“I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,” returned Louisa, after sitting thoughtful awhile, “to be so ready to agree with you, and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say.”
“I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over with my friend Tom more than once—of course I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom—and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk?”
They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the twilight—she leaning on his arm—and she little thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase.
Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; but, until then, there it was to be, a-building, before Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it.
And always gliding down, down, down!
Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant’s Staircase.
With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fullness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down.
XI
Lower and Lower
The figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily; always verging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.
Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife’s decease, made an expedition from London, and buried her in a businesslike manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes of other people who wanted other odds and ends—in fact resumed his parliamentary duties.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs. “Your foot on the last step, my lady,” said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, “and all your art shall never blind me.”
Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character or the graft of circumstances upon it—her curious reserve did baffle, while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to help her.
So the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding: “But you’ll go down tomorrow, ma’am, all the same. You’ll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you.”
“Pray, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, “let me beg you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I think you very well know.”
“Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,” said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.
“Mr. Bounderby,” retorted Mrs. Sparsit, “your will is to me a law, sir; otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you shall say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation.”
“Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,” said Bounderby, opening his eyes, “I should hope you want no other invitation.”
“No, indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “I should hope not. Say no more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again.”
“What do you mean, ma’am?” blustered Bounderby.
“Sir,” rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, “there was wont to be an elasticity in you which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!”
Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
“Bitzer,” said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on his journey, and the Bank was closing, “present my compliments to young Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop and walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?” Young Mr. Thomas being usually ready
