The last day of the appointed week touched the bars of the Marshalsea
gate. Black, all night, since the gate had clashed upon Little Dorrit,
its iron stripes were turned by the early-glowing sun into stripes of
gold. Far aslant across the city, over its jumbled roofs, and through
the open tracery of its church towers, struck the long bright rays, bars
of the prison of this lower world.
Throughout the day the old house within the gateway remained untroubled
by any visitors. But, when the sun was low, three men turned in at the
gateway and made for the dilapidated house.
Rigaud was the first, and walked by himself smoking. Mr Baptist was
the second, and jogged close after him, looking at no other object.
Mr Pancks was the third, and carried his hat under his arm for the
liberation of his restive hair; the weather being extremely hot. They
all came together at the door-steps.
'You pair of madmen!' said Rigaud, facing about. 'Don't go yet!'
'We don't mean to,' said Mr Pancks. Giving him a dark glance in
acknowledgment of his answer, Rigaud knocked loudly. He had charged
himself with drink, for the playing out of his game, and was impatient
to begin. He had hardly finished one long resounding knock, when he
turned to the knocker again and began another. That was not yet finished
when Jeremiah Flintwinch opened the door, and they all clanked into the
stone hall. Rigaud, thrusting Mr Flintwinch aside, proceeded straight
up-stairs. His two attendants followed him, Mr Flintwinch followed them,
and they all came trooping into Mrs Clennam's quiet room. It was in its
usual state; except that one of the windows was wide open, and Affery
sat on its old-fashioned window-seat, mending a stocking. The usual
articles were on the little table; the usual deadened fire was in the
grate; the bed had its usual pall upon it; and the mistress of all sat
on her black bier-like sofa, propped up by her black angular bolster
that was like the headsman's block.
Yet there was a nameless air of preparation in the room, as if it were
strung up for an occasion. From what the room derived it--every one of
its small variety of objects being in the fixed spot it had occupied
for years--no one could have said without looking attentively at its
mistress, and that, too, with a previous knowledge of her face. Although
her unchanging black dress was in every plait precisely as of old, and
her unchanging attitude was rigidly preserved, a very slight additional
setting of her features and contraction of her gloomy forehead was so
powerfully marked, that it marked everything about her.
'Who are these?' she said, wonderingly, as the two attendants entered.
'What do these people want here?'
'Who are these, dear madame, is it?' returned Rigaud. 'Faith, they are
friends of your son the prisoner. And what do they want here, is it?
Death, madame, I don't know. You will do well to ask them.'
'You know you told us at the door, not to go yet,' said Pancks.
'And you know you told me at the door, you didn't mean to go,' retorted
Rigaud. 'In a word, madame, permit me to present two spies of the
prisoner's--madmen, but spies. If you wish them to remain here during
our little conversation, say the word. It is nothing to me.'
'Why should I wish them to remain here?' said Mrs Clennam. 'What have I
to do with them?'
'Then, dearest madame,' said Rigaud, throwing himself into an arm-chair
so heavily that the old room trembled, 'you will do well to dismiss
them. It is your affair. They are not my spies, not my rascals.'
'Hark! You Pancks,' said Mrs Clennam, bending her brows upon him
angrily, 'you Casby's clerk! Attend to your employer's business and your
own. Go. And take that other man with you.' 'Thank you, ma'am,' returned
Mr Pancks, 'I am glad to say I see no objection to our both retiring.
We have done all we undertook to do for Mr Clennam. His constant anxiety
has been (and it grew worse upon him when he became a prisoner), that
this agreeable gentleman should be brought back here to the place from
which he slipped away. Here he is--brought back. And I will say,' added
Mr Pancks, 'to his ill-looking face, that in my opinion the world would
be no worse for his slipping out of it altogether.'
'Your opinion is not asked,' answered Mrs Clennam. 'Go.'
'I am sorry not to leave you in better company, ma'am,' said Pancks;
'and sorry, too, that Mr Clennam can't be present. It's my fault, that
is.'
'You mean his own,' she returned.
'No, I mean mine, ma'am,' said Pancks,'for it was my misfortune to lead
him into a ruinous investment.' (Mr Pancks still clung to that word,
and never said speculation.) 'Though I can prove by figures,' added Mr
Pancks, with an anxious countenance, 'that it ought to have been a good
investment. I have gone over it since it failed, every day of my life,
and it comes out--regarded as a question of figures--triumphant. The
present is not a time or place,' Mr Pancks pursued, with a longing
glance into his hat, where he kept his calculations, 'for entering upon
the figures; but the figures are not to be disputed. Mr Clennam ought to
have been at this moment in his carriage and pair, and I ought to have
been worth from three to five thousand pound.'
Mr Pancks put his hair erect with a general aspect of confidence that
could hardly have been surpassed, if he had had the amount in his
pocket. These incontrovertible figures had been the occupation of every
moment of his leisure since he had lost his money, and were destined to
afford him consolation to the end of his days.
'However,' said Mr Pancks, 'enough of that. Altro, old boy, you have
seen the figures, and you know how they come out.' Mr Baptist, who had
not the slightest arithmetical power of compensating himself in this
way, nodded, with a fine display of bright teeth.
At whom Mr Flintwinch had been looking, and to whom he then said:
'Oh! it's you, is it? I thought I remembered your face, but I wasn't
certain till I saw your teeth. Ah! yes, to be sure. It was this
officious refugee,' said Jeremiah to Mrs Clennam, 'who came knocking
at the door on the night when Arthur and Chatterbox were here, and who
asked me a whole Catechism of questions about Mr Blandois.'
'It is true,' Mr Baptist cheerfully admitted. 'And behold him, padrone!
I have found him consequentementally.'
'I shouldn't have objected,' returned Mr Flintwinch, 'to your having
broken your neck consequentementally.'
'And now,' said Mr Pancks, whose eye had often stealthily wandered to
the window-seat and the stocking that was being mended there, 'I've
only one other word to say before I go. If Mr Clennam was here--but
unfortunately, though he has so far got the better of this fine
gentleman as to return him to this place against his will, he is ill
and in prison--ill and in prison, poor fellow--if he was here,' said Mr
Pancks, taking one step aside towards the window-seat, and laying
his right hand upon the stocking; 'he would say, "Affery, tell your
dreams!"'
