Hard Times
the amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and
impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear
of her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr.
Bounderby immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone
Lodge.
‘Now, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law’s
room late at night; ‘here’s a lady here—Mrs. Sparsit—you know Mrs.
Sparsit—who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.’
‘You have missed my letter!’ exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, surprised by the
apparition.
‘Missed your letter, sir!’ bawled Bounderby. ‘The present time is no
time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
about letters, with his mind in the state it’s in now.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, ‘I
speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to
Louisa.’
‘Tom Gradgrind,’ replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several
times with great vehemence on the table, ‘I speak of a very special
messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit,
ma’am, stand forward!’
That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any
voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became
so aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr.
Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.
‘If you can’t get it out, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘leave _me_ to get it
out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be
totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs.
Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a
conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious
gentleman-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.’
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Ah! Indeed!’ cried Bounderby. ‘And in that conversation—’
‘It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what
passed.’
‘You do? Perhaps,’ said Bounderby, staring with all his might at his so
quiet and assuasive father-in-law, ‘you know where your daughter is at
the present time!’
‘Undoubtedly. She is here.’
‘Here?’
‘My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud out-breaks, on
all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from
that interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply
regret to have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here,
for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I
received her—here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she
ran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented
herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained
here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to
be more quiet.’
Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every
direction except Mrs. Sparsit’s direction; and then, abruptly turning
upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:
‘Now, ma’am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think
proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no
other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma’am!’
‘Sir,’ whispered Mrs. Sparsit, ‘my nerves are at present too much shaken,
and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit
of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.’ (Which she did.)
‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘without making any observation to you
that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I
have got to add to that, is that there is something else in which it
appears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach. And the coach in
which we came here being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to
it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to
pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and
take a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.’ With
these words, Mr. Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady,
and escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive
sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone.
‘Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to
speak to me,’ he resumed, ‘here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable
state, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business, even as it is,
and not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively
treated by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be
treated by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine,
I know. If you mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against
this candid remark, you had better let it alone.’
Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. Bounderby
took particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his
amiable nature.
‘My dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind began in reply.
‘Now, you’ll excuse me,’ said Bounderby, ‘but I don’t want to be too
dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I
generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking
to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am _not_ polite. If you like
politeness, you know where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends,
you know, and they’ll serve you with as much of the article as you want.
I don’t keep it myself.’
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we are all liable to mistakes—’
‘I thought you couldn’t make ’em,’ interrupted Bounderby.
‘Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes and I
should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would
spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our
conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in
connecting him with mine.’
‘I never mentioned his name!’ said Bounderby.
‘Well, well!’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive,
air. And he sat for a little while pondering. ‘Bounderby, I see reason
to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa.’
‘Who do you mean by We?’
‘Let me say I, then,’ he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted
question; ‘I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I
have been quite right in the manner of her education.’
‘There you hit it,’ returned Bounderby. ‘There I agree with you. You
have found it out at last, have you? Education! I’ll tell you what
education is—To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the
shortest allowance of everything except blows. That’s what _I_ call
education.’
‘I think your good sense will perceive,’ Mr. Gradgrind remonstrated in
all humility, ‘that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would
be difficult of general application to girls.’
‘I don’t see it at all, sir,’ returned the obstinate Bounderby.
‘Well,’ sighed Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we will not enter into the question. I
assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what
is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good
spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much distressed.’
‘I don’t understand you, yet,’ said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy,
‘and therefore I won’t make any promises.’
‘In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind
proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, ‘I appear to
myself to have become better informed as to Louisa’s character, than in
previous years. The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and
the discovery is not mine. I think there are—Bounderby, you will be
surprised to hear me say this—I think there are qualities in Louisa,
which—which have been harshly neglected, and—and a little perverted.
And—and I would suggest to you, that—that if you would kindly meet me in
a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while—and to
encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration—it—it
would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,’ said Mr.
Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, ‘has always been my favourite
child.’
The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on
hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink
of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent
up his indignation, however, and said:
‘You’d like to keep her here for a time?’
‘I—I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow
Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of
course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.’
‘I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, standing up with
his hands in his pockets, ‘that you are of opinion that there’s what
people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself.’
‘I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa,
and—and—and almost all the relations in which I have placed her,’ was her
father’s sorrowful reply.
‘Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby the flushed,
confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his
pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was
boisterous. ‘You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a
Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of
this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of
this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of
this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells
me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever
he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle soup and venison, with
a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six.
That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought
to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because,
Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.’
‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I hoped, after my entreaty, you would
have taken a different tone.’
‘Just wait a bit,’ retorted Bounderby; ‘you have said your say, I
believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make
yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because,
although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position,
I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s
an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by
you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give _you_ to understand, in
reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the
first magnitude—to be summed up in this—that your daughter don’t properly
know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as
would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain
speaking, I hope.’
‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘this is unreasonable.’
‘Is it?’ said Bounderby. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Because when
Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is
unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With
your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for
a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence
of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper,
that there are ladies—born ladies—belonging to families—Families!—who
next to worship the ground I walk on.’
He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head.
‘Whereas your daughter,’ proceeded Bounderby, ‘is far from being a born
lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff