on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could
detach herself from that interview with the person of whom you
speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the means of
introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. I myself
had not been at home many hours, when I received her - here, in
this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to
this house, through a raging storm, and presented herself before me
in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever
since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to be
more quiet.'
Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every
direction except Mrs. Sparsit's direction; and then, abruptly
turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched
woman:
'Now, ma'am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may
think proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace,
with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma'am!'
'Sir,' whispered Mrs. Sparsit, 'my nerves are at present too much
shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, in your
service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.'
(Which she did.)
'Well, ma'am,' said Bounderby, 'without making any observation to
you that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family,
what I have got to add to that, is that there is something else in
which it appears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach. And
the coach in which we came here being at the door, you'll allow me
to hand you down to it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the
best course for you to pursue, will be to put your feet into the
hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scalding rum and
butter after you get into bed.' With these words, Mr. Bounderby
extended his right hand to the weeping lady, and escorted her to
the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the
way. He soon returned alone.
'Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted
to speak to me,' he resumed, 'here I am. But, I am not in a very
agreeable state, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business,
even as it is, and not considering that I am at any time as
dutifully and submissively treated by your daughter, as Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated by his wife. You have
your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine, I know. If you mean to
say anything to me to-night, that goes against this candid remark,
you had better let it alone.'
Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr.
Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points.
It was his amiable nature.
'My dear Bounderby,' Mr. Gradgrind began in reply.
'Now, you'll excuse me,' said Bounderby, 'but I don't want to be
too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man,
I generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not
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speaking to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am not polite.
If you like politeness, you know where to get it. You have your
gentleman-friends, you know, and they'll serve you with as much of
the article as you want. I don't keep it myself.'
'Bounderby,' urged Mr. Gradgrind, 'we are all liable to mistakes -
'
'I thought you couldn't make 'em,' interrupted Bounderby.
'Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes
and I should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it,
if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not
associate him in our conversation with your intimacy and
encouragement; pray do not persist in connecting him with mine.'
'I never mentioned his name!' said Bounderby.
'Well, well!' returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a
submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering.
'Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite
understood Louisa.'
'Who do you mean by We?'
'Let me say I, then,' he returned, in answer to the coarsely
blurted question; 'I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I
doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her
education.'
'There you hit it,' returned Bounderby. 'There I agree with you.
You have found it out at last, have you? Education! I'll tell you
what education is - To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and
put upon the shortest allowance of everything except blows. That's
what I call education.'
'I think your good sense will perceive,' Mr. Gradgrind remonstrated
in all humility, 'that whatever the merits of such a system may be,
it would be difficult of general application to girls.'
'I don't see it at all, sir,' returned the obstinate Bounderby.
'Well,' sighed Mr. Gradgrind, 'we will not enter into the question.
I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to
repair what is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist
me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much
distressed.'
'I don't understand you, yet,' said Bounderby, with determined
obstinacy, 'and therefore I won't make any promises.'
'In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,' Mr. Gradgrind
proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, 'I appear
to myself to have become better informed as to Louisa's character,
than in previous years. The enlightenment has been painfully
forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I think there are -
Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this - I think
there are qualities in Louisa, which - which have been harshly
neglected, and - and a little perverted. And - and I would suggest
to you, that - that if you would kindly meet me in a timely
endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while - and to
encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration - it
- it would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,'
said Mr. Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, 'has always
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been my favourite child.'
The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on
hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the
brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with
crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, and said:
'You'd like to keep her here for a time?'
'I - I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you
should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by
Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in
whom she trusts.'
'I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,' said Bounderby, standing
up with his hands in his pockets, 'that you are of opinion that
there's what people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby
and myself.'
'I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between
Louisa, and - and - and almost all the relati
ons in which I have
placed her,' was her father's sorrowful reply.
'Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,' said Bounderby the flushed,
confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his
pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was
boisterous. 'You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am
a Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the
bricks of this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know
the chimneys of this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I
know the Hands of this town. I know 'em all pretty well. They're
real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I
always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He
means turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants
to be set up with a coach and six. That's what your daughter
wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she
wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because, Tom
Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.'