Mr Pancks held up his right forefinger between his nose and the stocking
with a ghostly air of warning, turned, steamed out and towed Mr Baptist
after him. The house-door was heard to close upon them, their steps
were heard passing over the dull pavement of the echoing court-yard, and
still nobody had added a word. Mrs Clennam and Jeremiah had exchanged a
look; and had then looked, and looked still, at Affery, who sat mending
the stocking with great assiduity.
'Come!' said Mr Flintwinch at length, screwing himself a curve or two in
the direction of the window-seat, and rubbing the palms of his hands on
his coat-tail as if he were preparing them to do something: 'Whatever
has to be said among us had better be begun to be said without more loss
of time.--So, Affery, my woman, take yourself away!'
In a moment Affery had thrown the stocking down, started up, caught
hold of the windowsill with her right hand, lodged herself upon the
window-seat with her right knee, and was flourishing her left hand,
beating expected assailants off.
'No, I won't, Jeremiah--no, I won't--no, I won't! I won't go! I'll stay
here. I'll hear all I don't know, and say all I know. I will, at last,
if I die for it. I will, I will, I will, I will!'
Mr Flintwinch, stiffening with indignation and amazement, moistened the
fingers of one hand at his lips, softly described a circle with them in
the palm of the other hand, and continued with a menacing grin to
screw himself in the direction of his wife; gasping some remark as he
advanced, of which, in his choking anger, only the words, 'Such a dose!'
were audible.
'Not a bit nearer, Jeremiah!' cried Affery, never ceasing to beat the
air. 'Don't come a bit nearer to me, or I'll rouse the neighbourhood!
I'll throw myself out of window. I'll scream Fire and Murder! I'll wake
the dead! Stop where you are, or I'll make shrieks enough to wake the
dead!'
The determined voice of Mrs Clennam echoed 'Stop!' Jeremiah had stopped
already. 'It is closing in, Flintwinch. Let her alone. Affery, do you
turn against me after these many years?'
'I do, if it's turning against you to hear what I don't know, and say
what I know. I have broke out now, and I can't go back. I am determined
to do it. I will do it, I will, I will, I will! If that's turning
against you, yes, I turn against both of you two clever ones. I told
Arthur when he first come home to stand up against you. I told him it
was no reason, because I was afeard of my life of you, that he should
be. All manner of things have been a-going on since then, and I won't
be run up by Jeremiah, nor yet I won't be dazed and scared, nor made a
party to I don't know what, no more. I won't, I won't, I won't! I'll
up for Arthur when he has nothing left, and is ill, and in prison, and
can't up for himself. I will, I will, I will, I will!'
'How do you know, you heap of confusion,' asked Mrs Clennam sternly,
'that in doing what you are doing now, you are even serving Arthur?'
'I don't know nothing rightly about anything,' said Affery; 'and if
ever you said a true word in your life, it's when you call me a heap of
confusion, for you two clever ones have done your most to make me such.
You married me whether I liked it or not, and you've led me, pretty well
ever since, such a life of dreaming and frightening as never was known,
and what do you expect me to be but a heap of confusion? You wanted to
make me such, and I am such; but I won't submit no longer; no, I won't,
I won't, I won't, I won't!' She was still beating the air against all
comers.
After gazing at her in silence, Mrs Clennam turned to Rigaud. 'You
see and hear this foolish creature. Do you object to such a piece of
distraction remaining where she is?'
'I, madame,' he replied, 'do I? That's a question for you.'
'I do not,' she said, gloomily. 'There is little left to choose now.
Flintwinch, it is closing in.'
Mr Flintwinch replied by directing a look of red vengeance at his wife,
and then, as if to pinion himself from falling upon her, screwed his
crossed arms into the breast of his waistcoat, and with his chin very
near one of his elbows stood in a corner, watching Rigaud in the oddest
attitude. Rigaud, for his part, arose from his chair, and seated himself
on the table with his legs dangling. In this easy attitude, he met Mrs
Clennam's set face, with his moustache going up and his nose coming
down.
'Madame, I am a gentleman--'
'Of whom,' she interrupted in her steady tones, 'I have heard
disparagement, in connection with a French jail and an accusation of
murder.'
He kissed his hand to her with his exaggerated gallantry.
'Perfectly. Exactly. Of a lady too! What absurdity! How incredible! I
had the honour of making a great success then; I hope to have the
honour of making a great success now. I kiss your hands. Madame, I am a
gentleman (I was going to observe), who when he says, "I will definitely
finish this or that affair at the present sitting," does definitely
finish it. I announce to you that we are arrived at our last sitting on
our little business. You do me the favour to follow, and to comprehend?'
She kept her eyes fixed upon him with a frown. 'Yes.'
'Further, I am a gentleman to whom mere mercenary trade-bargains are
unknown, but to whom money is always acceptable as the means of pursuing
his pleasures. You do me the favour to follow, and to comprehend?'
'Scarcely necessary to ask, one would say. Yes.'
'Further, I am a gentleman of the softest and sweetest disposition,
but who, if trifled with, becomes enraged. Noble natures under such
circumstances become enraged. I possess a noble nature. When the lion
is awakened--that is to say, when I enrage--the satisfaction of my
animosity is as acceptable to me as money. You always do me the favour
to follow, and to comprehend?'
'Yes,' she answered, somewhat louder than before.
'Do not let me derange you; pray be tranquil. I have said we are now
arrived at our last sitting. Allow me to recall the two sittings we have
held.'
'It is not necessary.'
'Death, madame,' he burst out, 'it's my fancy! Besides, it clears the
way. The first sitting was limited. I had the honour of making your
acquaintance--of presenting my letter; I am a Knight of Industry, at
your service, madame, but my polished manners had won me so much of
success, as a master of languages, among your compatriots who are as
stiff as their own starch is to one another, but are ready to relax to
a foreign gentleman of polished manners--and of observing one or two
little things,' he glanced around the room and smiled, 'about this
honourable house, to know which was necessary to assure me, and
to convince me that I had the distinguished pleasure of making the
acquaintance of the lady I sought. I achieved this. I gave my word
of honour to our dear Flintwinch that I would return. I gracefully
departed.'
