sono così vicino a lei. Sai — povera, paziente, sofferente, cara — come lavoravi per lei, seduta tutto il giorno nella sua poltroncina alla finestra della tua camera, e come morì giovane e deforme, sempre malata perché l’aria non era salubre come avrebbe dovuto essere, e sempre a causa delle misere abitazioni dei lavoratori. Un disastro! Tutto un disastro!»
Louisa si avvicinò a lui; ma non poteva vederla, giacendo con il volto rivolto verso l’alto cielo notturno.
«Se tutte le cose che ci riguardano, mia cara, non fossero così confuse, non avrei dovuto venire qui. Se noi stessi non fossimo in confusione tra di noi, non sarei stato frainteso dai miei compagni tessitori e fratelli di lavoro. Se il signor Bounderby mi avesse mai conosciuto bene - se mi avesse mai veramente conosciuto - non si sarebbe offeso con me. Non mi avrebbe sospettato. Ma guarda lassù, Rachael! Guarda in alto!»
Seguendo il suo sguardo, vide che stava fissando una stella.
[Illustrazione: Stephen Blackpool recuperato dal vecchio pozzo dell’Inferno]
«Ha brillato su di me», disse con riverenza, «nei miei dolori e nelle mie difficoltà laggiù. Ha illuminato la mia mente. L’ho guardata e ho pensato a te, Rachael, finché il groviglio nella mia testa si è un po’ diradato, lo spero. Se qualcuno ha mancato nel capirmi meglio, anche io ho mancato nel capirli meglio. Quando ho ricevuto la tua lettera, ho facilmente creduto che ciò che la giovane signora mi aveva mandato e fatto, e ciò che suo fratello mi aveva mandato e fatto, fossero una cosa sola, e che tra loro ci fosse un malvagio complotto. Quando sono caduto, ero arrabbiato con lei e stavo per essere tanto ingiusto verso di lei quanto gli altri lo erano stati verso di me. Ma nei nostri giudizi, come nelle nostre azioni, dobbiamo sopportare e tollerare. Nei miei dolori e nelle mie difficoltà, guardando lassù, con quella luce che brillava su di me, ho visto più chiaramente e ho fatto della mia ultima preghiera che tutto il mondo possa solo unirsi maggiormente e ottenere una migliore comprensione reciproca, rispetto a quando ero io stesso nella mia debole persona.»
Quando Louisa udì ciò che disse, si chinò su di lui dal lato opposto a quello di Rachael, in modo da farsi vedere.
«Avete sentito?» disse dopo alcuni momenti di silenzio. «Non vi ho dimenticata, signora.»
«Sì, Stephen, ti ho sentito. E la tua preghiera è anche mia».
“Hai un padre. Vuoi portargli un messaggio?”
‘È qui’, disse Louisa con timore. ‘Lo devo portare da voi?’
‘Vecchia mia.’
Ritornò Louisa con suo padre. In piedi mano nella mano, guardarono entrambi il volto solenne.
‘La prego, mi scagioni e faccia in modo che il mio nome sia rispettato da tutti gli uomini. Questo le chiedo.’
Il signor Gradgrind era turbato e chiese come?
«Signore», fu la risposta: «vostro figlio vi dirà come. Chiedeteglielo. Non faccio accuse, non lascio nulla dietro di me, neanche una parola. Ho visto e parlato con vostro figlio, una notte. Non chiedo altro da voi se non che mi scagioniate - e confido in voi per farlo».
I portatori erano ora pronti a trasportarlo e il chirurgo era ansioso di rimuoverlo; coloro che avevano torce o lanterne si prepararono ad andare davanti alla barella. Prima che venisse sollevata, mentre stavano decidendo come procedere, egli disse a Rachael, guardando verso l’alto la stella:
«Spesso quando tornavo in me e la vedevo brillare su di me laggiù nella mia angoscia, pensavo che fosse la stella che guidò alla casa del nostro Salvatore. Sono quasi certo che sia proprio quella stessa stella!»
Lo sollevarono e fu felicissimo di scoprire che lo stavano portando nella direzione verso cui la stella sembrava guidarlo.
«Rachael, mia cara ragazza! Non lasciare la mia mano. Possiamo camminare insieme stanotte, tesoro mio!»
‘Ti terrò per mano e starò al tuo fianco, Stephen, tutto il tempo.’
‘Per favore, qualcuno copri il mio viso!’
Lo portarono molto dolcemente attraverso i campi e giù per le strade, oltre il vasto paesaggio; Rachael sempre tenendogli la mano nella sua. Pochissimi sussurri rompevano il luttuoso silenzio. Presto divenne una processione funebre. La stella gli aveva mostrato dove trovare il Dio dei poveri; e attraverso umiltà, e dolore, e perdono, era andato al riposo del suo Redentore.
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
CAPITOLO VII LA CACCIA AI GIOVANI CANI
PRIMA che il circolo formato intorno al vecchio pozzo dell’inferno si rompesse, una figura era scomparsa dal suo interno. Il signor Bounderby e la sua ombra non erano rimasti vicino a Louisa, che teneva il braccio di suo padre, ma in un luogo appartato da soli. Quando il signor Gradgrind fu chiamato al letto, Sissy, attenta a tutto ciò che accadeva, si mise furtivamente dietro quella malvagia ombra — uno spettacolo nell’orrore del suo volto, se ci fossero stati occhi capaci di vedere qualcosa oltre a quell’unica cosa — e gli sussurrò all’orecchio. Senza voltare la testa, lui le parlò per qualche istante e poi sparì. Così il cucciolo era uscito dal circolo prima che la gente si muovesse.
Quando il padre arrivò a casa, inviò un messaggio a Mr. Bounderby, pregandolo di mandargli subito suo figlio. La risposta fu che Mr. Bounderby, non avendolo visto nella folla e non avendone più notizie da allora, aveva supposto che fosse alla Stone Lodge.
«Credo, padre», disse Louisa, «che non tornerà in città stasera». Il signor Gradgrind si allontanò e non aggiunse altro.
La mattina scese alla Banca non appena aprì e, vedendo il posto di suo figlio vuoto (non aveva avuto lo coraggio di guardare subito dentro), tornò indietro per la strada per incontrare Mr. Bounderby che stava arrivando. A lui disse che, per motivi che gli avrebbe spiegato presto ma che non voleva essere costretto a rivelare in quel momento, aveva trovato necessario impiegare suo figlio lontano da lì per un po’. Aggiunse anche che era incaricato di difendere la memoria di Stephen Blackpool e di identificare il ladro. Mr. Bounderby, completamente sconcertato, rimase immobile in mezzo alla strada dopo che suocero lo aveva lasciato, gonfiandosi come una enorme bolla di sapone senza la sua bellezza.
Il signor Gradgrind tornò a casa, si chiuse nella sua stanza e vi rimase tutto il giorno. Quando Sissy e Louisa bussarono alla porta, disse senza aprirla: «Non adesso, mie care; stasera». Al loro ritorno la sera, disse: «Ancora non sono in grado—domani». Non mangiò nulla per tutto il giorno e dopo il buio non accese alcuna candela; e lo sentirono camminare avanti e indietro tardi a notte.
Ma la mattina apparve a colazione all’ora solita e prese il suo posto abituale al tavolo. Sembrava vecchio e curvo, completamente abbattuto; eppure sembrava un uomo più saggio e migliore di quando in questa vita non desiderava altro che i Fatti. Prima di lasciare la stanza, fissò un momento per riceverli; e così, con il capo grigio chino, se ne andò.
«Caro padre», disse Louisa quando si incontrarono per l’appuntamento, «le sono rimasti tre bambini piccoli. Saranno diversi, e sarò diversa anch’io, con l’aiuto del Cielo».
Lei diede la mano a Sissy, come se intendesse anche con il suo aiuto.
«Il vostro povero fratello», disse il signor Gradgrind, «pensate che avesse progettato questo furto quando è venuto con voi all’alloggio?»
«Lo temo, padre. So che desiderava molto dei soldi e ne aveva spesi parecchi».
«Il poveraccio stava per lasciare la città e allora gli venne in mente quella idea malvagia di far cadere i sospetti su di lui?»
«Penso che gli sia balenato in mente mentre sedeva lì, padre. Perché sono stato io a chiedergli di venire con me. La visita non è partita da lui».
‘Ebbero una conversazione con l’uomo povero. Lo prese da parte?’
«Lo ha portato fuori dalla stanza. Gli ho chiesto dopo perché l’avesse fatto e lui ha addotto una scusa plausibile; ma da ieri sera, padre, e quando ricordo le circostanze alla sua luce, temo di poter immaginare troppo verosimilmente cosa sia accaduto tra loro.»
«Fammi sapere», disse suo padre, «se i tuoi pensieri ti mostrano tuo fratello colpevole nella stessa luce oscura che vedo io.»
