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 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withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards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.’