Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

'To Mr. Harthouse.' He added in his mind, 'And you speak to him

  with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice

  (though so quiet) I ever heard.'

  'If I do not understand - and I do not, sir' - said Sissy, 'what

  your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:' the

  blood really rose in his face as she began in these words: 'I am

  sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret

  what I am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell me I

  may so far trust - '

  'You may, I assure you.'

  'I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you,

  sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.' He

  thought, 'But that is very strong,' as he followed the momentary

  upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, 'This is a very odd

  beginning. I don't see where we are going.'

  'I think,' said Sissy, 'you have already guessed whom I left just

  now!'

  'I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last

  four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),' he

  returned, 'on a lady's account. The hopes I have been encouraged

  to form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.'

  'I left her within an hour.'

  'At - !'

  'At her father's.'

  Mr. Harthouse's face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his

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  perplexity increased. 'Then I certainly,' he thought, 'do not see

  where we are going.'

  'She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great

  agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her

  father's, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never

  see her again as long as you live.'

  Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in

  the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond

  all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like

  ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest

  fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her

  entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the

  object with which she had come; all this, together with her

  reliance on his easily given promise - which in itself shamed him -

  presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against

  which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless;

  that not a word could he rally to his relief.

  At last he said:

  'So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such

  lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be

  permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information

  to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak?'

  'I have no charge from her.'

  'The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for

  your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my

  saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am

  not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady's presence.'

  'There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here,

  sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more

  hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be if

  she had died when she came home last night.'

  'Must believe? But if I can't - or if I should, by infirmity of

  nature, be obstinate - and won't - '

  'It is still true. There is no hope.'

  James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his

  lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was

  quite thrown away.

  He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.

  'Well! If it should unhappily appear,' he said, 'after due pains

  and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as

  this banishment, I shall not become the lady's persecutor. But you

  said you had no commission from her?'

  'I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for

  me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since

  she came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no

  further trust, than that I know something of her character and her

  marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!'

  He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been - in

  that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have

  lived if they had not been whistled away - by the fervour of this

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  reproach.

  'I am not a moral sort of fellow,' he said, 'and I never make any

  pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as

  immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress

  upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in

  unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself

  by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly

  reconcilable with - in fact with - the domestic hearth; or in

  taking any advantage of her father's being a machine, or of her

  brother's being a whelp, or of her husband's being a bear; I beg to

  be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil

  intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a

  smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest

  idea the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over.

  Whereas I find,' said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, 'that it

  is really in several volumes.'

  Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for

  that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was

  silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed

  air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that would

  not be polished out.

  'After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find

  it impossible to doubt - I know of hardly any other source from

  which I could have accepted it so readily - I feel bound to say to

  you, in whom the confidence you have mentioned has been reposed,

  that I cannot refuse to contemplate the possibility (however

  unexpected) of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely to blame

  for the thing having come to this - and - and, I cannot say,' he

  added, rather hard up for a general peroration, 'that I have any

  sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or

  that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.'

  Sissy's face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not

  finished.

  'You spoke,' he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, 'of

  your first object. I may assume that there is a second to be

  mentioned?'

  'Yes.'

  'Will you oblige me by confiding it?'

  'Mr. Harthouse,' returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and

  steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in

  his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a

  singular disadvantage, 'the only reparation that remains with you,

  is to leave here immediatel
y and finally. I am quite sure that you

  can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I

  am quite sure that it is the only compensation you have left it in

  your power to make. I do not say that it is much, or that it is

  enough; but it is something, and it is necessary. Therefore,

  though without any other authority than I have given you, and even

  without the knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself,

  I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under an obligation

  never to return to it.'

  If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith

  in the truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the

  least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose

  any reserve or pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest

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  trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or

  any remonstrance he might offer; he would have carried it against

  her at this point. But he could as easily have changed a clear sky

  by looking at it in surprise, as affect her.

  'But do you know,' he asked, quite at a loss, 'the extent of what

  you ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public

  kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have

  gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in

  quite a desperate manner? You probably are not aware of that, but

  I assure you it's the fact.'

  It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.

  'Besides which,' said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across

  the room, dubiously, 'it's so alarmingly absurd. It would make a

  man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in

  such an incomprehensible way.'

