Little Dorrit
and to be faithful to her. The mystery of the noises was out now;
Affery, like greater people, had always been right in her facts, and
always wrong in the theories she deduced from them.
When the storm of dust had cleared away and the summer night was calm
again, numbers of people choked up every avenue of access, and parties
of diggers were formed to relieve one another in digging among the
ruins. There had been a hundred people in the house at the time of its
fall, there had been fifty, there had been fifteen, there had been
two. Rumour finally settled the number at two; the foreigner and Mr
Flintwinch.
The diggers dug all through the short night by flaring pipes of gas, and
on a level with the early sun, and deeper and deeper below it as it rose
into its zenith, and aslant of it as it declined, and on a level with it
again as it departed. Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and carrying away,
in carts, barrows, and baskets, went on without intermission, by night
and by day; but it was night for the second time when they found the
dirty heap of rubbish that had been the foreigner before his head had
been shivered to atoms, like so much glass, by the great beam that lay
upon him, crushing him.
Still, they had not come upon Flintwinch yet; so the sturdy digging and
shovelling and carrying away went on without intermission by night and
by day. It got about that the old house had had famous cellarage (which
indeed was true), and that Flintwinch had been in a cellar at the
moment, or had had time to escape into one, and that he was safe under
its strong arch, and even that he had been heard to cry, in hollow,
subterranean, suffocated notes, ‘Here I am!’ At the opposite extremity
of the town it was even known that the excavators had been able to open
a communication with him through a pipe, and that he had received both
soup and brandy by that channel, and that he had said with admirable
fortitude that he was All right, my lads, with the exception of his
collar-bone. But the digging and shovelling and carrying away went on
without intermission, until the ruins were all dug out, and the cellars
opened to the light; and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, all right
or all wrong, had been turned up by pick or spade.
It began then to be perceived that Flintwinch had not been there at the
time of the fall; and it began then to be perceived that he had been
rather busy elsewhere, converting securities into as much money as could
be got for them on the shortest notice, and turning to his own exclusive
account his authority to act for the Firm. Affery, remembering that the
clever one had said he would explain himself further in four-and-twenty
hours’ time, determined for her part that his taking himself off within
that period with all he could get, was the final satisfactory sum and
substance of his promised explanation; but she held her peace, devoutly
thankful to be quit of him. As it seemed reasonable to conclude that a
man who had never been buried could not be unburied, the diggers gave
him up when their task was done, and did not dig down for him into the
depths of the earth.
This was taken in ill part by a great many people, who persisted
in believing that Flintwinch was lying somewhere among the London
geological formation. Nor was their belief much shaken by repeated
intelligence which came over in course of time, that an old man who wore
the tie of his neckcloth under one ear, and who was very well known to
be an Englishman, consorted with the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of the
canals of the Hague and in the drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under the
style and designation of Mynheer von Flyntevynge.
CHAPTER 32. Going
Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg
descrying no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his enlargement,
Mr Pancks suffered desperately from self-reproaches. If it had not been
for those infallible figures which proved that Arthur, instead of pining
in imprisonment, ought to be promenading in a carriage and pair, and
that Mr Pancks, instead of being restricted to his clerkly wages, ought
to have from three to five thousand pounds of his own at his immediate
disposal, that unhappy arithmetician would probably have taken to his
bed, and there have made one of the many obscure persons who turned
their faces to the wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr
Merdle’s greatness. Solely supported by his unimpugnable calculations,
Mr Pancks led an unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his
figures about with him in his hat, and not only going over them himself
on every possible occasion, but entreating every human being he could
lay hold of to go over them with him, and observe what a clear case it
was. Down in Bleeding Heart Yard there was scarcely an inhabitant of
note to whom Mr Pancks had not imparted his demonstration, and, as
figures are catching, a kind of cyphering measles broke out in that
locality, under the influence of which the whole Yard was light-headed.
The more restless Mr Pancks grew in his mind, the more impatient he
became of the Patriarch. In their later conferences his snorting assumed
an irritable sound which boded the Patriarch no good; likewise, Mr
Pancks had on several occasions looked harder at the Patriarchal bumps
than was quite reconcilable with the fact of his not being a painter, or
a peruke-maker in search of the living model.
However, he steamed in and out of his little back Dock according as he
was wanted or not wanted in the Patriarchal presence, and business had
gone on in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard had been harrowed
by Mr Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the regular seasons; Mr Pancks
had taken all the drudgery and all the dirt of the business as _his_
share; Mr Casby had taken all the profits, all the ethereal vapour, and
all the moonshine, as his share; and, in the form of words which that
benevolent beamer generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he
twirled his fat thumbs after striking the week’s balance, ‘everything
had been satisfactory to all parties--all parties--satisfactory, sir, to
all parties.’
The Dock of the Steam-Tug, Pancks, had a leaden roof, which, frying in
the very hot sunshine, may have heated the vessel. Be that as it
may, one glowing Saturday evening, on being hailed by the lumbering
bottle-green ship, the Tug instantly came working out of the Dock in a
highly heated condition.
