Чарльз Диккенс
Tales from Dickens
II
THE ROBBERY OF BOUNDERBY'S BANK
In one of Bounderby's weaving mills a man named Stephen Blackpool had worked for years. He was sturdy and honest, but had a stooping frame, a knitted brow and iron-gray hair, for in his forty years he had known much trouble.
Many years before he had married; unhappily, for through no fault or failing of his own, his wife took to drink, left off work, and became a shame and a disgrace to the town. When she could get no money to buy drink with, she sold his furniture, and often he would come home from the mill to find the rooms stripped of all their belongings and his wife stretched on the floor in drunken slumber. At last he was compelled to pay her to stay away, and even then he lived in daily fear lest she return to disgrace him afresh.
What made this harder for Stephen to bear was the true love he had for a sweet, patient, working woman in the mill named Rachel. She had an oval, delicate face, with gentle eyes and dark, shining hair. She knew his story and loved him, too. He could not marry her, because his own wife stood in the way, nor could he even see or walk with her often, for fear busy tongues might talk of it, but he watched every flutter of her shawl.
One night Stephen went home to his lodging to find his wife returned. She was lying drunk across his bed, a besotted creature, stained and splashed, and evil to look at. All that night he sat sleepless and sick at heart.
Next day, at the noon hour, he went to his employer's house to ask his advice. He knew the law sometimes released two people from the marriage tie when one or the other lived wickedly, and his whole heart longed to marry Rachel.
But Bounderby told him bluntly that the law he had in mind was only for rich men, who could afford to spend a great deal of money. And he further added (according to his usual custom) that he had no doubt Stephen would soon be demanding the turtle-soup and venison and the golden spoon.
Stephen went home that night hopeless, knowing what he should find there. But Rachel had heard and was there before him. She had tidied the room and was tending the woman who was his wife. It seemed to Stephen, as he saw her in her work of mercy, there was an angel's halo about her head.
Soon the wretched creature she had aided passed out of his daily life again to go he knew not where, and this act of Rachel's remained to make his love and longing greater.
About this time a stranger came to Coketown. He was James Harthouse, a suave, polished man of the world, good-looking, well-dressed, with a gallant yet indolent manner and bold eyes.
Being wealthy, he had tried the army, tried a Government position, tried Jerusalem, tried yachting and found himself bored by them all. At last he had tried facts and figures, having some idea these might help in politics. In London he had met the great believer in facts, Mr. Gradgrind, and had been sent by him to Coketown to make the acquaintance of his friend Bounderby. Harthouse thus met the mill owner, who introduced him to Louisa, now his wife.
The year of married life had not been a happy one for her. She was reserved and watchful and cold as ever, but Harthouse easily saw that she was ashamed of Bounderby's bragging talk and shrank from his coarseness as from a blow. He soon perceived, too, that the only love she had for any one was given to Tom, though the latter little deserved it. In his own mind Harthouse called her father a machine, her brother a whelp and her husband a bear.
Harthouse was attracted by Louisa's beauty no less than by her pride. He was without conscience or honor, and determined, though she was already married, to make her fall in love with him. He knew the surest way to her liking was to pretend an interest in Tom, and he at once began to flatter the sullen young fellow. Under his influence the latter was not long in telling the story of Louisa's marriage, and in boasting that he himself had brought it about for his own advancement.
To Louisa, Harthouse spoke regretfully of the lad's idle habits, yet hopefully of his future, so that she, deeming him honestly Tom's friend, confided in him, telling him of her brother's love of gambling and how she had more than once paid his debts by selling some of her own jewelry. In such ways as these Harthouse, step by step, gained an intimacy with her.
While Harthouse was thus setting his net, Stephen Blackpool, the mill worker, was on trial.
It was a time of great dissatisfaction among workmen throughout the country. In many towns they were banding themselves together into "unions" in order to gain more privileges and higher wages from their employers. This movement in time had reached Coketown. Rachel was opposed to these unions, believing they would in the end do their members more harm than good, and knowing her mind, Stephen had long ago promised her that he would never join one. The day had come, however, when a workman who thus declined was looked on with suspicion and dislike by his fellows, and at length – though all had liked and respected Stephen – because he steadfastly refused to join the rest, he found himself shunned. Day after day he went to and from his work alone and spoken to by none, and, not seeing Rachel in these days, was lonely and disheartened.