«Temo, padre», esitò Louisa, «che egli debba aver fatto qualche rappresentazione a Stephen Blackpool—forse in mio nome, forse nel suo proprio—che lo indusse ad agire con buona fede e onestà, cosa che non aveva mai fatto prima, e ad aspettare nei pressi della Banca per quelle due o tre notti prima di lasciare la città.»
“Troppo semplice!” rispose il padre. “Troppo semplice!”
Si coprì il volto e rimase in silenzio per alcuni istanti. Riprendendosi, disse:
«E ora, come possiamo trovarlo? Come possiamo salvarlo dalla giustizia? Nelle poche ore che posso concedere prima di pubblicare la verità, come possiamo trovarlo noi e solo noi? Diecimila sterline non basterebbero.»
‘Sissy ce l’ha fatta, papà.’
Alzò gli occhi verso dove lei stava, come una buona fata nella sua casa, e disse con un tono di gratitudine dolce e gentile riconoscenza: «Sei sempre tu, mia figlia!»
«Avevamo le nostre paure», spiegò Sissy, lanciando un’occhiata a Louisa, «prima di ieri; e quando ti ho visto portare al fianco della lettiga la scorsa notte, e ho sentito ciò che è accaduto (essendo vicino a Rachael tutto il tempo), sono andata da lui quando nessuno mi vedeva, e gli ho detto: “Non guardarmi. Vedi dove è tuo padre. Fuggi subito, per il suo bene e per il tuo!” Era già in trepidazione prima che gli sussurrassi queste parole, e poi si è spaventato ancora di più e ha tremato, dicendo: “Dove posso andare? Ho pochissimi soldi, e non so chi mi nasconderà!” Mi sono ricordata del vecchio circo di mio padre. Non ho dimenticato dove va il signor Sleary in questo periodo dell’anno, e l’ho visto su un giornale proprio l’altro giorno. Gli ho detto di andare subito là, dire il suo nome e chiedere al signor Sleary di nasconderlo finché non fossi arrivata io. “Arriverò da lui prima del mattino”, ha detto. E l’ho visto allontanarsi tra la folla».
‘Grazie al cielo!’ esclamò suo padre. ‘Potrebbe ancora essere all’estero.’
Era ancora più incoraggiante il fatto che la città verso cui Sissy lo aveva indirizzato si trovasse a tre ore di viaggio da Liverpool, da dove poteva essere rapidamente inviato in qualsiasi parte del mondo. Ma era necessaria cautela nel comunicare con lui, perché il pericolo che venisse sospettato aumentava ad ogni momento e nessuno poteva escludere a priori che lo stesso Mr. Bounderby, in un accesso di zelo pubblico da prepotente, potesse fare la parte del romano.
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 the stones of the street. Sissy recommended that, to avoid making inquiries and attracting attention in the town, they should present themselves to pay at the door. If Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he would be sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion. If he were not, he would be sure to see them inside; and, knowing what he had done with the fugitive, would proceed with discretion still.
Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-remembered booth. The flag with the inscription SLEARY’S HORSE-RIDING was there; and the Gothic niche was there; but Mr. Sleary was not there. Master Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the exchequer—having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous forces. In the extreme sharpness of his look out for base coin, Mr. Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw anything but money; so Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.
The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though well acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act, was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her in.
Mr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash, and the Clown had only said, ‘If you do it again, I’ll throw the horse at you!’ when Sissy was recognised both by father and daughter. But they got through the Act with great self-possession; and Mr. Sleary, saving for the first instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive eye than into his fixed one. The performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling Mr. Sleary (who said ‘Indeed, sir!’ to all his observations in the calmest way, and with his eye on the house) about two legs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw ’em at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, ‘Now I’ll have a turn!’ when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.
She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr. Sleary in a very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation, as if they were coming through. ‘Thethilia,’ said Mr. Sleary, who had brandy and water at hand, ‘it doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth a favourite with uth, and you’ve done uth credith thinth the old timeth I’m thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, or they’ll break their hearth—ethpethially the women. Here’th Jothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, and though he’th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any pony you can bring againtht him. He’th named The Little Wonder of Thcolathtic Equitation; and if you don’t hear of that boy at Athley’th, you’ll hear of him at Parith. And you recollect Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather thweet upon yourthelf? Well. He’th married too. Married a widder. Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, thee wath, and now thee’th nothing—on accounth of fat. They’ve got two children, tho we’re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their father and mother both a dyin’ on a horthe—their uncle a retheiving of ’em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe—themthelvth both a goin’ a black-berryin’ on a horthe—and the Robinth a coming in to cover ’em with leavth, upon a horthe—you’d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever you thet your eyeth on! And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath wath a’motht a mother to you? Of courthe you do; I needn’t athk. Well! Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw’d a heavy back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and he never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond time—married a Cheethemonger ath fell in love with her from the front—and he’th a Overtheer and makin’ a fortun.’
parte—si convenne che Sissy e Louisa si recassero al luogo in questione, per un percorso indiretto, sole; e che il povero padre, partendo in direzione opposta, raggiungesse la stessa meta con un’altra rotta più ampia. Si concordò inoltre che non si sarebbe presentato a Mr. Sleary, per timore che le sue intenzioni venissero sospettate o che la notizia del suo arrivo facesse fuggire di nuovo il figlio; ma che la comunicazione fosse lasciata a Sissy e Louisa da iniziare; e che esse informassero la causa di tanta miseria e disonore dell’arrivo del padre e dello scopo per cui erano venute. Quando questi accordi furono bene considerati e compresi pienamente da tutti e tre, era ora di iniziare a metterli in esecuzione. All’inizio del pomeriggio, Mr. Gradgrind camminò direttamente dalla sua casa verso la campagna, per essere prelevato sulla linea che avrebbe dovuto seguire; e alla notte le due rimanenti si misero in viaggio su percorsi diversi, incoraggiate dal non vedere nessun volto conosciuto.
I due viaggiatori percorsero tutta la notte, tranne quando venivano lasciati, per strani numeri di minuti, alle fermate secondarie, su interminabili scalinate o giù in pozzi — che era l’unica varietà di quelle diramazioni — e, all’inizio del mattino, furono scaricati su una palude, a un miglio o due dalla città che cercavano. Da questo squallido luogo vennero soccorsi da un vecchio postiglione selvaggio, che per caso si era alzato presto e stava dando calci a un cavallo in una carrozza: così furono fatti entrare di nascosto in città attraverso tutti i vicoli posteriori dove vivevano i maiali: il che, sebbene non fosse un approccio magnifico o anche solo gradevole, era, come è solito in tali casi, la strada principale legittima.
La prima cosa che videro entrando in città fu lo scheletro del circo di Sleary. La compagnia era partita per un’altra città a più di venti miglia di distanza e vi si era esibita la sera precedente. La strada tra i due luoghi era una tortuosa strada di montagna, e il viaggio su quella strada era molto lento. Anche se fecero solo una colazione veloce e non riposarono (cosa che sarebbe stato inutile cercare in circostanze così angoscianti), fu mezzogiorno prima che cominciassero a trovare i manifesti del circo di Sleary sui fienili e sui muri, ed erano le tre quando si fermarono sulla piazza del mercato.
Un Grandioso Spettacolo Matutino dei Cavalieri, che iniziava proprio a quell’ora, veniva annunciato dal banditore mentre posavano i piedi sulle pietre della strada. Sissy consigliò di presentarsi direttamente al botteghino per pagare l’ingresso per evitare domande e attirare l’attenzione in città. Se il signor Sleary stava incassando i soldi, di certo la avrebbe riconosciuta, e si sarebbe comportato con discrezione. Se non fosse stato lui, di sicuro li avrebbe visti entrare; e sapendo cosa aveva fatto con la fuggitiva, si sarebbe comunque comportato con discrezione.
Pertanto, con il cuore in gola, si diressero verso la fontana ben nota. La bandiera con l’iscrizione SLEARY’S HORSE-RIDING era ancora al suo posto; e c’era anche il nicchio gotico; ma Mr. Sleary non c’era. Master Kidderminster, diventato troppo maturamente erboso per essere accolto dalla più selvaggia credulità come Cupido, aveva ceduto alla forza invincibile delle circostanze (e della sua barba), e, nella veste di uomo che si rendeva utile in generale, presiedeva in questa occasione al tesoro—avendo anche un tamburo di riserva su cui spendere i suoi momenti liberi e le sue forze superflue. Nella sua estrema attenzione nel cercare monete di basso valore, Mr. Kidderminster, nella sua attuale posizione, non vedeva altro che denaro; così Sissy lo oltrepassò senza essere riconosciuta, ed entrarono.
L’imperatore del Giappone, su un vecchio e stabile cavallo bianco con macchie nere dipinte, stava facendo girare cinque bacinelle per lavarsi le mani tutte insieme, poiché è questo il passatempo preferito di quel monarca. Sissy, sebbene fosse bene informata sulla sua linea reale, non aveva conoscenza personale dell’attuale imperatore e il suo regno era pacifico. La signorina Josephine Sleary, nel suo celebre e grazioso Atto Floreale Tirolese Equestre, fu annunciata allora da un nuovo pagliaccio (che disse umoristicamente “Atto di Cavolfiore”), e apparve il signor Sleary che la conduceva dentro.
