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, '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 her dry
reserve.
'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 well taught
too, Sissy?'
Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that they
were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, 'No one hears us; and if
any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an innocent question.'
'No, Miss Louisa,' answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her head;
'father knows very little indeed. It's as much as he can do to write; and it's
more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though it's plain to
me.'
'Your mother!'
'Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was;'
Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; 'she was a dancer.'
'Did your father love her?' Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild,
wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished
creature, and hiding in solitary places.
'O yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake. He
carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been asunder
from that time.'
'Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?'
'Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows him as I do.
When he left me for my good - he never would have left me for his own - I know
he was almost broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be happy for a single
minute, till he comes back.'
'Tell me more about him,' said Louisa, 'I will never ask you again. Where did
you live?'
'We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in. Father's
a;' Sissy whispered the awful word, 'a clown.'
'To make the people laugh?' said Louisa, with a nod of intelligence.
'Yes. But they wouldn't laugh sometimes, and then father cried. Lately, they
very often wouldn't laugh, and he used to come home despairing. Father's not
like most. Those who didn't know him as well as I do, and didn't love him as
dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right. Sometimes they played
tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt them, and shrunk up, when he
was alone with me. He was far, far timider than they thought!'
'And you were his comfort through everything?'
She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. 'I hope so, and father said
I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because he felt
himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to be his words),
that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be different from him. I
used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was very fond of that. They
were wrong books - I am never to speak of them here - but we didn't know there
was any harm in them.'
'And he liked them?' said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this
time.
'O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And
often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering
whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have her
head cut off before it was finished.'
'And your father was always kind? To the last?' asked Louisa contravening the
great principle, and wondering very much.
'Always, always!' returned Sissy, clasping her hands. 'Kinder and kinder than
I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me, but Merrylegs.
Merrylegs;' she whispered the awful fact; 'is his performing dog.'
'Why was he angry with the dog?' Louisa demanded.
'Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to jump up
on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them - which is one of his
tricks. He looked at father, and didn't do it at once. Everything of father's
had gone wrong that night, and he hadn't pleased the public at all. He cried out
that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no compassion on him. Then he
beat the dog, and I was frightened, and said, "Father, father! Pray don't hurt
the creature who is so fond of you! O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!" And he
stopped, and the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with
the dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.'
Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her hand,
and sat down beside her.
'Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have asked
you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is mine, not
yours.'
'Dear Miss Louisa,' said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; 'I came
home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come home too,
from the booth. And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as if he was in pain.
And I said, "Have you hurt yourself, father?" (as he did sometimes, like they
all did), and he said, "A little, my darling." And when I came to stoop down and
look up at his face, I saw that he was crying. The more I spoke to him, the more
he hid his face; and at first he shook all over, and said nothing but "My
darling;" and "My love!"'
Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not
particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much of that
at present.
'I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom,' observed his sister. 'You have no
occasion to go away; but don't interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear.'
'Oh! very well!' returned Tom. 'Only father has brought old Bounderby home,
and I want you to come into the drawing-room. Because if you come, there's a
good chance of old Bounderby's asking me to dinner; and if you don't, there's
none.'
'I'll come directly.'
'I'll wait for you,' said Tom, 'to make sure.'
Sissy resumed in a lower voice. 'At last poor father said that he had given
no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and that he was
a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without him all along. I
said all the affectionate things to him that came into my heart, and presently
he was quiet and I sat down by him, and told him all about the school and
everything that had been said and done there. When I had no more left to tell,
he put his arms round my neck, and kissed me a great many times. Then he asked
me to fetch some of the stuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, and to
get it at the best place, which was at the other end of town from there; and
then, after kissing me again, he let me go. When I had gone down-stairs, I
turned back that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in
at the door, and said, "Father dear, shall I take Merrylegs?" Father shook his
head and said, "No, Sissy, no; take nothing that's known to be mine, my
darling;" and I left him sitting by the fire. Then the thought must have come
upon him, poor, poor father! of going away to try something for my sake; for
when I came back, he was gone.'
'I say! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!' Tom remonstrated.
'There's no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils ready for him,
and I know he will come back. Every letter that I see in Mr. Gradgrind's hand
takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it comes from father, or
from Mr. Sleary about father. Mr. Sleary promised to write as soon as ever
father should be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his word.'
'Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!' said Tom, with an impatient whistle.
'He'll be off if you don't look sharp!'
After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Gradgrind in the presence
of his family, and said in a faltering way, 'I beg your pardon, sir, for being
troublesome - but - have you had any letter yet about me?' Louisa would suspend
the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and look for the reply as
earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind regularly answered, 'No, Jupe,
nothing of the sort,' the trembling of Sissy's lip would be repeated in Louisa's
face, and her eyes would follow Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind
usually improved these occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe
had been properly trained from an early age she would have remonstrated to
herself on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it
did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope
could take as strong a hold as Fact.
This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. As to Tom, he
was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually at
work on number one. As to Mrs. Gradgrind, if she said anything on the subject,
she would come a little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine dormouse, and
say:
'Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that girl
Jupe's so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her tiresome letters!
Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and ordained, to live
in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last of. It really is a most
extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if I never was to
hear the last of anything!'
At about this point, Mr. Gradgrind's eye would fall upon her; and under the
influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid again.
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