This condition of things did not escape the eye of Bounderby, who sent for Stephen and questioned him. But even in his trouble, thinking his fellow workmen believed themselves in the right, Stephen refused to complain or to bear tales of them. Bounderby, in his arrogance, chose to be angry that one of his mill-hands should presume not to answer his questions and discharged him forthwith, so that now Stephen found himself without friends, money or work.
Not wholly without friends, either, for Rachel was still the same. And he had gained another friend, too. While he told her that evening in his lodgings what had occurred, and that he must soon go in search of work in some other town, Louisa came to him. She had witnessed the interview in which her husband had discharged this faithful workman, had found out where he lived, and had made her brother Tom bring her there that she might tell Stephen how sorry she was and beg him to accept money from her to help him in his distress.
This kindness touched Stephen. He thanked her and took as a loan a small portion of the money she offered him.
Tom had come on this errand with his sister in a sulky humor. While he listened now a thought came to him. As Louisa talked with Rachel, he beckoned Stephen from the room and told him that he could perhaps aid him in finding work. He told him to wait during the next two or three evenings near the door of Bounderby's bank, and promised that he himself would seek Stephen there and tell him further.
There was no kindness, however, in this proposal. It was a sudden plan, wicked and cowardly. Tom had become a criminal. He had stolen money from the bank and trembled daily lest the theft become known. What would be easier now, he thought, than to hide his crime, by throwing suspicion on some one else? He could force the door of the safe before he left at night, and drop a key of the bank door, which he had secretly made, in the street where it would afterward be found. He himself, then, next morning, could appear to find the safe open and the money missing. Stephen, he considered, would be just the one to throw suspicion upon.
All unconscious of this plot, Stephen in good faith waited near the bank during three evenings, walking past the building again and again, watching vainly for Tom to appear. Mrs. Sparsit, at her upper window, wondered to see his bowed form haunting the place. Nothing came of his waiting, however, and the fourth morning saw him, with his thoughts on Rachel, trudging out of town along the highroad, bravely and uncomplainingly, toward whatever new lot the future held for him.
Tom's plot worked well. Next day there was a sensation in Coketown. Bounderby's bank was found to have been robbed. The safe, Tom declared, he had found open, with a large part of its contents missing. A key to the bank door was picked up in the street; this, it was concluded, the thief had thrown away after using. Who had done it? Had any suspicious person been seen about the place?
Many people remembered a strange old woman, apparently from the country, who called herself "Mrs. Pegler," and who had often been seen standing looking fixedly at the bank. What more natural than to suspect her?
Then another rumor began to grow. Stephen Blackpool, discharged from the mill by Bounderby himself – the workman who had been shunned by all his comrades, to whom no one spoke – he had been seen recently loitering, night after night, near the robbed bank. Where was he? Gone, none knew where!
In an hour Stephen was suspected. By the next day half of Coketown believed him guilty.
III
HARTHOUSE'S PLAN FAILS
Two persons, however, had a suspicion of the truth. One of these was the porter of the bank, whose suspicion was strong. The other was Louisa, who, though her love denied it room, hid in her secret heart a fear that her brother had had a share in the crime. In the night she went to Tom's bedside, put her arms around him and begged him to tell her any secret he might be keeping from her. But he answered sullenly that he did not know what she meant.
Mrs. Sparsit's fine-bred nerves (so she insisted) were so shaken by the robbery that she came to Bounderby's house to remain till she recovered.
The feeble, pink-eyed bundle of shawls that was Mrs. Gradgrind, happening to die at this time, and Louisa being absent at her mother's funeral, Mrs. Sparsit saw her opportunity. She had never forgiven Louisa for marrying Bounderby, and she now revenged herself by a course of such flattery that the vulgar bully began to think his cold, proud wife much too regardless of him and of his importance.
