BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY - CHAPTER 25 Conspirators and Others

The private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville, where he

lodged on the second-floor of a professional gentleman in an

extremely small way, who had an inner-door within the street door,

poised on a spring and starting open with a click like a trap; and

who wrote up in the fan-light, RUGG, GENERAL AGENT, ACCOUNTANT,

DEBTS RECOVERED.

This scroll, majestic in its severe simplicity, illuminated a

little slip of front garden abutting on the thirsty high-road,

where a few of the dustiest of leaves hung their dismal heads and

led a life of choking. A professor of writing occupied the first-

floor, and enlivened the garden railings with glass-cases

containing choice examples of what his pupils had been before six

lessons and while the whole of his young family shook the table,

and what they had become after six lessons when the young family

was under restraint. The tenancy of Mr Pancks was limited to one

airy bedroom; he covenanting and agreeing with Mr Rugg his

landlord, that in consideration of a certain scale of payments

accurately defined, and on certain verbal notice duly given, he

should be at liberty to elect to share the Sunday breakfast,

dinner, tea, or supper, or each or any or all of those repasts or

meals of Mr and Miss Rugg (his daughter) in the back-parlour.

Miss Rugg was a lady of a little property which she had acquired,

together with much distinction in the neighbourhood, by having her

heart severely lacerated and her feelings mangled by a middle-aged

baker resident in the vicinity, against whom she had, by the agency

of Mr Rugg, found it necessary to proceed at law to recover damages

for a breach of promise of marriage. The baker having been, by the

counsel for Miss Rugg, witheringly denounced on that occasion up to

the full amount of twenty guineas, at the rate of about eighteen-

pence an epithet, and having been cast in corresponding damages,

still suffered occasional persecution from the youth of

Pentonville. But Miss Rugg, environed by the majesty of the law,

and having her damages invested in the public securities, was

regarded with consideration.

In the society of Mr Rugg, who had a round white visage, as if all

his blushes had been drawn out of him long ago, and who had a

ragged yellow head like a worn-out hearth broom; and in the society

of Miss Rugg, who had little nankeen spots, like shirt buttons, all

over her face, and whose own yellow tresses were rather scrubby

than luxuriant; Mr Pancks had usually dined on Sundays for some few

years, and had twice a week, or so, enjoyed an evening collation of

bread, Dutch cheese, and porter. Mr Pancks was one of the very few

marriageable men for whom Miss Rugg had no terrors, the argument

with which he reassured himself being twofold; that is to say,

firstly, 'that it wouldn't do twice,' and secondly, 'that he wasn't

worth it.' Fortified within this double armour, Mr Pancks snorted

at Miss Rugg on easy terms.

Up to this time, Mr Pancks had transacted little or no business at

his quarters in Pentonville, except in the sleeping line; but now

that he had become a fortune-teller, he was often closeted after

midnight with Mr Rugg in his little front-parlour office, and even

after those untimely hours, burnt tallow in his bed-room. Though

his duties as his proprietor's grubber were in no wise lessened;

and though that service bore no greater resemblance to a bed of

roses than was to be discovered in its many thorns; some new branch

of industry made a constant demand upon him. When he cast off the

Patriarch at night, it was only to take an anonymous craft in tow,

and labour away afresh in other waters.

The advance from a personal acquaintance with the elder Mr Chivery

to an introduction to his amiable wife and disconsolate son, may

have been easy; but easy or not, Mr Pancks soon made it. He

nestled in the bosom of the tobacco business within a week or two

after his first appearance in the College, and particularly

addressed himself to the cultivation of a good understanding with

Young John. In this endeavour he so prospered as to lure that

pining shepherd forth from the groves, and tempt him to undertake

mysterious missions; on which he began to disappear at uncertain

intervals for as long a space as two or three days together. The

prudent Mrs Chivery, who wondered greatly at this change, would

have protested against it as detrimental to the Highland

typification on the doorpost but for two forcible reasons; one,

that her John was roused to take strong interest in the business

which these starts were supposed to advance--and this she held to

be good for his drooping spirits; the other, that Mr Pancks

confidentially agreed to pay her, for the occupation of her son's

time, at the handsome rate of seven and sixpence per day. The

proposal originated with himself, and was couched in the pithy

terms, 'If your John is weak enough, ma'am, not to take it, that is

no reason why you should be, don't you see? So, quite between

ourselves, ma'am, business being business, here it is!'

What Mr Chivery thought of these things, or how much or how little

he knew about them, was never gathered from himself. It has been

already remarked that he was a man of few words; and it may be here

observed that he had imbibed a professional habit of locking

everything up. He locked himself up as carefully as he locked up

the Marshalsea debtors. Even his custom of bolting his meals may

have been a part of an uniform whole; but there is no question,

that, as to all other purposes, he kept his mouth as he kept the

Marshalsea door. He never opened it without occasion. When it was

necessary to let anything out, he opened it a little way, held it

open just as long as sufficed for the purpose, and locked it again.

