Hard Times, Charles Dickens [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗
- Author: Charles Dickens
- Performer: 0553210165
Book online «Hard Times, Charles Dickens [mobile ebook reader .TXT] 📗». Author Charles Dickens
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.
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, steal, 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 haircutting 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
Comments (0)