Her face neither acquiesced nor demurred. The same when he paused, and
when he spoke, it as yet showed him always the one attentive frown,
and the dark revelation before mentioned of her being nerved for the
occasion.
'I say, gracefully departed, because it was graceful to retire without
alarming a lady. To be morally graceful, not less than physically, is
a part of the character of Rigaud Blandois. It was also politic, as
leaving you with something overhanging you, to expect me again with a
little anxiety on a day not named. But your slave is politic. By Heaven,
madame, politic! Let us return. On the day not named, I have again the
honour to render myself at your house. I intimate that I have something
to sell, which, if not bought, will compromise madame whom I highly
esteem. I explain myself generally. I demand--I think it was a thousand
pounds. Will you correct me?'
Thus forced to speak, she replied with constraint, 'You demanded as much
as a thousand pounds.'
'I demand at present, Two. Such are the evils of delay. But to return
once more. We are not accordant; we differ on that occasion. I am
playful; playfulness is a part of my amiable character. Playfully, I
become as one slain and hidden. For, it may alone be worth half the sum
to madame, to be freed from the suspicions that my droll idea awakens.
Accident and spies intermix themselves against my playfulness, and spoil
the fruit, perhaps--who knows? only you and Flintwinch--when it is just
ripe. Thus, madame, I am here for the last time. Listen! Definitely the
last.'
As he struck his straggling boot-heels against the flap of the table,
meeting her frown with an insolent gaze, he began to change his tone for
a fierce one.
'Bah! Stop an instant! Let us advance by steps. Here is my Hotel-note to
be paid, according to contract. Five minutes hence we may be at daggers'
points. I'll not leave it till then, or you'll cheat me. Pay it! Count
me the money!'
'Take it from his hand and pay it, Flintwinch,' said Mrs Clennam.
He spirted it into Mr Flintwinch's face when the old man advanced to
take it, and held forth his hand, repeating noisily, 'Pay it! Count it
out! Good money!' Jeremiah picked the bill up, looked at the total with
a bloodshot eye, took a small canvas bag from his pocket, and told the
amount into his hand.
Rigaud chinked the money, weighed it in his hand, threw it up a little
way and caught it, chinked it again.
'The sound of it, to the bold Rigaud Blandois, is like the taste of
fresh meat to the tiger. Say, then, madame. How much?'
He turned upon her suddenly with a menacing gesture of the weighted hand
that clenched the money, as if he were going to strike her with it.
'I tell you again, as I told you before, that we are not rich here, as
you suppose us to be, and that your demand is excessive. I have not the
present means of complying with such a demand, if I had ever so great an
inclination.'
'If!' cried Rigaud. 'Hear this lady with her If! Will you say that you
have not the inclination?'
'I will say what presents itself to me, and not what presents itself to
you.'
'Say it then. As to the inclination. Quick! Come to the inclination, and
I know what to do.'
She was no quicker, and no slower, in her reply. 'It would seem that
you have obtained possession of a paper--or of papers--which I assuredly
have the inclination to recover.'
Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed his heels against the table, and
chinked his money. 'I think so! I believe you there!'
'The paper might be worth, to me, a sum of money. I cannot say how much,
or how little.'
'What the Devil!' he asked savagely.'Not after a week's grace to
consider?'
'No! I will not out of my scanty means--for I tell you again, we are
poor here, and not rich--I will not offer any price for a power that I
do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time
of your hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may
go where you will, and do what you will. It is better to be torn to
pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat.'
He looked at her so hard with those eyes too near together that the
sinister sight of each, crossing that of the other, seemed to make the
bridge of his hooked nose crooked. After a long survey, he said, with
the further setting off of his internal smile:
'You are a bold woman!'
'I am a resolved woman.'
'You always were. What? She always was; is it not so, my little
Flintwinch?'
'Flintwinch, say nothing to him. It is for him to say, here and now,
all he can; or to go hence, and do all he can. You know this to be our
determination. Leave him to his action on it.'
She did not shrink under his evil leer, or avoid it. He turned it upon
her again, but she remained steady at the point to which she had fixed
herself. He got off the table, placed a chair near the sofa, sat down in
it, and leaned an arm upon the sofa close to her own, which he touched
with his hand. Her face was ever frowning, attentive, and settled.
'It is your pleasure then, madame, that I shall relate a morsel of
family history in this little family society,' said Rigaud, with a
warning play of his lithe fingers on her arm. 'I am something of a
doctor. Let me touch your pulse.'
She suffered him to take her wrist in his hand. Holding it, he proceeded
to say:
'A history of a strange marriage, and a strange mother, and a revenge,
and a suppression.--Aye, aye, aye? this pulse is beating curiously!
It appears to me that it doubles while I touch it. Are these the usual
changes of your malady, madame?'
There was a struggle in her maimed arm as she twisted it away, but there
was none in her face. On his face there was his own smile.
'I have lived an adventurous life. I am an adventurous character. I have
known many adventurers; interesting spirits--amiable society! To one
of them I owe my knowledge and my proofs--I repeat it, estimable
lady--proofs--of the ravishing little family history I go to commence.
You will be charmed with it. But, bah! I forget. One should name a
history. Shall I name it the history of a house? But, bah, again. There
are so many houses. Shall I name it the history of this house?'
Leaning over the sofa, poised on two legs of his chair and his left
elbow; that hand often tapping her arm to beat his words home; his
legs crossed; his right hand sometimes arranging his hair, sometimes
smoothing his moustache, sometimes striking his nose, always threatening
her whatever it did; coarse, insolent, rapacious, cruel, and powerful,
he pursued his narrative at his ease.
'In fine, then, I name it the history of this house. I commence it.
There live here, let us suppose, an uncle and nephew. The uncle, a
rigid old gentleman of strong force of character; the nephew, habitually
timid, repressed, and under constraint.'