What pleased the hawk-faced old busybody most was the game the suave Harthouse was playing, which she was sharp enough to see through at once. If Louisa would only disgrace herself by running away with Harthouse, thought Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby might be free again and she might marry him. So she watched narrowly the growing intimacy between them, hoping for Louisa's ruin.
There came a day when Bounderby was summoned on business to London, and Louisa stayed meanwhile at the Bounderby country house, which lay some distance from Coketown. Mrs. Sparsit guessed that Harthouse would use this chance to see Louisa alone, and, to spy upon her, took the train herself, reaching there at nightfall.
She went afoot from the station to the grounds, opened the gate softly and crept close to the house. Here and there in the dusk, through garden and wood, she stole, and at length she found what she sought. There under the trees stood Harthouse, his horse tied near by, and talking with him was Louisa.
Mrs. Sparsit stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade against the savages, and listened with all her ears. She could not hear all, but caught enough to know that he was telling her he loved her, and begging her to leave her husband, her home and friends, and to run away with him.
In her delight and in the noise of rain upon the foliage (for a thunder-storm was rolling up) Mrs. Sparsit did not catch Louisa's answer. Where and when Harthouse asked her to join him, she could not hear, but as he mounted and rode away she thought he said "To-night."
She waited in the rain, rejoicing, till her patience was at length rewarded by seeing Louisa, cloaked and veiled as if for a journey, come from the house and go toward the railroad station. Then Mrs. Sparsit, drawing her draggled shawl over her head to hide her face, followed, boarded the same train, and hastened to tell the news of his wife's elopement to Bounderby in London.
Wet to the skin, her feet squashing in her shoes, her clothes spoiled and her bonnet looking like an over-ripe fig, with a terrible cold that made her voice only a whisper, and sneezing herself almost to pieces, Mrs. Sparsit found Bounderby at his city hotel, exploded with the combustible information she carried and fainted quite away on his coat collar.
Furious at the news she brought, Bounderby hustled her into a fast train, and together, he raging and glaring and she inwardly jubilant, they hurried toward Coketown to inform Mr. Gradgrind, who was then at home, of his daughter's doings.
But where, meanwhile, was Louisa? Not run away with Harthouse, as Mrs. Sparsit so fondly imagined, but safe in her own father's house in Coketown.
She had suffered much without complaint, but Harthouse's proposal had been the last straw. Added to all the insults she had suffered at her husband's hands, and her fearful suspicion of Tom's guilt, it had proven too much for her to bear. She had pretended to agree to Harthouse's plan only that she might the more quickly rid herself of his presence.
Mr. Gradgrind, astonished at her sudden arrival at Stone Lodge, was shocked no less at her ghastly appearance than by what she said. She told him she cursed the hour when she had been born to grow up a victim to his teachings; that her whole life had been empty; that every hope, affection and fancy had been crushed from her very infancy and her better angel made a demon. She told him the whole truth about her marriage to Bounderby – that she had married him solely for the advancement of Tom, the only one she had ever loved – and that now she could no longer live with her husband or bear the life she had made for herself.
And when she had said this, Louisa, the daughter his "system" had brought to such despair, fell at his feet.
At her pitiful tale the tender heart that Mr. Gradgrind had buried in his long-past youth under his mountain of facts stirred again and began to beat. The mountain crumbled away, and he saw in an instant, as by a lightning flash, that the plan of life to which he had so rigidly held was a complete and hideous failure. He had thought there was but one wisdom, that of the head; he knew at last that there was a deeper wisdom of the heart also, which all these years he had denied!
When she came to herself, Louisa found her father sitting by her bedside. His face looked worn and older. He told her he realized at last his life mistake and bitterly reproached himself. Sissy, too, was there, her love shining like a beautiful light on the other's darkness. She knelt beside the bed and laid the weary head on her breast, and then for the first time Louisa burst into sobs.
Next day Sissy sought out Harthouse, who was waiting, full of sulky impatience at the failure of Louisa to appear as he had expected. Sissy told him plainly what had occurred, and that he should never see Louisa again. Harthouse, realizing that his plan had failed, suddenly discovered that he had a great liking for camels, and left the same hour for Egypt, never to return to Coketown.
