“Now,” said Sleary, “come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.” With which he delicately retired.
“Here is your letter,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “All necessary means will be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do!”
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
“Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!”
“O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!”
“After all your love!” he returned, obdurately. “Pretty love! Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me.”
“Tharp’th the word!” said Sleary at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.
“I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,” said Bitzer, shaking his head, “but I can’t allow myself to be done by horseriders. I must have young Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horseriders; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him!”
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.
Chapter VIII Philosophical
They went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the twilight.
“Bitzer,” said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, “have you a heart?”
“The circulation sir,” returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, “couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.”
“Is it accessible,” cried Mr. Gradgrind, “to any compassionate influence?”
“It is accessible to Reason, sir,” returned the excellent young man. “And to nothing else.”
They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind’s face as white as the pursuer’s.
“What motive – even what motive in reason – can you have for preventing the escape of this wretched youth,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “and crushing his miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!”
“Sir,” returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner, “since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own confessions, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am going to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.”