Chapter IX - Sissy's Progress

Hard Times

by Charles Dickens

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.