It was while Sissy was absent on this errand of her own that the furious Bounderby and the triumphant Mrs. Sparsit, the latter voiceless and still sneezing, appeared at Stone Lodge.
Mr. Gradgrind took the mill owner greatly aback with the statement that Louisa had had no intention whatever of eloping and was then in that same house and under his care. Angry and blustering at being made such a fool of, Bounderby turned on Mrs. Sparsit, but in her disappointment at finding it a mistake, she had dissolved in tears. When Mr. Gradgrind told him he had concluded it would be better for Louisa to remain for some time there with him, Bounderby flew into a still greater rage and stamped off, swearing his wife should come home by noon next day or not at all.
To be sure Louisa did not go, and next day Bounderby sent her clothes to Mr. Gradgrind, advertised his country house for sale, and, needing something to take his spite out upon, redoubled his efforts to find the robber of the bank.
And he began by covering the town with printed placards, offering a large regard for the arrest of Stephen Blackpool.
IV
STEPHEN'S RETURN
Rachel had known, of course, of the rumors against Stephen, and had been both indignant and sorrowful. She alone knew where he was, and how to find him, for deeming it impossible, because of his trouble with the Coketown workmen, to get work under his own name, he had taken another.
Now that he was directly charged with the crime, she wrote him the news at once, so that he might lose no time in returning to face the unjust accusation. Being so certain herself of his innocence, she made no secret of what she had done, and all Coketown waited, wondering whether he would appear or not.
Two days passed and he had not come, and then Rachel told Bounderby the address to which she had written him. Messengers were sent, who came back with the report that Stephen had received her letter and had left at once, saying he was going to Coketown, where he should long since have arrived.
Another day with no Stephen, and now almost every one believed he was guilty, had taken Rachel's letter as a warning and had fled. All the while Tom waited nervously, biting his nails and with fevered lips, knowing that Stephen, when he came, would tell the real reason why he had loitered near the bank, and so point suspicion to himself.
On the third day Mrs. Sparsit saw a chance to distinguish herself. She recognized on the street "Mrs. Pegler," the old countrywoman who also had been suspected. She seized her and, regardless of her entreaties, dragged her to Bounderby's house and into his dining-room, with a curious crowd flocking at their heels.
She plumed herself on catching one of the robbers, but what was her astonishment when the old woman called Bounderby her dear son, pleading that her coming to his house was not her fault and begging him not to be angry even if people did know at last that she was his mother.
Mr. Gradgrind, who was present when they entered, having always heard Bounderby tell such dreadful tales of his bringing-up, reproached her for deserting her boy in his infancy to a drunken grandmother. At this the old woman nearly burst with indignation, calling on Bounderby himself to tell how false this was and how she had pinched and denied herself for him till he had begun to be successful.
Everybody laughed at this, for now the true story of the bullying mill owner's tales was out. Bounderby, who had turned very red, was the only one who did not seem to enjoy the scene. After he had wrathfully shut every one else from the house, he vented his anger on Mrs. Sparsit for meddling (as he called it) with his own family affairs. He ended by giving her the wages due her and inviting her to take herself off at once.
So Mrs. Sparsit, for all her cap-setting and spying, had to leave her comfortable nest and go to live in a poor lodging as companion to the most grudging, peevish, tormenting one of her noble relatives, an invalid with a lame leg.
But meanwhile another day had passed – the fourth since Rachel had sent her letter – and still Stephen had not come. On this day, full of her trouble, Rachel had wandered with Sissy, now her fast friend, some distance out of the town, through some fields where mining had once been carried on.
Suddenly she cried out – she had picked up a hat and inside it was the name "Stephen Blackpool." An instant later a scream broke from her lips that echoed over the country-side. Before them, at their very feet, half-hidden by rubbish and grasses, yawned the ragged mouth of a dark, abandoned shaft. That instant both Rachel and Sissy guessed the truth – that Stephen, returning, had not seen the chasm in the darkness, and had fallen into its depths.
