“I hope, Bounderby,” said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, “that this was merely an oversight.”
“My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit,” said Bounderby, “that this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware, ma'am, I don't allow of even oversights towards you.”
“You are very good indeed, sir,” returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head with her State humility. “It is not worth speaking of.”
Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
“Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.”
“Yes, sir, very,” she answered, curtseying.
“I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found you among, I dare say?” said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.
“Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.”
“Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown. “I don't ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?”
“O, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—O, of all the happy times we had together, sir!”
It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
“And what,” asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, “did you read to your father, Jupe?”
“About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,” she sobbed out; “and about—”
“Hush!” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest.”
“Well,” returned Mr. Bounderby, “I have given you my opinion already, and I shouldn't do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent upon it, very well!”
So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad. And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the evening.
CHAPTER VIII
NEVER WONDER
LET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.
When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying “Tom, I wonder'—upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, “Louisa, never wonder!”
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, says M'Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.
Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement—which they never did; a surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body number two, said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.
There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering. They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women! They sometimes, after fifteen hours” work, sat down to read mere fables about men and women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid , and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.
“I am sick of my life, Loo. I, hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you,” said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the hair-cutting chamber at twilight.
“You don't hate Sissy, Tom?”
“I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,” said Tom, moodily.
“No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!”
“She must,” said Tom. “She must just hate and detest the whole set-out of us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with her. Already she's getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as—I am.”
Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.
“As to me,” said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky hands, “I am a Donkey, that's what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.”
“Not me, I hope, Tom?”
“No, Loo; I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don't know what this—jolly old—Jaundiced Jail,” Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one, “would be without you.”
“Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?”
“Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it!” returned Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have it in unison with his spirit.
“Because, Tom,” said his sister, after silently watching the sparks awhile, “as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don't know what other girls know. I can't play to you, or sing to you. I can't talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.”