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

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 armchair 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 courtyard, 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 coattail 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,