Il signor Sleary aveva fatto solo un colpo al Pagliaccio con la lunga frusta, e il Pagliaccio aveva detto solo: «Se lo fai ancora, ti lancio addosso il cavallo!» quando Sissy fu riconosciuta sia dal padre che dalla figlia. Ma portarono a termine l’atto con grande autocontrollo; e il signor Sleary, tranne per il primo istante, non trasmetteva più espressione nel suo occhio mobile di quanto ne trasmettesse in quello fisso. La rappresentazione sembrò un po’ lunga a Sissy e Louisa, specialmente quando si interrompeva per dare al Pagliaccio l’opportunità di raccontare al signor Sleary (che diceva «Davvero, signore!» a tutte le sue osservazioni nel modo più calmo, con lo sguardo sulla platea) la storia di due gambe sedute su tre gambe che guardano una gamba, quando entrano quattro gambe e afferrano una gamba, e allora si alzano due gambe, prendono tre gambe e le lanciano contro quattro gambe, che scappano con una gamba. Perché, sebbene fosse un’ingegnosa allegoria relativa a un macellaio, uno sgabello a tre gambe, un cane e una coscia di montone, questo racconto consumava tempo; ed erano in grande suspense. Alla fine, però, la piccola Josephine dai capelli chiari fece il suo inchino tra grandi applausi; e il Pagliaccio, rimasto solo nell’arena, si era appena scaldato e aveva detto: «Ora io mi faccio una bella risata!» quando Sissy fu toccata sulla spalla e chiamata fuori.
La signorina Louisa l’accompagnò; e furono ricevute dal signor Sleary in un piccolo locale privato, con pareti di tela, pavimento erboso e soffitto di legno inclinato su cui la compagnia della scatola batteva i piedi per approvarli, come se stessero passando. «Signorina», disse il signor Sleary, che aveva a portata di mano brandy e acqua, «mi fa piacere vederla. È sempre stata una delle nostre preferite, e da quando eravamo piccoli ha fatto molto per noi, ne sono sicuro. Deve vedere la nostra gente, mia cara, prima che parliamo di affari, altrimenti si spezzeranno il cuore—soprattutto le donne. Ecco, Josephine si è sposata con E. W. B. Childers e ha avuto un bambino; anche se ha solo tre anni, si aggrappa a qualsiasi pony gli mettiate davanti. Si chiama Il Piccolo Meraviglia dell’Equitazione Scalcinata; e se non sentirete parlare di quel ragazzo ad Ascot, lo sentirete a Parigi. E ricorda Kidderminster, che si diceva fosse piuttosto preso da lei? Beh. Anche lui si è sposato. Ha sposato una vedova. Abbastanza grande da poter essere sua madre. Lei era la Funambola, lo era, e ora non fa più nulla—per via del grasso. Hanno due figli, anche se noi siamo forti nel settore delle fate e nella truffa della nursery. Se volesse vedere i Nostri Bambini nel Bosco, con il padre e la madre che muoiono entrambi su un cavallo—lo zio che li riceve come suoi pupilli su un cavallo—loro stessi che vanno a raccogliere more su un cavallo—e i Robinetti che arrivano per coprirli con le foglie, su un cavallo—direbbe che è la cosa più completa che abbia mai visto! E ricorda Emma Gordon, mia cara, che era quasi una madre per lei? Certo che si; non c’è bisogno di chiedere. Beh! Emma, ha perso suo marito. Fu buttato giù da un pesante colpo all’indietro da un Elefante in una specie di Pagoda del Sultano delle Indie, e non se ne riprese mai; e si risposò—sposò un Macellaio che s’era innamorato di lei dal primo momento—e lui è un Impresario ed sta facendo fortuna.
These various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now, related with great heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was. Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the jaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa’s eyes, so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.
‘There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!’
As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. ‘Now, Thethilia, I don’t athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith to be Mith Thquire.’
‘This is his sister. Yes.’
‘And t’other on’th daughter. That’h what I mean. Hope I thee you well, mith. And I hope the Thquire’th well?’
‘My father will be here soon,’ said Louisa, anxious to bring him to the point. ‘Is my brother safe?’
‘Thafe and thound!’ he replied. ‘I want you jutht to take a peep at the Ring, mith, through here. Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a thpy-hole for yourthelf.’
They each looked through a chink in the boards.
‘That’h Jack the Giant Killer—piethe of comic infant bithnith,’ said Sleary. ‘There’th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in; there’th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a thpit, for Jack’th thervant; there’th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour; there’th two comic black thervanth twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), he an’t on yet. Now, do you thee ’em all?’
‘Yes,’ they both said.
‘Look at ’em again,’ said Sleary, ‘look at ’em well. You thee em all? Very good. Now, mith;’ he put a form for them to sit on; ‘I have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith. I don’t want to know what your brother’th been up to; ith better for me not to know. All I thay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. Your brother ith one them black thervanth.’
Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of satisfaction.
‘Ith a fact,’ said Sleary, ‘and even knowin’ it, you couldn’t put your finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep your brother here after the performanth. I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he’th well hid.’
Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr. Sleary no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the afternoon.
Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had encountered no one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary’s assistance, of getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night. As neither of the three could be his companion without almost identifying him under any disguise, he prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and privately dispatched.
This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated; not only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses. After watching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary bring out a chair and sit down by the side-door, smoking; as if that were his signal that they might approach.
‘Your thervant, Thquire,’ was his cautious salutation as they passed in. ‘If you want me you’ll find me here. You muthn’t mind your thon having a comic livery on.’
They all three went in; and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the Clown’s performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place, sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to call his son.
In a preposterous coat, like a beadle’s, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth-eaten and full of holes; with seams in his black face, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition daubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other means have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And one of his model children had come to this!
At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly made can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Sissy—for Louisa he disowned altogether—he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits from where his father sat.
‘How was this done?’ asked the father.
‘How was what done?’ moodily answered the son.
‘This robbery,’ said the father, raising his voice upon the word.
‘I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went away. I had had the key that was found, made long before. I dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn’t take the money all at once. I pretended to put my balance away every night, but I didn’t. Now you know all about it.’
Questi vari cambiamenti, che il signor Sleary, ormai molto affannato, raccontò con grande cordialità e con una straordinaria sorta di innocenza, considerando quale vecchio veterano annebbiato e alcolizzato fosse. In seguito fece entrare Josephine ed E. W. B. Childers (che alla luce del giorno mostrava piuttosto profonde rughe sulle guance), la Piccola Meraviglia dell’Equitazione Scolastica, e in una parola tutta la compagnia. Erano creature straordinarie agli occhi di Louisa, così bianche e rosa nel colorito, così scarse di abbigliamento e così dimostrative nelle gambe; ma era molto piacevole vederle accalcarsi intorno a Sissy, ed era del tutto naturale che Sissy non potesse trattenere le lacrime.
«Ecco fatto! Ora che Thethilia ha baciato tutti i bambini e abbracciato tutte le donne e stretto la mano a tutti gli uomini, allontanatevi, ognuno di voi, e formate il cerchio per la seconda parte!»
Non appena se ne furono andati, continuò sottovoce: «Ora, Thethilia, non athko di voler conoscere alcun thecreto, ma immagino che possa considerare questo come Miss Thquire».
‘Questa è sua sorella. Sì.’
«E l’altra è la figlia. È questo che intendo. Spero di vederti bene, signore. E spero che il Signorotto stia bene?»
«Mio padre sarà qui presto», disse Louisa, ansiosa di portarlo al dunque. «Mio fratello è al sicuro?»
«Zitto e zitto!» rispose lui. «Voglio solo che date un’occhiata all’Anello, signorina, da qui. Settimia, tu conosci i trucchi; trova una spioniera per te stessa».
Ognuno guardò attraverso una fessura tra le tavole.
«Quello è Jack lo Sterminatore di Giganti — un pezzo per bambini comici», disse Sleary. «C’è una casetta di scena, vedi, dove Jack si nasconde; c’è il mio Clown con un coperchio di padella e uno spiedo, che fa da servo a Jack; c’è lo stesso piccolo Jack in splendida armatura; ci sono due servitori comici neri alti come la casa, per stare accanto alla casetta e portarla dentro e toglierla di mezzo; e il Gigante (un gigantesco cesto) non è ancora entrato. Ora, li vedi tutti?»
«Sì», dissero entrambi.
«Guardateli di nuovo», disse Sleary, «guardateli bene. Li vedete tutti? Benissimo. Ora, mith;» mise una panca su cui sedersi; «ho le mie opinioni e il Thquire vostro padre ha le hie. Non voglio sapere cosa abbia fatto vostro fratello; è meglio per me non saperlo. Tutto quello che dico è che il Thquire è stato fedele a Thethilia, e io sarò fedele al Thquire. Vostro fratello è uno di quei servitori neri».
