Hard Times, Charles Dickens [little red riding hood ebook txt] 📗

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 anyone 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, forever.”

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