The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0059/00598.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 18KB | 342 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00598}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter IX}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{mrs
bounderby
louisa
sparsit
gradgrind
never
upon
sir
mother
old}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The Second: Reaping
Author:      Dickens, Charles

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 hoo beaked
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.  Ay, 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 daresay 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
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 is 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 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 any one, 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 matte