Luisa emise un’esclamazione, in parte di dolore e in parte di soddisfazione.
«È un fatto», disse Sleary, «e anche sapendolo non riuscireste a individuarlo. Lasciate che venga il Cavaliere. Io terrò qui vostro fratello dopo lo spettacolo. Non ho bisogno di capirlo né di vedere il suo trucco. Fatelo venire qui dopo lo spettacolo, o venite voi stessa dopo lo spettacolo, e troverete vostro fratello, avrete tutto il tempo per parlargli. Non preoccupatevi del suo aspetto, purché sia bene nascosto».
Louisa, con molti ringraziamenti e con un peso alleggerito, non trattenne più a lungo il signor Sleary. Le lasciò l’amore per suo fratello, con gli occhi pieni di lacrime; e lei e Sissy se ne andarono fino al tardo pomeriggio.
Il signor Gradgrind arrivò un’ora dopo. Anche lui non aveva incontrato nessuno che conoscesse; e ora, grazie all’aiuto di Sleary, era ottimista sulla possibilità di portare suo figlio screditato a Liverpool quella sera. Poiché nessuno dei tre poteva essere il suo compagno senza quasi identificarlo sotto qualsiasi travestimento, preparò una lettera a un corrispondente in cui aveva fiducia, supplicandolo di imbarcare il portatore a tutti i costi verso il Nord o il Sud America, o qualsiasi parte lontana del mondo dove potesse essere inviato con la massima rapidità e riservatezza.
Fatto ciò, si misero a camminare avanti e indietro in attesa che il circo fosse completamente svuotato; non solo dal pubblico ma anche dalla compagnia e dai cavalli. Dopo averlo osservato per un bel po’, videro il signor Sleary portare fuori una sedia e sedersi accanto alla porta laterale, fumando; come se questo fosse il segnale che potevano avvicinarsi.
«Il vostro servitore, signor cavaliere», fu il suo cauto saluto mentre entravano. «Se mi cercate, mi troverete qui. Non dovete preoccuparvi se vostro figlio indossa una livrea buffa».
Entrarono tutti e tre; e il signor Gradgrind si sedette abbandonato sulla sedia del pagliaccio nel mezzo dell’arena. Su una delle panche posteriori, lontano nella fioca luce e nell’inconsueta atmosfera del luogo, era seduto quel piccolo mascalzone malvagio, ostinatamente cupo fino all’ultimo, che aveva la sventura di chiamare suo figlio.
Con un ridicolo cappotto da sagrestano, con polsini e tasche esagerati al massimo grado; con un immenso panciotto, brache alla zuava, scarpe con fibbie e un pazzo cappello a tricorno; senza che nulla gli calzasse, e tutto fatto di materiale scadente, mangiato dalle tarme e pieno di buchi; con delle linee sul suo viso nero, dove la paura e il calore erano trapelati attraverso la grassa maschera che lo ricopriva tutto; nulla di così orribilmente, detestabilmente, ridicolamente vergognoso come quel cucciolo nella sua livrea comica poteva essere creduto da Mr. Gradgrind con qualsiasi altro mezzo, anche se era un fatto ponderabile e misurabile. E uno dei suoi bambini modello era arrivato a questo!
All’inizio il cucciolo non si avvicinava e insisteva nel rimanere lassù da solo. Cedendo infine, se una concessione fatta con tale riluttanza può essere chiamata cedimento, alle preghiere di Sissy — poiché negava del tutto Louisa — scese gradino per gradino finché non si trovò nella segatura, sul bordo del cerchio, il più lontano possibile, entro i suoi limiti, da dove sedeva suo padre.
«Come è stato fatto?» chiese il padre.
«Come è stato fatto?» rispose malvolentieri il figlio.
«Questo furto», disse il padre, alzando la voce sulla parola.
«Ho forzato la cassaforte io stesso durante la notte e l’ho lasciata socchiusa prima di andarmene. Avevo fatto fare da tempo quella chiave che è stata trovata. L’ho fatta cadere quel mattino, in modo che si potesse supporre fosse stata usata. Non ho preso i soldi tutti insieme. Fingevo di riporre il mio denaro ogni sera, ma non lo facevo. Ora sapete tutto».
‘If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,’ said the father, ‘it would have shocked me less than this!’
‘I don’t see why,’ grumbled the son. ‘So many people are employed in situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. How can I help laws? You have comforted others with such things, father. Comfort yourself!’
The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw: his hands, with the black partly worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. The evening was fast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was so thick.
‘You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.’
‘I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,’ whimpered the whelp, ‘than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That’s one thing.’
Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?
‘Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth time to lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail. There’th a coath in half an hour, that goeth to the rail, ‘purpothe to cath the mail train. That train will take him right to Liverpool.’
‘But look at him,’ groaned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Will any coach—’
‘I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,’ said Sleary. ‘Thay the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five minutes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. There’ll be beer to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic blackamoor.’
Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box, a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again.
‘Now,’ said Sleary, ‘come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.’ With which he delicately retired.
‘Here is your letter,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘All necessary means will be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do!’
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
‘Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!’
‘O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!’
‘After all your love!’ he returned, obdurately. ‘Pretty love! Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me.’
‘Tharp’th the word!’ said Sleary, at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.
‘I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,’ said Bitzer, shaking his head, ‘but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him!’
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.
«Se un fulmine fosse caduto su di me», disse il padre, «mi avrebbe scosso meno di questo!»
«Non vedo perché», brontolò il figlio. «Tante persone sono impiegate in posti di fiducia; tante persone, tra tante altre, saranno disoneste. Vi ho sentito parlare centinaia di volte del fatto che è una legge. Come posso io aiutare le leggi? Avete consolato altri con queste cose, padre. Consolatevi!»
Il padre si nascose il viso tra le mani e il figlio rimase in piedi nella sua disgustosa goffaggine a masticare paglia: le sue mani, con la pelle interna parzialmente consumata dal nero, sembravano quelle di una scimmia. La sera stava calando rapidamente; e di tanto in tanto, egli rivolgeva il bianco degli occhi verso suo padre con irrequieta impazienza. Erano le uniche parti del viso che mostravano vita o espressione, tanto era spesso lo strato di pigmento su di esso.
‘Devi essere portato a Liverpool e mandato all’estero.’
«Suppongo che debba farlo. Non potrei essere più infelice in nessun altro posto», piagnucolò il cucciolo, «di quanto non sia stato qui da quando ho memoria. Questo è un punto a mio favore».
Il signor Gradgrind si recò alla porta e tornò con Sleary, al quale sottopose la domanda: Come fare a liberarsi di questo deplorevole individuo?
«Perché ci ho pensato io, Thquire. Non c’è molto tempo da perdere, quindi devi dire sì o no. Sono più di venti miglia fino alla stazione ferroviaria. C’è un treno tra mezz’ora che va alla stazione per prendere il treno postale. Quel treno lo porterà dritto a Liverpool».
‘Guardatelo’, gemette il signor Gradgrind, ‘ci sarà un allenatore, ’
«Non intendo dire che dovrebbe indossare la livrea da pagliaccio», disse Sleary. «Dica la parola e lo trasformerò in un Jothkin con i costumi dell’armadio in cinque minuti».
«Non capisco», disse il signor Gradgrind.
«Un Jothkin — un carrettiere. Deciditi in fretta, signorino. Ci sarà da andare a prendere la birra. Non ho mai visto niente che pulisca meglio di una birra un negro comico».
Il signor Gradgrind acconsentì rapidamente; il signor Sleary tirò fuori in un baleno da una scatola una giacca di tela grezza, un cappello di feltro e altri indumenti essenziali; il cucciolo si cambiò velocemente dietro uno schermo di baeta; il signor Sleary portò rapidamente della birra e lo lavò fino a renderlo bianco come prima.
«Ora», disse Sleary «venite al calesse e salite dietro; vi accompagno io fino là, e penseranno che siete una delle mie persone. Salutate la vostra famiglia e partite subito». E con queste parole si ritirò delicatamente.
«Ecco la tua lettera», disse il signor Gradgrind. «Ti verranno forniti tutti i mezzi necessari. Espia con pentimento e condotta migliore l’azione scandalosa che hai commesso e le terribili conseguenze a cui ha portato. Dammi la mano, povero ragazzo mio, e possa Dio perdonarti come faccio io!»
Il colpevole fu mosso a qualche misero pianto da queste parole e dal loro tono patetico. Ma quando Louisa aprì le braccia, lui la respinse di nuovo.
‘Non tu! Non voglio avere nulla da dire con te!’
«Oh, Tom, Tom, finisce così, dopo tutto il mio amore!»