  'I am quite sure,' repeated Sissy, 'that it is the only reparation

  in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come

  here.'

  He glanced at her face, and walked about again. 'Upon my soul, I

  don't know what to say. So immensely absurd!'

  It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.

  'If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,' he said, stopping

  again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, 'it could

  only be in the most inviolable confidence.'

  'I will trust to you, sir,' returned Sissy, 'and you will trust to

  me.'

  His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night

  with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he

  felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at

  all.

  'I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,'

  he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and

  frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. 'But I see no

  way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I

  must take off myself, I imagine - in short, I engage to do it.'

  Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy

  in it, and her face beamed brightly.

  'You will permit me to say,' continued Mr. James Harthouse, 'that I

  doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have

  addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard myself

  as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at

  all points. Will you allow me the privilege of remembering my

  enemy's name?'

  'My name?' said the ambassadress.

  'The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.'

  'Sissy Jupe.'

  'Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?'

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  'I am only a poor girl,' returned Sissy. 'I was separated from my

  father - he was only a stroller - and taken pity on by Mr.

  Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.'

  She was gone.

  'It wanted this to complete the defeat,' said Mr. James Harthouse,

  sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing

  transfixed a little while. 'The defeat may now be considered

  perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl - only a stroller - only

  James Harthouse made nothing of - only James Harthouse a Great

  Pyramid of failure.'

  The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took

  a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in

  appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:

  Dear Jack, - All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going

  in for camels. Affectionately, JEM,

  He rang the bell.

  'Send my fellow here.'

  'Gone to bed, sir.'

  'Tell him to get up, and pack up.'

  He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his

  retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he

  would be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in

  effect, to Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon

  their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown

  behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the

  dark landscape.

  The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse

  derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt

  retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for

  anything, and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax

  of a very bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense

  of having failed and been ridiculous - a dread of what other

  fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his

  expense if they knew it - so oppressed him, that what was about the

  very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would

  not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him

  ashamed of himself.

  CHAPTER III - VERY DECIDED

  THE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her

  voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by

  continual sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave

  chase to her patron until she found him in the metropolis; and

  there, majestically sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St.

  James's Street, exploded the combustibles with which she was

  charged, and blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite

  relish, this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr. Bounderby's

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  coat-collar.

  Mr. Bounderby's first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, and

  leave her to progress as she might through various stages of

  suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the administration

  of potent restoratives, such as screwing the patient's thumbs,

  smiting her hands, abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt

  in her mouth. When these attentions had recovered her (which they

  speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without offering

  any other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead

  than alive.

  Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting

  spectacle on her arrival at her journey's end; but considered in

  any other light, the amou
nt of damage she had by that time

  sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration.

  Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and

  constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr. Bounderby

  immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone

  Lodge.

  'Now, Tom Gradgrind,' said Bounderby, bursting into his father-inlaw's

  room late at night; 'here's a lady here - Mrs. Sparsit - you

  know Mrs. Sparsit - who has something to say to you that will

  strike you dumb.'

  'You have missed my letter!' exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, surprised by

  the apparition.

  'Missed your letter, sir!' bawled Bounderby. 'The present time is

  no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of

  Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it's in now.'

  'Bounderby,' said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate

  remonstrance, 'I speak of a very special letter I have written to

  you, in reference to Louisa.'

  'Tom Gradgrind,' replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand

  several times with great vehemence on the table, 'I speak of a very

  special messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa.

  Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, stand forward!'

  That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without

  any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed

  throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many facial

  contortions, that Mr. Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by

  the arm and shook her.

  'If you can't get it out, ma'am,' said Bounderby, 'leave me to get

  it out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected,

  to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom

  Gradgrind, Mrs. Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a

  situation to overhear a conversation out of doors between your

  daughter and your precious gentleman-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.'

  'Indeed!' said Mr. Gradgrind.

  'Ah! Indeed!' cried Bounderby. 'And in that conversation - '

  'It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what

  passed.'

  'You do? Perhaps,' said Bounderby, staring with all his might at

  his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, 'you know where your

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  daughter is at the present time!'

  'Undoubtedly. She is here.'

  'Here?'

  'My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud outbreaks,