Charles Dickens - Hard Times

After this, there was a smile upon Louisa's face that day, for some one else. Alas, for some one 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.”

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!” cried Mr. Bounderby. “Have you heard?”

“Heard what?” said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.

“Then you haven't heard!”

“I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.”

Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path before the horse's head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.

“The Bank's robbed!”

“You don't mean it!”

“Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with a false key.”

“Of much?”

Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed mortified by being obliged to reply, “Why, no; not of very much. But it might have been.”

“Of how much?”

“Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty pound,” said Bounderby, with impatience. “But it's not the sum; it's the fact. It's the fact of the Bank being robbed, that's the important circumstance. I am surprised you don't see it.”

“My dear Bounderby,” said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to his servant, “I do see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view. Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you—which I do with all my soul, I assure you—on your not having sustained a greater loss.”

“Thank'ee,” replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. “But I tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound.”

“I suppose it might.”

“Suppose it might! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By George!” said Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head. “It might have been twice twenty. There's no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn't have been, as it was, but for the fellows” being disturbed.”

Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer.

“Here's Tom Gradgrind's daughter knows pretty well what it might have been, if you don't,” blustered Bounderby. “Dropped, sir, as if she was shot when I told her! Never knew her do such a thing before. Does her credit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!”

She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been committed.

“Why, I am going to tell you,” said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm to Mrs. Sparsit. “If you hadn't been so mighty particular about the sum, I should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she is a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?”

“I have already had the honour—”

“Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same occasion?” Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer knuckled his forehead.

“Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank, perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business hours, everything was put away as usual. In the iron room that this young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much. In the little safe in young Tom's closet, the safe used for petty purposes, there was a hundred and fifty odd pound.”

“A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,” said Bitzer.

“Come!” retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, “let's have none of your interruptions. It's enough to be robbed while you're snoring because you're too comfortable, without being put right with your four seven ones. I didn't snore, myself, when I was your age, let me tell you. I hadn't victuals enough to snore. And I didn't four seven one. Not if I knew it.”

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of Mr. Bounderby's moral abstinence.

“A hundred and fifty odd pound,” resumed Mr. Bounderby. “That sum of money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that's no matter now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night, while this young fellow snored—Mrs. Sparsit, ma'am, you say you have heard him snore?”

“Sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, “I cannot say that I have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,” said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, “that I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my testimony.”