Hard Times
‘I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,’ whimpered the
whelp, ‘than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That’s one
thing.’
Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he
submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?
‘Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth time to
lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail.
There’th a coath in half an hour, that goeth _to_ the rail, ‘purpothe to
cath the mail train. That train will take him right to Liverpool.’
‘But look at him,’ groaned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Will any coach—’
‘I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,’ said Sleary. ‘Thay
the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five
minutes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. There’ll be beer
to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic
blackamoor.’
Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box,
a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly
changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary rapidly brought
beer, and washed him white again.
‘Now,’ said Sleary, ‘come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go
with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay
farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.’ With which he
delicately retired.
‘Here is your letter,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘All necessary means will be
provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the
shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to
which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive
you as I do!’
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their
pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
‘Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!’
‘O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!’
‘After all your love!’ he returned, obdurately. ‘Pretty love! Leaving
old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off,
and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that!
Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you
saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have
regularly given me up. You never cared for me.’
‘Tharp’th the word!’ said Sleary, at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him,
and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her
so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one
ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him
while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin
nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face
more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when
other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and
heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when
he had run them down before.
‘I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,’ said Bitzer, shaking his head,
‘but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young
Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock
frock, and I must have him!’
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILOSOPHICAL
THEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders
out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in
the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the
twilight.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to
him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the
question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted
with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the
blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate
influence?’
‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man.
‘And to nothing else.’
They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind’s face as white as the
pursuer’s.
‘What motive—even what motive in reason—can you have for preventing the
escape of this wretched youth,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘and crushing his
miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!’
‘Sir,’ returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner,
‘since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom
back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have
suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first. I had had
my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my
observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs
against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own
confession, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of
watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am
going to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him
over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby
will then promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to have
his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.’
‘If this is solely a question of self-interest with you—’ Mr. Gradgrind
began.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but I am
sure you know that the whole social system is a question of
self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s
self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was
brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are
aware.’
‘What sum of money,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘will you set against your
expected promotion?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Bitzer, ‘for hinting at the proposal; but I
will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would
propose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind;
and I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed,
would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the
Bank.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would
have said, See how miserable I am! ‘Bitzer, I have but one chance left
to soften you. You were many years at my school. If, in remembrance of
the pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any
degree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat
and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.’
‘I really wonder, sir,’ rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative
manner, ‘to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was
paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.’
It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that
everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give
anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was
to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every
inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a
bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it
was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
‘I don’t deny,’ added Bitzer, ‘that my schooling was cheap. But that
comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose
of myself in the dearest.’
He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.
‘Pray don’t do that,’ said he, ‘it’s of no use doing that: it only
worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr.
Tom; whereas I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable
grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to
resist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief! But, he won’t resist, you
may depend upon it.’
Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably
jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with
profound attention, here stepped forward.
‘Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly
well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn’t know
what your thon had done, and that I didn’t want to know—I thed it wath
better not, though I only thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking.
However, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank,
why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to
compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it.
Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I take thith young
man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th no help for it. But I
tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll drive your thon and thith young man
over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do
more, but I’ll do that.’
Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr. Gradgrind’s
part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy
glanced at him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast
misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her
with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind.
As he locked the door, he said excitedly:
‘The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire.
More than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and belongth to that
bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a
dark night; I’ve got a horthe that’ll do anything but thpeak; I’ve got a
pony that’ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I’ve
got a dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a
word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin
to danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a
pony-gig coming up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump
down, and it’ll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith
young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe
ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the
morning—I don’t know him?—Tharp’th the word!’
The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering about
the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr. Sleary’s
equipage was ready. It was a fine sight, to behold the learned dog
barking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with his one
practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions.
Soon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a
formidable creature) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking
close to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the
event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.
The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight
o’clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high
spirits.
‘All right, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, ‘your thon may be aboard-a-thip by
thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left
there latht night. The horthe danthed the polka till he wath dead beat
(he would have walthed if he hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him
the word and he went to thleep comfortable. When that prethiouth young
Rathcal thed he’d go for’ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith
neck-hankercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and
rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that,
’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.’