“Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?” asked Mrs. Sparsit.
“You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of years, this unlucky job of yours?” said Mr. Bounderby.
“Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.”
“Indeed, sir?” said Mrs. Sparsit to her chief, with great placidity. “I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.”
Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a sidelong way that had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little more sherry.
“Well? Why don’t you go on?” he then asked, turning rather irritably on Stephen Blackpool.
“I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.” Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral shock.
“What do you mean?” said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimneypiece. “What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse.”
“I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under ’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’ best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone battering mad.”
“He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir,” observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.
“I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’ read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that they can be set free fro’ their misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o’ one kind an’ another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that won’t do, they ha’ gowd an’ other cash, an’ they can say ‘This for yo’ an’ that for me,’ an’ they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?”
“No how,” returned Mr. Bounderby.
“If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?”
“Of course there is.”
“If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?”
“Of course there is.”
“If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?”
“Of course there is.”
“If I was to live wi’ her an’ not marry her—saying such a thing could be, which it never could or would, an’ her so good—there’s a law to punish me, in every innocent child belonging to me?”
“Of course there is.”
“Now, a’ God’s name,” said Stephen Blackpool, “show me the law to help me!”
“Hem! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,” said Mr. Bounderby, “and—and—it must be kept up.”
“No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. Not that way. ’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were in a fact’ry when a chilt, but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and eern to year wi’. I read in th’ papers every ’Sizes, every Sessions—and you read too—I know it!—with dismay—how th’ supposed unpossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a grievous case, an’ I want—if yo will be so good—t’ know the law that helps me.”
“Now, I tell you what!” said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets. “There is such a law.”
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his attention, gave a nod.
“But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money.”
“How much might that be?” Stephen calmly asked.
“Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, and you’d have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you’d have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,” said Mr. Bounderby. “Perhaps twice the money.”
“There’s no other law?”
“Certainly not.”
“Why then, sir,” said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, “ ’tis a muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an’ the sooner I am dead, the better.”
(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
“Pooh, pooh! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,” said Mr. Bounderby, “about things you don’t understand; and don’t you call the institutions of your country a muddle, or you’ll get yourself into a real muddle one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are not your piecework, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind your piecework. You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but for better for worse. If she has turned out worse—why, all we have got to say is, she might have turned out better.”
“ ’Tis a muddle,” said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door. “ ’Tis a’ a muddle!”
“Now, I’ll tell you what!” Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory address. “With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been quite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a
