Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

packet-boat, madam, and have been delayed by the weather: the infernal weather! In consequence of this, madam, some necessary business that I should otherwise have transacted here within the regular hours (necessary business because money-business), still remains to be done. Now, if you will fetch any authorised neighbouring somebody to do it in return for my opening the door, I’ll open the door. If this arrangement should be objectionable, I’ll⁠—” and with the same smile he made a significant feint of backing away.

Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect the proposed compromise, gave in her willing adhesion to it. The gentleman at once requested her to do him the favour of holding his cloak, took a short run at the narrow window, made a leap at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, and in a moment had his hand at the sash, raising it. His eyes looked so very sinister, as he put his leg into the room and glanced round at Mistress Affery, that she thought with a sudden coldness, if he were to go straight upstairs to murder the invalid, what could she do to prevent him?

Happily he had no such purpose; for he reappeared, in a moment, at the house door. “Now, my dear madam,” he said, as he took back his cloak and threw it on, “if you have the goodness to⁠—what the Devil’s that!”

The strangest of sounds. Evidently close at hand from the peculiar shock it communicated to the air, yet subdued as if it were far off. A tremble, a rumble, and a fall of some light dry matter.

“What the Devil is it?”

“I don’t know what it is, but I’ve heard the like of it over and over again,” said Affery, who had caught his arm.

He could hardly be a very brave man, even she thought in her dreamy start and fright, for his trembling lips had turned colourless. After listening a few moments, he made light of it.

“Bah! Nothing! Now, my dear madam, I think you spoke of some clever personage. Will you be so good as to confront me with that genius?” He held the door in his hand, as though he were quite ready to shut her out again if she failed.

“Don’t you say anything about the door and me, then,” whispered Affery.

“Not a word.”

“And don’t you stir from here, or speak if she calls, while I run round the corner.”

“Madam, I am a statue.”

Affery had so vivid a fear of his going stealthily upstairs the moment her back was turned, that after hurrying out of sight, she returned to the gateway to peep at him. Seeing him still on the threshold, more out of the house than in it, as if he had no love for darkness and no desire to probe its mysteries, she flew into the next street, and sent a message into the tavern to Mr. Flintwinch, who came out directly. The two returning together⁠—the lady in advance, and Mr. Flintwinch coming up briskly behind, animated with the hope of shaking her before she could get housed⁠—saw the gentleman standing in the same place in the dark, and heard the strong voice of Mrs. Clennam calling from her room, “Who is it? What is it? Why does no one answer? Who is that, down there?”

XXX The Word of a Gentleman

When Mr. and Mrs. Flintwinch panted up to the door of the old house in the twilight, Jeremiah within a second of Affery, the stranger started back. “Death of my soul!” he exclaimed. “Why, how did you get here?”

Mr. Flintwinch, to whom these words were spoken, repaid the stranger’s wonder in full. He gazed at him with blank astonishment; he looked over his own shoulder, as expecting to see someone he had not been aware of standing behind him; he gazed at the stranger again, speechlessly, at a loss to know what he meant; he looked to his wife for explanation; receiving none, he pounced upon her, and shook her with such heartiness that he shook her cap off her head, saying between his teeth, with grim raillery, as he did it, “Affery, my woman, you must have a dose, my woman! This is some of your tricks! You have been dreaming again, mistress. What’s it about? Who is it? What does it mean! Speak out or be choked! It’s the only choice I’ll give you.”

Supposing Mistress Affery to have any power of election at the moment, her choice was decidedly to be choked; for she answered not a syllable to this adjuration, but, with her bare head wagging violently backwards and forwards, resigned herself to her punishment. The stranger, however, picking up her cap with an air of gallantry, interposed.

“Permit me,” said he, laying his hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who stopped and released his victim. “Thank you. Excuse me. Husband and wife I know, from this playfulness. Haha! Always agreeable to see that relation playfully maintained. Listen! May I suggest that somebody upstairs, in the dark, is becoming energetically curious to know what is going on here?”

This reference to Mrs. Clennam’s voice reminded Mr. Flintwinch to step into the hall and call up the staircase. “It’s all right, I am here, Affery is coming with your light.” Then he said to the latter flustered woman, who was putting her cap on, “Get out with you, and get upstairs!” and then turned to the stranger and said to him, “Now, sir, what might you please to want?”

“I am afraid,” said the stranger, “I must be so troublesome as to propose a candle.”

“True,” assented Jeremiah. “I was going to do so. Please to stand where you are while I get one.”

The visitor was standing in the doorway, but turned a little into the gloom of the house as Mr. Flintwinch turned, and pursued him with his eyes into the little room, where he groped about for a phosphorus box. When he found it, it was damp, or otherwise out of order; and match after match that he struck into it lighted