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 When her sister had withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards the floor, until it opened and her father entered.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 helplessness, “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