«Dopo tutto il tuo amore!» replicò ostinato. «Bell’amore davvero! Lasciare solo quel vecchio Bounderby, spedire via mio migliore amico, Mr Harthouse, e andartene a casa proprio quando ero in pericolo mortale. Bell’amore questo! Rivelare ogni cosa sul fatto che eravamo stati in quel posto, quando hai visto che la rete si stringeva intorno a me. Bell’amore davvero! Mi hai abbandonato senza mezzi termini. Non ti sei mai curata di me».
«È la parola giusta!» disse Sleary sulla porta.
Uscirono tutti confusamente: Louisa piangeva e gli diceva che lo perdonava, e che ancora lo amava, e che un giorno si sarebbe pentito di averla lasciata così, e sarebbe stato felice di ricordare queste sue ultime parole, lontano: quando qualcuno andò a sbattere contro di loro. Il signor Gradgrind e Sissy, che erano entrambi davanti a lui mentre sua sorella ancora gli si aggrappava alla spalla, si fermarono e indietreggiarono.
Infatti c’era Bitzer, senza fiato, le labbra sottili aperte, le narici strette dilatate, le ciglia bianche tremolanti, il volto incolore più incolore che mai, come se si fosse messo a correre fino ad arroventarsi, mentre gli altri correvano solo per riscaldarsi. Lì stava, ansimante e affannato, come se non avesse mai smesso di correre dalla notte, ormai lontana, in cui li aveva già messi alle strette.
«Mi dispiace interferire con i suoi piani», disse Bitzer scuotendo la testa, «ma non posso permettere che mi si faccia del male da parte di cavallerizzi. Devo avere il giovane signor Tom; non deve essere portato via dai cavallerizzi; eccolo qui in un grembiule, e devo averlo!»
Anche per il colletto, sembrava. Perché così se ne impossessò.
CHAPTER VIII PHILOSOPHICAL
THEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the twilight.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate influence?’
‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man. ‘And to nothing else.’
They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind’s face as white as the pursuer’s.
‘What motive—even what motive in reason—can you have for preventing the escape of this wretched youth,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘and crushing his miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!’
‘Sir,’ returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner, ‘since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own confession, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am going to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.’
‘If this is solely a question of self-interest with you—’ Mr. Gradgrind began.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are aware.’
‘What sum of money,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘will you set against your expected promotion?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Bitzer, ‘for hinting at the proposal; but I will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would propose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind; and I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would have said, See how miserable I am! ‘Bitzer, I have but one chance left to soften you. You were many years at my school. If, in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.’
‘I really wonder, sir,’ rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, ‘to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.’
It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
‘I don’t deny,’ added Bitzer, ‘that my schooling was cheap. But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose of myself in the dearest.’
He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.
‘Pray don’t do that,’ said he, ‘it’s of no use doing that: it only worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr. Tom; whereas I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief! But, he won’t resist, you may depend upon it.’
Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward.
‘Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn’t know what your thon had done, and that I didn’t want to know—I thed it wath better not, though I only thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking. However, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank, why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it. Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I take thith young man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th no help for it. But I tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll drive your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do more, but I’ll do that.’
Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr. Gradgrind’s part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy glanced at him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind. As he locked the door, he said excitedly:
CAPITOLO VIII
FILOSOFICO
Rientrarono nella baracca, Sleary chiuse la porta per tenere lontani gli intrusi. Bitzer, continuando a trattenere il colpevole paralizzato per il bavero, rimase in piedi nel recinto, sbattendo le palpebre verso il suo vecchio protettore attraverso l’oscurità del crepuscolo.
«Bitzer», disse il signor Gradgrind, abbattuto e umilmente sottomesso a lui, «hai un cuore?»
«La circolazione, signore», rispose Bitzer con un sorriso per la stranezza della domanda, «non potrebbe avvenire senza di essa. Nessun uomo, signore, che conosca i fatti stabiliti da Harvey riguardanti la circolazione del sangue, può dubitare che io abbia un cuore».
‘È accessibile’, gridò il signor Gradgrind, ‘a qualche influenza compassionevole?’
«È accessibile alla Ragione, signore», rispose il giovane esemplare. «E a nient’altro».
Si guardarono l’un l’altro; il volto di Mr. Gradgrind era bianco come quello del perseguitore.
«Quale motivo — anche quale motivo ragionevole — può spingervi a impedire la fuga di questo povero giovane», disse il signor Gradgrind, «e a schiacciare suo padre infelice? Guardate sua sorella qui. Abbiate pietà di noi!»
«Signore», rispose Bitzer in modo molto pratico e logico, «poiché mi chiede quale motivo io abbia di ragione per riportare il giovane signor Tom a Coketown, è solo giusto che lei lo sappia. Ho sospettato del giovane signor Tom questo furto in banca fin dall’inizio. Lo avevo tenuto d’occhio già prima di quel tempo, perché conoscevo i suoi modi. Ho tenuto per me le mie osservazioni, ma le ho fatte; e ora ho prove abbondanti contro di lui, oltre alla sua fuga e oltre la sua stessa confessione, che sono riuscito appena in tempo a sentire. Ieri mattina ho avuto il piacere di sorvegliare la sua casa e seguirla qui. Intendo riportare il giovane signor Tom a Coketown, per consegnarlo al signor Bounderby. Signore, non ho alcun dubbio che il signor Bounderby mi promuoverà allora alla posizione del giovane signor Tom. E desidero avere la sua posizione, signore, perché per me sarà un passo avanti e mi farà bene».
«Se per lei si tratta esclusivamente di un problema di interesse personale —» cominciò il signor Gradgrind.
«Chiedo scusa per averla interrotta, signore», rispose Bitzer; «ma sono sicuro che lei sa che l’intero sistema sociale è una questione di interesse personale. A ciò a cui deve sempre fare appello è all’interesse personale di una persona. È il suo unico punto d’appoggio. Siamo fatti così. Sono stato educato in quel catechismo quando ero molto giovane, signore, come lei sa bene».
‘Quale somma di denaro’, disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘metterete contro la vostra aspettativa di promozione?’
«Grazie, signore», rispose Bitzer «per aver accennato alla proposta; ma non contratterò alcuna somma. Sapendo che la sua mente lucida avrebbe suggerito tale alternativa, ho ripassato i calcoli nella mia testa e ho scoperto che anche un accordo per una condanna penale a termini davvero molto vantaggiosi non sarebbe altrettanto sicuro e vantaggioso per me quanto le mie migliori prospettive in Banca.»
«Bitzer», disse il signor Gradgrind, tendendo le mani come se volesse dire: «Vedete quanto sono infelice!» «Bitzer, mi resta una sola possibilità di addolcire la tua durezza. Sei stato per molti anni a scuola da me. Se, in ricordo delle cure che ti ho dedicato lì, puoi persuaderti anche solo un po’ a trascurare il tuo interesse attuale e liberare mio figlio, ti prego con tutto il cuore di concedergli i benefici di quel ricordo».
«Mi chiedo davvero, signore», replicò l’antico allievo in tono polemico, «come faccia a prendere una posizione così insostenibile. La mia istruzione è stata pagata; era un accordo; e quando me ne sono andato, l’accordo è finito».
Era un principio fondamentale della filosofia Gradgrind che tutto dovesse essere pagato. Nessuno doveva mai dare niente a nessuno o prestar soccorso senza compenso. La gratitudine andava abolita, e le virtù da essa derivate non avevano ragione di esistere. Ogni istante dell’esistenza umana, dalla nascita alla morte, doveva essere un affare concluso al banco. E se così facendo non fossimo riusciti ad arrivare in Paradiso, allora quel luogo non era politico-economicamente valido e non ci spettava di entrarvi.
«Non nego», aggiunse Bitzer, «che la mia istruzione sia stata economica. Ma questo è giusto così, signore. Sono stato prodotto nel mercato più economico e ora mi trovo a dovermi vendere in quello più caro».
Qui fu un po’ turbato dal pianto di Louisa e Sissy.
«La prego di non farlo», disse lui, «non serve a nulla: è solo fonte di preoccupazioni. Lei sembra pensare che io nutra qualche animosità contro il giovane signor Tom; mentre in realtà non ne ho affatto. Mi limiterò semplicemente, per i ragionevoli motivi da me esposti, a riportarlo a Coketown. Se dovesse opporre resistenza, lancerei l’allarme di “Fermate il ladro!”. Ma lui non si ribellerà, può starne certa».
Il signor Sleary, che con la bocca aperta e l’occhio ruotante bloccato nella testa immobile come quello fisso, aveva ascoltato queste dottrine con profonda attenzione, si fece avanti.
