“But hearken, missus, hearken;” said Stephen, astonished, “‘Tisn’t Mr. Bounderby; ’tis his wife. Your not fearfo’ o’ her. Yo was hey-go-mad about her, but an hour sin.”
“But are you sure it’s the lady, and not the gentleman?” she asked, still trembling.
“Certain sure!”
“Well then, pray don’t speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,” said the old woman. “Let me be quite to myself in this corner.”
Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was quite unable to give him; took the candle, went down-stairs, and in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa into the room. She was followed by the whelp.
Rachel had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle on the table. Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table near it, waiting to be addressed.
For the first time in her life, Louisa had come into one of the dwellings of Coketown hands; for the first time in her life, she was face to face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce, in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women.
Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended; something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand; something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and such another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like the sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into component drops.
She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the few chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two women, and to Stephen.
“I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now. I should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me. Is this your wife?”
Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped again.
“I remember,” said Louisa, reddening at her mistake, “I recollect, now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not attending to the particulars at the time. It was not my meaning to ask a question that would give pain to any one here. If I should ask any other question that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you please, for being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.”
As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachel. Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.
“He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband? You would be his first resource, I think.”
“I have heard the end of it, young lady,” said Rachael.
“Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would probably be rejected by all? I thought he said as much?”
“The chances are very small, young lady – next to nothing – for a man who gets a bad name among them.”
“What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?”
“The name of being troublesome.”
“Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply separated in this town, that there is no place whatever, for an honest workman between them?”
Rachael shook her head in silence.