at all, on the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will
not do so by halves. Since you have been in the habit of visiting
here, he has wanted in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have
not been able to give it to him. I have felt uneasy for the
consequences of his being so involved, but I have kept these
secrets until now, when I trust them to your honour. I have held
no confidence with any one, because - you anticipated my reason
just now.' She abruptly broke off.
He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of
presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
'Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I
feel the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I
cannot possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share
the wise consideration with which you regard his errors. With all
possible respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. Bounderby, I
think I perceive that he has not been fortunate in his training.
Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in which he has his part
to play, he rushes into these extremes for himself, from opposite
extremes that have long been forced - with the very best intentions
we have no doubt - upon him. Mr. Bounderby's fine bluff English
independence, though a most charming characteristic, does not - as
we have agreed - invite confidence. If I might venture to remark
that it is the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to
which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities
misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should express
what it presents to my own view.'
As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights
upon the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her
face her application of his very distinctly uttered words.
'All allowance,' he continued, 'must be made. I have one great
fault to find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for
which I take him heavily to account.'
Page 111
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was
that?
'Perhaps,' he returned, 'I have said enough. Perhaps it would have
been better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.'
'You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.'
'To relieve you from needless apprehension - and as this confidence
regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible
things, has been established between us - I obey. I cannot forgive
him for not being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his
life, of the affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his
best friend; of her unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he
makes her, within my observation, is a very poor one. What she has
done for him demands his constant love and gratitude, not his illhumour
and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I am not so
indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this vice in
your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence.'
The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears.
They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was
filled with acute pain that found no relief in them.
'In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby,
that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and
my direction and advice in extricating them - rather valuable, I
hope, as coming from a scapegrace on a much larger scale - will
give me some influence over him, and all I gain I shall certainly
use towards this end. I have said enough, and more than enough. I
seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good fellow, when, upon
my honour, I have not the least intention to make any protestation
to that effect, and openly announce that I am nothing of the sort.
Yonder, among the trees,' he added, having lifted up his eyes and
looked about; for he had watched her closely until now; 'is your
brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be
loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk
towards him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very
silent and doleful of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is
touched - if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my
honour, I hear of them much too often to believe in them.'
He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to
meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged
along: or he stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with
his stick. He was startled when they came upon him while he was
engaged in this latter pastime, and his colour changed.
'Halloa!' he stammered; 'I didn't know you were here.'
'Whose name, Tom,' said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his
shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the
house together, 'have you been carving on the trees?'
'Whose name?' returned Tom. 'Oh! You mean what girl's name?'
'You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair
creature's on the bark, Tom.'
'Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a
slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or
she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing
me. I'd carve her name as often as she liked.'
Page 112
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
'I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.'
'Mercenary,' repeated Tom. 'Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.'
'Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?' said Louisa,
showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
'You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,' returned her brother
sulkily. 'If it does, you can wear it.'
'Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and
then,' said Mr. Harthouse. 'Don't believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He
knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you,
privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little.'
'At all events, Mr. Harthouse,' said Tom, softening in his
admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, 'you
can't tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. I may
have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again,
if I had as good reason. However, never mind this now; it's not
very interesting to you, and I am sick of the subject.'
They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor's arm
and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the
steps, and passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand
upon her brother's shoulder again, and invited him with a
confidential nod to a walk in the garden.
'Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.'
They had stopped among a disorder of roses - it was part of Mr.
Bounderby's humility to keep Nickits's roses on a reduced scale -
and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking
them to pieces; while his powerful Familiar
stood over him, with a
foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily resting on the arm
supported by that knee. They were just visible from her window.
Perhaps she saw them.
'Tom, what's the matter?'
'Oh! Mr. Harthouse,' said Tom with a groan, 'I am hard up, and
bothered out of my life.'
'My good fellow, so am I.'
'You!' returned Tom. 'You are the picture of independence. Mr.
Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state
I have got myself into - what a state my sister might have got me
out of, if she would only have done it.'
He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his
teeth with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man's. After
one exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into
his lightest air.
'Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister.
You have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.'
'Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it?
Here's old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon
twopence a month, or something of that sort. Here's my father
drawing what he calls a line, and tying me down to it from a baby,
neck and heels. Here's my mother who never has anything of her
own, except her complaints. What is a fellow to do for money, and
Page 113
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
where am I to look for it, if not to my sister?'
