Hard Times
strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a
heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.
It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood
herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did
not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she
rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being
so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched
hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause
of them.
As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that
she stood placidly near the bedside.
‘I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me
stay with you?’
‘Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are
everything to her.’
‘Am I?’ returned Sissy, shaking her head. ‘I would be something to you,
if I might.’
‘What?’ said Louisa, almost sternly.
‘Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like
to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I
will never tire of trying. Will you let me?’
‘My father sent you to ask me.’
‘No indeed,’ replied Sissy. ‘He told me that I might come in now, but he
sent me away from the room this morning—or at least—’
She hesitated and stopped.
‘At least, what?’ said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
‘I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very
uncertain whether you would like to find me here.’
‘Have I always hated you so much?’
‘I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you
should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left
home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so
little, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other
friends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.’
Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood
the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
‘May I try?’ said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that
was insensibly drooping towards her.
Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another
moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
‘First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so
confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to
myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me. Does not that
repel you?’
‘No!’
‘I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid
waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of
being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest
truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the
good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that
repel you?’
‘No!’
In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old
devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon
the darkness of the other.
Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow
there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller’s child
looked up at her almost with veneration.
‘Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let
me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!’
‘O lay it here!’ cried Sissy. ‘Lay it here, my dear.’
CHAPTER II
VERY RIDICULOUS
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much
hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely
have recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of
the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He
several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He
went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an
object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored
by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the
manner prescribed by the authorities.
After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a
leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the
greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in
withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been
entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn
coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor
letter coming with either, he went down to the country house. There, the
report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for
town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of
message, importing that her return was not to be expected for the
present.
In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town.
He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there. He looked in at
the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away?
Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that
griffin!
‘Well! I don’t know,’ said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy
about it. ‘She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always
full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got
his blinking eyes upon a fellow.’
‘Where were you last night, Tom?’
‘Where was I last night!’ said Tom. ‘Come! I like that. I was waiting
for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as _I_ never saw it come down
before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.’
‘I was prevented from coming—detained.’
‘Detained!’ murmured Tom. ‘Two of us were detained. I was detained
looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have
been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk
home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all.’
‘Where?’
‘Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’s.’
‘Did you see your sister?’
‘How the deuce,’ returned Tom, staring, ‘could I see my sister when she
was fifteen miles off?’
Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true
a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the
smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth
time what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was,
that whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been
premature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost
courage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at
present incomprehensible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his
fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when
condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was
tied. As to all the rest—What will be, will be.
‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a
penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby
in the Lancashire manner—which would seem as likely as anything else in
the present state of affairs—I’ll dine,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.
‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a
British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in
training.’
Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa,
ordered ‘Some dinner at six—with a beefsteak in it,’ and got through the
intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well;
for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on,
and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at
compound interest.
However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and
entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than
once. ‘It wouldn’t be bad,’ he yawned at one time, ‘to give the waiter
five shillings, and throw him.’ At another time it occurred to him, ‘Or
a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.’
But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his
suspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.
It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in
the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the
door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps
approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to
twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication
was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, ‘like the Holy Office
and slow torture.’ However, still true to his conviction that
indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had),
he seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a
newspaper.
He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper,
when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and
apologetically:
‘Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.’
A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to
the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with
bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by ‘wanted’?
‘Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.’
‘Outside? Where?’
‘Outside this door, sir.’
Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-head duly
qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried into the gallery.
A young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very
quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair
for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even
prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and
youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of
him, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely
preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that
consideration for herself.
‘I speak to Mr. Harthouse?’ she said, when they were alone.
‘To Mr. Harthouse.’ He added in his mind, ‘And you speak to him with the
most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so
quiet) I ever heard.’
‘If I do not understand—and I do not, sir’—said Sissy, ‘what your honour
as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:’ the blood really rose in
his face as she began in these words: ‘I am sure I may rely upon it to
keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will
rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust—’
‘You may, I assure you.’
‘I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir,
I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.’ He thought, ‘But
that is very strong,’ as he followed the momentary upward glance of her
eyes. He thought besides, ‘This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see
where we are going.’
‘I think,’ said Sissy, ‘you have already guessed whom I left just now!’
‘I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last
four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),’ he returned,
‘on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you
come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.’
‘I left her within an hour.’
‘At—!’
‘At her father’s.’
Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his
perplexity increased. ‘Then I certainly,’ he thought, ‘do _not_ see
where we are going.’
‘She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and
was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was
with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as
you live.’