Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0058/00587.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 230 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00587}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter XIV}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gradgrind
father
louisa
young
loo
quite
sir
time
tom
woman}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The First: Sowing
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XIV

The Great Manufacturer

     Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought
up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made.  But,
less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying seasons
even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only stand that
ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity.

     "Louisa is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind, "almost a young woman."

     Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what
anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot taller than when
his father had last taken particular notice of him.

     "Thomas is becoming," said Mr. Gradgrind, "almost a young man."

     Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking about
it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.

     "Really," said Mr. Gradgrind, "the period has arrived when Thomas ought
to go to Bounderby."

     Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby's Bank, made him an
inmate of Bounderby's house, necessitated the purchase of his first razor, and
exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to number one.

     The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on
hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his mill, and
worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.

     "I fear, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, "that your continuance at the school
any longer, would be useless."

     "I am afraid it would, sir," Sissy answered with a curtsey.

     "I cannot disguise from you, Jupe," said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting his
brow, "that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has
greatly disappointed me.  You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs.
M'Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I looked
for.  You are extremely deficient in your facts.  Your acquaintance with
figures is very limited.  You are altogether backward, and below the mark."

     "I am sorry sir," she returned; "but I know it is quite true.  Yet I have
tried hard, sir."

     "Yes," said Mr. Gradgrind, "yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have
observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect."

     "Thank you, sir.  I have thought sometimes;" Sissy very timid here; "that
perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to
try a little less, I might have - "

     "No, Jupe, no," said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest
and most eminently practical way.  "No.  The course you pursued, you pursued
according to the system - the system - and there is no more to be said about
it.  I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were too
unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we began
too late.  Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed."

     "I wish I could have a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a
poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of her."

     "Don't shed tears," said Mr. Gradgrind.  "Don't shed tears.  I don't
complain of you.  You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman, and -
and we must make that do."

     "Thank you, sir, very much," said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey."

     "You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you
are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and,
indeed, so I have observed myself.  I therefore hope," said Mr. Gradgrind,
"that you can make yourself happy in those relations."

     "I should have nothing to wish, sir, if - "

     "I understand you," said Mr. Gradgrind; "you still refer to your father.
I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle.  Well!  If
your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more
successful, you would have been wiser on these points.  I will say no more."

     He really liked Sissy too well to have contempt for her; otherwise he
held her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must have
fallen upon that conclusion.  Somehow or other, he had become possessed by an
idea that there was something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in
a tabular form.  Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very
low figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not sure that if
he had been required, for example, to kick her off into columns in a
parliamentary return, he would have quite known how to divide her.

     In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of
Time are very rapid.  Young Thomas and Sissy being both at such a stage of
their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while Mr.
Gradgrind himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no
alteration.  Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through
the mill.  Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in
a by-corner, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the
respected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the representatives
of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honorable gentlemen, dumb
honorable gentlemen, blind honorable gentlemen, lame honorable gentlemen, dead
honorable gentlemen, to every other consideration.  Else wherefore live we in
a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after our Master?

     All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so
much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the
grate and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said she
was almost a young woman - which seemed but yesterday - she had scarcely
attracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.

     "Quite a young woman," said Mr. Gradgrind, musing.  "Dear me!"

     Soon after this discovery he became more thoughtful than usual for
several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject.  On a certain night,
when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid him good-bye before his
departure - as he was not to be home until late and she would not see him
again until the morning - he held her in his arms, looking at her in his
kindest manner, and said:

     "My dear Louisa, you are a woman!"

     She answered him with the old, quick, searching look of the night when
she was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes.  "Yes, father."

     "My dear," said Mr. Gradgrind, "I must speak with you alone and
seriously.  Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will you?"

     "Yes, father."

     "Your hands are rather cold, Louisa.  Are you not well?"

     "Quite well, father

     "And cheerful?"

     She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner.  "I am as
cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been."

     "That's well," said Mr. Gradgrind.  So, he kissed her and went away; and
Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character, and
leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks that
soon subsided into ashes.

     "Are you there, Loo?" said her brother, looking in at the door.  He was
quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing one.

     "Dear Tom," she answered, rising and embracing him, "how long it is since
you have been to see me!"

     "Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the
daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather.  But I touch him up
with you, when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an understanding.  I
say!  Has father said anything particular to you, to-day or yesterday, Loo?"

     "No, Tom.  But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the
morning."

     "Ah!  that's what I mean," said Tom.  "Do you know where he is to-night?"
- with a deep expression.

     "No."

     "Then I'll tell you.  He's with old Bounderby.  They are having a regular
confab together, up at the Bank.  Why at the Bank, do you think? Well, I'll
tell you again.  To keep Mrs. Sparsit's ears as far off as possible, I
expect."

     With her hand upon her brother's shoulder, Louisa still stood looking at
the fire.  Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than usual,
and encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.

     "You are very fond of me, an't you, Loo?"

     "Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without
coming to see me."

     "Well, sister of mine," said Tom, "when you say that, you are near my
thoughts.  We might be so much oftener together - mightn't we?  Always
together, almost - mightn't we?  It would do me a great deal of good if you
were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo.  It would be a splendid thing
for me.  It would be uncommonly jolly!"

     Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny.  He could make nothing
of her face.  He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek. She returned
the kiss, but still looked at the fire.

     "I say, Loo!  I thought I'd come, and just hint to you what was going on:
though I supposed you'd most likely guess, even if you didn't know.  I can't
stay, because I'm engaged to some fellows to-night.  You won't forget how fond
you are of me?"

     "No, dear Tom, I won't forget."

     "That's a capital girl," said Tom.  "Good-bye, Loo."

     She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the
door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance lurid.
She stood there looking steadfastly towards them, and listening to his
departing steps.  They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from Stone
Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet. It seemed
as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the fiery haze
without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and
longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had
already spun into a woman.  But his factory is a secret place, his work is
noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.