He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr.
Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat.
'But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it - '
'Not got it, Mr. Harthouse? I don't say she has got it. I may
have wanted more than she was likely to have got. But then she
ought to get it. She could get it. It's of no use pretending to
make a secret of matters now, after what I have told you already;
you know she didn't marry old Bounderby for her own sake, or for
his sake, but for my sake. Then why doesn't she get what I want,
out of him, for my sake? She is not obliged to say what she is
going to do with it; she is sharp enough; she could manage to coax
it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn't she choose, when I
tell her of what consequence it is? But no. There she sits in his
company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable and
getting it easily. I don't know what you may call this, but I call
it unnatural conduct.'
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the
parapet, on the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a
very strong inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind junior, as
the injured men of Coketown threatened to pitch their property into
the Atlantic. But he preserved his easy attitude; and nothing more
solid went over the stone balustrades than the accumulated rosebuds
now floating about, a little surface-island.
'My dear Tom,' said Harthouse, 'let me try to be your banker.'
'For God's sake,' replied Tom, suddenly, 'don't talk about
bankers!' And very white he looked, in contrast with the roses.
Very white.
Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the
best society, was not to be surprised - he could as soon have been
affected - but he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were
lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against
the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was against the
doctrines of the Gradgrind College.
'What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them.
Say what they are.'
'Mr. Harthouse,' returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears
were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made:
'it's too late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should
have had it before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged
to you; you're a true friend.'
A true friend! 'Whelp, whelp!' thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily;
'what an Ass you are!'
'And I take your offer as a great kindness,' said Tom, grasping his
hand. 'As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.'
'Well,' returned the other, 'it may be of more use by and by. And,
my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they
come thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than
you can find for yourself.'
'Thank you,' said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing
rosebuds. 'I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.'
Page 114
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
'Now, you see, Tom,' said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself
tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which
was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of
the mainland: 'every man is selfish in everything he does, and I
am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately
intent;' the languor of his desperation being quite tropical; 'on
your softening towards your sister - which you ought to do; and on
your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother - which you
ought to be.'
'I will be, Mr. Harthouse.'
'No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.'
'Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.'
'Having made which bargain, Tom,' said Harthouse, clapping him on
the shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer
- as he did, poor fool - that this condition was imposed upon him
in mere careless good nature to lessen his sense of obligation, 'we
will tear ourselves asunder until dinner-time.'
When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy
enough, his body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr.
Bounderby came in. 'I didn't mean to be cross, Loo,' he said,
giving her his hand, and kissing her. 'I know you are fond of me,
and you know I am fond of you.'
After this, there was a smile upon Louisa's face that day, for some
one else. Alas, for some one else!
'So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares
for,' thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his
first day's knowledge of her pretty face. 'So much the less, so
much the less.'
CHAPTER VIII - EXPLOSION
THE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James
Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his
dressing-room, smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome
an influence on his young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with
the fragrance of his eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke
vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with summer odours, he
reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might count his gains.
He was not at all bored for the time, and could give his mind to
it.
He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband
was excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that
absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and
the absence, now and at all times, of any congeniality between
them. He had artfully, but plainly,
assured her that he knew her
heart in its last most delicate recesses; he had come so near to
her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated himself with
that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, had melted
away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in
Page 115
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times
him. Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in
which he lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were
designedly bad, than indifferent and purposeless. It is the
drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the
ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a
shape by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But,
when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode;
when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to
brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the
serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, he is the
very Devil.
So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and
reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he
happened to be travelling. The end to which it led was before him,
pretty plainly; but he troubled himself with no calculations about
it. What will be, will be.
As he had rather a long ride to take that day - for there was a
public occasion 'to do' at some distance, which afforded a
tolerable opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men - he
dressed early and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if
she had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed where
he had left off. There was a look of interest for him again.
He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own
satisfaction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing
circumstances; and came riding back at six o'clock. There was a
sweep of some half-mile between the lodge and the house, and he was
riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once Nickits's,
when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such violence
as to make his horse shy across the road.
'Harthouse!' cried Mr. Bounderby. 'Have you heard?'
'Heard what?' said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly
favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.
'Then you haven't heard!'
Hard Times Page 22