Mistress Affery, fixedly attentive in the window-seat, biting the
rolled up end of her apron, and trembling from head to foot, here cried
out,'Jeremiah, keep off from me! I've heerd, in my dreams, of Arthur's
father and his uncle. He's a talking of them. It was before my time
here; but I've heerd in my dreams that Arthur's father was a poor,
irresolute, frightened chap, who had had everything but his orphan life
scared out of him when he was young, and that he had no voice in the
choice of his wife even, but his uncle chose her. There she sits! I
heerd it in my dreams, and you said it to her own self.'
As Mr Flintwinch shook his fist at her, and as Mrs Clennam gazed upon
her, Rigaud kissed his hand to her. 'Perfectly right, dear Madame
Flintwinch. You have a genius for dreaming.'
'I don't want none of your praises,' returned Affery. 'I don't want to
have nothing at all to say to you. But Jeremiah said they was dreams,
and I'll tell 'em as such!' Here she put her apron in her mouth again,
as if she were stopping somebody else's mouth--perhaps jeremiah's, which
was chattering with threats as if he were grimly cold.
'Our beloved Madame Flintwinch,' said Rigaud, 'developing all of a
sudden a fine susceptibility and spirituality, is right to a marvel.
Yes. So runs the history. Monsieur, the uncle, commands the nephew to
marry. Monsieur says to him in effect, "My nephew, I introduce to you a
lady of strong force of character, like myself--a resolved lady, a stern
lady, a lady who has a will that can break the weak to powder: a lady
without pity, without love, implacable, revengeful, cold as the stone,
but raging as the fire."
Ah! what fortitude! Ah, what superiority of intellectual strength!
Truly, a proud and noble character that I describe in the supposed words
of Monsieur, the uncle. Ha, ha, ha! Death of my soul, I love the sweet
lady!'
Mrs Clennam's face had changed. There was a remarkable darkness of
colour on it, and the brow was more contracted. 'Madame, madame,' said
Rigaud, tapping her on the arm, as if his cruel hand were sounding a
musical instrument, 'I perceive I interest you. I perceive I awaken your
sympathy. Let us go on.'
The drooping nose and the ascending moustache had, however, to be hidden
for a moment with the white hand, before he could go on; he enjoyed the
effect he made so much.
'The nephew, being, as the lucid Madame Flintwinch has remarked, a poor
devil who has had everything but his orphan life frightened and famished
out of him--the nephew abases his head, and makes response: "My uncle,
it is to you to command. Do as you will!" Monsieur, the uncle, does as
he will. It is what he always does. The auspicious nuptials take place;
the newly married come home to this charming mansion; the lady is
received, let us suppose, by Flintwinch. Hey, old intriguer?'
Jeremiah, with his eyes upon his mistress, made no reply. Rigaud looked
from one to the other, struck his ugly nose, and made a clucking with
his tongue.
'Soon the lady makes a singular and exciting discovery. Thereupon,
full of anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, she forms--see you,
madame!--a scheme of retribution, the weight of which she ingeniously
forces her crushed husband to bear himself, as well as execute upon her
enemy. What superior intelligence!'
'Keep off, Jeremiah!' cried the palpitating Affery, taking her apron
from her mouth again. 'But it was one of my dreams, that you told her,
when you quarrelled with her one winter evening at dusk--there she sits
and you looking at her--that she oughtn't to have let Arthur when he
come home, suspect his father only; that she had always had the strength
and the power; and that she ought to have stood up more to Arthur, for
his father. It was in the same dream where you said to her that she was
not--not something, but I don't know what, for she burst out tremendous
and stopped you. You know the dream as well as I do. When you come
down-stairs into the kitchen with the candle in your hand, and hitched
my apron off my head. When you told me I had been dreaming. When you
wouldn't believe the noises.' After this explosion Affery put her apron
into her mouth again; always keeping her hand on the window-sill and her
knee on the window-seat, ready to cry out or jump out if her lord and
master approached.
Rigaud had not lost a word of this.
'Haha!' he cried, lifting his eyebrows, folding his arms, and leaning
back in his chair. 'Assuredly, Madame Flintwinch is an oracle! How shall
we interpret the oracle, you and I and the old intriguer? He said that
you were not--? And you burst out and stopped him! What was it you were
not? What is it you are not? Say then, madame!'
Under this ferocious banter, she sat breathing harder, and her mouth was
disturbed. Her lips quivered and opened, in spite of her utmost efforts
to keep them still.
'Come then, madame! Speak, then! Our old intriguer said that you were
not--and you stopped him. He was going to say that you were not--what?
I know already, but I want a little confidence from you. How, then? You
are not what?'
She tried again to repress herself, but broke out vehemently, 'Not
Arthur's mother!'
'Good,' said Rigaud. 'You are amenable.'
With the set expression of her face all torn away by the explosion
of her passion, and with a bursting, from every rent feature, of the
smouldering fire so long pent up, she cried out: 'I will tell it myself!
I will not hear it from your lips, and with the taint of your wickedness
upon it. Since it must be seen, I will have it seen by the light I stood
in. Not another word. Hear me!'
'Unless you are a more obstinate and more persisting woman than even
I know you to be,' Mr Flintwinch interposed, 'you had better leave Mr
Rigaud, Mr Blandois, Mr Beelzebub, to tell it in his own way. What does
it signify when he knows all about it?'
'He does not know all about it.'
'He knows all he cares about it,' Mr Flintwinch testily urged. 'He does
not know me.'
'What do you suppose he cares for you, you conceited woman?' said Mr
Flintwinch.
'I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. I tell you when it has come
to this, I will tell it with my own lips, and will express myself
throughout it. What! Have I suffered nothing in this room, no
deprivation, no imprisonment, that I should condescend at last to
contemplate myself in such a glass as that. Can you see him? Can you
hear him? If your wife were a hundred times the ingrate that she is, and
if I were a thousand times more hopeless than I am of inducing her to be
silent if this man is silenced, I would tell it myself, before I would
bear the torment of the hearing it from him.'
Rigaud pushed his chair a little back; pushed his legs out straight
before him; and sat with his arms folded over against her.
