Hard Times
‘Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.’
They had stopped among a disorder of roses—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s
humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale—and Tom sat down on a
terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his
powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his
figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just
visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.
‘Tom, what’s the matter?’
‘Oh! Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom with a groan, ‘I am hard up, and bothered
out of my life.’
‘My good fellow, so am I.’
‘You!’ returned Tom. ‘You are the picture of independence. Mr.
Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have
got myself into—what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she
would only have done it.’
He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth
with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man’s. After one
exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his
lightest air.
‘Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You
have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.’
‘Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it? Here’s
old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon twopence a
month, or something of that sort. Here’s my father drawing what he calls
a line, and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here’s my
mother who never has anything of her own, except her complaints. What
_is_ a fellow to do for money, and where _am_ I to look for it, if not to
my sister?’
He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr.
Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat.
‘But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it—’
‘Not got it, Mr. Harthouse? I don’t say she has got it. I may have
wanted more than she was likely to have got. But then she ought to get
it. She could get it. It’s of no use pretending to make a secret of
matters now, after what I have told you already; you know she didn’t
marry old Bounderby for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake.
Then why doesn’t she get what I want, out of him, for my sake? She is
not obliged to say what she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough;
she could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn’t
she choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is? But no. There
she sits in his company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable
and getting it easily. I don’t know what you may call this, but I call
it unnatural conduct.’
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on
the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong
inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind junior, as the injured men of
Coketown threatened to pitch their property into the Atlantic. But he
preserved his easy attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone
balustrades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little
surface-island.
‘My dear Tom,’ said Harthouse, ‘let me try to be your banker.’
‘For God’s sake,’ replied Tom, suddenly, ‘don’t talk about bankers!’ And
very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. Very white.
Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the best
society, was not to be surprised—he could as soon have been affected—but
he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble
touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his
school to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind
College.
‘What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what
they are.’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were
better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: ‘it’s too
late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it
before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you’re a
true friend.’
A true friend! ‘Whelp, whelp!’ thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily; ‘what an
Ass you are!’
‘And I take your offer as a great kindness,’ said Tom, grasping his hand.
‘As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Well,’ returned the other, ‘it may be of more use by and by. And, my
good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come
thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find
for yourself.’
‘Thank you,’ said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds.
‘I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘Now, you see, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing
over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always
drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland:
‘every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the
rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately intent;’ the languor of
his desperation being quite tropical; ‘on your softening towards your
sister—which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and
agreeable sort of brother—which you ought to be.’
‘I will be, Mr. Harthouse.’
‘No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.’
‘Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.’
‘Having made which bargain, Tom,’ said Harthouse, clapping him on the
shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer—as he did,
poor fool—that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good
nature to lessen his sense of obligation, ‘we will tear ourselves asunder
until dinner-time.’
When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his
body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. ‘I
didn’t mean to be cross, Loo,’ he said, giving her his hand, and kissing
her. ‘I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.’
After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for some one
else. Alas, for some one else!
‘So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,’
thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day’s
knowledge of her pretty face. ‘So much the less, so much the less.’
CHAPTER VIII
EXPLOSION
THE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse
rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room,
smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his
young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his
eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so
rich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an
idle winner might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time,
and could give his mind to it.
He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was
excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely
turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now
and at all times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but
plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate
recesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he
had associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which
she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him.
Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he
lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad,
than indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting
with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape
by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is
trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is
aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used
up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or
to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and
reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to
be travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly;
but he troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be,
will be.
As he had rather a long ride to take that day—for there was a public
occasion ‘to do’ at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity
of going in for the Gradgrind men—he dressed early and went down to
breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous
evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. There was a look of
interest for him again.
He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as
was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding
back at six o’clock. There was a sweep of some half-mile between the
lodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the
smooth gravel, once Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the
shrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.
‘Harthouse!’ cried Mr. Bounderby. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring
Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.
‘Then you _haven’t_ heard!’
‘I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.’
Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path
before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
‘The Bank’s robbed!’
‘You don’t mean it!’
‘Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with
a false key.’
‘Of much?’
Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed
mortified by being obliged to reply, ‘Why, no; not of very much. But it
might have been.’
‘Of how much?’
‘Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty
pound,’ said Bounderby, with impatience. ‘But it’s not the sum; it’s the
fact. It’s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that’s the important
circumstance. I am surprised you don’t see it.’
‘My dear Bounderby,’ said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to
his servant, ‘I _do_ see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly
desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view.
Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you—which I do
with all my soul, I assure you—on your not having sustained a greater
loss.’
‘Thank’ee,’ replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. ‘But I
tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound.’
‘I suppose it might.’
‘Suppose it might! By the Lord, you _may_ suppose so. By George!’ said
Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head. ‘It
might have been twice twenty. There’s no knowing what it would have
been, or wouldn’t have been, as it was, but for the fellows’ being
disturbed.’
Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer.
‘Here’s Tom Gradgrind’s daughter knows pretty well what it might have
been, if you don’t,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘Dropped, sir, as if she was
shot when I told her! Never knew her do such a thing before. Does her
credit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!’
She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his
arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been
committed.
‘Why, I am going to tell you,’ said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm
to Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If you hadn’t been so mighty particular about the sum,
I should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she _is_
a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?’
‘I have already had the honour—’
‘Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same