Hard Times
Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the
position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all
question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with
which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which
put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her
earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this,
together with her reliance on his easily given promise—which in itself
shamed him—presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and
against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless;
that not a word could he rally to his relief.
At last he said:
‘So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is
really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire,
if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless
words, by the lady of whom we speak?’
‘I have no charge from her.’
‘The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your
judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I
cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to
perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.’
‘There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir,
is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your
ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when
she came home last night.’
‘Must believe? But if I can’t—or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be
obstinate—and won’t—’
‘It is still true. There is no hope.’
James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips;
but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown
away.
He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
‘Well! If it should unhappily appear,’ he said, ‘after due pains and
duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this
banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you
had no commission from her?’
‘I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I
have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home,
and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than
that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr.
Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!’
He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that
nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they
had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.
‘I am not a moral sort of fellow,’ he said, ‘and I never make any
pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral
as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who
is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately
compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of
sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with—in fact with—the
domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a
machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a
bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly
evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a
smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the
catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I
find,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, ‘that it is really in
several volumes.’
Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that
once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a
moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with
traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.
‘After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it
impossible to doubt—I know of hardly any other source from which I could
have accepted it so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in whom the
confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to
contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no
more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this—and—and, I
cannot say,’ he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, ‘that I
have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or
that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.’
Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.
‘You spoke,’ he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, ‘of your
first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you oblige me by confiding it?’
‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and
steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his
being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular
disadvantage, ‘the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave
here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in
no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it
is the only compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do
not say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and
it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other authority than I
have given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than
yourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under
an obligation never to return to it.’
If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the
truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or
irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or
pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any
sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he
might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he
could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as
affect her.
‘But do you know,’ he asked, quite at a loss, ‘the extent of what you
ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of
business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for,
and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate
manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the
fact.’
It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
‘Besides which,’ said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the
room, dubiously, ‘it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so
ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an
incomprehensible way.’
‘I am quite sure,’ repeated Sissy, ‘that it is the only reparation in
your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.’
He glanced at her face, and walked about again. ‘Upon my soul, I don’t
know what to say. So immensely absurd!’
It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.
‘If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,’ he said, stopping again
presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, ‘it could only be in
the most inviolable confidence.’
‘I will trust to you, sir,’ returned Sissy, ‘and you will trust to me.’
His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the
whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if
_he_ were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at all.
‘I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,’ he
said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and
walking off, and walking back again. ‘But I see no way out of it. What
will be, will be. _This_ will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I
imagine—in short, I engage to do it.’
Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in
it, and her face beamed brightly.
‘You will permit me to say,’ continued Mr. James Harthouse, ‘that I doubt
if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with
the same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very
ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you
allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy’s name?’
‘_My_ name?’ said the ambassadress.
‘The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.’
‘Sissy Jupe.’
‘Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?’
‘I am only a poor girl,’ returned Sissy. ‘I was separated from my
father—he was only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr. Gradgrind. I have
lived in the house ever since.’
She was gone.
‘It wanted this to complete the defeat,’ said Mr. James Harthouse,
sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a
little while. ‘The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished.
Only a poor girl—only a stroller—only James Harthouse made nothing
of—only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.’
The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen
upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate
hieroglyphics) to his brother:
Dear Jack,—All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in
for camels.
Affectionately,
JEM.
He rang the bell.
‘Send my fellow here.’
‘Gone to bed, sir.’
‘Tell him to get up, and pack up.’
He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his
retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be
found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr.
Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions,
he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway
carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.
The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse derived
some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one
of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to
himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it
was not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been
ridiculous—a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of
things, would say at his expense if they knew it—so oppressed him, that
what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all
others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that
made him ashamed of himself.
CHAPTER III
VERY DECIDED
THE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice
reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual
sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her
patron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically
sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James’s Street, exploded the
combustibles with which she was charged, and blew up. Having executed
her mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted
away on Mr. Bounderby’s coat-collar.
Mr. Bounderby’s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, and leave
her to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the
floor. He next had recourse to the administration of potent
restoratives, such as screwing the patient’s thumbs, smiting her hands,
abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When
these attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled
her into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried
her back to Coketown more dead than alive.
Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting spectacle
on her arrival at her journey’s end; but considered in any other light,