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 bedside 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withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards the
door, 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 happiness, '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.'
'O 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 some one
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 bedside.
'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 every one 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 brimming 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!'
'O lay it here!' cried Sissy. 'Lay it here, my dear.'
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