Even as he would be sparing of his trouble at the Marshalsea door,

and would keep a visitor who wanted to go out, waiting for a few

moments if he saw another visitor coming down the yard, so that one

turn of the key should suffice for both, similarly he would often

reserve a remark if he perceived another on its way to his lips,

and would deliver himself of the two together. As to any key to

his inner knowledge being to be found in his face, the Marshalsea

key was as legible as an index to the individual characters and

histories upon which it was turned.

That Mr Pancks should be moved to invite any one to dinner at

Pentonville, was an unprecedented fact in his calendar. But he

invited Young John to dinner, and even brought him within range of

the dangerous (because expensive) fascinations of Miss Rugg. The

banquet was appointed for a Sunday, and Miss Rugg with her own

hands stuffed a leg of mutton with oysters on the occasion, and

sent it to the baker's--not THE baker's but an opposition

establishment. Provision of oranges, apples, and nuts was also

made. And rum was brought home by Mr Pancks on Saturday night, to

gladden the visitor's heart.

The store of creature comforts was not the chief part of the

visitor's reception. Its special feature was a foregone family

confidence and sympathy. When Young John appeared at half-past one

without the ivory hand and waistcoat of golden sprigs, the sun

shorn of his beams by disastrous clouds, Mr Pancks presented him to

the yellow-haired Ruggs as the young man he had so often mentioned

who loved Miss Dorrit.

'I am glad,' said Mr Rugg, challenging him specially in that

character, 'to have the distinguished gratification of making your

acquaintance, sir. Your feelings do you honour. You are young;

may you never outlive your feelings! If I was to outlive my own

feelings, sir,' said Mr Rugg, who was a man of many words, and was

considered to possess a remarkably good address; 'if I was to

outlive my own feelings, I'd leave fifty pound in my will to the

man who would put me out of existence.'

Miss Rugg heaved a sigh.

'My daughter, sir,' said Mr Rugg. 'Anastatia, you are no stranger

to the state of this young man's affections. My daughter has had

her trials, sir'--Mr Rugg might have used the word more pointedly

in the singular number--'and she can feel for you.'

Young John, almost overwhelmed by the touching nature of this

greeting, professed himself to that effect.

'What I envy you, sir, is,' said Mr Rugg, 'allow me to take your

hat--we are rather short of pegs--I'll put it in the corner, nobody

will tread on it there--What I envy you, sir, is the luxury of your

own feelings. I belong to a profession in which that luxury is

sometimes denied us.'

Young John replied, with acknowledgments, that he only hoped he did

what was right, and what showed how entirely he was devoted to Miss

Dorrit. He wished to be unselfish; and he hoped he was. He wished

to do anything as laid in his power to serve Miss Dorrit,

altogether putting himself out of sight; and he hoped he did. It

was but little that he could do, but he hoped he did it.

'Sir,' said Mr Rugg, taking him by the hand, 'you are a young man

that it does one good to come across. You are a young man that I

should like to put in the witness-box, to humanise the minds of the

legal profession. I hope you have brought your appetite with you,

and intend to play a good knife and fork?'

'Thank you, sir,' returned Young John, 'I don't eat much at

present.'

Mr Rugg drew him a little apart. 'My daughter's case, sir,' said

he, 'at the time when, in vindication of her outraged feelings and

her sex, she became the plaintiff in Rugg and Bawkins. I suppose

I could have put it in evidence, Mr Chivery, if I had thought it

worth my while, that the amount of solid sustenance my daughter

consumed at that period did not exceed ten ounces per week.'

'I think I go a little beyond that, sir,' returned the other,

hesitating, as if he confessed it with some shame.

'But in your case there's no fiend in human form,' said Mr Rugg,

with argumentative smile and action of hand. 'Observe, Mr Chivery!

No fiend in human form!'

'No, sir, certainly,' Young John added with simplicity, 'I should

be very sorry if there was.'

'The sentiment,' said Mr Rugg, 'is what I should have expected from

your known principles. It would affect my daughter greatly, sir,

if she heard it. As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she didn't

hear it. Mr Pancks, on this occasion, pray face me. My dear, face

Mr Chivery. For what we are going to receive, may we (and Miss

Dorrit) be truly thankful!'

But for a grave waggishness in Mr Rugg's manner of delivering this

introduction to the feast, it might have appeared that Miss Dorrit

was expected to be one of the company. Pancks recognised the sally

in his usual way, and took in his provender in his usual way. Miss

Rugg, perhaps making up some of her arrears, likewise took very

kindly to the mutton, and it rapidly diminished to the bone. A

bread-and-butter pudding entirely disappeared, and a considerable

amount of cheese and radishes vanished by the same means. Then

came the dessert.

Then also, and before the broaching of the rum and water, came Mr

Pancks's note-book. The ensuing business proceedings were brief

but curious, and rather in the nature of a conspiracy. Mr Pancks

looked over his note-book, which was now getting full, studiously;

and picked out little extracts, which he wrote on separate slips of

paper on the table; Mr Rugg, in the meanwhile, looking at him with

close attention, and Young John losing his uncollected eye in mists

of meditation. When Mr Pancks, who supported the character of

chief conspirator, had completed his extracts, he looked them over,

corrected them, put up his note-book, and held them like a hand at

cards.

