Chapter II - Very Ridiculous

Hard Times

by Charles Dickens

Mr. James Harthouse passed a whole night and a day in a state of
so much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would
scarcely have recognized him during that insane interval, as the
brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively
agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the
vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like
a man without an object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he
was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go
in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.

After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it
were a leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his
bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with
delinquency in withholding letters or messages that could not fail to
have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot.
The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither
message nor letter coming with either, he went down to the country
house. There, the report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and Mrs. Bounderby
in town. Left for town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be
gone until receipt of message, importing that her return was not to
be expected for the present.

In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her
to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there.
He looked in at the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away.
Mrs. Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity
for the company of that griffin!

'Well! I don't know,' said Tom, who had his own reasons for
being uneasy about it. 'She was off somewhere at daybreak this
morning. She's always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that
white chap; he's always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.'

'Where were you last night, Tom?'

'Where was I last night!' said Tom. 'Come! I like that. I was
waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it
come down before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.'

'I was prevented from coming - detained.'

'Detained!' murmured Tom. 'Two of us were detained. I was
detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It
would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night,
and have to walk home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town
after all.'

'Where?'

'Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby's.'

'Did you see your sister?'

'How the deuce,' returned Tom, staring, 'could I see my sister
when she was fifteen miles off?'

Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he
was so true a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that
interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and
debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean? He made
only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in town or out of
town, whether he had been premature with her who was so hard to
comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were discovered, or some
mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible, had occurred, he
must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where
he was known to live when condemned to that region of blackness, was
the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest - What will be,
will be.

'So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an
assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with
my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner - which would seem as
likely as anything else in the present state of affairs - I'll dine,'
said Mr. James Harthouse. 'Bounderby has the advantage in point of
weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between
us, it may be as well to be in training.'

Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a
sofa, ordered 'Some dinner at six - with a beefsteak in it,' and got
through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not
particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and,
as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, his
perplexity augmented at compound interest.

However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to
do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training
more than once. 'It wouldn't be bad,' he yawned at one time, 'to
give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.' At another time it
occurred to him, 'Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone
might be hired by the hour.' But these jests did not tell materially
on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth to say, they both
lagged fearfully.

It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking
about in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window,
listening at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather
hot when any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the
day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still
no communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it,
'like the Holy Office and slow torture.' However, still true to his
conviction that indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only
conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the opportunity for
ordering candles and a newspaper.

He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this
newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously
and apologetically:

'Beg your pardon, sir. You're wanted, sir, if you please.'

A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the
Police said to the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter
in return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by
'wanted'?

'Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see
you.'

'Outside? Where?'

'Outside this door, sir.'

Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-
head duly qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried into
the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood there.
Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into
the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the light of the
candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first believed.
Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression remarkably
pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in any way disconcerted; she
seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied with the occasion of her
visit, and to have substituted that consideration for herself.

'I speak to Mr. Harthouse?' she said, when they were alone.

'To Mr. Harthouse.' He added in his mind, 'And you speak to him
with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice
(though so quiet) I ever heard.'

'If I do not understand - and I do not, sir' - said Sissy, 'what
your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:' the blood
really rose in his face as she began in these words: 'I am sure I
may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I
am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so
far trust - '

'You may, I assure you.'

'I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to
you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.' He
thought, 'But that is very strong,' as he followed the momentary
upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, 'This is a very odd
beginning. I don't see where we are going.'

'I think,' said Sissy, 'you have already guessed whom I left
just now!'

'I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the
last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),' he
returned, 'on a lady's account. The hopes I have been encouraged to
form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.'

'I left her within an hour.'

'At - !'

'At her father's.'

Mr. Harthouse's face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and
his perplexity increased. 'Then I certainly,' he thought, 'do not
see where we are going.'

'She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great
agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her
father's, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see
her again as long as you live.'

Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself
in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond
all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like
ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness,
her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire
forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object
with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his
easily given promise - which in itself shamed him - presented
something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew
any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word
could he rally to his relief.

At last he said:

'So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such
lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted
to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information to me in
those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak?'

'I have no charge from her.'

'The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for
your judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying
that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not
condemned to perpetual exile from that lady's presence.'

'There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming
here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no
more hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be
if she had died when she came home last night.'

