Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (best books to read for students TXT) 📖

Bawkins) was expressing her great surprise; her great surprise.

Now under these circumstances, and considering that none of us can quite set ourselves above public opinion, wouldn’t a trifling concession to that opinion be— Come, sir,’ said Rugg, ‘I will put it on the lowest ground of argument, and say, amiable?’

Arthur’s thoughts had once more wandered away to Little Dorrit, and the question remained unanswered.

‘As to myself, sir,’ said Mr Rugg, hoping that his eloquence had reduced him to a state of indecision, ‘it is a principle of mine not to consider myself when a client’s inclinations are in the scale. But, knowing your considerate character and general wish to oblige, I will repeat that I should prefer your being in the Bench.

Your case has made a noise; it is a creditable case to be professionally concerned in; I should feel on a better standing with my connection, if you went to the Bench. Don’t let that influence you, sir. I merely state the fact.’

So errant had the prisoner’s attention already grown in solitude and dejection, and so accustomed had it become to commune with only one silent figure within the ever-frowning walls, that Clennam had to shake off a kind of stupor before he could look at Mr Rugg, recall the thread of his talk, and hurriedly say, ‘I am unchanged, and unchangeable, in my decision. Pray, let it be; let it be!’ Mr Rugg, without concealing that he was nettled and mortified, replied:

‘Oh! Beyond a doubt, sir. I have travelled out of the record, sir, I am aware, in putting the point to you. But really, when I herd it remarked in several companies, and in very good company, that however worthy of a foreigner, it is not worthy of the spirit of an Englishman to remain in the Marshalsea when the glorious liberties of his island home admit of his removal to the Bench, I thought I would depart from the narrow professional line marked out to me, and mention it. Personally,’ said Mr Rugg, ‘I have no opinion on the topic.’

‘That’s well,’ returned Arthur.

‘Oh! None at all, sir!’ said Mr Rugg. ‘If I had, I should have been

unwilling, some minutes ago, to see a client of mine visited in this place by a gentleman of a high family riding a saddle-horse. But it was not my business. If I had, I might have wished to be now empowered to mention to another gentleman, a gentleman of military

exterior at present waiting in the Lodge, that my client had never intended to remain here, and was on the eve of removal to a superior abode. But my course as a professional machine is clear; I have nothing to do with it. Is it your good pleasure to see the gentleman, sir?’

‘Who is waiting to see me, did you say?’

‘I did take that unprofessional liberty, sir. Hearing that I was your professional adviser, he declined to interpose before my very limited function was performed. Happily,’ said Mr Rugg, with sarcasm, ‘I did not so far travel out of the record as to ask the gentleman for his name.’

‘I suppose I have no resource but to see him,’ sighed Clennam, wearily.

‘Then it IS your good pleasure, sir?’ retorted Rugg. ‘Am I honoured by your instructions to mention as much to the gentleman, as I pass out? I am? Thank you, sir. I take my leave.’ His leave he took accordingly, in dudgeon.

The gentleman of military exterior had so imperfectly awakened Clennam’s curiosity, in the existing state of his mind, that a half-forgetfulness of such a visitor’s having been referred to, was already creeping over it as a part of the sombre veil which almost always dimmed it now, when a heavy footstep on the stairs aroused him. It appeared to ascend them, not very promptly or spontaneously, yet with a display of stride and clatter meant to be insulting. As it paused for a moment on the landing outside his door, he could not recall his association with the peculiarity of its sound, though he thought he had one. Only a moment was given him for consideration. His door was immediately swung open by a thump, and in the doorway stood the missing Blandois, the cause of many anxieties.

‘Salve, fellow jail-bird !’ said he. ‘You want me, it seems. Here I am!’

Before Arthur could speak to him in his indignant wonder, Cavalletto followed him into the room. Mr Pancks followed Cavalletto. Neither of the two had been there since its present occupant had had possession of it. Mr Pancks, breathing hard, sidled near the window, put his hat on the ground, stirred his hair up with both hands, and folded his arms, like a man who had come to a pause in a hard day’s work. Mr Baptist, never taking his eyes from his dreaded chum of old, softly sat down on the floor with his back against the door and one of his ankles in each hand: resuming the attitude (except that it was now expressive of unwinking watchfulness) in which he had sat before the same man in the deeper shade of another prison, one hot morning at Marseilles. ‘I have it on the witnessing of these two madmen,’ said Monsieur Blandois, otherwise Lagnier, otherwise Rigaud, ‘that you want me, brother-bird. Here I am!’ Glancing round contemptuously at the bedstead, which was turned up by day, he leaned his back against it as a resting-place, without removing his hat from his head, and stood defiantly lounging with his hands in his pockets.

‘You villain of ill-omen!’ said Arthur. ‘You have purposely cast a dreadful suspicion upon my mother’s house. Why have you done it?

What prompted you to the devilish invention?’

Monsieur Rigaud, after frowning at him for a moment, laughed. ‘Hear this noble gentleman! Listen, all the world, to this creature of Virtue! But take care, take care. It is possible, my friend, that your ardour is a little compromising. Holy Blue! It is possible.’

