Hard Times
‘It was,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I
can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with
you.’
‘You see, my friend,’ Mr. Bounderby put in, ‘we are the kind of people
who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know
the value of time.’
‘I have not,’ retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to
foot, ‘the honour of knowing _you_,—but if you mean that you can make
more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your
appearance, that you are about right.’
‘And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,’ said
Cupid.
‘Kidderminster, stow that!’ said Mr. Childers. (Master Kidderminster was
Cupid’s mortal name.)
‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master
Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to
cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’
‘Kidderminster,’ said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, ‘stow that!—Sir,’
to Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may
not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that
Jupe has missed his tip very often, lately.’
‘Has—what has he missed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent
Bounderby for assistance.
‘Missed his tip.’
‘Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done ’em once,’
said Master Kidderminster. ‘Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was
loose in his ponging.’
‘Didn’t do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his
tumbling,’ Mr. Childers interpreted.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is tip, is it?’
‘In a general way that’s missing his tip,’ Mr. E. W. B. Childers
answered.
‘Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!’
ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. ‘Queer sort of company,
too, for a man who has raised himself!’
‘Lower yourself, then,’ retorted Cupid. ‘Oh Lord! if you’ve raised
yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.’
‘This is a very obtrusive lad!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and knitting
his brows on him.
‘We’d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were
coming,’ retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. ‘It’s a pity
you don’t have a bespeak, being so particular. You’re on the Tight-Jeff,
ain’t you?’
‘What does this unmannerly boy mean,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in
a sort of desperation, ‘by Tight-Jeff?’
‘There! Get out, get out!’ said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend
from the room, rather in the prairie manner. ‘Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff,
it don’t much signify: it’s only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were
going to give me a message for Jupe?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘Then,’ continued Mr. Childers, quickly, ‘my opinion is, he will never
receive it. Do you know much of him?’
‘I never saw the man in my life.’
‘I doubt if you ever _will_ see him now. It’s pretty plain to me, he’s
off.’
‘Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?’
‘Ay! I mean,’ said Mr. Childers, with a nod, ‘that he has cut. He was
goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed
to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he
can’t stand it.’
‘Why has he been—so very much—Goosed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the
word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
‘His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,’ said Childers.
‘He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can’t get a living out of
_them_.’
‘A Cackler!’ Bounderby repeated. ‘Here we go again!’
‘A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,’ said Mr. E. W. B.
Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder,
and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair—which all shook at
once. ‘Now, it’s a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to
know that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with
it.’
‘Good!’ interrupted Mr. Bounderby. ‘This is good, Gradgrind! A man so
fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good!
Ha! ha! Now, I’ll tell you what, young man. I haven’t always occupied
my present station of life. I know what these things are. You may be
astonished to hear it, but my mother—ran away from _me_.’
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to
hear it.
‘Very well,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran
away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for
it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very
worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother.
There’s no family pride about me, there’s no imaginative sentimental
humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call
her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this
man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that’s what he is, in
English.’
‘It’s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English
or whether in French,’ retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about. ‘I
am telling your friend what’s the fact; if you don’t like to hear it, you
can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do;
but give it mouth in your own building at least,’ remonstrated E. W. B.
with stern irony. ‘Don’t give it mouth in this building, till you’re
called upon. You have got some building of your own I dare say, now?’
‘Perhaps so,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
‘Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?’ said
Childers. ‘Because this isn’t a strong building, and too much of you
might bring it down!’
Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from
a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.
‘Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was
seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied
up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him,
but he has cut away and left her.’
‘Pray,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘why will she never believe it of him?’
‘Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because,
up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,’ said Childers, taking a
step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master
Kidderminster walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart
than the general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being
stiff in the knees. This walk was common to all the male members of
Sleary’s company, and was understood to express, that they were always on
horseback.
‘Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,’ said Childers, giving
his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. ‘Now, he
leaves her without anything to take to.’
‘It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express
that opinion,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly.
‘_I_ never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.’
‘Oh! Indeed?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been
defrauded of his good opinion. ‘I was not aware of its being the custom
to apprentice young persons to—’
‘Idleness,’ Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. ‘No, by the Lord
Harry! Nor I!’
‘Her father always had it in his head,’ resumed Childers, feigning
unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s existence, ‘that she was to be taught
the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can’t say; I
can only say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of
reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for her, there—and a bit of
ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years.’
Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked
his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little
hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that
gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.
‘When Sissy got into the school here,’ he pursued, ‘her father was as
pleased as Punch. I couldn’t altogether make out why, myself, as we were
not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose,
however, he had this move in his mind—he was always half-cracked—and then
considered her provided for. If you should happen to have looked in
to-night, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her
any little service,’ said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and
repeating his look, ‘it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very
fortunate and well-timed.’
‘On the contrary,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I came to tell him that her
connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not
attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any
connivance on her part—Bounderby, let me have a word with you.’
Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian
walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face,
and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in
Mr. Bounderby’s voice as ‘No. _I_ say no. I advise you not. I say by
no means.’ While, from Mr. Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone
the words, ‘But even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which
has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think
of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.’
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company gradually gathered
together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from
standing about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers,
gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or
three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands,
and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children,
who did the fairy business when required. The father of one of the
families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the
families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often
made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the
apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling
casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins,
ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the
mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope,
and perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all
particular in respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a
Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all
assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their
private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic
arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have
produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable
gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for
any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity
one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much
generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in
the world.
Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with
one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like
the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a
muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.
‘Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose
breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, ‘Your thervant!
Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You’ve heard of my Clown