“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 of it?”
“Why yes, sir. ‘Tis true.”
“Though he knows,” said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, “that these are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for! Now, Mr. Hart house, 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, 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.”