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.
Chapter XV Father And Daughter
Although Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove (which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits. In that charmed apartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into the exact totals, and finally settled – if those concerned could only have been brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind in his Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
To this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid: Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window looked towards Coketown; and when she sat down near her father’s table, she saw the high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy distance gloomily.
“My dear Louisa,” said her father, “I prepared you last night to give me your serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have together. You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say, so much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect confidence in your good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and calculation. From that ground alone, I know you will view and consider what I am going to communicate.”
He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. But she said never a word.
“Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has been made to me.” [See Louisa And Her Father: “Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has been made to me.]
Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so far surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, “a proposal of marriage, my dear.” To which she returned, without any visible emotion whatever:
“I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you.”
“Well!” said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the moment at a loss, “you are even more dispassionate than I expected, Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have in charge to make?”
“I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unprepared, I wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it to me, father.”