Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  have no selfish meaning in what I say; but I find the shock of what

  broke upon me last night, to be very heavy indeed.'

  She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck

  of her whole life upon the rock.

  'I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance

  undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us both;

  better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that

  it may not have been a part of my system to invite any confidence

  of that kind. I had proved my - my system to myself, and I have

  rigidly administered it; and I must bear the responsibility of its

  failures. I only entreat you to believe, my favourite child, that

  I have meant to do right.'

  He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging

  fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering

  over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had

  meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he

  had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with

  greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages

  whose company he kept.

  'I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have been

  your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy.

  I have never blamed you, and I never shall.'

  He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.

  'My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again

  and again on what has so painfully passed between us. When I

  consider your character; when I consider that what has been known

  to me for hours, has been concealed by you for years; when I

  consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from you

  at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust

  myself.'

  He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking

  at him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her

  scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. Such little

  actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him; and

  his daughter received them as if they had been words of contrition.

  'But,' said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as

  with a wretched sense of happiness, 'if I see reason to mistrust

  myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the

  present and the future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am

  far from feeling convinced now, however differently I might have

  felt only this time yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you

  repose in me; that I know how to respond to the appeal you have

  come home to make to me; that I have the right instinct - supposing

  it for the moment to be some quality of that nature - how to help

  you, and to set you right, my child.'

  She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm,

  so that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had

  subsided; but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father

  was changed in nothing so much as in the respect that he would have

  been glad to see her in tears.

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  'Some persons hold,' he pursued, still hesitating, 'that there is a

  wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I

  have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now.

  I have supposed the head to be all-sufficient. It may not be allsufficient;

  how can I venture this morning to say it is! If that

  other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and should be

  the instinct that is wanted, Louisa - '

  He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to

  admit it even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on her

  bed, still half-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor

  of his room last night.

  'Louisa,' and his hand rested on her hair again, 'I have been

  absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your

  sister's training has been pursued according to - the system,' he

  appeared to come to that word with great reluctance always, 'it has

  necessarily been modified by daily associations begun, in her case,

  at an early age. I ask you - ignorantly and humbly, my daughter -

  for the better, do you think?'

  'Father,' she replied, without stirring, 'if any harmony has been

  awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned

  to discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier

  way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my

  way.'

  'O my child, my child!' he said, in a forlorn manner, 'I am an

  unhappy man to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not

  reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself!' He bent his head,

  and spoke low to her. 'Louisa, I have a misgiving that some change

  may have been slowly working about me in this house, by mere love

  and gratitude: that what the Head had left undone and could not

  do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it be so?'

  She made him no reply.

  'I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be

  arrogant, and you before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?'

  He looked upon her once more, lying cast away there; and without

  another word went out of the room. He had not been long gone, when

  she heard a light tread near the door, and knew that some one stood

  beside her.

  She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen

  in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented

  should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an

  unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy.

  The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would

  enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So

  in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long

  turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that rose

  against a friend.

  It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she

  understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The

  sympathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there,

  let it lie.

  It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and

  she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness

  of being so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The

  face touched hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too,

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  and she the cause of them.

  As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so

  that she stood placidly near the bedside.

  'I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would

  let me stay with you?'

  'Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are

  everything to her.'

  'Am I?' returned Sissy, shaking her head. 'I would be something to

  you, if I might.'

  'What?' said Louisa, almost sternly.

  'Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I

  would
like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off

  that may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let me?'

  'My father sent you to ask me.'

  'No indeed,' replied Sissy. 'He told me that I might come in now,

  but he sent me away from the room this morning - or at least - '

  She hesitated and stopped.

  'At least, what?' said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.

  'I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt

  very uncertain whether you would like to find me here.'

  'Have I always hated you so much?'

  'I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished

  that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly

  before you left home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so

  much, and I knew so little, and it was so natural in many ways,

  going as you were among other friends, that I had nothing to

  complain of, and was not at all hurt.'

  Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa

  understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.

  'May I try?' said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck

  that was insensibly drooping towards her.

  Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in

  another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:

  'First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so

  hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to

  every one and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and

  wicked to me. Does not that repel you?'

  'No!'

  'I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so

  laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and

  instead of being as learned as you think me, had to begin to

  acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace,

  contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more

  abjectly than I do. Does not that repel you?'

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  'No!'

  In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her

  old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful

  light upon the darkness of the other.

  Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its

  fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this

  stroller's child looked up at her almost with veneration.

  'Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need,

  and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!'

  'O lay it here!' cried Sissy. 'Lay it here, my dear.'

  CHAPTER II - VERY RIDICULOUS

  MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so

  much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would

  scarcely have recognized him during that insane interval, as the

  brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was

  positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis,

  similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an

  unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a

  highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing

  circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner

  prescribed by the authorities.

  After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it

  were a leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his

  bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch

  with delinquency in withholding letters or messages that could not

  fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on

  the spot. The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day coming,

  and neither message nor letter coming with either, he went down to

  the country house. There, the report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and

  Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last evening. Not

  even known to be gone until receipt of message, importing that her

  return was not to be expected for the present.

  In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to

  town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there. He

  looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away.

  Mrs. Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity

  for the company of that griffin!

  'Well! I don't know,' said Tom, who had his own reasons for being

  uneasy about it. 'She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning.

  She's always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap;

  he's always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.'

  'Where were you last night, Tom?'

  'Where was I last night!' said Tom. 'Come! I like that. I was

  waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it

  come down before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.'

  'I was prevented from coming - detained.'

  'Detained!' murmured Tom. 'Two of us were detained. I was

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  detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It

  would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night,

  and have to walk home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in

  town after all.'

  'Where?'

  'Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby's.'

  'Did you see your sister?'

  'How the deuce,' returned Tom, staring, 'could I see my sister when

  she was fifteen miles off?'

  Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was

  so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that

  interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and

  debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean? He made

  only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in town or out

  of town, whether he had been premature with her who was so hard to

  comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were discovered, or

  some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible, had

  occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was.

  The hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region

  of blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the

  rest - What will be, will be.

  'So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation,

  or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend

  Bounderby in the Lancashire manner - which would seem as likely as

  anything else in the present state of affairs - I'll dine,' said

  Mr. James Harthouse. 'Bounderby has the advantage in point of

  weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between

  us, it may be as well to be in training.'

  Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a

  sofa, ordered 'Some dinner at six - with a beefsteak in it,' and

  got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not

  particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and,

  as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself,

  his perplexity augmented at compound interest.

  However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do,

  and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training

&
nbsp; more than once. 'It wouldn't be bad,' he yawned at one time, 'to

  give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.' At another time it

  occurred to him, 'Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone

  might be hired by the hour.' But these jests did not tell

  materially on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth to say,

  they both lagged fearfully.

  It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about

  in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening

  at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot

  when any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the

  day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still

  no communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed

  it, 'like the Holy Office and slow torture.' However, still true

  to his conviction that indifference was the genuine high-breeding

  (the only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the

  opportunity for ordering candles and a newspaper.

  He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this

  newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously

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  and apologetically:

  'Beg your pardon, sir. You're wanted, sir, if you please.'

  A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police

  said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in

  return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by

  'wanted'?

  'Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see

  you.'

  'Outside? Where?'

  'Outside this door, sir.'

  Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a blockhead

  duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried

  into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood

  there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted

  her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the

  light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at

  first believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, and its

  expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in

  any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely

  preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted

  that consideration for herself.

  'I speak to Mr. Harthouse?' she said, when they were alone.