Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0059/00592.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 236 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00592}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{tom
harthouse
old
bounderby
james
returned
whelp
care
sister
it's}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The Second: Reaping
Author:      Dickens, Charles

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 old Bounderby to night." 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?  O 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 Leo 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."

     "Ay, ay?  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 sawdust.  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!" said 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 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 for ever with its filthy waters.