Hard Times
brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds,
and the black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of
which mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl
Mr. James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so
careless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so
sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she
shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite
a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than
in manner. Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so
locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine
expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a
loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them
there, and her mind apparently quite alone—it was of no use ‘going in’
yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.
From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself.
There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little
adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed
her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich,
there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved
by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in
the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied
their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another,
and well matched.
‘This, sir,’ said Bounderby, ‘is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind’s
eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined
your father’s muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before
long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of
our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my
junior. I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw
something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. She has
lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want
to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better
adviser than Loo Bounderby.’
To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to
learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.
‘Come!’ said his host. ‘If you’re in the complimentary line, you’ll get
on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I have never been in the
way of learning compliments myself, and I don’t profess to understand the
art of paying ’em. In fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was
different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You’re a
gentleman, and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am not influenced
by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn’t my
advantages—disadvantages you would call ’em, but I call ’em advantages—so
you’ll not waste your power, I dare say.’
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, ‘is a noble
animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in
which a conventional hack like myself works.’
‘You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,’ she quietly returned. ‘It is
natural that you should.’
He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of
the world, and thought, ‘Now, how am I to take this?’
‘You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby
has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,’
said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped—in all
the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously
very ill at ease—‘to show the nation the way out of all its
difficulties.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he returned, laughing, ‘upon my honour, no. I will
make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up
and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and
as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your
respected father’s opinions—really because I have no choice of opinions,
and may as well back them as anything else.’
‘Have you none of your own?’ asked Louisa.
‘I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I
attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the
varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction
is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the
subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other
set, and just as much harm as any other set. There’s an English family
with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only
truth going!’
This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty—a vice so dangerous, so
deadly, and so common—seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his
favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest
manner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning
as she pleased: ‘The side that can prove anything in a line of units,
tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the
most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached
to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same
extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did
believe it!’
‘You are a singular politician,’ said Louisa.
‘Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the
state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted
ranks and were reviewed together.’
Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed
here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six,
and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to
the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity.
The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet
use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a
considerable accession of boredom.
In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat
down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to
discuss the flavour of the hap’orth of stewed eels he had purchased in
the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially
used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He
likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the
calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three
horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in
a languid manner, received with ‘charming!’ every now and then; and they
probably would have decided him to ‘go in’ for Jerusalem again to-morrow
morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.
‘Is there nothing,’ he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of
the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very
graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; ‘is there nothing that
will move that face?’
Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected
shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a
beaming smile.
A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of
it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out
her hand—a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her
brother’s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.
‘Ay, ay?’ thought the visitor. ‘This whelp is the only creature she
cares for. So, so!’
The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not
flattering, but not unmerited.
‘When I was your age, young Tom,’ said Bounderby, ‘I was punctual, or I
got no dinner!’
‘When you were my age,’ resumed Tom, ‘you hadn’t a wrong balance to get
right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, then,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Don’t begin with me.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as
it went on; ‘your brother’s face is quite familiar to me. Can I have
seen him abroad? Or at some public school, perhaps?’
‘No,’ she resumed, quite interested, ‘he has never been abroad yet, and
was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that
he never saw you abroad.’
‘No such luck, sir,’ said Tom.
There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen
young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the
greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some
one on whom to bestow it. ‘So much the more is this whelp the only
creature she has ever cared for,’ thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it
over and over. ‘So much the more. So much the more.’
Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp
took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could
indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry
faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic
communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the
evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to
return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by
night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned
out with him to escort him thither.
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse dines at the Bounderby’s]
CHAPTER III
THE WHELP
IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up
under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a
hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange
that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for
five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing
himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a
young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle,
should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling
sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.
‘I believe you!’ said Tom.
He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up.
What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as
cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts;
Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and
more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and
took an observation of his friend. ‘He don’t seem to care about his
dress,’ thought Tom, ‘and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy
swell he is!’
Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank
nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
‘Thank’ee,’ said Tom. ‘Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have
had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.’ Tom said this with one eye
shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.
‘A very good fellow indeed!’ returned Mr. James Harthouse.
‘You think so, don’t you?’ said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and
lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before
the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at
him, observed:
‘What a comical brother-in-law you are!’
‘What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,’ said
Tom.