'You do not know what it is,' she went on addressing him, 'to be brought
up strictly and straitly. I was so brought up. Mine was no light youth
of sinful gaiety and pleasure. Mine were days of wholesome repression,
punishment, and fear. The corruption of our hearts, the evil of our
ways, the curse that is upon us, the terrors that surround us--these
were the themes of my childhood. They formed my character, and filled me
with an abhorrence of evil-doers. When old Mr Gilbert Clennam proposed
his orphan nephew to my father for my husband, my father impressed upon
me that his bringing-up had been, like mine, one of severe restraint.
He told me, that besides the discipline his spirit had undergone, he
had lived in a starved house, where rioting and gaiety were unknown, and
where every day was a day of toil and trial like the last. He told me
that he had been a man in years long before his uncle had acknowledged
him as one; and that from his school-days to that hour, his uncle's roof
has been a sanctuary to him from the contagion of the irreligious
and dissolute. When, within a twelvemonth of our marriage, I found
my husband, at that time when my father spoke of him, to have sinned
against the Lord and outraged me by holding a guilty creature in my
place, was I to doubt that it had been appointed to me to make the
discovery, and that it was appointed to me to lay the hand of punishment
upon that creature of perdition? Was I to dismiss in a moment--not my
own wrongs--what was I! but all the rejection of sin, and all the war
against it, in which I had been bred?' She laid her wrathful hand upon
the watch on the table.
'No! "Do not forget." The initials of those words are within here now,
and were within here then. I was appointed to find the old letter that
referred to them, and that told me what they meant, and whose work they
were, and why they were worked, lying with this watch in his secret
drawer. But for that appointment there would have been no discovery.
"Do not forget." It spoke to me like a voice from an angry cloud. Do
not forget the deadly sin, do not forget the appointed discovery, do not
forget the appointed suffering. I did not forget. Was it my own wrong I
remembered? Mine! I was but a servant and a minister. What power could I
have over them, but that they were bound in the bonds of their sin, and
delivered to me!'
More than forty years had passed over the grey head of this determined
woman, since the time she recalled. More than forty years of strife
and struggle with the whisper that, by whatever name she called her
vindictive pride and rage, nothing through all eternity could change
their nature. Yet, gone those more than forty years, and come this
Nemesis now looking her in the face, she still abided by her old
impiety--still reversed the order of Creation, and breathed her own
breath into a clay image of her Creator. Verily, verily, travellers have
seen many monstrous idols in many countries; but no human eyes have ever
seen more daring, gross, and shocking images of the Divine nature than
we creatures of the dust make in our own likenesses, of our own bad
passions.
'When I forced him to give her up to me, by her name and place of
abode,' she went on in her torrent of indignation and defence; 'when I
accused her, and she fell hiding her face at my feet, was it my injury
that I asserted, were they my reproaches that I poured upon her? Those
who were appointed of old to go to wicked kings and accuse them--were
they not ministers and servants? And had not I, unworthy and far-removed
from them, sin to denounce? When she pleaded to me her youth, and his
wretched and hard life (that was her phrase for the virtuous training he
had belied), and the desecrated ceremony of marriage there had
secretly been between them, and the terrors of want and shame that had
overwhelmed them both when I was first appointed to be the instrument of
their punishment, and the love (for she said the word to me, down at my
feet) in which she had abandoned him and left him to me, was it my enemy
that became my footstool, were they the words of my wrath that made her
shrink and quiver! Not unto me the strength be ascribed; not unto me the
wringing of the expiation!'
Many years had come and gone since she had had the free use even of
her fingers; but it was noticeable that she had already more than once
struck her clenched hand vigorously upon the table, and that when she
said these words she raised her whole arm in the air, as though it had
been a common action with her.
'And what was the repentance that was extorted from the hardness of her
heart and the blackness of her depravity? I, vindictive and implacable?
It may be so, to such as you who know no righteousness, and no
appointment except Satan's. Laugh; but I will be known as I know
myself, and as Flintwinch knows me, though it is only to you and this
half-witted woman.'
'Add, to yourself, madame,' said Rigaud. 'I have my little suspicions
that madame is rather solicitous to be justified to herself.'
'It is false. It is not so. I have no need to be,' she said, with great
energy and anger.
'Truly?' retorted Rigaud. 'Hah!'
'I ask, what was the penitence, in works, that was demanded of her?
"You have a child; I have none. You love that child. Give him to me. He
shall believe himself to be my son, and he shall be believed by every
one to be my son. To save you from exposure, his father shall swear
never to see or communicate with you more; equally to save him from
being stripped by his uncle, and to save your child from being a beggar,
you shall swear never to see or communicate with either of them more.
That done, and your present means, derived from my husband, renounced,
I charge myself with your support. You may, with your place of retreat
unknown, then leave, if you please, uncontradicted by me, the lie that
when you passed out of all knowledge but mine, you merited a good name."
That was all. She had to sacrifice her sinful and shameful affections;
no more. She was then free to bear her load of guilt in secret, and to
break her heart in secret; and through such present misery (light enough
for her, I think!) to purchase her redemption from endless misery, if
she could. If, in this, I punished her here, did I not open to her a way
hereafter? If she knew herself to be surrounded by insatiable vengeance
and unquenchable fires, were they mine? If I threatened her, then and
afterwards, with the terrors that encompassed her, did I hold them in my
right hand?'
She turned the watch upon the table, and opened it, and, with an
unsoftening face, looked at the worked letters within.
'They did not forget. It is appointed against such offences that the
offenders shall not be able to forget. If the presence of Arthur was a
daily reproach to his father, and if the absence of Arthur was a daily
agony to his mother, that was the just dispensation of Jehovah. As well
might it be charged upon me, that the stings of an awakened conscience
drove her mad, and that it was the will of the Disposer of all things
that she should live so, many years. I devoted myself to reclaim the
otherwise predestined and lost boy; to give him the reputation of an
honest origin; to bring him up in fear and trembling, and in a life of
practical contrition for the sins that were heavy on his head before his
entrance into this condemned world. Was that a cruelty? Was I, too,
not visited with consequences of the original offence in which I had no
complicity? Arthur's father and I lived no further apart, with half the
globe between us, than when we were together in this house. He died,
and sent this watch back to me, with its Do not forget. I do NOT forget,
though I do not read it as he did. I read in it, that I was appointed
to do these things. I have so read these three letters since I have
had them lying on this table, and I did so read them, with equal
distinctness, when they were thousands of miles away.'
