Hard Times
odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes
of other people who wanted other odds and ends—in fact resumed his
parliamentary duties.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated
from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing
Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like
observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through
James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through
everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs.
‘Your foot on the last step, my lady,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing
the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, ‘and all
your art shall never blind me.’
Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character or the
graft of circumstances upon it,—her curious reserve did baffle, while it
stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr.
James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not
read the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a
greater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of
satellites to help her.
So the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away
from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or
four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at
the Bank, adding: ‘But you’ll go down to-morrow, ma’am, all the same.
You’ll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to
you.’
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, ‘let me beg you not to
say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I
think you very well know.’
‘Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,’
said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.
‘Mr. Bounderby,’ retorted Mrs. Sparsit, ‘your will is to me a law, sir;
otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not
feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to
receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you
shall say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation.’
‘Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, opening his
eyes, ‘I should hope you want no other invitation.’
‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I should hope not. Say no
more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again.’
‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ blustered Bounderby.
‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘there was wont to be an elasticity in you
which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!’
Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed
up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and
ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being
heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on
his journey, and the Bank was closing, ‘present my compliments to young
Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop
and walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?’ Young Mr. Thomas being
usually ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and
followed on its heels. ‘Mr. Thomas,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘these plain
viands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.’
‘Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.
‘How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Tom.
‘Where may he be at present?’ Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light
conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies
for being so uncommunicative.
‘He is shooting in Yorkshire,’ said Tom. ‘Sent Loo a basket half as big
as a church, yesterday.’
‘The kind of gentleman, now,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, ‘whom one might
wager to be a good shot!’
‘Crack,’ said Tom.
He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had
so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three
seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching
his looks, if she were so inclined.
‘Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘as
indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr.
Tom?’
‘Why, _I_ expect to see him to-morrow,’ returned the whelp.
‘Good news!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly.
‘I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the
station here,’ said Tom, ‘and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I
believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so,
being due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn’t wonder
if he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.’
‘Which reminds me!’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Would you remember a message to
your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?’
‘Well? I’ll try,’ returned the reluctant whelp, ‘if it isn’t a long un.’
‘It is merely my respectful compliments,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I fear
I may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little
nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.’
‘Oh! If that’s all,’ observed Tom, ‘it wouldn’t much matter, even if I
was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of you unless she sees
you.’
Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he
relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left,
when he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off!’ and went off.
Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long looking
at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye
on the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind,
but, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening
come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her
reasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a
passenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it
round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room windows, to
appearing in its precincts openly.
Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came
in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had
dispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of
trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, he strolled away idly,
stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat
off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and
exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who
had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty
minutes hence.
‘This is a device to keep him out of the way,’ said Mrs. Sparsit,
starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last.
‘Harthouse is with his sister now!’
It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her
utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was
at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy;
but she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in
darting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving
into the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of
coal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and
whirled away.
All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to
the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal
strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes
of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down.
Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.
An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its
drooping eyelids Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the
wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a
green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches.
One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily
crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick
dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Sparsit heard or saw until she
very softly closed a gate.
She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round
it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were
open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights
yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect.
She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and
briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be.
With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs.
Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent
upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood
had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by
the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and
listened.
Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment _was_ a
device to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled
tree.
Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer to them.
She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his
ambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that
no great one, she could have touched them both. He was there secretly,
and had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horseback, and
must have passed through the neighbouring fields; for his horse was tied
to the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.
‘My dearest love,’ said he, ‘what could I do? Knowing you were alone,
was it possible that I could stay away?’
‘You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; _I_ don’t
know what they see in you when you hold it up,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit;
‘but you little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!’
That she hung her head, was certain. She urged him to go away, she
commanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor
raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the
amiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life.
Her hands rested in one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her
manner of speaking was not hurried.
‘My dear child,’ said Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit saw with delight that his
arm embraced her; ‘will you not bear with my society for a little while?’
‘Not here.’
‘Where, Louisa?
‘Not here.’
‘But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far,
and am altogether so devoted, and distracted. There never was a slave at
once so devoted and ill-used by his mistress. To look for your sunny
welcome that has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen
manner, is heart-rending.’
‘Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?’
‘But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet?’
They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought
there was another listener among the trees. It was only rain, beginning
to fall fast, in heavy drops.
‘Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing
that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?’
‘No!’
‘Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most
unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to
all other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of
the most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious. My