Hard Times
occasion?’ Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer
knuckled his forehead.
‘Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank,
perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business
hours, everything was put away as usual. In the iron room that this
young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much. In the
little safe in young Tom’s closet, the safe used for petty purposes,
there was a hundred and fifty odd pound.’
‘A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,’ said Bitzer.
‘Come!’ retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, ‘let’s have
none of _your_ interruptions. It’s enough to be robbed while you’re
snoring because you’re too comfortable, without being put right with
_your_ four seven ones. I didn’t snore, myself, when I was your age, let
me tell you. I hadn’t victuals enough to snore. And I didn’t four seven
one. Not if I knew it.’
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at
once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of
Mr. Bounderby’s moral abstinence.
‘A hundred and fifty odd pound,’ resumed Mr. Bounderby. ‘That sum of
money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that’s
no matter now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night,
while this young fellow snored—Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, you say you have
heard him snore?’
‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I cannot say that I have heard him
precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on
winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard
him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard
him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be
sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty
sense of giving strict evidence, ‘that I would convey any imputation on
his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a
young man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my
testimony.’
‘Well!’ said the exasperated Bounderby, ‘while he was snoring, _or_
choking, _or_ Dutch-clocking, _or_ something _or_ other—being asleep—some
fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not
remains to be seen, got to young Tom’s safe, forced it, and abstracted
the contents. Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves
out at the main door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked,
and the key under Mrs. Sparsit’s pillow) with a false key, which was
picked up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o’clock to-day. No
alarm takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and
begins to open and prepare the offices for business. Then, looking at
Tom’s safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the
money gone.’
‘Where is Tom, by the by?’ asked Harthouse, glancing round.
‘He has been helping the police,’ said Bounderby, ‘and stays behind at
the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his
time of life. They would have been out of pocket if they had invested
eighteenpence in the job; I can tell ’em that.’
‘Is anybody suspected?’
‘Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. Egod!’ said
Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit’s arm to wipe his heated head.
‘Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody
suspected. No, thank you!’
Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected?
‘Well,’ said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront them all,
‘I’ll tell you. It’s not to be mentioned everywhere; it’s not to be
mentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there’s a
gang of ’em) may be thrown off their guard. So take this in confidence.
Now wait a bit.’ Mr. Bounderby wiped his head again. ‘What should you
say to;’ here he violently exploded: ‘to a Hand being in it?’
‘I hope,’ said Harthouse, lazily, ‘not our friend Blackpot?’
‘Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,’ returned Bounderby, ‘and that’s the man.’
Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.
‘O yes! I know!’ said Bounderby, immediately catching at the sound. ‘I
know! I am used to that. I know all about it. They are the finest
people in the world, these fellows are. They have got the gift of the
gab, they have. They only want to have their rights explained to them,
they do. But I tell you what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll
show you a man that’s fit for anything bad, I don’t care what it is.’
Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been
taken to disseminate—and which some people really believed.
‘But I am acquainted with these chaps,’ said Bounderby. ‘I can read ’em
off, like books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I appeal to you. What warning did
I give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the
express object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over,
and floor the Established Church? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high
connexions, you are on a level with the aristocracy,—did I say, or did I
not say, to that fellow, “you can’t hide the truth from me: you are not
the kind of fellow I like; you’ll come to no good”?’
‘Assuredly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you did, in a highly impressive
manner, give him such an admonition.’
‘When he shocked you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘when he shocked your
feelings?’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her head, ‘he
certainly did so. Though I do not mean to say but that my feelings may
be weaker on such points—more foolish if the term is preferred—than they
might have been, if I had always occupied my present position.’
Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Harthouse, as much as
to say, ‘I am the proprietor of this female, and she’s worth your
attention, I think.’ Then, resumed his discourse.
‘You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him when you saw
him. I didn’t mince the matter with him. I am never mealy with ’em. I
KNOW ’em. Very well, sir. Three days after that, he bolted. Went off,
nobody knows where: as my mother did in my infancy—only with this
difference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What
did he do before he went? What do you say;’ Mr. Bounderby, with his hat
in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his
sentences, as if it were a tambourine; ‘to his being seen—night after
night—watching the Bank?—to his lurking about there—after dark?—To its
striking Mrs. Sparsit—that he could be lurking for no good—To her calling
Bitzer’s attention to him, and their both taking notice of him—And to its
appearing on inquiry to-day—that he was also noticed by the neighbours?’
Having come to the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put
his tambourine on his head.
‘Suspicious,’ said James Harthouse, ‘certainly.’
‘I think so, sir,’ said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. ‘I think so. But
there are more of ’em in it. There’s an old woman. One never hears of
these things till the mischief’s done; all sorts of defects are found out
in the stable door after the horse is stolen; there’s an old woman turns
up now. An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a
broomstick, every now and then. _She_ watches the place a whole day
before this fellow begins, and on the night when you saw him, she steals
away with him and holds a council with him—I suppose, to make her report
on going off duty, and be damned to her.’
There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from
observation, thought Louisa.
‘This is not all of ’em, even as we already know ’em,’ said Bounderby,
with many nods of hidden meaning. ‘But I have said enough for the
present. You’ll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no
one. It may take time, but we shall have ’em. It’s policy to give ’em
line enough, and there’s no objection to that.’
‘Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as
notice-boards observe,’ replied James Harthouse, ‘and serve them right.
Fellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences. If there were no
consequences, we should all go in for Banks.’ He had gently taken
Louisa’s parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked
under its shade, though the sun did not shine there.
‘For the present, Loo Bounderby,’ said her husband, ‘here’s Mrs. Sparsit
to look after. Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves have been acted upon by this
business, and she’ll stay here a day or two. So make her comfortable.’
‘Thank you very much, sir,’ that discreet lady observed, ‘but pray do not
let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do for Me.’
It soon appeared that if Mrs. Sparsit had a failing in her association
with that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively
regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance. On
being shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts
as to suggest the inference that she would have preferred to pass the
night on the mangle in the laundry. True, the Powlers and the Scadgerses
were accustomed to splendour, ‘but it is my duty to remember,’ Mrs.
Sparsit was fond of observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any
of the domestics were present, ‘that what I was, I am no longer.
Indeed,’ said she, ‘if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr.
Sparsit was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family;
or if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of common
descent and ordinary connexions; I would gladly do so. I should think
it, under existing circumstances, right to do so.’ The same Hermitical
state of mind led to her renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner,
until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to take them; when she said,
‘Indeed you are very good, sir;’ and departed from a resolution of which
she had made rather formal and public announcement, to ‘wait for the
simple mutton.’ She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt;
and, feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr. Bounderby to the fullest
extent in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back
in her chair and silently wept; at which periods a tear of large
dimensions, like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must
be, for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose.
But Mrs. Sparsit’s greatest point, first and last, was her determination
to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions when in looking at him she
was involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, ‘Alas, poor
Yorick!’ After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of
emotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully
cheerful, and would say, ‘You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful
to find;’ and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr.
Bounderby bore up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often
apologized, she found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a
curious propensity to call Mrs. Bounderby ‘Miss Gradgrind,’ and yielded
to it some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her
repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest confusion;
but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Gradgrind:
whereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the
happiness of knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs.
Bounderby, she found almost impossible. It was a further singularity of
this remarkable case, that the more she thought about it, the more
impossible it appeared; ‘the differences,’ she observed, ‘being such.’
In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case of the