He said, "No. No, my poor child."
"Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me--for no one's enrichment--only for the greater desolation of this world--of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?"
"Oh, no, no. No, Louisa."
"Yet, Father, if I had been stone blind--if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them--I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say."
He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they stood close together, she with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his face.
"With a hunger and thirst upon me, Father, which have never been for a moment appeased, with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute, I have grown up, battling every inch of my way."
"I never knew you were unhappy, my child."
"Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned, and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest."
"And you so young, Louisa!" he said with pity.
"And I so young. In this condition, Father--for I show you now, without fear or favour, that ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it--you proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, Father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors."
As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other shoulder, and, still looking fixedly in his face, went on.
"When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the tie the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall ever rule or state for me, Father, until they shall be able to direct the anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul."
"Louisa!" he said, and said imploringly, for he well remembered what had passed between them in their former interview.
"I do not reproach you, Father; I make no complaint. I am here with another object."
"What can I do, child? Ask me what you will."
"I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance, a man such as I had had no experience of--used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don't know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me."
"For you, Louisa!"
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
"I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well."
Her father's face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
"I have done no worse. I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, Father, that it may be so. I don't know."
She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders and pressed them both upon her side, while in her face, not like itself--and in her figure, drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say--the feelings long supressed broke loose.
"This night, my husband being away, he had been with me, declaring himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, Father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means!"
He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, "I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground!" And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.
END OF THE SECOND BOOK
BOOK THE THIRD
Garnering
CHAPTER I
Another Thing Needful
LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed at home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all that had happened since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the shadows of a dream; but gradually, as the objects became more real to her sight, the events became more real to her mind.
She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness; her eyes were strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention had such possession of her that the presence of her little sister in the room did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she asked:
"When was I brought to this room?"
"Last night, Louisa."
"Who brought me here?"
"Sissy, I believe."
"Why do you believe so?"
"Because I found her here this morning. She didn't come to my bed-side to wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her. She was not in her own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until I found her here taking care of you and cooling your head. Will you see Father? Sissy said I was to tell him when you woke."
"What a beaming face you have, Jane!" said Louisa, as her young sister--timidly still--bent down to kiss her.
"Have I? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be Sissy's doing."
The arm Louisa had begun to twine around her neck unbent itself. "You can tell Father if you will." Then, staying her for a moment, she said, "It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of welcome?"
"Oh, no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was--"
Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards the floor, until it opened and her father entered.
He had a jaded, anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady, trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet after her agitation and exposure to the weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial manner; and was often at a loss for words.
"My dear Louisa. My poor daughter." He was so much at a loss at that place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again.
"My unfortunate child." The place was so difficult to get over, that he tried again.
"It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last
night. The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet. The only support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed, and still does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant. I am stunned by these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say, but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night to be very heavy indeed."
She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck of her whole life upon the rock.
"I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived me some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been a part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind. I had proved my--my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my favourite child, that I have meant to do right."
He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
"I am well assured of what you say, Father. I know I have been your favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have never blamed you, and I never shall."
He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.
"My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and again on what has so painfully passed between us. When I consider your character; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours has been concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate pressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot but mistrust myself."
He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered hair from her forehead with his hand. Such little actions, slight in another man, were very noticeable in him, and his daughter received them as if they had been words of contrition.
"But," said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a wretched sense of helplessness, "if I see reason to mistrust myself for the past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am far from feeling convinced now, however differently I might have felt only this time yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how to respond to the appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have the right instinct--supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that nature--how to help you, and to set you right, my child."
She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had subsided; but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father was changed in nothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her in tears.
"Some persons hold," he pursued, still hesitating, "that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I venture this morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa----"
He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half-unwilling to admit it even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on her bed, still half-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last night.
"Louisa," and his hand rested on her hair again, "I have been absent from here, my dear, a good deal of late, and though your sister's training has been pursued according to--the system," he appeared to come to that word with great reluctance always, "it has necessarily been modified by daily associations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you--ignorantly and humbly, my daughter--for the better, do you think?"
"Father," she replied, without stirring, "if any harmony has been awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my way."
"Oh, my child, my child!" he said, in a forlorn manner, "I am an unhappy man to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not reproach me, if I so bitterly reproach myself!" He bent his head, and spoke low to her. "Louisa, I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly working about me in this house, by mere love and gratitude, that what the Head had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it be so?"
She made him no reply.
"I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be arrogant, and you before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?"
He looked upon her once more, lying cast away there; and without another word went out of the room. He had not been long gone when she heard a light tread near the door, and knew that someone stood beside her.
She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now, the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy that rose against a friend.
It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it, too, and she the cause of them.
As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that she stood placidly near the bed-side.
"I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me stay with you?"
"Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are everything to her."
"Am I?" returned Sissy, shaking her head. "I would be something to you, if I might."
"What?" said Louisa, almost sternly.
"Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I will never tire of trying. Will you let me?"
"My father sent you to ask me."
"No indeed," replied Sissy. "He told me that I might come in now, but he sent me away from the room this morning--or at least--" She hesitated and stopped.
"At least, what?" said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
"I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very uncertain whether you would like to find me here."
"Have I always hated you so much?"
"I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so little, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other friends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt."
Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
"May I try?" said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that was insensibly drooping towards her.
Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
"First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to everyone and to myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me
. Does not that repel you?"
"No!"
"I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of being as learned as you think me had to begin to acquire the simplest truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that repel you?"
"No!"
In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brim-ming up of her old devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon the darkness of the other.
Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow there. She fell upon her knees, and, clinging to this stroller's child, looked up at her almost with veneration.
"Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!"
"Oh, lay it here!" cried Sissy. "Lay it here, my dear."
CHAPTER II
Very Ridiculous
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 its 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.