As she took the watch-case in her hand, with that new freedom in the use
of her hand of which she showed no consciousness whatever, bending her
eyes upon it as if she were defying it to move her, Rigaud cried with a
loud and contemptuous snapping of his fingers. 'Come, madame! Time runs
out. Come, lady of piety, it must be! You can tell nothing I don't know.
Come to the money stolen, or I will! Death of my soul, I have had enough
of your other jargon. Come straight to the stolen money!'
'Wretch that you are,' she answered, and now her hands clasped her head:
'through what fatal error of Flintwinch's, through what incompleteness
on his part, who was the only other person helping in these things and
trusted with them, through whose and what bringing together of the ashes
of a burnt paper, you have become possessed of that codicil, I know no
more than how you acquired the rest of your power here--'
'And yet,' interrupted Rigaud, 'it is my odd fortune to have by me, in a
convenient place that I know of, that same short little addition to the
will of Monsieur Gilbert Clennam, written by a lady and witnessed by the
same lady and our old intriguer! Ah, bah, old intriguer, crooked little
puppet! Madame, let us go on. Time presses. You or I to finish?'
'I!' she answered, with increased determination, if it were possible.
'I, because I will not endure to be shown myself, and have myself
shown to any one, with your horrible distortion upon me. You, with your
practices of infamous foreign prisons and galleys would make it the
money that impelled me. It was not the money.'
'Bah, bah, bah! I repudiate, for the moment, my politeness, and say,
Lies, lies, lies. You know you suppressed the deed and kept the money.'
'Not for the money's sake, wretch!' She made a struggle as if she were
starting up; even as if, in her vehemence, she had almost risen on her
disabled feet. 'If Gilbert Clennam, reduced to imbecility, at the point
of death, and labouring under the delusion of some imaginary relenting
towards a girl of whom he had heard that his nephew had once had a fancy
for her which he had crushed out of him, and that she afterwards drooped
away into melancholy and withdrawal from all who knew her--if, in that
state of weakness, he dictated to me, whose life she had darkened with
her sin, and who had been appointed to know her wickedness from her
own hand and her own lips, a bequest meant as a recompense to her
for supposed unmerited suffering; was there no difference between my
spurning that injustice, and coveting mere money--a thing which you, and
your comrades in the prisons, may steal from anyone?'
'Time presses, madame. Take care!'
'If this house was blazing from the roof to the ground,' she returned,
'I would stay in it to justify myself against my righteous motives being
classed with those of stabbers and thieves.'
Rigaud snapped his fingers tauntingly in her face. 'One thousand guineas
to the little beauty you slowly hunted to death. One thousand guineas
to the youngest daughter her patron might have at fifty, or (if he
had none) brother's youngest daughter, on her coming of age, "as the
remembrance his disinterestedness may like best, of his protection of
a friendless young orphan girl." Two thousand guineas. What! You will
never come to the money?'
'That patron,' she was vehemently proceeding, when he checked her.
'Names! Call him Mr Frederick Dorrit. No more evasions.'
'That Frederick Dorrit was the beginning of it all. If he had not been
a player of music, and had not kept, in those days of his youth and
prosperity, an idle house where singers, and players, and such-like
children of Evil turned their backs on the Light and their faces to the
Darkness, she might have remained in her lowly station, and might not
have been raised out of it to be cast down. But, no. Satan entered into
that Frederick Dorrit, and counselled him that he was a man of innocent
and laudable tastes who did kind actions, and that here was a poor girl
with a voice for singing music with. Then he is to have her taught. Then
Arthur's father, who has all along been secretly pining in the ways of
virtuous ruggedness for those accursed snares which are called the Arts,
becomes acquainted with her. And so, a graceless orphan, training to be
a singing girl, carries it, by that Frederick Dorrit's agency, against
me, and I am humbled and deceived!--Not I, that is to say,' she added
quickly, as colour flushed into her face; 'a greater than I. What am I?'
Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been gradually screwing himself towards
her, and who was now very near her elbow without her knowing it, made a
specially wry face of objection when she said these words, and moreover
twitched his gaiters, as if such pretensions were equivalent to little
barbs in his legs.
'Lastly,' she continued, 'for I am at the end of these things, and I
will say no more of them, and you shall say no more of them, and all
that remains will be to determine whether the knowledge of them can
be kept among us who are here present; lastly, when I suppressed that
paper, with the knowledge of Arthur's father--'
'But not with his consent, you know,' said Mr Flintwinch.
'Who said with his consent?' She started to find Jeremiah so near her,
and drew back her head, looking at him with some rising distrust. 'You
were often enough between us when he would have had me produce it and
I would not, to have contradicted me if I had said, with his consent. I
say, when I suppressed that paper, I made no effort to destroy it, but
kept it by me, here in this house, many years. The rest of the Gilbert
property being left to Arthur's father, I could at any time, without
unsettling more than the two sums, have made a pretence of finding
it. But, besides that I must have supported such pretence by a direct
falsehood (a great responsibility), I have seen no new reason, in
all the time I have been tried here, to bring it to light. It was a
rewarding of sin; the wrong result of a delusion. I did what I was
appointed to do, and I have undergone, within these four walls, what
I was appointed to undergo. When the paper was at last destroyed--as
I thought--in my presence, she had long been dead, and her patron,
Frederick Dorrit, had long been deservedly ruined and imbecile. He had
no daughter. I had found the niece before then; and what I did for her,
was better for her far than the money of which she would have had no
good.' She added, after a moment, as though she addressed the watch:
'She herself was innocent, and I might not have forgotten to relinquish
it to her at my death:' and sat looking at it.
'Shall I recall something to you, worthy madame?' said Rigaud. 'The
little paper was in this house on the night when our friend the
prisoner--jail-comrade of my soul--came home from foreign countries.
