Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  that even these readers persisted in wondering. They wondered

  about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the

  struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows,

  the lives and deaths of common men and women! They sometimes,

  after fifteen hours' work, sat down to read mere fables about men

  and women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more

  or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead

  of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by

  Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in

  print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never could

  make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.

  'I am sick of my life, Loo. I, hate it altogether, and I hate

  everybody except you,' said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in

  the hair-cutting chamber at twilight.

  'You don't hate Sissy, Tom?'

  'I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,' said

  Tom, moodily.

  'No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!'

  'She must,' said Tom. 'She must just hate and detest the whole

  set-out of us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before they

  have done with her. Already she's getting as pale as wax, and as

  heavy as - I am.'

  Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair

  before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on

  his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now

  looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped

  upon the hearth.

  'As to me,' said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his

  sulky hands, 'I am a Donkey, that's what I am. I am as obstinate

  as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one,

  and I should like to kick like one.'

  'Not me, I hope, Tom?'

  'No, Loo; I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you at

  first. I don't know what this - jolly old - Jaundiced Jail,' Tom

  had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name

  for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment

  by the strong alliteration of this one, 'would be without you.'

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  'Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?'

  'Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it!'

  returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify

  his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit.

  'Because, Tom,' said his sister, after silently watching the sparks

  awhile, 'as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit

  wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't

  reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don't know

  what other girls know. I can't play to you, or sing to you. I

  can't talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any

  amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a

  pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.'

  'Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am

  a Mule too, which you're not. If father was determined to make me

  either a Prig or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to

  reason, I must be a Mule. And so I am,' said Tom, desperately.

  'It's a great pity,' said Louisa, after another pause, and speaking

  thoughtfully out of her dark corner: 'it's a great pity, Tom.

  It's very unfortunate for both of us.'

  'Oh! You,' said Tom; 'you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of

  it better than a boy does. I don't miss anything in you. You are

  the only pleasure I have - you can brighten even this place - and

  you can always lead me as you like.'

  'You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such

  things, I don't so much mind knowing better. Though I do know

  better, Tom, and am very sorry for it.' She came and kissed him,

  and went back into her corner again.

  'I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,' said

  Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, 'and all the Figures, and all

  the people who found them out: and I wish I could put a thousand

  barrels of gunpowder under them, and blow them all up together!

  However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I'll have my

  revenge.'

  'Your revenge, Tom?'

  'I mean, I'll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see

  something, and hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way

  in which I have been brought up.'

  'But don't disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Bounderby

  thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half

  so kind.'

  'Oh!' said Tom, laughing; 'I don't mind that. I shall very well

  know how to manage and smooth old Bounderby!'

  Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high

  presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on

  the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark

  cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination - if such treason could have

  been there - might have made it out to be the shadow of their

  subject, and of its lowering association with their future.

  'What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a

  secret?'

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  'Oh!' said Tom, 'if it is a secret, it's not far off. It's you.

  You are his little pet, you are his favourite; he'll do anything

  for you. When he says to me what I don't like, I shall say to him,

  "My sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She

  always used to tell me she was sure you would be easier with me

  than this." That'll bring him about, or nothing will.'

  After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom

  wearily relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning

  round and about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more

  and more, until he suddenly looked up, and asked:

  'Have you gone to sleep, Loo?'

  'No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.'

  'You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,'

  said Tom. 'Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.'

  'Tom,' enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if

  she were reading what she asked in the fire, and it was not quite

  plainly written there, 'do you look forward with any satisfaction

  to this change to Mr. Bounderby's?'

  'Why, there's one thing to be said of it,' returned Tom, pushing

  his chair from him, and standing up; 'it will be getting away from

  home.'

  'There is one thing to be said of it,' Louisa repeated in her

  former curious tone; 'it will be getting away from home. Yes.'

  'Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo,

  and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it

  or not; and I had better go where I can take with me some advantage

  of your influence, than where I should lose it altogether. Don't

  you see?'

  'Yes, Tom.'

  The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in

  it, tha
t Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to

  contemplate the fire which so engrossed her, from her point of

  view, and see what he could make of it.

  'Except that it is a fire,' said Tom, 'it looks to me as stupid and

  blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a

  circus?'

  'I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have

  been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown

  up.'

  'Wondering again!' said Tom.

  'I have such unmanageable thoughts,' returned his sister, 'that

  they will wonder.'