They ran and roused the town. Crowds came from Coketown. Rope and windlass were brought and two men were lowered into the pit. The poor fellow was there, alive but terribly injured. A rough bed was made, and so at last the crushed and broken form was brought up to the light and air.
A surgeon was at hand with wine and medicines, but it was too late. Stephen spoke with Rachel first, then called Mr. Gradgrind to him and asked him to clear the blemish from his name. He told him simply that he could do so through his son Tom. This was all. He died while they bore him home, holding the hand of Rachel, whom he loved.
Stephen's last words had told the truth to Mr. Gradgrind. He read in them that his own son was the robber. Tom's guilty glance had seen also. With suspicion removed from Stephen, he felt his own final arrest sure.
Sissy noted Tom's pale face and trembling limbs. Guessing that he would attempt flight too late, and longing to save the heartbroken father from the shame of seeing his son's arrest and imprisonment, she drew the shaking thief aside and in a whisper bade him go at once to Sleary, the proprietor of the circus to which her father had once belonged. She told him where the circus was to be found at that season of the year, and bade him ask Sleary to hide him for her sake till she came. Tom obeyed. He disappeared that night, and later Sissy told his father what she had done.
Mr. Gradgrind, with Sissy and Louisa, followed as soon as possible, intending to get his son to the nearest seaport and so out of the country on a vessel, for he knew that soon he himself, Tom's father, would be questioned and obliged to tell the truth. They traveled all night, and at length reached the town where the circus showed.
Sleary, for Sissy's sake, had provided Tom with a disguise in which not even his father recognized him. He had blacked his sullen face and dressed him in a moth-eaten greatcoat and a mad cocked hat, in which attire he played the role of a black servant in the performance. Tom met them, grimy and defiant, ashamed to meet Louisa's eyes, brazen to his father, anxious only to be saved from his deserved punishment.
A seaport was but three hours away. He was soon dressed and plans for his departure were completed. But at the last moment danger appeared. It came in the person of the porter of Bounderby's bank, who had all along suspected Tom. He had watched the Gradgrind house, followed its master when he left and now laid hands on Tom, vowing he would take him back to Coketown.
In this moment of the father's despair, Sleary the showman saved the day for the shivering thief. He agreed with the porter that as Tom was guilty of a crime he must certainly go with him, and he offered, moreover, to drive the captor and his prisoner at once to the nearest railroad station. He winked at Sissy as he proposed this, and she was not alarmed. The porter accepted the proposal at once, but he did not guess what the showman had in mind.
Sleary's horse was an educated horse. At a certain word from its owner it would stop and begin to dance, and would not budge from the spot till he gave the command in a particular way. He had an educated dog, also, that would do anything it was told. With this horse hitched to the carriage and this dog trotting innocently behind, the showman set off with the porter and Tom, while Mr. Gradgrind and Louisa, whom Sissy had told to trust in Sleary, waited all night for his return.
It was morning before Sleary came back, with the news that Tom was undoubtedly safe from pursuit, if not already aboard ship. He told them how, at the word from him, the educated horse had begun to dance; how Tom had slipped down and got away, while the educated dog, at his command, had penned the frightened porter in the carriage all night, fearing to stir.
Thus Tom, who did not deserve any such good luck, got safely away, but though his father was spared the shame of ever seeing his son behind the bars of a jail, yet he was a broken man ever after the truth became known.
What was the fate of all these? Bounderby, a bully to the last, died of a fit five years afterward, leaving his entire fortune to the perpetual support of twenty-five humbugs, each of whom was required to take the name of "Josiah Bounderby of Coketown." Louisa never remarried, but lived to be the comfort of her father and the loving comrade of Sissy Jupe. Sissy never found her father, and when at last Merrylegs, his wonderful dog, came back alone to die of old age at Sleary's feet, all knew that his master must be dead. Tom died, softened and penitent, in a foreign land. Rachel remained the same pensive little worker, always dressed in black, beloved by all and helping every one, even Stephen's besotted wife.
As for Mr. Gradgrind, a white-haired, decrepit old man, he forgot all the facts on which he had so depended, and tried for ever after to mingle his life's acts with Faith, Hope and Charity.
