Hard Times
Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest. ‘I
never in my life,’ he thought, ‘saw anything so remarkable and so
captivating as the lighting of those features!’ His face betrayed his
thoughts—perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according
to its instructions so to do.
‘Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful—Tom
should be so proud of it—I know this is inexcusable, but I am so
compelled to admire.’
‘Being so impulsive,’ she said composedly.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You know I am
a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any
reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding
whatever.’
‘I am waiting,’ she returned, ‘for your further reference to my brother.’
‘You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog as you
will find, except that I am not false—not false. But you surprised and
started me from my subject, which was your brother. I have an interest
in him.’
‘Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?’ she asked, half
incredulously and half gratefully.
‘If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no. I
must say now—even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of
justly awakening your incredulity—yes.’
She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not
find voice; at length she said, ‘Mr. Harthouse, I give you credit for
being interested in my brother.’
‘Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but
I will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of
him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming
self-forgetfulness on his account—pardon me again—I am running wide of
the subject. I am interested in him for his own sake.’
She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in
a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that
instant, and she remained.
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of
effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he
dismissed; ‘it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your
brother’s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive—a little
dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?’
‘I think he makes bets.’ Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that were not her
whole answer, she added, ‘I know he does.’
‘Of course he loses?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of your
sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?’
She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly
and a little resentfully.
‘Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. I think Tom
may be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a
helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked experience.—Shall I say
again, for his sake? Is that necessary?’
She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.
‘Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,’ said James
Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more
airy manner; ‘I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many
advantages. Whether—forgive my plainness—whether any great amount of
confidence is likely to have been established between himself and his
most worthy father.’
‘I do not,’ said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in that
wise, ‘think it likely.’
‘Or, between himself, and—I may trust to your perfect understanding of my
meaning, I am sure—and his highly esteemed brother-in-law.’
She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a
fainter voice, ‘I do not think that likely, either.’
‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, after a short silence, ‘may there be a
better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a
considerable sum of you?’
‘You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,’ she returned, after some
indecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout
the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self-contained
manner; ‘you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know,
it is not by way of complaint or regret. I would never complain of
anything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret.’
‘So spirited, too!’ thought James Harthouse.
‘When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in
debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some
trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold them very willingly. I
attached no value to them. They were quite worthless to me.’
Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her
conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband’s gifts.
She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would
have known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.
‘Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I
could spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you at all,
on the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by
halves. Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted
in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it
to him. I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so
involved, but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to
your honour. I have held no confidence with any one, because—you
anticipated my reason just now.’ She abruptly broke off.
He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of
presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
‘Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel
the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot
possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise
consideration with which you regard his errors. With all possible
respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. Bounderby, I think I perceive
that he has not been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage
towards the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into
these extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long been
forced—with the very best intentions we have no doubt—upon him. Mr.
Bounderby’s fine bluff English independence, though a most charming
characteristic, does not—as we have agreed—invite confidence. If I might
venture to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that
delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and
abilities misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should
express what it presents to my own view.’
As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon
the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her
application of his very distinctly uttered words.
‘All allowance,’ he continued, ‘must be made. I have one great fault to
find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him
heavily to account.’
Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?
‘Perhaps,’ he returned, ‘I have said enough. Perhaps it would have been
better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.’
‘You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.’
‘To relieve you from needless apprehension—and as this confidence
regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible
things, has been established between us—I obey. I cannot forgive him for
not being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the
affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her
unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my
observation, is a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his
constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless
fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be
regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a
venial offence.’
The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They
rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with
acute pain that found no relief in them.
‘In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby, that I
must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction
and advice in extricating them—rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a
scapegrace on a much larger scale—will give me some influence over him,
and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said
enough, and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort
of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to
make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am
nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees,’ he added, having lifted
up his eyes and looked about; for he had watched her closely until now;
‘is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be
loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards
him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful
of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched—if there are such
things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too
often to believe in them.’
He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet
the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he
stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was
startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter
pastime, and his colour changed.
‘Halloa!’ he stammered; ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
‘Whose name, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder
and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house
together, ‘have you been carving on the trees?’
‘Whose name?’ returned Tom. ‘Oh! You mean what girl’s name?’
‘You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature’s on
the bark, Tom.’
[Picture: Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the garden]
‘Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a
slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she
might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I’d
carve her name as often as she liked.’
‘I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.’
‘Mercenary,’ repeated Tom. ‘Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.’
‘Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?’ said Louisa,
showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
‘You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,’ returned her brother sulkily.
‘If it does, you can wear it.’
‘Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and then,’
said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Don’t believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He knows much
better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately
expressed to me, unless he relents a little.’
‘At all events, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, softening in his admiration of
his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, ‘you can’t tell her that I
ever praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being
the contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason.
However, never mind this now; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am
sick of the subject.’
They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and
went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and
passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother’s
shoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the
garden.