In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case of the robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town with instructions to recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.
When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, "Don't be low, sir. Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do." Mr. Bounderby, upon whom these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in a bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large sea-animal. "I cannot bear to see you so, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. "Try a hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of living under your roof." "I haven't played backgammon, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, "since that time." "No, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, soothingly, "I am aware that you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no interest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you will condescend."
They played near a window opening on the garden. It was a fine night--not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr. Harthouse strolled out into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the stillness, though not what they said. Mrs. Sparsit, from her place at the backgammon board, was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the shadows without. "What's the matter, ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby; "you don't see a Fire, do you?" "Oh, dear no, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, "I was thinking of the dew." "What have you got to do with the dew, ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby. "It's not myself, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit. "I am fearful of Miss Gradgrind's taking cold." "She never takes cold," said Mr. Bounderby. "Really, sir?" said Mrs. Sparsit. And was affected with a cough in her throat.
When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took a glass of water. "Oh, sir?" said Mrs. Sparsit. "Not your sherry warm, with lemon-peel and nutmeg?" "Why, I have got out of the habit of taking it now, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby. "The more's the pity, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit; "you are losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir! If Miss Gradgrind will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I have often done."
Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything she pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr. Bounderby. "It will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir." And when Mr. Bounderby said, "Your health, ma'am!" she answered with great feeling, "Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also." Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender, though he could not for his life have mentioned what it was.
Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for her brother's coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour past midnight, but in the country silence, which did anything but calm the trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang on until daylight, but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.
She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose, put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark and up the staircase to her brother's room. His door being shut, she softly opened it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.
She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said nothing to him.
He started by-and-by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that was, and what was the matter?
"Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and have anything concealed from everyone besides, tell it to me."
"I don't know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming."
"My dear brother"--she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from everyone but herself--"is there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. Oh Tom, tell me the truth!"
"I don't know what you mean, Loo!"
"As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie somewhere, one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!"
"What is it you want to know?"
"You may be certain"--in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom as if he were a child--"that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. Oh Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only 'yes,' and I shall understand you!"
She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.
"Not a word, Tom?"
"How can I say yes, or how can I say no, when I don't know what you mean? Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy, I begin to think, of a better brother than I am. But I have nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to bed."
"You are tired," she whispered presently, more in her usual way.
"Yes, I am quite tired out."
"You have been so hurried and disturbed today. Have any fresh discoveries been made?"
"Only those you have heard of, from--him."
"Tom, have you said to anyone that we made a visit to those people, and that we saw those three together?"
"No. Didn't you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet when you asked me to go there with you?"
"Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen."
"Nor I neither. How could I?"
He was very quick upon her with the retort.
"Ought I to say, after what has happened," said his sister, standing by the bed--she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, "that I made that visit? Should I say so? Must I say so?"
"Good Heavens, Loo," returned her brother, "you are not in the habit of asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep it to yourself, I shall keep it to myself. If you disclose it, there's an end of it."
It was too dark for either to see the other's face, but each seemed very attentive, and to consider before speaking.
"Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to is really implicated in this crime?"
"I don't know. I don't see why he shouldn't be."
"He seemed to me an honest man."
"Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so."
There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.
"In short," resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, "if you come to that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour that I took him outside the door to tell him quietly that I thought he might consider himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from my sister, and that I hoped he would make good use of it. You remember whether I took him out or not. I say nothing against the man; he may be a very good fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is."
"Was he offended by what you said?"
"No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough. Where are you, Loo?" He sat up in bed and kissed her. "Good night, my dear, good night."
"You have nothing more to tell me?"
"No. What should I have? You wouldn't have me tell you a lie?"
"I wouldn't have you do that tonight, Tom, of all the nights in your life; many and much happier as I hope they will be."
"Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired that I am sure I wonder I don't say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to bed."
Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and lay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him. She stood for some time at the bed-side before she slowly moved away. She stopp
ed at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if he had called her? But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and returned to her room.
Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again--tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world.
CHAPTER IX
Hearing the Last of It
MRS. SPARSIT, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr. Bounderby's retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold rock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly serene that most observers would have been constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature in the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hookbeaked order.
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
She took very kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the garden, one morning before breakfast.
"It appears but yesterday, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that I had the honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby's address."
"An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of Ages," said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs. Sparsit with the most indolent of all possible airs.
"We live in a singular world, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit.
"I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically expressed."
"A singular world, I would say, sir," pursued Mrs. Sparsit, after acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet tones, "as regards the intimacies we form at one time with individuals we were quite ignorant of at another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind."
"Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I availed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is unnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs. Sparsit's talent for--in fact for anything requiring accuracy--with a combination of strength of mind--and Family--is too habitually developed to admit of any question." He was almost falling asleep over this compliment, it took him so long to get through and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution.
"You found Miss Gradgrind--I really cannot call her Mrs. Bounderby; it's very absurd of me--as youthful as I described her?" asked Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly.
"You drew her portrait perfectly," said Mr. Harthouse. "Presented her dead image."
"Very engaging, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to revolve over one another.
"Highly so."
"It used to be considered," said Mrs. Sparsit, "that Miss Gradgrind was wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and strikingly improved in that respect. Aye, and indeed here is Mr. Bounderby!" cried Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as if she had been talking and thinking of no one else. "How do you find yourself this morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir."
Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with forced lightness of heart, "You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table," Mr. Bounderby replied, "If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma'am, I believe you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I'll trouble you to take charge of the teapot." Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at table.
This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble withal that when Louisa appeared she rose, protesting she never could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she had had the honour of making Mr. Bounderby's breakfast before Mrs. Gradgrind--she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Bounderby--she hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to become familiar with it by-and-by--had assumed her present position. It was only, she observed, because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby's time was so very precious, and she knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request--long as his will had been a law to her.
"There! Stop where you are, ma'am," said Mr. Bounderby, "stop where you are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe."
"Don't say that, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity, "because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be unkind is not to be you, sir."
"You may set your mind at rest, ma'am.--You can take it very quietly, can't you, Loo?" said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way to his wife.
"Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to me?"
"Why should it be of any importance to anyone, Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am?" said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. "You attach too much importance to these things, ma'am. By George, you'll be corrupted in some of your notions here. You are old-fashioned, ma'am. You are behind Tom Gradgrind's children's time."
"What is the matter with you?" asked Louisa, coldly surprised. "What has given you offence?"
"Offence!" repeated Bounderby. "Do you suppose if there was any offence given me, I shouldn't name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a straightforward man, I believe. I don't go beating about for side-winds."
"I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too delicate," Louisa answered him composedly: "I have never made that objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don't understand what you would have."
"Have?" returned Mr. Bounderby. "Nothing. Otherwise, don't you, Loo Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would have it?"
She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the tea-cups ring, with a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought. "You are incomprehensible this morning," said Louisa. "Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What does it matter?"
Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay on indifferent subjects. But from this day the Sparsit action upon Mr. Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not retrace them if she tried. But whether she ever tried or no lay hidde
n in her own closed heart.
Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured, "My benefactor!" and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five minutes after he had left the house in the selfsame hat, the same descendant of the Scadgerses and connection by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of art, and said, "Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it."
Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches that bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an express from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa that Mrs. Gradgrind lay very ill. She had never been well within her daughter's knowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead as her limited capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to get out of it allowed.