Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the

  shrubbery, considering what next?

  Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled,

  and stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost

  stair, and is swallowed up in the gulf.

  Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step,

  she struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit

  followed in the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for

  it was not easy to keep a figure in view going quickly through the

  umbrageous darkness.

  When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Sparsit

  stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went by the

  way Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the

  stony road, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad. A train

  for Coketown would come through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so

  she understood Coketown to be her first place of destination.

  In Mrs. Sparsit's limp and streaming state, no extensive

  precautions were necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she

  stopped under the lee of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a

  new shape, and put it on over her bonnet. So disguised she had no

  fear of being recognized when she followed up the railroad steps,

  and paid her money in the small office. Louisa sat waiting in a

  corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in another corner. Both listened

  to the thunder, which was loud, and to the rain, as it washed off

  the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two or three

  lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw the lightning to

  advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron tracks.

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  The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually

  deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire

  and steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a

  shriek; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into

  another: the little station a desert speck in the thunderstorm.

  Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs.

  Sparsit exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice,

  and she felt herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could

  she, who had been so active in the getting up of the funeral

  triumph, do less than exult? 'She will be at Coketown long before

  him,' thought Mrs. Sparsit, 'though his horse is never so good.

  Where will she wait for him? And where will they go together?

  Patience. We shall see.'

  The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train

  stopped at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains

  had overflowed, and streets were under water. In the first instant

  of alighting, Mrs. Sparsit turned her distracted eyes towards the

  waiting coaches, which were in great request. 'She will get into

  one,' she considered, 'and will be away before I can follow in

  another. At all risks of being run over, I must see the number,

  and hear the order given to the coachman.'

  But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into no

  coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the

  railroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a

  moment too late. The door not being opened after several minutes,

  Mrs. Sparsit passed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and

  found it empty. Wet through and through: with her feet squelching

  and squashing in her shoes whenever she moved; with a rash of rain

  upon her classical visage; with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig;

  with all her clothes spoiled; with damp impressions of every

  button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon her

  highly connected back; with a stagnant verdure on her general

  exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a mouldy

  lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of

  bitterness and say, 'I have lost her!'

  CHAPTER XII - DOWN

  THE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great

  many noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the

  present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.

  He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock,

  proving something no doubt - probably, in the main, that the Good

  Samaritan was a Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not

  disturb him much; but it attracted his attention sufficiently to

  make him raise his head sometimes, as if he were rather

  remonstrating with the elements. When it thundered very loudly, he

  glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind that some of the

  tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.

  The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring

  down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked

  round the lamp upon his table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest

  daughter.

  'Louisa!'

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  'Father, I want to speak to you.'

  'What is the matter? How strange you look! And good Heaven,' said

  Mr. Gradgrind, wondering more and more, 'have you come here exposed

  to this storm?'

  She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. 'Yes.'

  Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall

  where they might, stood looking at him: so colourless, so

  dishevelled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.

  'What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter.'

  She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his

  arm.

  'Father, you have trained me from my cradle?'

  'Yes, Louisa.'

  'I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.'

  He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: 'Curse

  the hour? Curse the hour?'

  'How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable

  things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are

  the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What

  have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that

  should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!'

  She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.

  'If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the

  void in which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this;

  but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this room?'

  He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was

  with difficulty he answered, 'Yes, Louisa.'

  'What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then,

  if you had given me a moment's help. I don't reproach you, father.

  What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in

  yourself; but O! if you had only done so long ago, or if you had

  only neglected me, what a much better and much happier creature I

  should have been this day!'

  On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his

  hand and groaned aloud.

  'Father, if you had known, w
hen we were last together here, what

  even I feared while I strove against it - as it has been my task

  from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has

  arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my

  breast, sensibilities, affections, weaknesses capable of being

  cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by

  man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is, -

  would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I

  hate?'

  He said, 'No. No, my poor child.'

  'Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight

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  that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me - for

  no one's enrichment - only for the greater desolation of this world

  - of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my

  belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things

  around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more

  humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere

  to make them better?'

  'O no, no. No, Louisa.'

  'Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by

  my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and

  surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to

  them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more

  loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good

  respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have

  come to say.'

  He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so,

  they stood close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder,

  looking fixedly in his face.

  'With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been

  for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region

  where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute;

  I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.'

  'I never knew you were unhappy, my child.'

  'Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed

  and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has

  left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have

  not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life

  would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain

  and trouble of a contest.'

  'And you so young, Louisa!' he said with pity.

  'And I so young. In this condition, father - for I show you now,

  without fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I

  know it - you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made

  a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father,

  you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly

  indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom.

  I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly

  found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the

  little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew

  so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may

  dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.'

  As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his

  other shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.

  'When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion

  against the tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes

  of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and

  which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, father,

  until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike

  his knife into the secrets of my soul.'

  'Louisa!' he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered

  what had passed between them in their former interview.

  'I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am here

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  with another object.'

  'What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.'

  'I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new

  acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the

  world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low

  estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret;

  conveying to me almost immediately, though I don't know how or by

  what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could

  not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near

  affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while,

  who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.'

  'For you, Louisa!'

  Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he

  felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire

  in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.

  'I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters

  very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you

  know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.'

  Her father's face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.

  'I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me

  whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly,

  father, that it may be so. I don't know.'

  She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed them

  both upon her side; while in her face, not like itself - and in her

  figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had

  to say - the feelings long suppressed broke loose.

  'This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring

  himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release

  myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am

  sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am

  degraded in my own esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and

  your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me

  to this. Save me by some other means!'

  He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor,

  but she cried out in a terrible voice, 'I shall die if you hold me!

  Let me fall upon the ground!' And he laid her down there, and saw

  the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an

  insensible heap, at his feet.

  END OF THE SECOND BOOK

  BOOK THE THIRD - GARNERING

  CHAPTER I - ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL

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  LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her

  old bed at home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all

  that had happened since the days when these objects were familiar

  to her were the shadows of a dream, but gradually, as the objects

  became more real to her sight, the events became more real to her

  mind.

  She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes

  were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive

  inattention had such possession of her, that the presence of her

  little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time.

  Even when thei
r eyes had met, and her sister had approached the

  bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in silence, and

  suffering her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she asked:

  'When was I brought to this room?'

  'Last night, Louisa.'

  'Who brought me here?'

  'Sissy, I believe.'

  'Why do you believe so?'

  'Because I found her here this morning. She didn't come to my

  bedside to wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her.

  She was not in her own room either; and I went looking for her all

  over the house, until I found her here taking care of you and

  cooling your head. Will you see father? Sissy said I was to tell

  him when you woke.'

  'What a beaming face you have, Jane!' said Louisa, as her young

  sister - timidly still - bent down to kiss her.

  'Have I? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be

  Sissy's doing.'

  The arm Louisa had begun to twine around her neck, unbent itself.

  'You can tell father if you will.' Then, staying her for a moment,

  she said, 'It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it

  this look of welcome?'

  'Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was - '

  Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister

  had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her

  face towards the door, until it opened and her father entered.

  He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady,

  trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly

  asking how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping

  very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the weather last

  night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, very different

  from his usual dictatorial manner; and was often at a loss for

  words.

  'My dear Louisa. My poor daughter.' He was so much at a loss at

  that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again.

  'My unfortunate child.' The place was so difficult to get over,

  that he tried again.

  'It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how

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  overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last

  night. The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my

  feet. The only support on which I leaned, and the strength of

  which it seemed, and still does seem, impossible to question, has

  given way in an instant. I am stunned by these discoveries. I