Shall I recall yet something more to you? The little singing-bird
that never was fledged, was long kept in a cage by a guardian of your
appointing, well enough known to our old intriguer here. Shall we coax
our old intriguer to tell us when he saw him last?'
'I'll tell you!' cried Affery, unstopping her mouth. 'I dreamed it,
first of all my dreams. Jeremiah, if you come a-nigh me now, I'll scream
to be heard at St Paul's! The person as this man has spoken of, was
jeremiah's own twin brother; and he was here in the dead of the night,
on the night when Arthur come home, and Jeremiah with his own hands give
him this paper, along with I don't know what more, and he took it away
in an iron box--Help! Murder! Save me from Jere-mi-ah!'
Mr Flintwinch had made a run at her, but Rigaud had caught him in his
arms midway. After a moment's wrestle with him, Flintwinch gave up, and
put his hands in his pockets.
'What!' cried Rigaud, rallying him as he poked and jerked him back with
his elbows, 'assault a lady with such a genius for dreaming! Ha, ha, ha!
Why, she'll be a fortune to you as an exhibition. All that she dreams
comes true. Ha, ha, ha! You're so like him, Little Flintwinch. So like
him, as I knew him (when I first spoke English for him to the host) in
the Cabaret of the Three Billiard Tables, in the little street of the
high roofs, by the wharf at Antwerp! Ah, but he was a brave boy to
drink. Ah, but he was a brave boy to smoke! Ah, but he lived in a sweet
bachelor-apartment--furnished, on the fifth floor, above the wood and
charcoal merchant's, and the dress-maker's, and the chair-maker's, and
the maker of tubs--where I knew him too, and wherewith his cognac and
tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day and one fit, until he had a fit too
much, and ascended to the skies. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter how I
took possession of the papers in his iron box? Perhaps he confided it
to my hands for you, perhaps it was locked and my curiosity was piqued,
perhaps I suppressed it. Ha, ha, ha! What does it matter, so that I
have it safe? We are not particular here; hey, Flintwinch? We are not
particular here; is it not so, madame?'
Retiring before him with vicious counter-jerks of his own elbows, Mr
Flintwinch had got back into his corner, where he now stood with his
hands in his pockets, taking breath, and returning Mrs Clennam's stare.
'Ha, ha, ha! But what's this?' cried Rigaud. 'It appears as if you
don't know, one the other. Permit me, Madame Clennam who suppresses, to
present Monsieur Flintwinch who intrigues.'
Mr Flintwinch, unpocketing one of his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced
a step or so in that attitude, still returning Mrs Clennam's look, and
thus addressed her:
'Now, I know what you mean by opening your eyes so wide at me, but you
needn't take the trouble, because I don't care for it. I've been telling
you for how many years that you're one of the most opinionated and
obstinate of women. That's what YOU are. You call yourself humble and
sinful, but you are the most Bumptious of your sex. That's what YOU are.
I have told you, over and over again when we have had a tiff, that you
wanted to make everything go down before you, but I wouldn't go down
before you--that you wanted to swallow up everybody alive, but I
wouldn't be swallowed up alive. Why didn't you destroy the paper when
you first laid hands upon it?
I advised you to; but no, it's not your way to take advice. You must
keep it forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it out at some other time,
forsooth. As if I didn't know better than that! I think I see your pride
carrying it out, with a chance of being suspected of having kept it by
you. But that's the way you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat yourself
into making out that you didn't do all this business because you were a
rigorous woman, all slight, and spite, and power, and unforgiveness, but
because you were a servant and a minister, and were appointed to do it.
Who are you, that you should be appointed to do it? That may be your
religion, but it's my gammon. And to tell you all the truth while I
am about it,' said Mr Flintwinch, crossing his arms, and becoming the
express image of irascible doggedness, 'I have been rasped--rasped these
forty years--by your taking such high ground even with me, who knows
better; the effect of it being coolly to put me on low ground. I admire
you very much; you are a woman of strong head and great talent; but
the strongest head, and the greatest talent, can't rasp a man for forty
years without making him sore. So I don't care for your present eyes.
Now, I am coming to the paper, and mark what I say. You put it away
somewhere, and you kept your own counsel where. You're an active woman
at that time, and if you want to get that paper, you can get it. But,
mark. There comes a time when you are struck into what you are now, and
then if you want to get that paper, you can't get it. So it lies, long
years, in its hiding-place. At last, when we are expecting Arthur home
every day, and when any day may bring him home, and it's impossible to
say what rummaging he may make about the house, I recommend you five
thousand times, if you can't get at it, to let me get at it, that it may
be put in the fire. But no--no one but you knows where it is, and that's
power; and, call yourself whatever humble names you will, I call you a
female Lucifer in appetite for power! On a Sunday night, Arthur comes
home. He has not been in this room ten minutes, when he speaks of his
father's watch. You know very well that the Do Not Forget, at the time
when his father sent that watch to you, could only mean, the rest of the
story being then all dead and over, Do Not Forget the suppression. Make
restitution! Arthur's ways have frightened you a bit, and the paper
shall be burnt after all. So, before that jumping jade and Jezebel,' Mr
Flintwinch grinned at his wife, 'has got you into bed, you at last tell
me where you have put the paper, among the old ledgers in the cellars,
where Arthur himself went prowling the very next morning. But it's not
to be burnt on a Sunday night. No; you are strict, you are; we must wait
over twelve o'clock, and get into Monday. Now, all this is a swallowing
of me up alive that rasps me; so, feeling a little out of temper, and
not being as strict as yourself, I take a look at the document before
twelve o'clock to refresh my memory as to its appearance--fold up one of
the many yellow old papers in the cellars like it--and afterwards, when
we have got into Monday morning, and I have, by the light of your
lamp, to walk from you, lying on that bed, to this grate, make a little
exchange like the conjuror, and burn accordingly. My brother
Ephraim, the lunatic-keeper (I wish he had had himself to keep in a
strait-waistcoat), had had many jobs since the close of the long job he
got from you, but had not done well. His wife died (not that that
was much; mine might have died instead, and welcome), he speculated
unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got into difficulty about over-roasting
a patient to bring him to reason, and he got into debt. He was going out
of the way, on what he had been able to scrape up, and a trifle from me.
