Hard Times

by Dickens, Charles

  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

  Page 37

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  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.

  Page 38

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  '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,

  Page 39

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  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.

  CHAPTER X - STEPHEN BLACKPOOL

  I ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked

  as any people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this

  ridiculous idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little

  more play.

  Page 40

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost

  fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly

  bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart

  of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets

  upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece

  in a violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and the whole an

  unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one

  another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted

  receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught,

  were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as

  though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might

  be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown,

  generically called 'the Hands,' - a race who would have found more

  favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them

  only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only

  hands and stomachs - lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years

  of age.

  Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that

  every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have

  been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody

  else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed

  of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own. He had

  known, to use his words, a peck of trouble. He was usually called

  Old Stephen, in a kind of rough homage to the fact.

  A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression

  of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which

  his iron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed

  for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was

  not. He took no place among those remarkable 'Hands,' who, piecing

  together their broken intervals of leisure through many years, had

  mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most

  unlikely things. He held no station among the Hands who could make

  speeches and carry on debates. Thousands of his compeers could

  talk much better than he, at any time. He was a good power-loom

  weaver, and a man of perfect integrity. What more he was, or what

  else he had in him, if anything, let him show for himself.

  The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were

  illuminated, like Fairy palaces - or the travellers by expresstrain

  said so - were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for

  knocking off for the night, and had ceased again; and the Hands,

  men and women, boy and girl, were clattering home. Old Stephen was

  standing in the street, with the old sensation upon him which the

  stoppage of the machinery always produced - the sensation of its

  having worked and stopped in his own head.

  'Yet I don't see Rachael, still!' said he.

  It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with

  their shawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their

  chins to keep the rain out. He knew Rachael well, for a glance at

  any one of these groups was sufficient to show him that she was not

  there. At last, there were no more to come; and then he turned

  away, saying in a tone of disappointment, 'Why, then, ha' missed

  her!'

  But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw

  another of the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he

  looked so keenly that perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly

  reflected on the wet pavement - if he could have seen it without

  the figure itself moving along from lamp to lamp, brightening and

  Page 41

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  fading as it went - would have been enough to tell him who was

  there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer, he

  darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his

  former walk, and called 'Rachael!'

  She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her

  hood a little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate,

  irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by

  the perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a face in

  its first bloom; she was a woman five and thirty years of age.

  'Ah, lad
! 'Tis thou?' When she had said this, with a smile which

  would have been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been

  seen but her pleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they

  went on together.

  'I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?'

  'No.'

  'Early t'night, lass?'

  ''Times I'm a little early, Stephen! 'times a little late. I'm

  never to be counted on, going home.'

  'Nor going t'other way, neither, 't seems to me, Rachael?'

  'No, Stephen.'

  He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a

  respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in

  whatever she did. The expression was not lost upon her; she laid

  her hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him for it.

  'We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting

  to be such old folk, now.'

  'No, Rachael, thou'rt as young as ever thou wast.'

  'One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without 't

  other getting so too, both being alive,' she answered, laughing;

  'but, anyways, we're such old friends, and t' hide a word of honest

  truth fro' one another would be a sin and a pity. 'Tis better not

  to walk too much together. 'Times, yes! 'Twould be hard, indeed,

  if 'twas not to be at all,' she said, with a cheerfulness she

  sought to communicate to him.

  ''Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.'

  'Try to think not; and 'twill seem better.'

  'I've tried a long time, and 'ta'nt got better. But thou'rt right;

  't might mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me,

  Rachael, through so many year: thou hast done me so much good, and

  heartened of me in that cheering way, that thy word is a law to me.

  Ah, lass, and a bright good law! Better than some real ones.'

  'Never fret about them, Stephen,' she answered quickly, and not

  without an anxious glance at his face. 'Let the laws be.'

  'Yes,' he said, with a slow nod or two. 'Let 'em be. Let

  everything be. Let all sorts alone. 'Tis a muddle, and that's

  aw.'

  Page 42

  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  'Always a muddle?' said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his

  arm, as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was

  biting the long ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along.

  The touch had its instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned a

  smiling face upon her, and said, as he broke into a good-humoured