‘Sammy has been practised upon, and has broken confidence. It has all come out. You had better not be in the way, for strangers are going to call upon you. They have been very quiet as yet, because they mean to surprise you. Don’t lose time. I didn’t. I am not to be found anywhere. If I was you, I wouldn’t either. S. B., late of B. M.’
To describe the changes that passed over Quilp’s face, as he read this letter half-a-dozen times, would require some new language: such, for power of expression, as was never written, read, or spoken. For a long time he did not utter one word; but, after a considerable interval, during which Mrs Quilp was almost paralysed with the alarm his looks engendered, he contrived to gasp out,
‘If I had him here. If I only had him here—’
‘Oh Quilp!’ said his wife, ‘what’s the matter? Who are you angry with?’
‘—I should drown him,’ said the dwarf, not heeding her. ‘Too easy a death, too short, too quick—but the river runs close at hand. Oh! if I had him here! just to take him to the brink coaxingly and pleasantly,—holding him by the button-hole—joking with him,—and, with a sudden push, to send him splashing down! Drowning men come to the surface three times they say. Ah! To see him those three times, and mock him as his face came bobbing up,—oh, what a rich treat that would be!’
‘Quilp!’ stammered his wife, venturing at the same time to touch him on the shoulder: ‘what has gone wrong?’
She was so terrified by the relish with which he pictured this pleasure to himself that she could scarcely make herself intelligible.
‘Such a bloodless cur!’ said Quilp, rubbing his hands very slowly, and pressing them tight together. ‘I thought his cowardice and servility were the best guarantee for his keeping silence. Oh Brass, Brass—my dear, good, affectionate, faithful, complimentary, charming friend—if I only had you here!’
His wife, who had retreated lest she should seem to listen to these mutterings, ventured to approach him again, and was about to speak, when he hurried to the door, and called Tom Scott, who, remembering his late gentle admonition, deemed it prudent to appear immediately.
‘There!’ said the dwarf, pulling him in. ‘Take her home. Don’t come here to-morrow, for this place will be shut up. Come back no more till you hear from me or see me. Do you mind?’