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

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 daughter is at the present time!”

“Undoubtedly. She is here.”

“Here?”

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