“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 said 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.
“Oh 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 I 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 her 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 his dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.”