Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  light went up-stairs after her, passing first the fanlight of the

  door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its way up. By

  and by, one corner of the second-floor blind was disturbed, as if

  Mrs. Sparsit's eye were there; also the other corner, as if the

  light porter's eye were on that side. Still, no communication was

  made to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were at last

  accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so

  much loitering.

  He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his

  temporary bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for tomorrow,

  and all was arranged for his departure. He meant to be

  clear of the town very early; before the Hands were in the streets.

  It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room,

  mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went

  out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had

  abandoned it, rather than hold communication with him. Everything

  looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste

  in the sky, like a sad sea.

  By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by

  the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling

  yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the

  strengthening day; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half

  pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where

  the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like

  untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of

  ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.

  Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were

  going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted,

  and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their

  poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for

  half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed

  the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of

  smoked glass.

  So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange, to

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  have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So

  strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning

  like a boy this summer morning! With these musings in his mind,

  and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive face along

  the high road. And the trees arched over him, whispering that he

  left a true and loving heart behind.

  CHAPTER VII - GUNPOWDER

  MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, 'going in' for his adopted party, soon began

  to score. With the aid of a little more coaching for the political

  sages, a little more genteel listlessness for the general society,

  and a tolerable management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty,

  most effective and most patronized of the polite deadly sins, he

  speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not being

  troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, enabling

  him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a grace as if he

  had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other tribes

  overboard, as conscious hypocrites.

  'Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not

  believe themselves. The only difference between us and the

  professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy - never mind

  the name - is, that we know it is all meaningless, and say so;

  while they know it equally and will never say so.'

  Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was

  not so unlike her father's principles, and her early training, that

  it need startle her. Where was the great difference between the

  two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, and

  inspired her with no faith in anything else? What was there in her

  soul for James Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas Gradgrind had

  nurtured there in its state of innocence!

  It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind -

  implanted there before her eminently practical father began to form

  it - a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler

  humanity than she had ever heard of, constantly strove with doubts

  and resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been so

  laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the wrong

  that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth.

  Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and

  divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief and

  justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she had

  missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter, she had

  said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it

  matter, she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked

  herself, What did anything matter - and went on.

  Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end,

  yet so gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless.

  As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither considered nor

  cared. He had no particular design or plan before him: no

  energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as much amused

  and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be;

  perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his

  reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote

  to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the

  Bounderbys were 'great fun;' and further, that the female

  Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young,

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  and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them,

  and devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often

  in their house, in his flittings and visitings about the Coketown

  district; and was much encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite

  in Mr. Bounderby's gusty way to boast to all his world that he

  didn't care about your highly connected people, but that if his

  wife Tom Gradgrind's daughter did, she was welcome to their

  company.

  Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if

  the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change

  for him.

  He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not

  forget a word of the brother's revelations. He interwove them with

  everything he saw of the sister, and he began to understand her.

  To be sure, the better and profounder part of her character was not

  within his scope of perception; for in natures, as in seas, depth

  answers unto depth; but he soon began to read the rest with a

  student's eye.

  Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, about

  fifteen miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two,

  by a railway striding on many arches over a wild country,

  undermined by deserted coal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires

  and black shapes of stationary engines at pits' mouths.
This

  country, gradually softening towards the neighbourhood of Mr.

  Bounderby's retreat, there mellowed into a rustic landscape, golden

  with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of the year, and

  tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer time. The

  bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus

  pleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his

  determination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous

  fortune, overspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand

  pounds. These accidents did sometimes happen in the best regulated

  families of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever

  with the improvident classes.

  It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to instal himself in

  this snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow

  cabbages in the flower-garden. He delighted to live, barrackfashion,

  among the elegant furniture, and he bullied the very

  pictures with his origin. 'Why, sir,' he would say to a visitor,

  'I am told that Nickits,' the late owner, 'gave seven hundred pound

  for that Seabeach. Now, to be plain with you, if I ever, in the

  whole course of my life, take seven looks at it, at a hundred pound

  a look, it will be as much as I shall do. No, by George! I don't

  forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon

  years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could have got

  into my possession, by any means, unless I stole 'em, were the

  engravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking

  bottles that I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and

  that I sold when they were empty for a farthing a-piece, and glad

  to get it!'

  Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style.

  'Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring half a

  dozen more if you like, and we'll find room for 'em. There's

  stabling in this place for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is

  belied, he kept the full number. A round dozen of 'em, sir. When

  that man was a boy, he went to Westminster School. Went to

  Westminster School as a King's Scholar, when I was principally

  living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets. Why, if I

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  wanted to keep a dozen horses - which I don't, for one's enough for

  me - I couldn't bear to see 'em in their stalls here, and think

  what my own lodging used to be. I couldn't look at 'em, sir, and

  not order 'em out. Yet so things come round. You see this place;

  you know what sort of a place it is; you are aware that there's not

  a completer place of its size in this kingdom or elsewhere - I

  don't care where - and here, got into the middle of it, like a

  maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man

  came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to

  act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the chiefjustices

  and nobility of this country applauding him till they were

  black in the face, is drivelling at this minute - drivelling, sir!

  - in a fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.'

  It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long

  sultry summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the face

  which had set him wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it

  would change for him.

  'Mrs. Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find

  you alone here. I have for some time had a particular wish to

  speak to you.'

  It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of

  day being that at which she was always alone, and the place being

  her favourite resort. It was an opening in a dark wood, where some

  felled trees lay, and where she would sit watching the fallen

  leaves of last year, as she had watched the falling ashes at home.

  He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.

  'Your brother. My young friend Tom - '

  Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of

  interest. 'I never in my life,' he thought, 'saw anything so

  remarkable and so captivating as the lighting of those features!'

  His face betrayed his thoughts - perhaps without betraying him, for

  it might have been according to its instructions so to do.

  'Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so

  beautiful - Tom should be so proud of it - I know this is

  inexcusable, but I am so compelled to admire.'

  'Being so impulsive,' she said composedly.

  'Mrs. Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You

  know I am a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at

  any time for any reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any

  Arcadian proceeding whatever.'

  'I am waiting,' she returned, 'for your further reference to my

  brother.'

  'You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog

  as you will find, except that I am not false - not false. But you

  surprised and started me from my subject, which was your brother.

  I have an interest in him.'

  'Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?' she asked, half

  incredulously and half gratefully.

  'If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no.

  I must say now - even at the hazard of appearing to make a

  pretence, and of justly awakening your incredulity - yes.'

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  She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but

  could not find voice; at length she said, 'Mr. Harthouse, I give

  you credit for being interested in my brother.'

  'Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do

  claim, but I will go that length. You have done so much for him,

  you are so fond of him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses

  such charming self-forgetfulness on his account - pardon me again -

  I am running wide of the subject. I am interested in him for his

  own sake.'

  She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have

  risen in a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what

  he said at that instant, and she remained.

  'Mrs. Bounderby,' he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a

  show of effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than

  the manner he dismissed; 'it is no irrevocable offence in a young

  fellow of your brother's years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate,

  and expensive - a little dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?'

  'Yes.'

  'Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?'

  'I think he makes bets.' Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that were

  not her whole answer, she added, 'I know he does.'

  'Of course he loses?'

  'Yes.'

  'Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of

  your sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?'

  She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes

  searchingly and a little resentfully.

  'Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. I

  think Tom may be gradually falling i
nto trouble, and I wish to

  stretch out a helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked

  experience. - Shall I say again, for his sake? Is that necessary?'

  She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.

  'Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,' said

  James Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort

  into his more airy manner; 'I will confide to you my doubt whether

  he has had many advantages. Whether - forgive my plainness -

  whether any great amount of confidence is likely to have been

  established between himself and his most worthy father.'

  'I do not,' said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in

  that wise, 'think it likely.'

  'Or, between himself, and - I may trust to your perfect

  understanding of my meaning, I am sure - and his highly esteemed

  brother-in-law.'

  She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied

  in a fainter voice, 'I do not think that likely, either.'

  'Mrs. Bounderby,' said Harthouse, after a short silence, 'may there

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  be a better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a

  considerable sum of you?'

  'You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,' she returned, after some

  indecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled

  throughout the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her

  self-contained manner; 'you will understand that if I tell you what

  you press to know, it is not by way of complaint or regret. I

  would never complain of anything, and what I have done I do not in

  the least regret.'

  'So spirited, too!' thought James Harthouse.

  'When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time

  heavily in debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to

  oblige me to sell some trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold

  them very willingly. I attached no value to them. They, were

  quite worthless to me.'

  Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her

  conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband's

  gifts. She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it

  before, he would have known it then, though he had been a much

  duller man than he was.

  'Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money

  I could spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you