  'Then I beg of you, Louisa,' said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened

  the door without being heard, 'to do nothing of that description,

  for goodness' sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear

  the last of it from your father. And, Thomas, it is really

  shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy

  brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what

  yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  he knows his father has expressly said that she is not to do it.'

  Louisa denied Tom's participation in the offence; but her mother

  stopped her with the conclusive answer, 'Louisa, don't tell me, in

  my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is

  morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.'

  'I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red

  sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made

  me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I

  could hope to do in it.'

  'Nonsense!' said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic.

  'Nonsense! Don't stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my

  face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your

  father's ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the

  trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have

  attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard

  you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed,

  going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and

  calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive

  a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way

  about sparks and ashes! I wish,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking

  a chair, and discharging her strongest point before succumbing

  under these mere shadows of facts, 'yes, I really do wish that I

  had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was

  to do without me!'

  CHAPTER IX - SISSY'S PROGRESS

  SISSY JUPE had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M'Choakumchild

  and Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the

  first months of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all

  day long so very hard, and life in general was opened to her as

  such a closely ruled ciphering-book, that assuredly she would have

  run away, but for only one restraint.

  It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of

  no arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all

  calculation, and went dead against any table of probabilities that

  any Actuary would have drawn up from the premises. The girl

  believed that her father had not deserted her; she lived in the

  hope that he would come back, and in the faith that he would be

  made the happier by her remaining where she was.

  The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation,

  rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical

  basis, that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr.

  Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what was to be done? M'Choakumchild

  reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once

  possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest

  conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was

  extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful

  incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst

  into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to

  name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at

  fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school,

  as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the

  elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set

  right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question,

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  'What is the first principle of this science?' the absurd answer,

  'To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.'

  Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very

  bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill

  of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and

  tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe 'must be kept to it.' So

  Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.

  'It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!' she said, one

  night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for

  next day something clearer to her.

  'Do you think so?'

  'I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me

  now, would be so easy then.'

  'You might not be the better for it, Sissy.'

  Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, 'I should not be the

  worse, Miss Louisa.' To which Miss Louisa answered, 'I don't know

  that.'

  There had been so little communication between these two - both

  because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of

  machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of the

  prohibition relative to Sissy's past career - that they were still

  almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed

  to Louisa's face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain

  silent.

  'You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than

  I can ever be,' Louisa resumed. 'You are pleasanter to yourself,

  than I am to myself.'

  'But, if you please, Miss Louisa,' Sissy pleaded, 'I am - O so

  stupid!'

  Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be

  wiser by-and-by.

  'You don't know,' said Sissy, half crying, 'what a stupid girl I

  am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs.

  M'Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make

  mistakes. I can't help them. They seem to come natural to me.'

  'Mr. and Mrs. M'Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I

  suppose, Sissy?'

  'O no!' she eagerly returned. 'They know everything.'

  'Tell me some of your mistakes.'

  'I am almost ashamed,' said Sissy, with reluctance. 'But to-day,

  for instance, Mr. M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural

  Prosperity.'

  'National, I think it must have been,' observed Louisa.

  'Yes, it was. - But isn't it the same?' she timidly asked.

  'You had better say, National, as he said so,' returned Louisa,

  with he
r dry reserve.

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  'National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a

  Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money.

  Isn't this a prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn't this a

  prosperous nation, and a'n't you in a thriving state?'

  'What did you say?' asked Louisa.

  'Miss Louisa, I said I didn't know. I thought I couldn't know

  whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a

  thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and

  whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it.

  It was not in the figures at all,' said Sissy, wiping her eyes.

  'That was a great mistake of yours,' observed Louisa.

  'Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M'Choakumchild

  said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an

  immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and

  only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the

  course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my

  remark was - for I couldn't think of a better one - that I thought

  it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the

  others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong,

  too.'

  'Of course it was.'

  'Then Mr. M'Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he

  said, Here are the stutterings - '

  'Statistics,' said Louisa.

  'Yes, Miss Louisa - they always remind me of stutterings, and

  that's another of my mistakes - of accidents upon the sea. And I

  find (Mr. M'Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred

  thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred

  of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage?

  And I said, Miss;' here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with

  extreme contrition to her greatest error; 'I said it was nothing.'

  'Nothing, Sissy?'

  'Nothing, Miss - to the relations and friends of the people who

  were killed. I shall never learn,' said Sissy. 'And the worst of

  all is, that although my poor father wished me so much to learn,

  and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I

  am afraid I don't like it.'

  Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped

  abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her

  face. Then she asked:

  'Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be