Hard Times by Charles Dickens (ebooks that read to you txt) 📕

with his hat in his hand, in his gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, “Yes.”

“You are the hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?” said Bitzer, the very light young man in question.

Stephen answered “Yes,” again.

“I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don’t you?”

Stephen said “Yes,” again.

“Then go straight up there, will you?” said Bitzer. “You’re expected, and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong to the Bank; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you’ll save me a walk.”

Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant Bounderby.

V Men and Masters

“Well, Stephen,” said Bounderby, in his windy manner, “what’s this I hear? What have these pests of the earth been doing to you? Come in, and speak up.”

It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was set out; and Mr. Bounderby’s young wife, and her brother, and a great gentleman from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.

“This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,” said Mr. Bounderby. The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, “Oh really?” and dawdled to the hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.

“Now,” said Bounderby, “speak up!”

After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling of his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested deserter he had been called.

“What were it, sir,” said Stephen, “as yo were pleased to want wi’ me?”

“Why, I have told you,” returned Bounderby. “Speak up like a man, since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.”

“Wi’ yor pardon, sir,” said Stephen Blackpool, “I ha’ nowt to sen about it.”

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a wind, finding something in his way here, began to blow at it directly.

“Now, look here, Harthouse,” said he, “here’s a specimen of ’em. When this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous strangers who are always about⁠—and who ought to be hanged wherever they are found⁠—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips about them?”

“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 about it?”

“Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.”

“Though he knows,” said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, “that there are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for! Now, Mr. Harthouse, 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, 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