Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which could just turn from side to side.
She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out, and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages, and patriarchs.
Chapter X Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase
Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, where, notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and contempt.
Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was), and further, that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything he choose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming sweet-breads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, “I tell you what, ma’am; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday.” To which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mohammedan persuasion: “To hear is to obey.”
Now Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life, to look up at her staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never turning back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief.
She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
“And pray, sir,” said she, “if I may venture to ask a question appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve – which is indeed hardly in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do – have you received intelligence respecting the robbery?”
“Why, ma’am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect it yet. Rome wasn’t built in a day, ma’am.”
“Very true, sir,” said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head.
“Nor yet in a week, ma’am.”
“No, indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon her.
“In a similar manner, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “I can wait, you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were better off in their youth than I was, however, They had a she-wolf for a nurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn’t give any milk, ma’am; she gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that.”