“Young lady,” said Rachael, “Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a meeting tonight where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen! The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!” Her indignation failed her, and she broke off sobbing.
“I am very, very sorry,” said Louisa.
“Oh, young lady, young lady,” returned Rachael, “I hope you may be, but I don’t know! I can’t say what you may ha’ done! The like of you don’t know us, don’t care for us, don’t belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha’ come that night. I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some aim of your own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I said then, bless you for coming; and I said it of my heart, you seemed to take so pitifully to him; but I don’t know now, I don’t know!”
Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.
“And when I think,” said Rachael through her sobs, “that the poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him—when I mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there—Oh, I hope you may be sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it; but I don’t know, I don’t know!”
“You’re a pretty article,” growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark corner, “to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by rights.”
She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke.
“Come!” said he, “you know what you have engaged to do. You had better give your mind to that; not this.”
“ ’Deed, I am loath,” returned Rachael, drying her eyes, “that any here should see me like this; but I won’t be seen so again. Young lady, when I had read what’s put in print of Stephen—and what has just as much truth in it as if it had been put in print of you—I went straight to the Bank to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise that he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr. Bounderby then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the mill tonight, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’ pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr. Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.”
“So far, that’s true enough,” assented Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on. “But I have known you people before today, you’ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!”
“I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I have written to him once before sin’ he went away,” said Rachael; “and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.”
“Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,” retorted Mr. Bounderby, “that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account of most people being judged according to the company they keep. The post-office hasn’t been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no letter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mistaken, and never wrote any.”
“He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,” said Rachael, turning appealingly to Louisa, “as much as a week, when he sent me the only letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in another name.”
“Oh, by George!” cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, “he changes his name, does he! That’s rather unlucky, too, for such an immaculate chap. It’s considered a little suspicious in Courts of Justice, I believe, when an innocent happens to have many names.”
“What,” said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, “what, young lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this side, or must he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a hare?”
“Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,” returned Louisa; “and I hope that he will clear himself.”
“You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!”
“All the surer, I suppose,” said Mr. Bounderby, “for your refusing to tell where he is? Eh?”
“He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been done against him,” said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws of the sea, “and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.”
“Notwithstanding which,” added