«Signor, sapete perfettamente bene, e vostra figlia sa perfettamente bene (meglio di voi, perché gliel’ho detto io), che non sapevo cosa avesse fatto vostro figlio, e che non volevo saperlo: ho detto che era meglio di no, anche se allora pensavo fosse solo uno scherzo. Tuttavia, ora che questo giovane ha rivelato che si tratta di una rapina in banca, beh, questa è una cosa seria; troppo seria perché io possa compromettermi, come giustamente ha detto questo giovane. Di conseguenza, signor, non dovete offendervi se prendo le parti di questo giovane e dico che ha ragione e che non c’è niente da fare. Ma vi dico cosa farò: accompagnerò vostro figlio e questo giovane alla stazione ferroviaria e eviterò ulteriori esposture qui. Non posso acconsentire a fare di più, ma questo lo farò».
Nuove lamentazioni da parte di Louisa e un’angoscia più profonda nel signor Gradgrind seguirono l’abbandono da parte del loro ultimo amico. Ma Sissy lo guardò con grande attenzione; né fra sé e sé lo fraintese. Mentre stavano tutti per uscire di nuovo, le fece l’onore di una lieve rotazione dei suoi occhi mobili, invitandola a trattenersi indietro. Mentre chiudeva la porta a chiave, disse con eccitazione:
‘The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. More than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a dark night; I’ve got a horthe that’ll do anything but thpeak; I’ve got a pony that’ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I’ve got a dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig coming up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump down, and it’ll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the morning—I don’t know him?—Tharp’th the word!’
The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering about the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr. Sleary’s equipage was ready. It was a fine sight, to behold the learned dog barking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with his one practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions. Soon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a formidable creature) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.
The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight o’clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high spirits.
‘All right, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, ‘your thon may be aboard-a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left there latht night. The horthe danthed the polka till he wath dead beat (he would have walthed if he hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him the word and he went to thleep comfortable. When that prethiouth young Rathcal thed he’d go for’ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-hankercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that, ’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.’
Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.
‘I don’t want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn’t be unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thtand a collar for the dog, or a thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take ’em. Brandy and water I alwayth take.’ He had already called for a glass, and now called for another. ‘If you wouldn’t think it going too far, Thquire, to make a little thpread for the company at about three and thixth ahead, not reckoning Luth, it would make ’em happy.’
All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very willingly undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for such a service.
‘Very well, Thquire; then, if you’ll only give a Horthe-riding, a bethpeak, whenever you can, you’ll more than balanthe the account. Now, Thquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one parting word with you.’
Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary, stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:
‘Thquire,—you don’t need to be told that dogth ith wonderful animalth.’
‘Their instinct,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘is surprising.’
‘Whatever you call it—and I’m bletht if I know what to call it’—said Sleary, ‘it ith athtonithing. The way in whith a dog’ll find you—the dithtanthe he’ll come!’
‘His scent,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘being so fine.’
‘I’m bletht if I know what to call it,’ repeated Sleary, shaking his head, ‘but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that made me think whether that dog hadn’t gone to another dog, and thed, “You don’t happen to know a perthon of the name of Thleary, do you? Perthon of the name of Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding way—thtout man—game eye?” And whether that dog mightn’t have thed, “Well, I can’t thay I know him mythelf, but I know a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.” And whether that dog mightn’t have thought it over, and thed, “Thleary, Thleary! O yeth, to be thure! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one time. I can get you hith addreth directly.” In conthequenth of my being afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there mutht be a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that I don’t know!’
Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.
‘Any way,’ said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water, ‘ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter. We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, a dog. He had travelled a long way, he wath in a very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking for a child he know’d; and then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up behind, and thtood on hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.’
‘Sissy’s father’s dog!’
‘Thethilia’th father’th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead—and buried—afore that dog come back to me. Joth’phine and Childerth and me talked it over a long time, whether I thould write or not. But we agreed, “No. There’th nothing comfortable to tell; why unthettle her mind, and make her unhappy?” Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he broke hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him; never will be known, now, Thquire, till—no, not till we know how the dogth findth uth out!’
‘She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don’t it, Thquire?’ said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and water: ‘one, that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different; t’other, that it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!’
Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr. Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.
‘Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye! Mith Thquire, to thee you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!’
‘And I never thought before,’ said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the door again to say it, ‘that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!’
«Il Thquire è stato dalla tua parte, Thethilia, e io starò dalla parte del Thquire. E non solo: quetho è un prethiouth rathcal, e appartiene a quel Cove che i miei hanno quasi pithciato fuori dalla finestra. Sarà una notte buia; ho un cavallo che farebbe di tutto pur di non parlare; ho uno pone che può percorrere quindici miglia all’ora con Childerth a guidarlo; ho un cane che tiene fermo un uomo in un posto per ventiquattro ore. Parla col giovane Thquire. Digli, quando vede i nostri cavalli cominciare a danzare, di non aver paura di essere buttato giù, ma di stare attento all’arrivo di una carrozza trainata da uno pone. Digli che, quando vede la carrozza avvicinarsi, deve saltar giù e quella lo porterà via a rotta di collo. Se il mio cane lascia che questo giovane si allontani anche solo di un passo a piedi, gli do il permesso di andarsene. E se il mio cavallo mai si muoverà da quel punto in cui comincia la danza fino al mattino—non lo conosco?—Tharp’ è la parola!»
La parola era così tagliente che in dieci minuti il signor Childers, passeggiando per la piazza del mercato con un paio di pantofole, aveva capito e l’equipaggio del signor Sleary era pronto. Era uno spettacolo meraviglioso vedere il cane sapiente abbaiare intorno ad esso e il signor Sleary istruirlo, con il suo unico occhio funzionante, che Bitzer era oggetto delle sue particolari attenzioni. Poco dopo il buio tutti e tre salirono a bordo e partirono; il cane sapiente (una creatura formidabile) già teneva d’occhio Bitzer e si manteneva vicino alla ruota dal suo lato, per essere pronto nel caso in cui avesse mostrato la più piccola intenzione di scendere.
Gli altri tre rimasero seduti nella locanda tutta la notte in grande suspense. Alle otto del mattino il signor Sleary e il cane riapparvero, entrambi di ottimo umore.
«Va bene, signorino!» disse il signor Sleary «vostro figlio potrebbe essere già a bordo di una nave in questo momento. Childers lo ha portato via un’ora e mezza dopo che siamo partiti da lì la scorsa notte. Il cavallo ballò la polca fino ad essere stremato (avrebbe continuato a danzare se non fosse stato attaccato ai finimenti), allora gli ho dato il segnale e lui è andato a dormire tranquillo. Quando quel grazioso giovane Rathcal disse che sarebbe andato avanti a piedi, il cane si aggrappò al suo fazzoletto da collo con tutte e quattro le zampe in aria e lo tirò giù facendolo rotolare. Così è tornato nella carrozza, dove è rimasto fino a quando non ho girato la testa del cavallo, a metà strada tra le sei di questa mattina».
Il signor Gradgrind lo sommerse di ringraziamenti, naturalmente; e accennò con la massima delicatezza possibile ad un’ampia retribuzione in denaro.
«Io non voglio denaro per me stesso, signorino; ma Childerth è un uomo di famiglia e se lei volesse offrirgli una banconota da cinque sterline, potrebbe non essere inaccettabile. Allo stesso modo, se lei volesse offrire un collare per il cane o un set di campanelli per il cavallo, sarei molto felice di prenderli. Il brandy e acqua lo prendo sempre». Aveva già chiesto un bicchiere e ora ne chiese un altro. «Se non pensasse che sia troppo audace, signorino, preparare un po’ di pane per la compagnia verso le tre e mezza in avanti, senza contare Ruth, li renderebbe felici».
Mr. Gradgrind accettò molto volentieri di restituire tutti questi piccoli segni della sua gratitudine; anche se li considerava troppo insignificanti per un servizio del genere.
«Molto bene, signor Thquire; allora, se vorrà concedermi solo un’andata a cavallo e una chiacchierata ogni volta che potrà, più che pareggiare i conti. Ora, signor Thquire, se sua figlia mi permetterà, vorrei scambiare con lei qualche parola prima di andarmene».
Louisa e Sissy si ritirarono in una stanza attigua; il signor Sleary, mescolando e bevendo il suo brandy e acqua mentre stava in piedi, continuò:
‘Gentiluomo, non c’è bisogno di dirle che i cani sono animali straordinari.’
“Il loro istinto,” disse il signor Gradgrind, “è sorprendente.”
«Chiamatela come volete — e io non so proprio che nome darle» disse Sleary «è sorprendente. Il modo in cui un cane vi trova, la distanza da cui arriva!»
‘Il suo fiuto’, disse il signor Gradgrind, ‘è così raffinato’.
«Non saprei come chiamarlo», ripeté Sleary scuotendo la testa, «ma mi è capitato di essere trovato da cani, signorino, in un modo che mi ha fatto pensare se quel cane non fosse andato da un altro cane e gli avesse detto: “Per caso non conosci una persona di nome Sleary? Una persona di nome Sleary, del circo itinerante—uomo robusto—occhio vivace?” E se quel cane non potrebbe aver risposto: “Beh, non posso dire di conoscerlo io stesso, ma ne conosco uno che credo sarebbe probabile che lo conosca.” E se quel cane non avesse riflettuto e detto: “Sleary, Sleary! O sì, certo! Un mio amico mi ha parlato di lui una volta. Posso procurarti subito il suo indirizzo.” A causa del fatto che sono davanti al pubblico e vado in giro per la strada, capisce, ci devono essere un sacco di cani che conoscono me, signorino, che io non conosco!»
