From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself. There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at its present occupants, un-softened and unrelieved by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another and well matched.
"This, sir," said Bounderby, "is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby--Tom Gradgrind's eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined your father's muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind's colleague before long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connection with one of our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. I don't know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn't have married me. She has lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better adviser than Loo Bounderby."
To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.
"Come!" said his host. "If you're in the complimentary line, you'll get on here, for you'll meet with no competition. I have never been in the way of learning compliments myself, and I don't profess to understand the art of paying 'em. In fact, despise 'em. But your bringing-up was different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You're a gentleman, and I don't pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that's enough for me. However, though I am not influenced by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn't my advantages--disadvantages you would call 'em, but I call 'em advantages--so you'll not waste your power, I dare say."
"Mr. Bounderby," said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, "is a noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in which a conventional hack like myself works."
"You respect Mr. Bounderby very much," she quietly returned. "It is natural that you should."
He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of the world, and thought, "Now, how am I to take this?"
"You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind," said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped--in all the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease--"to show the nation the way out of all its difficulties."
"Mrs. Bounderby," he returned, laughing, "upon my honour, no. I will make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your respected father's opinions--really because I have no choice of opinions, and may as well back them as anything else."
"Have you none of your own?" asked Louisa.
"I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone is a conviction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the subject) that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other set, and just as much harm as any other set. There's an English family with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It's the only truth going!"
This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty--a vice so dangerous, so deadly, and so common--seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his favour. He followed up the advantage by saying in his pleasantest manner--a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased--"The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did believe it!"
"You are a singular politician," said Louisa.
"Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks and were reviewed together."
Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six, and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity. The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of boredom.
In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the ha'p'orth of stewed eels he had purchased in the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish with the calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner, received with "charming!" every now and then; and they probably would have decided him to "go in" for Jerusalem again tomorrow morning had he been less curious respecting Louisa.
"Is there nothing," he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight but very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced, "is there nothing that will move that face?"
Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a beaming smile.
A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of it but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out her hand--a pretty little soft hand--and her fingers closed upon her brother's as if she would have carried them to her lips.
"Aye, aye?" thought the visitor. "This whelp is the only creature she cares for. So, so!"
The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not flattering, but not unmerited.
"When I was your age, young Tom," said Bounderby, "I was punctual or I got no dinner!"
"When you were my age," returned Tom, "you hadn't a wrong balance to get right, and hadn't to dress afterwards."
"Never mind that now," said Bounderby.
"Well, then," grumbled Tom. "Don't begin with me."
"Mrs. Bounderby," said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as it went on, "your brother's face is quite familiar to me. Can I have seen him abroad? or at some public school, perhaps?"
"No," she returned, quite interested, "he has never been abroad yet, and was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that he never saw you abroad."
"No such luck, sir," said Tom.
There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of someone on whom to bestow it. "So much the more is this whelp the only creature she has ever cared for," thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it over and over. "So much the more. So much the more."
Both in his sister's presence and after she had left the room, the whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned out with him to escort him thither.
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CHAPTER III
The Whelp
IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint should be a hypocrite--but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes should be incapable at last of governing himself--but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities--but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
"Do you smoke?" asked Mr. James Harthouse when they came to the hotel.
"I believe you!" said Tom.
He could do no less than ask Tom up, and Tom could do no less than go up. What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as cool, and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts, Tom was soon in a highly free-and-easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and took an observation of his friend. "He don't seem to care about his dress," thought Tom, "and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is!"
Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom's eye, remarked that he drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
"Thank'ee," said Tom. "Thank'ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have had about a dose of Bounderby tonight." Tom said this with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly at his entertainer.
"A very good fellow indeed!" returned Mr. James Harthouse.
"You think so, don't you?" said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
Mr. James Harthouse smiled, and, rising from his end of the sofa, and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece so that he stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at him, observed:
"What a comical brother-in-law you are!"
"What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean," said Tom.
"You are a piece of caustic, Tom," retorted Mr. James Harthouse.
There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a waistcoat, in being called Tom in such an intimate way by such a voice, in being on such off-hand terms so soon with such a pair of whiskers that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.
"Oh! I don't care for old Bounderby," said he, "if you mean that. I have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin to be polite now about old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day."
"Don't mind me," returned James, "but take care when his wife is by, you know."
"His wife?" said Tom. "My sister Loo? Oh yes!" And he laughed, and took a little more of the cooling drink.
James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude, smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over him and he must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.
"My sister Loo?" said Tom. "She never cared for old Bounderby."
"That's the past tense, Tom," returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. "We are in the present tense, now."
"Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care; third person singular, she does not care," returned Tom.
"Good! Very quaint!" said his friend. "Though you don't mean it."
"But I do mean it," cried Tom. "Upon my honour! Why, you won't tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for old Bounderby."
"My dear fellow," returned the other, "what am I bound to suppose when I find two married people living in harmony and happiness?"
Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would have put it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common face and not too sober eyes towards the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so potently.
"You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse," said Tom, "and therefore, you needn't be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him."
"Very dutiful in your interesting sister," said Mr. James Harthouse.
"Yes, but she wouldn't have been as dutiful, and it would not have come off as easily," returned the whelp, "if it hadn't been for me."
The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows, but the whelp was obliged to go on.
"I persuaded her," he said, with an edifying air of superiority. "I was stuck into old Bounderby's bank (where I never wanted to be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there if she put old Bounderby's pipe out, so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn't it?"
"It was charming, Tom!"
"Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me," continued Tom coolly, "because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my getting on, depended on it, and she had no other lover, and staying at home was like staying in jail--especially when I was gone. It wasn't as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby, but still it was a good thing in her."
"Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly."
"Oh," returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage,
"she's a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don't mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she's not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think--as I have often known her sit and watch the fire--for an hour at a stretch."
"Aye, aye? Has resources of her own," said Harthouse, smoking quietly.
"Not so much of that as you may suppose," returned Tom, "for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and saw dust. It's his system."
"Formed his daughter on his own model?" suggested Harthouse.
"His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why he formed Me that way," said Tom.
"Impossible!"
"He did, though," said Tom, shaking his head. "I mean to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby's I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life than any oyster does."
"Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke's a joke."
"Upon my soul!" cried the whelp. "I am serious; I am indeed!" He smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a highly complacent tone, "Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don't deny that. But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor."
"And your intelligent sister?"
"My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon that girls usually fall back upon, and I don't see how she is to have got over that since. But she don't mind," he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. "Girls can always get on, somehow."
"Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby's address, I found an ancient lady there who seems to entertain great admiration for your sister," observed Mr. James Harthouse, throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.
"Mother Sparsit!" said Tom. "What! you have seen her already, have you?"
His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater
expression, and to tap his nose several times with his finger.
"Mother Sparsit's feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should think," said Tom. "Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!"
These were the last words spoken by the whelp before a giddy drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also of a voice saying: "Come, it's late. Be off!"
"Well!" he said, scrambling from the sofa. "I must take my leave of you--though--I say--Yours is very good tobacco--But it's too mild."
"Yes, it's too mild," returned his entertainer.
"It's--it's ridiculously mild," said Tom. "Where's the door? Good night!"
He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into the main street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and influence of his new friend--as if he were lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.
The whelp went home and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained his head forever with its filthy waters.
CHAPTER IV
Men and Brothers
"OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!"
"Good!" "Hear, hear, hear!" "Hurrah!" and other cries arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this and what other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself into a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring at the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists, knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much out of himself by this time that he was brought to a stop, and called for a glass of water.