‘Signore!’ interposed Cavalletto, also addressing Arthur: ‘for to commence, hear me! I received your instructions to find him, Rigaud; is it not?’

‘It is the truth.’

‘I go, consequentementally,’—it would have given Mrs Plornish great concern if she could have been persuaded that his occasional lengthening of an adverb in this way, was the chief fault of his English,—‘first among my countrymen. I ask them what news in Londra, of foreigners arrived. Then I go among the French. Then I go among the Germans. They all tell me. The great part of us know well the other, and they all tell me. But!—no person can tell me nothing of him, Rigaud. Fifteen times,’ said Cavalletto, thrice throwing out his left hand with all its fingers spread, and doing it so rapidly that the sense of sight could hardly follow the action, ‘I ask of him in every place where go the foreigners; and fifteen times,’ repeating the same swift performance, ‘they know nothing. But!—’ At this significant Italian rest on the word ‘But,’ his backhanded shake of his right forefinger came into play; a very little, and very cautiously.

‘But!—After a long time when I have not been able to find that he is here in Londra, some one tells me of a soldier with white hair— hey?—not hair like this that he carries—white—who lives retired secrettementally, in a certain place. But!—’ with another rest upon the word, ‘who sometimes in the after-dinner, walks, and smokes. It is necessary, as they say in Italy (and as they know, poor people), to have patience. I have patience. I ask where is this certain place. One. believes it is here, one believes it is there. Eh well! It is not here, it is not there. I wait patientissamentally. At last I find it. Then I watch; then I hide, until he walks and smokes. He is a soldier with grey hair— But!—’ a very decided rest indeed, and a very vigorous play from side to side of the backhanded forefinger—‘he is also this man that you see.’

It was noticeable, that, in his old habit of submission to one who had been at the trouble of asserting superiority over him, he even then bestowed upon Rigaud a confused bend of his head, after thus pointing him out.

‘Eh well, Signore!’ he cried in conclusion, addressing Arthur again. ‘I waited for a good opportunity. I writed some words to Signor Panco,’ an air of novelty came over Mr Pancks with this designation, ‘to come and help. I showed him, Rigaud, at his window, to Signor Panco, who was often the spy in the day. I slept at night near the door of the house. At last we entered, only this to-day, and now you see him! As he would not come up in presence of the illustrious Advocate,’ such was Mr Baptist’s honourable mention of Mr Rugg, ‘we waited down below there, together, and Signor Panco guarded the street.’

At the close of this recital, Arthur turned his eyes upon the impudent and wicked face. As it met his, the nose came down over the moustache and the moustache went up under the nose. When nose and moustache had settled into their places again, Monsieur Rigaud loudly snapped his fingers half-a-dozen times; bending forward to jerk the snaps at Arthur, as if they were palpable missiles which he jerked into his face.

‘Now, Philosopher!’ said Rigaud.‘What do you want with me?’

‘I want to know,’ returned Arthur, without disguising his abhorrence, ‘how you dare direct a suspicion of murder against my mother’s house?’

‘Dare!’ cried Rigaud. ‘Ho, ho! Hear him! Dare? Is it dare? By Heaven, my small boy, but you are a little imprudent!’

‘I want that suspicion to be cleared away,’ said Arthur. ‘You shall be taken there, and be publicly seen. I want to know, moreover, what business you had there when I had a burning desire to fling you downstairs. Don’t frown at me, man! I have seen enough of you to know that you are a bully and coward. I need no revival of my spirits from the effects of this wretched place to tell you so plain a fact, and one that you know so well.’

White to the lips, Rigaud stroked his moustache, muttering, ‘By Heaven, my small boy, but you are a little compromising of my lady, your respectable mother’—and seemed for a minute undecided how to act. His indecision was soon gone. He sat himself down with a threatening swagger, and said:

‘Give me a bottle of wine. You can buy wine here. Send one of your madmen to get me a bottle of wine. I won’t talk to you without wine. Come! Yes or no?’

‘Fetch him what he wants, Cavalletto,’ said Arthur, scornfully, producing the money.

‘Contraband beast,’ added Rigaud, ‘bring Port wine! I’ll drink nothing but Porto-Porto.’

The contraband beast, however, assuring all present, with his significant finger, that he peremptorily declined to leave his post at the door, Signor Panco offered his services. He soon returned with the bottle of wine: which, according to the custom of the place, originating in a scarcity of corkscrews among the Collegians (in common with a scarcity of much else), was already opened for use.

‘Madman! A large glass,’ said Rigaud.

Signor Panco put a tumbler before him; not without a visible conflict of feeling on the question of throwing it at his head.

‘Haha!’ boasted Rigaud. ‘Once a gentleman, and always a gentleman.

A gentleman from the beginning, and a gentleman to the end. What the Devil! A gentleman must be waited on, I hope? It’s a part of my character to be waited on!’

He half filled the tumbler as he said it, and drank off the contents when he had done saying it.

‘Hah!’ smacking his lips. ‘Not a very old prisoner that! I judge by your