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Little Dorrit: Rigaud

And strange to say it is a rascally adventurer, Rigaud, a murderous jailbird with drooping nose and ascending mustache, who opens the rift still farther for the sunshine. He has discovered Mrs. Clennam's secret, having stolen the strong-box that Flintwinch had smuggled into Holland and in which lay a page of the will of Arthur's uncle, a page which Mrs. Clennam had concealed for years. Rigaud visits the strange old lady. Leaning over the sofa, poised on two legs of his chair and his left elbow, coarse, insolent, rapacious, cruel, he reveals to her his knowledge.

Then, torn by the explosion of her passion, the old lady vehemently tells her own story.

She had learned, after Mr. Clennam's marriage to her (a marriage commanded by his overbearing uncle), that her husband had loved and gone through a sort of ceremony with a beautiful young singer whom Frederick Dorrit, a kind-hearted musician (the uncle of Little Dorrit), was befriending and giving an education. She had obtained the first clue from those initials in her husband's watch which she found years ago, signifying "Do Not Forget." She accused both her husband and the woman who put the initials there. "I said to her," declared Mrs. Clennam, "'You have a child; I have none. You love that child. Give him to me and swear never again to see his father. Then I will support you and not expose your shame. And I will reclaim the otherwise lost boy.'" Thus it had been that Arthur came into the Clennam home. At this point in her narrative Rigaud contemptuously interrupted. "Come straight to the stolen money," he commanded. "Wretch!" she responded, "know then that I suppressed a part of the will of my husband's uncle"--the part in which that uncle had revealed the maternity of Arthur and had left, as a repentant compensation, a legacy to Arthur's mother and to the niece of the man who had befriended her--"but I found that niece of Frederick Dorrit and what I did for her was better for her far than the money."

Instantly Rigaud, seeking to blackmail the old lady, declared he had deposited with the niece, Little Amy Dorrit, then at the prison with Arthur, a packet containing the suppressed section of the will, with instructions to open it at a certain hour unless reclaimed by him. What would Mrs. Clennam pay him to reclaim it?

To the astonishment of all, the paralytic old lady rises to her feet and rushes from the house to the prison, seeks Little Dorrit, calls for the packet, and then bids Amy read it, at the same time begging her to forgive the past. "I forgive you freely," cries the generous girl. "God bless you!" was the fervent and broken response. And then came the good news that Arthur's firm had re-established itself and that he would be able now to leave the debtors' prison. So they were married--but not before Little Dorrit had handed to Arthur a folded bit of legal paper, asking him not to open it, but to burn it in her presence. "Is it a charm?" he asked, smilingly. "And does the charm want any words to be said?" he added, as he held the paper over the flames. "You can say (if you don't mind), 'I love you!'" answered Little Dorrit. So he said it and the paper burned away.

With it died the secret of Arthur's birth, never to be known to him; with it also Little Dorrit had voluntarily destroyed the evidence of her own legacy. And they were married with the sun shining on them through the painted figure of our Saviour on the window.

Then they went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and, as they passed along in the sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the forward, and the vain fretted and chafed and made their usual uproar.