'Must believe? But if I can't - or if I should, by infirmity of
nature, be obstinate - and won't - '

'It is still true. There is no hope.'

James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his
lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was
quite thrown away.

He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.

'Well! If it should unhappily appear,' he said, 'after due
pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so
desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady's
persecutor. But you said you had no commission from her?'

'I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for
me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she
came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no
further trust, than that I know something of her character and her
marriage. O Mr. Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!'

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been -
in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have
lived if they had not been whistled away - by the fervour of this
reproach.

'I am not a moral sort of fellow,' he said, 'and I never make
any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as
immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon
the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in
unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by
any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable
with - in fact with - the domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage
of her father's being a machine, or of her brother's being a whelp,
or of her husband's being a bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you
that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on
from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly diabolical,
that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so long
until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,' said Mr. James
Harthouse, in conclusion, 'that it is really in several volumes.'

Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed,
for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was
silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed
air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that would not
be polished out.

'After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I
find it impossible to doubt - I know of hardly any other source from
which I could have accepted it so readily - I feel bound to say to
you, in whom the confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that
I cannot refuse to contemplate the possibility (however unexpected)
of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely to blame for the thing
having come to this - and - and, I cannot say,' he added, rather hard
up for a general peroration, 'that I have any sanguine expectation of
ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief in
any moral sort of fellow whatever.'

Sissy's face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not
finished.

'You spoke,' he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again,
'of your first object. I may assume that there is a second to be
mentioned?'

'Yes.'

'Will you oblige me by confiding it?'

'Mr. Harthouse,' returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness
and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence
in his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a
singular disadvantage, 'the only reparation that remains with you, is
to leave here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can
mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am
quite sure that it is the only compensation you have left it in your
power to make. I do not say that it is much, or that it is enough;
but it is something, and it is necessary. Therefore, though without
any other authority than I have given you, and even without the
knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself, I ask you to
depart from this place to-night, under an obligation never to return
to it.'

If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain
faith in the truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed
the least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the best
purpose any reserve or pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the
lightest trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his
astonishment, or any remonstrance he might offer; he would have
carried it against her at this point. But he could as easily have
changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as affect her.

'But do you know,' he asked, quite at a loss, 'the extent of
what you ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public
kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have
gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite
a desperate manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure
you it's the fact.'

It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.

'Besides which,' said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across
the room, dubiously, 'it's so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man
so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such
an incomprehensible way.'

'I am quite sure,' repeated Sissy, 'that it is the only
reparation in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have
come here.'

He glanced at her face, and walked about again. 'Upon my soul,
I don't know what to say. So immensely absurd!'

It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.

'If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,' he said,
stopping again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, 'it
could only be in the most inviolable confidence.'

'I will trust to you, sir,' returned Sissy, 'and you will trust
to me.'

His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night
with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he
felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at
all.

'I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous
position,' he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing,
and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. 'But I see no
way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I
must take off myself, I imagine - in short, I engage to do it.'

Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was
happy in it, and her face beamed brightly.

'You will permit me to say,' continued Mr. James Harthouse,
'that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have
addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard myself as
being in a very ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all
points. Will you allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy's
name?'

'My name?' said the ambassadress.

'The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.'

'Sissy Jupe.'

'Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?'

'I am only a poor girl,' returned Sissy. 'I was separated from
my father - he was only a stroller - and taken pity on by Mr.
Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.'

She was gone.

'It wanted this to complete the defeat,' said Mr. James
Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing
transfixed a little while. 'The defeat may now be considered
perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl - only a stroller - only
James Harthouse made nothing of - only James Harthouse a Great
Pyramid of failure.'

The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He
took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in
appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:

Dear Jack, - All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and
going in for camels. Affectionately, Jem,

He rang the bell.

'Send my fellow here.'

'Gone to bed, sir.'

'Tell him to get up, and pack up.'

He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his
retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would
be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to
Mr. Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their
superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind,
and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark
landscape.

The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse
derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt
retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for anything,
and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax of a very
bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense of having
failed and been ridiculous - a dread of what other fellows who went
in for similar sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew
it - so oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in
his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to on any
account, and the only one that made him ashamed of himself.