in one of bounderby's weaving mills a man named stephen blackpool had worked for years. he was sturdy and honest, but had a stooping frame, a knitted brow and iron-gray hair, for in his forty years he had known much trouble.[pg 421]
many years before he had married; unhappily, for through no fault or failing of his own, his wife took to drink, left off work, and became a shame and a disgrace to the town. when she could get no money to buy drink with, she sold his furniture, and often he would come home from the mill to find the rooms stripped of all their belongings and his wife stretched on the floor in drunken slumber. at last he was compelled to pay her to stay away, and even then he lived in daily fear lest she return to disgrace him afresh.
what made this harder for stephen to bear was the true love he had for a sweet, patient, working woman in the mill named rachel. she had an oval, delicate face, with gentle eyes and dark, shining hair. she knew his story and loved him, too. he could not marry her, because his own wife stood in the way, nor could he even see or walk with her often, for fear busy tongues might talk of it, but he watched every flutter of her shawl.
one night stephen went home to his lodging to find his wife returned. she was lying drunk across his bed, a besotted creature, stained and splashed, and evil to look at. all that night he sat sleepless and sick at heart.
next day, at the noon hour, he went to his employer's house to ask his advice. he knew the law sometimes released two people from the marriage tie when one or the other lived wickedly, and his whole heart longed to marry rachel.[pg 422]
but bounderby told him bluntly that the law he had in mind was only for rich men, who could afford to spend a great deal of money. and he further added (according to his usual custom) that he had no doubt stephen would soon be demanding the turtle-soup and venison and the golden spoon.
stephen went home that night hopeless, knowing what he should find there. but rachel had heard and was there before him. she had tidied the room and was tending the woman who was his wife. it seemed to stephen, as he saw her in her work of mercy, there was an angel's halo about her head.
soon the wretched creature she had aided passed out of his daily life again to go he knew not where, and this act of rachel's remained to make his love and longing greater.
about this time a stranger came to coketown. he was james harthouse, a suave, polished man of the world, good-looking, well-dressed, with a gallant yet indolent manner and bold eyes.
being wealthy, he had tried the army, tried a government position, tried jerusalem, tried yachting and found himself bored by them all. at last he had tried facts and figures, having some idea these might help in politics. in london he had met the great believer in facts, mr. gradgrind, and had been sent by him to coketown to make the acquaintance of his friend bounderby. harthouse thus met the mill owner, who introduced him to louisa, now his wife.[pg 423]
the year of married life had not been a happy one for her. she was reserved and watchful and cold as ever, but harthouse easily saw that she was ashamed of bounderby's bragging talk and shrank from his coarseness as from a blow. he soon perceived, too, that the only love she had for any one was given to tom, though the latter little deserved it. in his own mind harthouse called her father a machine, her brother a whelp and her husband a bear.
harthouse was attracted by louisa's beauty no less than by her pride. he was without conscience or honor, and determined, though she was already married, to make her fall in love with him. he knew the surest way to her liking was to pretend an interest in tom, and he at once began to flatter the sullen young fellow. under his influence the latter was not long in telling the story of louisa's marriage, and in boasting that he himself had brought it about for his own advancement.
to louisa, harthouse spoke regretfully of the lad's idle habits, yet hopefully of his future, so that she, deeming him honestly tom's friend, confided in him, telling him of her brother's love of gambling and how she had more than once paid his debts by selling some of her own jewelry. in such ways as these harthouse, step by step, gained an intimacy with her.
while harthouse was thus setting his net, stephen blackpool, the mill worker, was on trial.[pg 424]
it was a time of great dissatisfaction among workmen throughout the country. in many towns they were banding themselves together into "unions" in order to gain more privileges and higher wages from their employers. this movement in time had reached coketown. rachel was opposed to these unions, believing they would in the end do their members more harm than good, and knowing her mind, stephen had long ago promised her that he would never join one. the day had come, however, when a workman who thus declined was looked on with suspicion and dislike by his fellows, and at length—though all had liked and respected stephen—because he steadfastly refused to join the rest, he found himself shunned. day after day he went to and from his work alone and spoken to by none, and, not seeing rachel in these days, was lonely and disheartened.
this condition of things did not escape the eye of bounderby, who sent for stephen and questioned him. but even in his trouble, thinking his fellow workmen believed themselves in the right, stephen refused to complain or to bear tales of them. bounderby, in his arrogance, chose to be angry that one of his mill-hands should presume not to answer his questions and discharged him forthwith, so that now stephen found himself without friends, money or work.
not wholly without friends, either, for rachel was still the same. and he had gained another[pg 425] friend, too. while he told her that evening in his lodgings what had occurred, and that he must soon go in search of work in some other town, louisa came to him. she had witnessed the interview in which her husband had discharged this faithful workman, had found out where he lived, and had made her brother tom bring her there that she might tell stephen how sorry she was and beg him to accept money from her to help him in his distress.
this kindness touched stephen. he thanked her and took as a loan a small portion of the money she offered him.
tom had come on this errand with his sister in a sulky humor. while he listened now a thought came to him. as louisa talked with rachel, he beckoned stephen from the room and told him that he could perhaps aid him in finding work. he told him to wait during the next two or three evenings near the door of bounderby's bank, and promised that he himself would seek stephen there and tell him further.
there was no kindness, however, in this proposal. it was a sudden plan, wicked and cowardly. tom had become a criminal. he had stolen money from the bank and trembled daily lest the theft become known. what would be easier now, he thought, than to hide his crime, by throwing suspicion on some one else? he could force the door of the safe before he left at night, and drop a key[pg 426] of the bank door, which he had secretly made, in the street where it would afterward be found. he himself, then, next morning, could appear to find the safe open and the money missing. stephen, he considered, would be just the one to throw suspicion upon.
all unconscious of this plot, stephen in good faith waited near the bank during three evenings, walking past the building again and again, watching vainly for tom to appear. mrs. sparsit, at her upper window, wondered to see his bowed form haunting the place. nothing came of his waiting, however, and the fourth morning saw him, with his thoughts on rachel, trudging out of town along the highroad, bravely and uncomplainingly, toward whatever new lot the future held for him.
tom's plot worked well. next day there was a sensation in coketown. bounderby's bank was found to have been robbed. the safe, tom declared, he had found open, with a large part of its contents missing. a key to the bank door was picked up in the street; this, it was concluded, the thief had thrown away after using. who had done it? had any suspicious person been seen about the place?
many people remembered a strange old woman, apparently from the country, who called herself "mrs. pegler," and who had often been seen standing looking fixedly at the bank. what more natural than to suspect her?[pg 427]
then another rumor began to grow. stephen blackpool, discharged from the mill by bounderby himself—the workman who had been shunned by all his comrades, to whom no one spoke—he had been seen recently loitering, night after night, near the robbed bank. where was he? gone, none knew where!
in an hour stephen was suspected. by the next day half of coketown believed him guilty.