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

make a desperate appeal to Affery. If she could be brought to become communicative, and to do what lay in her to break the spell of secrecy that enshrouded the house, he might shake off the paralysis of which every hour that passed over his head made him more acutely sensible. This was the result of his day’s anxiety, and this was the decision he put in practice when the day closed in.

His first disappointment, on arriving at the house, was to find the door open, and Mr. Flintwinch smoking a pipe on the steps. If circumstances had been commonly favourable, Mistress Affery would have opened the door to his knock. Circumstances being uncommonly unfavourable, the door stood open, and Mr. Flintwinch was smoking his pipe on the steps.

“Good evening,” said Arthur.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Flintwinch.

The smoke came crookedly out of Mr. Flintwinch’s mouth, as if it circulated through the whole of his wry figure and came back by his wry throat, before coming forth to mingle with the smoke from the crooked chimneys and the mists from the crooked river.

“Have you any news?” said Arthur.

“We have no news,” said Jeremiah.

“I mean of the foreign man,” Arthur explained.

“I mean of the foreign man,” said Jeremiah.

He looked so grim, as he stood askew, with the knot of his cravat under his ear, that the thought passed into Clennam’s mind, and not for the first time by many, could Flintwinch for a purpose of his own have got rid of Blandois? Could it have been his secret, and his safety, that were at issue? He was small and bent, and perhaps not actively strong; yet he was as tough as an old yew-tree, and as crusty as an old jackdaw. Such a man, coming behind a much younger and more vigorous man, and having the will to put an end to him and no relenting, might do it pretty surely in that solitary place at a late hour.

While, in the morbid condition of his thoughts, these thoughts drifted over the main one that was always in Clennam’s mind, Mr. Flintwinch, regarding the opposite house over the gateway with his neck twisted and one eye shut up, stood smoking with a vicious expression upon him; more as if he were trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, than as if he were enjoying it. Yet he was enjoying it in his own way.

“You’ll be able to take my likeness, the next time you call, Arthur, I should think,” said Mr. Flintwinch, drily, as he stooped to knock the ashes out.

Rather conscious and confused, Arthur asked his pardon, if he had stared at him unpolitely. “But my mind runs so much upon this matter,” he said, “that I lose myself.”

“Hah! Yet I don’t see,” returned Mr. Flintwinch, quite at his leisure, “why it should trouble you, Arthur.”

“No?”

“No,” said Mr. Flintwinch, very shortly and decidedly: much as if he were of the canine race, and snapped at Arthur’s hand.

“Is it nothing to see those placards about? Is it nothing to me to see my mother’s name and residence hawked up and down in such an association?”

“I don’t see,” returned Mr. Flintwinch, scraping his horny cheek, “that it need signify much to you. But I’ll tell you what I do see, Arthur,” glancing up at the windows; “I see the light of fire and candle in your mother’s room!”

“And what has that to do with it?”

“Why, sir, I read by it,” said Mr. Flintwinch, screwing himself at him, “that if it’s advisable (as the proverb says it is) to let sleeping dogs lie, it’s just as advisable, perhaps, to let missing dogs lie. Let ’em be. They generally turn up soon enough.”

Mr. Flintwinch turned short round when he had made this remark, and went into the dark hall. Clennam stood there, following him with his eyes, as he dipped for a light in the phosphorus-box in the little room at the side, got one after three or four dips, and lighted the dim lamp against the wall. All the while, Clennam was pursuing the probabilities⁠—rather as if they were being shown to him by an invisible hand than as if he himself were conjuring them up⁠—of Mr. Flintwinch’s ways and means of doing that darker deed, and removing its traces by any of the black avenues of shadow that lay around them.

“Now, sir,” said the testy Jeremiah; “will it be agreeable to walk upstairs?”

“My mother is alone, I suppose?”

“Not alone,” said Mr. Flintwinch. “Mr. Casby and his daughter are with her. They came in while I was smoking, and I stayed behind to have my smoke out.”

This was the second disappointment. Arthur made no remark upon it, and repaired to his mother’s room, where Mr. Casby and Flora had been taking tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered toast. The relics of those delicacies were not yet removed, either from the table or from the scorched countenance of Affery, who, with the kitchen toasting-fork still in her hand, looked like a sort of allegorical personage; except that she had a considerable advantage over the general run of such personages in point of significant emblematical purpose.

Flora had spread her bonnet and shawl upon the bed, with a care indicative of an intention to stay some time. Mr. Casby, too, was beaming near the hob, with his benevolent knobs shining as if the warm butter of the toast were exuding through the patriarchal skull, and with his face as ruddy as if the colouring matter of the anchovy paste were mantling in the patriarchal visage. Seeing this, as he exchanged the usual salutations, Clennam decided to speak to his mother without postponement.

It had long been customary, as she never changed her room, for those who had anything to say to her apart, to wheel her to her desk; where she sat, usually with the back of her chair turned towards the rest of the room, and the person who talked with her seated in a corner, on a stool which was always set in that place for that purpose. Except that it was