Hard Times, Charles Dickens [little red riding hood ebook txt] 📗

his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his school to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind College.

“What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what they are.”

“Mr. Harthouse,” returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: “it’s too late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you’re a true friend.”

A true friend! “Whelp, whelp!” thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily; “what an ass you are!”

“And I take your offer as a great kindness,” said Tom, grasping his hand. “As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.”

“Well,” returned the other, “it may be of more use by and by. And, my good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find for yourself.”

“Thank you,” said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds. “I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.”

“Now, you see, Tom,” said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland: “every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately intent;” the languor of his desperation being quite tropical; “on your softening towards your sister⁠—which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother⁠—which you ought to be.”

“I will be, Mr. Harthouse.”

“No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.”

“Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.”

“Having made which bargain, Tom,” said Harthouse, clapping him on the shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer⁠—as he did, poor fool⁠—that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good nature to lessen his sense of obligation, “we will tear ourselves asunder until dinnertime.”

When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. “I didn’t mean to be cross, Loo,” he said, giving her his hand, and kissing her. “I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.”

After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for someone else. Alas, for someone else!

“So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,” thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day’s knowledge of her pretty face. “So much the less, so much the less.”

VIII Explosion

The next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room, smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so rich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could give his mind to it.

He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now and at all times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate recesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!

And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him. Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad, than indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.

When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.

So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to be travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly; but he troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be, will be.

As he had rather a long ride to take that day⁠—for there was a public occasion “to do” at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity of going in for the Gradgrind men⁠—he dressed early and went down to breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. There was a look of interest for him again.

He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding back at six o’clock. There was a sweep of some half-mile between the lodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, once Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.

“Harthouse!”