Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

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