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

for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and followed on its heels. “Mr. Thomas,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “these plain viands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.”

“Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,” said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.

“How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom?” asked Mrs. Sparsit.

“Oh, he’s all right,” said Tom.

“Where may he be at present?” Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies for being so uncommunicative.

“He is shooting in Yorkshire,” said Tom. “Sent Loo a basket half as big as a church, yesterday.”

“The kind of gentleman, now,” said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, “whom one might wager to be a good shot!”

“Crack,” said Tom.

He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching his looks, if she were so inclined.

“Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “as indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr. Tom?”

“Why, I expect to see him tomorrow,” returned the whelp.

“Good news!” cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly.

“I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the station here,” said Tom, “and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so, being due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn’t wonder if he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.”

“Which reminds me!” said Mrs. Sparsit. “Would you remember a message to your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?”

“Well? I’ll try,” returned the reluctant whelp, “if it isn’t a long un.”

“It is merely my respectful compliments,” said Mrs. Sparsit, “and I fear I may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.”

“Oh! If that’s all,” observed Tom, “it wouldn’t much matter, even if I was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of you unless she sees you.”

Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left, when he said, “Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off!” and went off.

Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long looking at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye on the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind, but, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her reasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a passenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room windows, to appearing in its precincts openly.

Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had dispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, he strolled away idly, stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty minutes hence.

“This is a device to keep him out of the way,” said Mrs. Sparsit, starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last. “Harthouse is with his sister now!”

It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy; but she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in darting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of coal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and whirled away.

All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down. Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.

An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its drooping eyelids Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches. One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Sparsit heard or saw until she very softly closed a gate.

She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.

Hark!

The smaller birds might have tumbled out