Lower and Lower — Hard Times

The chapter opens where the last one left the allegory: the figure descends the great stairs steadily toward the black gulf at the bottom. Mr Gradgrind buries Mrs Gradgrind in a business-like manner and returns promptly to parliamentary duties at the national cinder-heap. Mrs Sparsit, separated from her staircase all week by the iron road, keeps cat-like watch on Louisa through her husband, her brother, Harthouse, and the outsides of letters, apostrophizing the descending figure with her threatening mitten.

When Bounderby leaves town for three or four days, Sparsit pumps Tom at the Bank over lamb chop and India ale. Tom expects Harthouse at the station Saturday evening but the Yorkshire train brings no Harthouse. Sparsit decides this is a device to keep the brother out of the way while Harthouse is with his sister, races by coach and rail to the country house, and in the wet wood overhears him declare love while Louisa refuses to receive him at the house.

Louisa leaves alone cloaked in the storm and Sparsit reads elopement: she falls from the lowermost stair into the gulf. She follows on the same train to Coketown, exulting as if attending on the body, until Louisa's railroad carriage stands empty at the station. Soaked, ruined, and wrong about the destination, Mrs Sparsit bursts into tears of bitterness: I have lost her. Down will show where Louisa was actually going.