Il signor Gradgrind sembrò essere completamente sconcertato da questa speculazione.
«Comunque», disse Sleary dopo aver portato le labbra al suo brandy e acqua, «era quattordici mesi fa, signorino, quando eravamo a Chester. Stavamo preparando i nostri bambini nella foresta una mattina, quando è entrato nel nostro circo, dalla porta del palcoscenico, un cane. Aveva viaggiato molto lontano, era in condizioni pietose, zoppo e quasi completamente cieco. Si avvicinò ai nostri bambini uno dopo l’altro, come se stesse cercando un bambino che conosceva; poi venne da me, si arrampicò dietro e si mise in piedi sulle sue due zampe anteriori, debole com’era, quindi agitò la coda e morì. Signorino, quel cane era Merrylegs».
‘Il cane del padre di Sissy!’
«Il vecchio cane del padre di Thethilia. Ora, signorino, posso giurare che, per la mia conoscenza di quel cane, quell’uomo era morto e sepolto prima ancora che il cane tornasse da me. Josifine, Childerth ed io abbiamo discusso a lungo tempo se avrei dovuto scrivere o no. Ma siamo stati d’accordo: “No. Non c’è nulla di confortante da dire; perché sconvolgere la sua mente e renderla infelice?” Quindi, se suo padre l’abbia semplicemente abbandonata; oppure se si sia spezzato il cuore da solo, piuttosto che trascinarla giù con sé; non lo sapremo mai, ora, signorino, fino a quando—no, finché non sapremo come i cani ci trovano!»
«Conserva ancora la bottiglia che lui le ha mandato e crederà nel suo affetto fino all’ultimo momento della sua vita», disse il signor Gradgrind.
«Sembrano presentare due cose a una persona, non è così, Squi?» disse il signor Sleary, riflettendo mentre guardava nelle profondità del suo whisky e acqua: «una, che c’è un amore nel mondo, non tutto egoistico dopotutto, ma qualcosa di molto diverso; l’altra, che ha un modo proprio di calcolare o non calcolare, che in qualche modo è almeno difficile da definire quanto i modi dei cani!»
Il signor Gradgrind guardò fuori dalla finestra e non rispose. Il signor Sleary svuotò il bicchiere e richiamò le signore.
«Thethilia mia cara, baciala e addio! Mith Thquire, a te che la tratti come una thithter, e una thithter che tu trutht e onori con tutto il cuore e più ancora, è una cosa molto bella per me. Io spero che tuo fratello possa vivere per meritare di più te, e essere un maggior conforto per te. Thquire, thciamoci le mani, prima e ultima volta! Non arrabbiarti con noi poveri vagabondi. La gente deve divertirsi. Non possono stare sempre a imparare, né possono stare sempre a lavorare, non sono fatti per questo. Devi averci, Thquire. Fai la cosa giusta e anche quella gentile, e fa’ il meglio di noi; non il peggio!»
«E non ho mai pensato prima», disse il signor Sleary, mettendo di nuovo la testa nella porta per dirlo, «che fossi così bocca da gallina!»
CHAPTER IX FINAL
IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female—to have it in his power to say, ‘She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her’—would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.
Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came in to lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.
Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr. Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look she now bestowed upon her patron.
‘What’s the matter now, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a very short, rough way.
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘do not bite my nose off.’
‘Bite your nose off, ma’am?’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘Your nose!’ meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.
Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, ‘Mr. Bounderby, sir!’
‘Well, ma’am?’ retorted Mr. Bounderby. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘May I ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘have you been ruffled this morning?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘May I inquire, sir,’ pursued the injured woman, ‘whether I am the unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I am not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.’ (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be beaten.)
Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.
‘Sir,’ said she, majestically. ‘It is apparent to me that I am in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.’
‘Allow me to open the door, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.’
‘You had better allow me, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, passing her, and getting his hand upon the lock; ‘because I can take the opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there’s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people’s affairs.’
Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great politeness, ‘Really, sir?’
‘I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have happened, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘and it appears to my poor judgment—’
‘Oh! Pray, sir,’ Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness, ‘don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr. Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, laughing.
Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:
‘It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s, now. Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?’
‘It never occurred to me before, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but now you mention it, should think it highly probable.’
‘Then suppose you try, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, laying an envelope with a cheque in it in her little basket. ‘You can take your own time for going, ma’am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded upon. I really ought to apologise to you—being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown—for having stood in your light so long.’
‘Pray don’t name it, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If that portrait could speak, sir—but it has the advantage over the original of not possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others,—it would testify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt.’
Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase. Mr. Bounderby closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself after his old explosive manner into his portrait—and into futurity.
Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting out a daily fight at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by about the middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more? Did he catch any glimpse of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, so devoted to his master’s great merits, who had won young Tom’s place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals he was spirited away? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for 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.
FOOTNOTES
{0} Reprinted Pieces was released as a separate eText by Project Gutenberg, and is not included in this eText.
CAPITOLO IX FINALE
È una cosa pericolosa vedere qualcosa nel mondo di un vanaglorioso prima che il vanaglorioso lo veda lui stesso. Il signor Bounderby sentiva che la signora Sparsit l’aveva sfidato audacemente e si era permessa di essere più saggia di lui. Insofferentemente indignato con lei per la sua trionfante scoperta della signora Pegler, continuava a rivoltare questa presunzione da parte di una donna in una posizione dipendente nella sua mente, finché non si accumulava girando come una grande palla di neve. Alla fine scoprì che licenziare quella donna altolocata — avere il potere di dire: «Era una signora di famiglia e voleva attaccarsi a me, ma io non l’ho voluto e mi sono liberato di lei» — sarebbe stato ottenere la massima quantità possibile di gloria culminante dalla relazione e allo stesso tempo punire la signora Sparsit secondo i suoi meriti.
Ricolmo più che mai di questa grande idea, il signor Bounderby entrò a pranzo e si sedette nella sala da pranzo dei tempi passati, dove era appeso il suo ritratto. La signora Sparsit stava accanto al fuoco, con il piede nel cavalletto di cotone, senza sospettare affatto la destinazione del viaggio che l’attendeva.
Da quando era scoppiato lo scandalo Pegler, questa gentildonna aveva coperto la sua pietà per il signor Bounderby con un velo di tranquilla malinconia e pentimento. In virtù di ciò, le era diventata abitudine assumere uno sguardo afflitto che ora rivolgeva al suo protettore.
«Che succede adesso, signora?» disse il signor Bounderby, in modo molto brusco e sbrigativo.
“Prego, signore,” rispose la signora Sparsit, “non mi morda il naso.”
«Mordersi il naso, signora?» ripeté Mr. Bounderby. «Il vostro naso!» intendendo, come la Sparsit interpretò, che era un naso troppo sviluppato per lo scopo. Dopo questa offensiva implicazione, si tagliò una crosta di pane e lasciò cadere il coltello rumorosamente sul tavolo.
La signora Sparsit tolse il piede dalla staffa e disse: ‘Signor Bounderby, signore!’
«Bene, signora?» ribatté il signor Bounderby. «A cosa sta fissando?»
‘Posso chiedere, signore,’ disse la signora Sparsit, ‘se è stato turbato questa mattina?’
‘Sì, signora.’
«Posso chiedere, signore», proseguì la donna offesa, «se sono io la sfortunata causa per cui avete perso il vostro buon umore?»
«Ora, le dico una cosa, signora», disse Bounderby, «non sono venuto qui per farmi intimidire. Una donna può anche avere ottime connessioni, ma non si può permettere di infastidire e tormentare un uomo nella mia posizione, e io non intendo sopportarlo». (Il signor Bounderby sentì la necessità di andare avanti: prevedendo che se avesse permesso i dettagli, sarebbe stato sconfitto.)
La signora Sparsit prima sollevò e poi aggrottò le sue sopracciglia coriolaniane; raccolse il suo lavoro nel cestino adatto, e si alzò.
«Signore», disse lei con maestà, «mi è evidente che al momento sono d’intralcio. Mi ritirerò nella mia stanza».
‘Permettetemi di aprire la porta, signora.’
‘Grazie, signore; posso farlo da solo.’
«È meglio che lo faccia io, signora», disse Bounderby passandole accanto e mettendo la mano sulla serratura; «perché posso approfittare dell’occasione per dirle due parole prima che se ne vada. Signora Sparsit, credo piuttosto che qui lei sia in una situazione difficile, sa? Mi sembra che sotto il mio umile tetto non ci sia abbastanza spazio per una signora del suo genio nelle faccende altrui».
La signora Sparsit gli lanciò uno sguardo di profondo disprezzo e disse con grande cortesia: «Davvero, signore?»
