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

“No, my son,” he resumed, with a snap of his fingers. “I play my game to the end in spite of words; and Death of my Body and Death of my Soul! I’ll win it. You want to know why I played this little trick that you have interrupted? Know then that I had, and that I have⁠—do you understand me? have⁠—a commodity to sell to my lady your respectable mother. I described my precious commodity, and fixed my price. Touching the bargain, your admirable mother was a little too calm, too stolid, too immovable and statue-like. In fine, your admirable mother vexed me. To make variety in my position, and to amuse myself⁠—what! a gentleman must be amused at somebody’s expense!⁠—I conceived the happy idea of disappearing. An idea, see you, that your characteristic mother and my Flintwinch would have been well enough pleased to execute. Ah! Bah, bah, bah, don’t look as from high to low at me! I repeat it. Well enough pleased, excessively enchanted, and with all their hearts ravished. How strongly will you have it?”

He threw out the lees of his glass on the ground, so that they nearly spattered Cavalletto. This seemed to draw his attention to him anew. He set down his glass and said:

“I’ll not fill it. What! I am born to be served. Come then, you Cavalletto, and fill!”

The little man looked at Clennam, whose eyes were occupied with Rigaud, and, seeing no prohibition, got up from the ground, and poured out from the bottle into the glass. The blending, as he did so, of his old submission with a sense of something humorous; the striving of that with a certain smouldering ferocity, which might have flashed fire in an instant (as the born gentleman seemed to think, for he had a wary eye upon him); and the easy yielding of all to a good-natured, careless, predominant propensity to sit down on the ground again: formed a very remarkable combination of character.

“This happy idea, brave sir,” Rigaud resumed after drinking, “was a happy idea for several reasons. It amused me, it worried your dear mama and my Flintwinch, it caused you agonies (my terms for a lesson in politeness towards a gentleman), and it suggested to all the amiable persons interested that your entirely devoted is a man to fear. By Heaven, he is a man to fear! Beyond this; it might have restored her wit to my lady your mother⁠—might, under the pressing little suspicion your wisdom has recognised, have persuaded her at last to announce, covertly, in the journals, that the difficulties of a certain contract would be removed by the appearance of a certain important party to it. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. But that, you have interrupted. Now, what is it you say? What is it you want?”

Never had Clennam felt more acutely that he was a prisoner in bonds, than when he saw this man before him, and could not accompany him to his mother’s house. All the undiscernible difficulties and dangers he had ever feared were closing in, when he could not stir hand or foot.

“Perhaps, my friend, philosopher, man of virtue, Imbecile, what you will; perhaps,” said Rigaud, pausing in his drink to look out of his glass with his horrible smile, “you would have done better to leave me alone?”

“No! At least,” said Clennam, “you are known to be alive and unharmed. At least you cannot escape from these two witnesses; and they can produce you before any public authorities, or before hundreds of people!”

“But will not produce me before one,” said Rigaud, snapping his fingers again with an air of triumphant menace. “To the Devil with your witnesses! To the Devil with your produced! To the Devil with yourself! What! Do I know what I know, for that? Have I my commodity on sale, for that? Bah, poor debtor! You have interrupted my little project. Let it pass. How then? What remains? To you, nothing; to me, all. Produce me! Is that what you want? I will produce myself, only too quickly. Contrabandist! Give me pen, ink, and paper.”

Cavalletto got up again as before, and laid them before him in his former manner. Rigaud, after some villainous thinking and smiling, wrote, and read aloud, as follows:

“To Mrs. Clennam.

“Wait answer.

“Prison of the Marshalsea. At the apartment of your son.

“Dear Madam,

“I am in despair to be informed today by our prisoner here (who has had the goodness to employ spies to seek me, living for politic reasons in retirement), that you have had fears for my safety.

“Reassure yourself, dear madam. I am well, I am strong and constant.

“With the greatest impatience I should fly to your house, but that I foresee it to be possible, under the circumstances, that you will not yet have quite definitively arranged the little proposition I have had the honour to submit to you. I name one week from this day, for a last final visit on my part; when you will unconditionally accept it or reject it, with its train of consequences.

“I suppress my ardour to embrace you and achieve this interesting business, in order that you may have leisure to adjust its details to our perfect mutual satisfaction.

“In the meanwhile, it is not too much to propose (our prisoner having deranged my housekeeping), that my expenses of lodging and nourishment at an hotel shall be paid by you.

“Receive, dear madam, the assurance of my highest and most distinguished consideration,

Rigaud Blandois

“A thousand friendships to that dear Flintwinch.

“I kiss the hands of Madame F.”

When he had finished this epistle, Rigaud folded it and tossed it with a flourish at Clennam’s feet. “Hola you! Apropos of producing, let somebody produce that at its address, and produce the answer here.”

“Cavalletto,” said Arthur. “Will you take this fellow’s letter?”

But, Cavalletto’s significant finger again expressing that his post was at the door to keep watch over Rigaud, now he had found him with so much