Чарльз Диккенс
Hard Times
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.
