CHAPTER XII

THE OLD WOMAN

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.