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.
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