Hearing the Last of it — Hard Times

Mrs Sparsit keeps watch at Bounderby's country house with lighthouse eyes and serene prowling. She talks with Harthouse in the garden, recalls his first visit to the Bank, and notes how animated Miss Gradgrind has become. At breakfast her assuagements soften Bounderby toward herself and harden him toward Louisa, who answers his bluster with cold composure. From that day the Sparsit action throws Louisa and Harthouse more together and strengthens her dangerous alienation from her husband. After Bounderby leaves, Sparsit kisses his hand and calls him benefactor, then grimaces at his portrait and mutters, Serve you right, you Noodle.

Bitzer arrives by train with an express from Stone Lodge: Mrs Gradgrind is nearly dead. Louisa rides back through coal-pits to a home that no longer feels like one. She remembers childhood enchantment dried up, Reason become a grim idol with victims bound hand and foot, and enters her mother's room with a heavy, hardened sorrow.

Sissy tends Mrs Gradgrind, who refuses her bed lest she never hear the last of it. Feeble and giddy, the mother says there is a pain somewhere in the room but cannot locate it. She sends for Jane, asks Louisa to see the likeness, then dismisses Sissy to speak alone.

Mrs Gradgrind says every Ology in the house has been worn to rags, yet there is something Thomas missed or forgot, something that makes her restless. She asks for a pen to write to him and find its name for God's sake, traces meaningless figures, and dies with the word unspoken. Louisa has heard the last of her mother, and the last of what the system never supplied.