‘Mr Pancks,’ was the Patriarchal remark, ‘you have been remiss, you have
been remiss, sir.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ was the short rejoinder.
The Patriarchal state, always a state of calmness and composure, was
so particularly serene that evening as to be provoking. Everybody else
within the bills of mortality was hot; but the Patriarch was perfectly
cool. Everybody was thirsty, and the Patriarch was drinking. There was
a fragrance of limes or lemons about him; and he made a drink of golden
sherry, which shone in a large tumbler as if he were drinking the
evening sunshine. This was bad, but not the worst. The worst was, that
with his big blue eyes, and his polished head, and his long white hair,
and his bottle-green legs stretched out before him, terminating in his
easy shoes easily crossed at the instep, he had a radiant appearance
of having in his extensive benevolence made the drink for the human
species, while he himself wanted nothing but his own milk of human
kindness.
Wherefore, Mr Pancks said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ and put his hair
up with both hands, in a highly portentous manner.
‘I mean, Mr Pancks, that you must be sharper with the people, sharper
with the people, much sharper with the people, sir. You don’t squeeze
them. You don’t squeeze them. Your receipts are not up to the mark. You
must squeeze them, sir, or our connection will not continue to be as
satisfactory as I could wish it to be to all parties. All parties.’
‘_Don’t_ I squeeze ‘em?’ retorted Mr Pancks. ‘What else am I made for?’
‘You are made for nothing else, Mr Pancks. You are made to do your
duty, but you don’t do your duty. You are paid to squeeze, and you
must squeeze to pay.’ The Patriarch so much surprised himself by this
brilliant turn, after Dr Johnson, which he had not in the least
expected or intended, that he laughed aloud; and repeated with great
satisfaction, as he twirled his thumbs and nodded at his youthful
portrait, ‘Paid to squeeze, sir, and must squeeze to pay.’
‘Oh,’ said Pancks. ‘Anything more?’
‘Yes, sir, yes, sir. Something more. You will please, Mr Pancks, to
squeeze the Yard again, the first thing on Monday morning.’
‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘Ain’t that too soon? I squeezed it dry to-day.’
‘Nonsense, sir. Not near the mark, not near the mark.’
‘Oh!’ said Pancks, watching him as he benevolently gulped down a good
draught of his mixture. ‘Anything more?’
‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, something more. I am not at all pleased, Mr Pancks,
with my daughter; not at all pleased. Besides calling much too often
to inquire for Mrs Clennam, Mrs Clennam, who is not just now in
circumstances that are by any means calculated to--to be satisfactory to
all parties, she goes, Mr Pancks, unless I am much deceived, to inquire
for Mr Clennam in jail. In jail.’
‘He’s laid up, you know,’ said Pancks. ‘Perhaps it’s kind.’
‘Pooh, pooh, Mr Pancks. She has nothing to do with that, nothing to do
with that. I can’t allow it. Let him pay his debts and come out, come
out; pay his debts, and come out.’
Although Mr Pancks’s hair was standing up like strong wire, he gave it
another double-handed impulse in the perpendicular direction, and smiled
at his proprietor in a most hideous manner.
‘You will please to mention to my daughter, Mr Pancks, that I can’t
allow it, can’t allow it,’ said the Patriarch blandly.
‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘You couldn’t mention it yourself?’
‘No, sir, no; you are paid to mention it,’ the blundering old booby
could not resist the temptation of trying it again, ‘and you must
mention it to pay, mention it to pay.’
‘Oh!’ said Pancks. ‘Anything more?’
‘Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr Pancks, that you yourself are too often
and too much in that direction, that direction. I recommend you, Mr
Pancks, to dismiss from your attention both your own losses and other
people’s losses, and to mind your business, mind your business.’
Mr Pancks acknowledged this recommendation with such an extraordinarily
abrupt, short, and loud utterance of the monosyllable ‘Oh!’ that even
the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue eyes in something of a hurry, to
look at him. Mr Pancks, with a sniff of corresponding intensity, then
added, ‘Anything more?’
‘Not at present, sir, not at present. I am going,’ said the Patriarch,
finishing his mixture, and rising with an amiable air, ‘to take a little
stroll, a little stroll. Perhaps I shall find you here when I come back.
If not, sir, duty, duty; squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, on Monday; squeeze
on Monday!’
Mr Pancks, after another stiffening of his hair, looked on at the
Patriarchal assumption of the broad-brimmed hat, with a momentary
appearance of indecision contending with a sense of injury. He was also
hotter than at first, and breathed harder. But he suffered Mr Casby to
go out, without offering any further remark, and then took a peep at
him over the little green window-blinds. ‘I thought so,’ he observed. ‘I
knew where you were bound to. Good!’ He then steamed back to his Dock,
put it carefully in order, took down his hat, looked round the Dock,
said ‘Good-bye!’ and puffed away on his own account. He steered straight
for Mrs Plornish’s end of Bleeding Heart Yard, and arrived there, at the
top of the steps, hotter than ever.
At the top of the steps, resisting Mrs Plornish’s invitations to come