'Bounderby,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'I hoped, after my entreaty, you
would have taken a different tone.'
'Just wait a bit,' retorted Bounderby; 'you have said your say, I
believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don't make
yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency,
because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his
present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so
low as that. Now, there's an incompatibility of some sort or
another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter and
me. I'll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there
unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude - to be
summed up in this - that your daughter don't properly know her
husband's merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would
become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That's plain
speaking, I hope.'
'Bounderby,' urged Mr. Gradgrind, 'this is unreasonable.'
'Is it?' said Bounderby. 'I am glad to hear you say so. Because
when Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say
is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish
sensible. With your permission I am going on. You know my origin;
and you know that for a good many years of my life I didn't want a
shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. Yet you may
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believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies - born
ladies - belonging to families - Families! - who next to worship
the ground I walk on.'
He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law's head.
'Whereas your daughter,' proceeded Bounderby, 'is far from being a
born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of
candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well aware I
don't; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can't
change it. Why do I say this?'
'Not, I fear,' observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, 'to spare
me.'
'Hear me out,' said Bounderby, 'and refrain from cutting in till
your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected
females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter
has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have
wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, and I
won't suffer it.'
'Bounderby,' returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, 'the less we say tonight
the better, I think.'
'On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, the
better, I think. That is,' the consideration checked him, 'till I
have said all I mean to say, and then I don't care how soon we
stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do
you mean by the proposal you made just now?'
'What do I mean, Bounderby?'
'By your visiting proposition,' said Bounderby, with an inflexible
jerk of the hayfield.
'I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly
manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here,
which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many
respects.'
'To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?' said
Bounderby.
'If you put it in those terms.'
'What made you think of this?' said Bounderby.
'I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it
asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid
in trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of
her; for better for worse, for - '
Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own
words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an
angry start.
'Come!' said he, 'I don't want to be told about that. I know what
I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her
for; that's my look out.'
'I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be
more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some
yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may
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not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred
towards Louisa.'
'I think differently,' blustered Bounderby. 'I am going to finish
this business according to my own opinions. Now, I don't want to
make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the
truth, I don't think it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel
on such a subject. As to your gentleman-friend, he may take
himself off, wherever he likes best. If he falls in my way, I
shall tell him my mind; if he don't fall in my way, I shan't, for
it won't be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom I
made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo
Gradgrind, if she don't come home to-morrow, by twelve o'clock at
noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall
send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you'll take
charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in
general, of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the
law, will be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringingup;
she's the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringingup;
and the two horses wouldn't pull together. I am pretty well
known to be rather an uncommon man, I believe; and most people will
understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the
common, also, who, in the long run, would come up to my mark.'
'Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Bounderby,' urged
Mr. Gradgrind, 'before you commit yourself to such a decision.'
'I always come to a decision,' said Bounderby, tossing his hat on:
'and whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom
Gradgrind's addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I could be surprised by
anything Tom Grad
grind did, after his making himself a party to
sentimental humbug. I have given you my decision, and I have got
no more to say. Good night!'
So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five
minutes past twelve o'clock next day, he directed Mrs. Bounderby's
property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind's;
advertised his country retreat for sale by private contract; and
resumed a bachelor life.
CHAPTER IV - LOST
THE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not
cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of
that establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and
activity, as a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a
commercial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of
the mud instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his
domestic affairs abated his business ardour. Consequently, in the
first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon
his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout in
renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who
had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.
They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been
so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people
really did suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing
new occurred. No implicated man or woman took untimely courage, or
made a self-betraying step. More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool
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could not be heard of, and the mysterious old woman remained a
mystery.
Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of
stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby's investigations
was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a
placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the apprehension of
Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in the robbery of
Coketown Bank on such a night; he described the said Stephen
Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and manner, as
minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and in
what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole
printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he
caused the walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that
it should strike upon the sight of the whole population at one
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