«Ci ho pensato sopra, vede, da quando sono accaduti gli ultimi fatti, signora», disse Bounderby; «e mi sembra a mio povero giudizio —»
«Oh! La prego, signore», intervenne la signora Sparsit con vivace allegria, «non svaluti il suo giudizio. Tutti sanno quanto sia infallibile il giudizio del signor Bounderby. Tutti ne hanno avuto le prove. Deve essere l’argomento di conversazione generale. Svaluti pure tutto in sé stesso, ma non il suo giudizio», disse la signora Sparsit ridendo.
Il signor Bounderby, molto rosso e a disagio, riprese:
«Mi sembra, signora, dico, che un tipo di stabilimento completamente diverso metterebbe in luce una signora con i suoi talenti. Un tale stabilimento come quello della sua parente, Lady Scadgers, per esempio. Non crede che potrebbe trovare là qualche faccenda da gestire?»
«Non mi era mai venuto in mente prima d’ora, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit «ma ora che lo dice lei, credo sia molto probabile».
«Allora suppongo che ci proverà, signora», disse Bounderby, posando una busta con un assegno dentro nel suo piccolo cestino. «Può prendersi tutto il tempo che vuole per andarsene, signora; ma forse nel frattempo sarà più piacevole a una donna delle sue doti intellettuali mangiare i suoi pasti da sola e non essere importunata. In realtà dovrei scusarmi con lei - essendo solo Josiah Bounderby di Coketown - per averle ostruito la vista così a lungo».
«La prego di non nominarlo, signore», rispose la signora Sparsit. «Se quel ritratto potesse parlare, signore - ma ha il vantaggio sull’originale di non possedere la capacità di compromettersi e disgustare gli altri - testimonierebbe che è trascorso molto tempo da quando per la prima volta mi sono abituata a chiamarlo ritratto di un Noodle. Nulla che un Noodle fa può destare sorpresa o indignazione; le azioni di un Noodle possono solo ispirare disprezzo».
Così dicendo, la signora Sparsit, con i suoi tratti romani come una medaglia coniata per commemorare il suo disprezzo verso il signor Bounderby, lo osservò fissamente dalla testa ai piedi, gli passò accanto con disdegno e salì le scale. Il signor Bounderby chiuse la porta e si fermò davanti al fuoco; proiettandosi nel suo vecchio modo esplosivo nel suo ritratto - e nell’avvenire.
Fino a quale punto del futuro? Vide la signora Sparsit impegnata in una lotta quotidiana con tutti gli strumenti dell’armamentario femminile, contro la riluttante, risentita, irritabile e tormentosa lady Scadgers, ancora costretta a letto per via della sua misteriosa gamba, e che divorava il suo misero reddito entro metà di ogni trimestre, in un piccolo alloggio senza aria, una semplice dispensa per uno, una stanzetta per due; ma vide qualcosa di più? Intravide forse se stesso mostrare Bitzer agli estranei come il giovane in ascesa, così devoto ai grandi meriti del suo padrone, che aveva conquistato il posto di Tom junior e quasi catturato lo stesso Tom junior, nei tempi in cui era stato portato via da vari farabutti? Vide forse un pallido riflesso della sua immagine mentre redigeva una volontà vanagloriosa con la quale venticinque ciarlatani, oltre i cinquantacinque anni di età, assumendo ciascuno il nome Josiah Bounderby di Coketown, avrebbero dovuto cenare per sempre a Bounderby Hall, alloggiare per sempre negli edifici Bounderby, frequentare per sempre una cappella Bounderby, andare a dormire per sempre sotto la guida di un cappellano Bounderby, essere sostenuti per sempre da un patrimonio Bounderby e nauseare per sempre tutti gli stomaci sani con una grande quantità di chiacchiere e fanfaronate bounderbiane? Aveva forse qualche presentimento del giorno, cinque anni dopo, in cui Josiah Bounderby di Coketown sarebbe morto per un attacco nel centro di Coketown, e questo stesso prezioso testamento avrebbe iniziato la sua lunga carriera di cavilli, saccheggi, false pretese, esempi ignobili, pochi servigi e molta legge? Probabilmente no. Eppure il ritratto doveva vedere tutto ciò.
Ecco il signor Gradgrind nello stesso giorno e nella stessa ora, seduto pensieroso nella sua stanza. Quanto del futuro lui vedeva? Si vide forse come un decrepito uomo dai capelli bianchi che piegava le sue fino ad allora inflessibili teorie alle circostanze; rendendo i suoi fatti e numeri sussidiari alla Fede, alla Speranza e alla Carità; e non cercando più di macinare quel trio celeste nei suoi polverosi mulini? Si vide forse quindi disprezzato dai suoi ex colleghi politici? Li vide mentre, nell’epoca in cui era ormai stabilito che i netturbini nazionali avevano solo a che fare tra loro e non dovevano nulla ad un’astrazione chiamata Popolo, “rimproveravano l’onorevole gentiluomo” per questo e quello e chissà cos’altro cinque sere alla settimana fino alle prime ore del mattino? Probabilmente aveva questa premonizione, conoscendo i suoi uomini.
Ecco Louisa nella notte dello stesso giorno, a guardare il fuoco come ai vecchi tempi, sebbene con un volto più gentile e umile. Quanto del futuro poteva sorgere davanti alla sua visione? Manifesti per le strade, firmati dal nome di suo padre, che scagionavano il defunto Stephen Blackpool, tessitore, da un sospetto infondato e pubblicavano la colpa del proprio figlio, con tutte le attenuanti che potevano essere invocate in base alla sua età e alle sue tentazioni (non riusciva a portarsi ad aggiungere, la sua educazione); erano del Presente. Così, la lapide di Stephen Blackpool, con il resoconto della sua morte scritto da suo padre, era quasi del Presente, perché sapeva che sarebbe stata. Queste cose poteva vedere chiaramente. Ma quanto del Futuro?
Una donna lavoratrice, battezzata Rachael, dopo una lunga malattia riapparve al suono della campana della fabbrica e si mise ad andare avanti e indietro alle ore stabilite tra le mani di Coketown; una donna dalla bellezza pensierosa, sempre vestita di nero, ma dal carattere dolce e sereno, anzi persino allegra; che, di tutte le persone del posto, sola sembrava avere compassione per un’infima ubriacona della sua stessa sesso, a volte vista in città chiedere segretamente l’elemosina e piangendo; una donna che lavora, sempre lavora, ma è contenta di farlo e preferisce farlo come suo destino naturale, fino a quando non sarà troppo vecchia per lavorare ancora? Louisa vide questo? Una cosa del genere doveva accadere.
Un fratello solitario, a migliaia di chilometri di distanza, scriveva su un foglio macchiato di lacrime che le sue parole si erano avverate troppo presto e che tutti i tesori del mondo sarebbero stati scambiati volentieri per uno sguardo al suo caro viso? Alla fine questo fratello si avvicinava a casa, con la speranza di vederla, ma veniva ritardato da una malattia; e poi una lettera, scritta in una mano sconosciuta, che diceva: “morì all’ospedale per la febbre un tale giorno, morendo pentito e con amore per te: l’ultima parola fu il tuo nome”? Louisa vide queste cose? Erano destinate ad accadere.
Era di nuovo una moglie, una madre, amorevolmente attenta ai suoi figli, sempre curiosa che avessero un’infanzia della mente non meno di un’infanzia del corpo, sapendo che era anche una cosa più bella e una proprietà, qualsiasi frammento accumulato è una benedizione e felicità per i più saggi? Louisa lo vedeva? Una tale cosa non sarebbe mai stata.
Ma i felici bambini di Sissy erano felici e la amavano; tutti i bambini l’amavano; lei, divenuta esperta nelle cose infantili; pensando che nessuna innocente e graziosa fantasia dovesse mai essere disprezzata; cercando con tutte le sue forze di conoscere i suoi più umili simili, e di abbellire la loro vita fatta di macchinari e realtà con quelle grazie e delizie immaginative senza cui il cuore dell’infanzia appassirà, l’uomo fisicamente più robusto sarà moralmente una morte inanimata, e le cifre più semplici della prosperità nazionale saranno la Scritta sulla Parete,—lei seguiva questo percorso non come parte di un voto fantastico, o vincolo, o fratellanza, o sorellanza, o impegno, o patto, o costume fantasioso, o fiera delle fantasie; ma semplicemente come un dovere da compiere,—Louisa vedeva queste cose da sola? Queste cose dovevano accadere.
Caro lettore! Dipende da te e me se nelle nostre due sfere d’azione cose simili saranno o no. Che siano! Ci sedremo con cuori più leggeri presso il focolare, a vedere le ceneri dei nostri fuochi diventare grigie e fredde.
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{0} «Pezzi ristampati» è stato pubblicato come testo elettronico separato dal Progetto Gutenberg e non è incluso nel presente testo elettronico.