He was here that early Monday morning, waiting for the tide; in short,
he was going to Antwerp, where (I am afraid you'll be shocked at
my saying, And be damned to him!) he made the acquaintance of this
gentleman. He had come a long way, and, I thought then, was only sleepy;
but, I suppose now, was drunk. When Arthur's mother had been under
the care of him and his wife, she had been always writing, incessantly
writing,--mostly letters of confession to you, and Prayers for
forgiveness. My brother had handed, from time to time, lots of these
sheets to me. I thought I might as well keep them to myself as have them
swallowed up alive too; so I kept them in a box, looking over them when
I felt in the humour. Convinced that it was advisable to get the paper
out of the place, with Arthur coming about it, I put it into this same
box, and I locked the whole up with two locks, and I trusted it to my
brother to take away and keep, till I should write about it. I did write
about it, and never got an answer. I didn't know what to make of it,
till this gentleman favoured us with his first visit. Of course, I began
to suspect how it was, then; and I don't want his word for it now to
understand how he gets his knowledge from my papers, and your paper, and
my brother's cognac and tobacco talk (I wish he'd had to gag himself).
Now, I have only one thing more to say, you hammer-headed woman, and
that is, that I haven't altogether made up my mind whether I might, or
might not, have ever given you any trouble about the codicil. I think
not; and that I should have been quite satisfied with knowing I had got
the better of you, and that I held the power over you. In the present
state of circumstances, I have no more explanation to give you till
this time to-morrow night. So you may as well,' said Mr Flintwinch,
terminating his oration with a screw, 'keep your eyes open at somebody
else, for it's no use keeping 'em open at me.'
She slowly withdrew them when he had ceased, and dropped her forehead
on her hand. Her other hand pressed hard upon the table, and again the
curious stir was observable in her, as if she were going to rise.
'This box can never bring, elsewhere, the price it will bring here.
This knowledge can never be of the same profit to you, sold to any other
person, as sold to me. But I have not the present means of raising the
sum you have demanded. I have not prospered. What will you take now, and
what at another time, and how am I to be assured of your silence?'
'My angel,' said Rigaud, 'I have said what I will take, and time
presses. Before coming here, I placed copies of the most important of
these papers in another hand. Put off the time till the Marshalsea
gate shall be shut for the night, and it will be too late to treat. The
prisoner will have read them.'
She put her two hands to her head again, uttered a loud exclamation, and
started to her feet. She staggered for a moment, as if she would have
fallen; then stood firm.
'Say what you mean. Say what you mean, man!'
Before her ghostly figure, so long unused to its erect attitude, and so
stiffened in it, Rigaud fell back and dropped his voice. It was, to all
the three, almost as if a dead woman had risen.
'Miss Dorrit,' answered Rigaud, 'the little niece of Monsieur Frederick,
whom I have known across the water, is attached to the prisoner. Miss
Dorrit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, watches at this moment over
the prisoner, who is ill. For her I with my own hands left a packet
at the prison, on my way here, with a letter of instructions, "FOR HIS
SAKE"--she will do anything for his sake--to keep it without breaking
the seal, in case of its being reclaimed before the hour of shutting up
to-night--if it should not be reclaimed before the ringing of the prison
bell, to give it to him; and it encloses a second copy for herself,
which he must give to her. What! I don't trust myself among you, now we
have got so far, without giving my secret a second life. And as to its
not bringing me, elsewhere, the price it will bring here, say then,
madame, have you limited and settled the price the little niece will
give--for his sake--to hush it up? Once more I say, time presses. The
packet not reclaimed before the ringing of the bell to-night, you cannot
buy. I sell, then, to the little girl!'
Once more the stir and struggle in her, and she ran to a closet, tore
the door open, took down a hood or shawl, and wrapped it over her head.
Affery, who had watched her in terror, darted to her in the middle of
the room, caught hold of her dress, and went on her knees to her.
'Don't, don't, don't! What are you doing? Where are you going? You're a
fearful woman, but I don't bear you no ill-will. I can do poor Arthur
no good now, that I see; and you needn't be afraid of me. I'll keep your
secret. Don't go out, you'll fall dead in the street. Only promise me,
that, if it's the poor thing that's kept here secretly, you'll let me
take charge of her and be her nurse. Only promise me that, and never be
afraid of me.'
Mrs Clennam stood still for an instant, at the height of her rapid
haste, saying in stern amazement:
'Kept here? She has been dead a score of years or more. Ask
Flintwinch--ask HIM. They can both tell you that she died when Arthur
went abroad.'
'So much the worse,' said Affery, with a shiver, 'for she haunts the
house, then. Who else rustles about it, making signals by dropping
dust so softly? Who else comes and goes, and marks the walls with
long crooked touches when we are all a-bed? Who else holds the door
sometimes? But don't go out--don't go out! Mistress, you'll die in the
street!'
Her mistress only disengaged her dress from the beseeching hands, said
to Rigaud, 'Wait here till I come back!' and ran out of the room. They
saw her, from the window, run wildly through the court-yard and out at
the gateway.
For a few moments they stood motionless. Affery was the first to move,
and she, wringing her hands, pursued her mistress. Next, Jeremiah
Flintwinch, slowly backing to the door, with one hand in a pocket, and
the other rubbing his chin, twisted himself out in his reticent way,
speechlessly. Rigaud, left alone, composed himself upon the window-seat
of the open window, in the old Marseilles-jail attitude. He laid his
cigarettes and fire-box ready to his hand, and fell to smoking.
'Whoof! Almost as dull as the infernal old jail. Warmer, but almost as
dismal. Wait till she comes back? Yes, certainly; but where is she gone,
and how long will she be gone? No matter! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my
amiable subject, you will get your money. You will enrich yourself. You
have lived a gentleman; you will die a gentleman. You triumph, my little
boy; but it is your character to triumph. Whoof!' In the hour of his
triumph, his moustache went up and his nose came down, as he ogled a
great beam over his head with particular satisfaction.