'Now, there's a churchyard in Bedfordshire,' said Pancks. 'Who

takes it?'

'I'll take it, sir,' returned Mr Rugg, 'if no one bids.'

Mr Pancks dealt him his card, and looked at his hand again.

'Now, there's an Enquiry in York,' said Pancks. 'Who takes it?'

'I'm not good for York,' said Mr Rugg.

'Then perhaps,' pursued Pancks, 'you'll be so obliging, John

Chivery?' Young John assenting, Pancks dealt him his card, and

consulted his hand again.

'There's a Church in London; I may as well take that. And a Family

Bible; I may as well take that, too. That's two to me. Two to

me,' repeated Pancks, breathing hard over his cards. 'Here's a

Clerk at Durham for you, John, and an old seafaring gentleman at

Dunstable for you, Mr Rugg. Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me.

Here's a Stone; three to me. And a Still-born Baby; four to me.

And all, for the present, told.'

When he had thus disposed of his cards, all being done very quietly

and in a suppressed tone, Mr Pancks puffed his way into his own

breast-pocket and tugged out a canvas bag; from which, with a

sparing hand, he told forth money for travelling expenses in two

little portions. 'Cash goes out fast,' he said anxiously, as he

pushed a portion to each of his male companions, 'very fast.'

'I can only assure you, Mr Pancks,' said Young John, 'that I deeply

regret my circumstances being such that I can't afford to pay my

own charges, or that it's not advisable to allow me the time

necessary for my doing the distances on foot; because nothing would

give me greater satisfaction than to walk myself off my legs

without fee or reward.'

This young man's disinterestedness appeared so very ludicrous in

the eyes of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to effect a precipitate

retirement from the company, and to sit upon the stairs until she

had had her laugh out. Meanwhile Mr Pancks, looking, not without

some pity, at Young John, slowly and thoughtfully twisted up his

canvas bag as if he were wringing its neck. The lady, returning as

he restored it to his pocket, mixed rum and water for the party,

not forgetting her fair self, and handed to every one his glass.

When all were supplied, Mr Rugg rose, and silently holding out his

glass at arm's length above the centre of the table, by that

gesture invited the other three to add theirs, and to unite in a

general conspiratorial clink. The ceremony was effective up to a

certain point, and would have been wholly so throughout, if Miss

Rugg, as she raised her glass to her lips in completion of it, had

not happened to look at Young John; when she was again so overcome

by the contemptible comicality of his disinterestedness as to

splutter some ambrosial drops of rum and water around, and withdraw

in confusion.

Such was the dinner without precedent, given by Pancks at

Pentonville; and such was the busy and strange life Pancks led.

The only waking moments at which he appeared to relax from his

cares, and to recreate himself by going anywhere or saying anything

without a pervading object, were when he showed a dawning interest

in the lame foreigner with the stick, down Bleeding Heart Yard.

The foreigner, by name John Baptist Cavalletto--they called him Mr

Baptist in the Yard--was such a chirping, easy, hopeful little

fellow, that his attraction for Pancks was probably in the force of

contrast. Solitary, weak, and scantily acquainted with the most

necessary words of the only language in which he could communicate

with the people about him, he went with the stream of his fortunes,

in a brisk way that was new in those parts. With little to eat,

and less to drink, and nothing to wear but what he wore upon him,

or had brought tied up in one of the smallest bundles that ever

were seen, he put as bright a face upon it as if he were in the

most flourishing circumstances when he first hobbled up and down

the Yard, humbly propitiating the general good-will with his white

teeth.

It was uphill work for a foreigner, lame or sound, to make his way

with the Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, they were vaguely

persuaded that every foreigner had a knife about him; in the

second, they held it to be a sound constitutional national axiom

that he ought to go home to his own country. They never thought of

inquiring how many of their own countrymen would be returned upon

their hands from divers parts of the world, if the principle were

generally recognised; they considered it particularly and

peculiarly British. In the third place, they had a notion that it

was a sort of Divine visitation upon a foreigner that he was not an

Englishman, and that all kinds of calamities happened to his

country because it did things that England did not, and did not do

things that England did. In this belief, to be sure, they had long

been carefully trained by the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings, who

were always proclaiming to them, officially, that no country which

failed to submit itself to those two large families could possibly

hope to be under the protection of Providence; and who, when they

believed it, disparaged them in private as the most prejudiced

people under the sun.

This, therefore, might be called a political position of the

Bleeding Hearts; but they entertained other objections to having

foreigners in the Yard. They believed that foreigners were always

badly off; and though they were as ill off themselves as they could

desire to be, that did not diminish the force of the objection.

They believed that foreigners were dragooned and bayoneted; and

though they certainly got their own skulls promptly fractured if

they showed any ill-humour, still it was with a blunt instrument,

and that didn't count. They believed that foreigners were always

immoral; and though they had an occasional assize at home, and now

and then a divorce case or so, that had nothing to do with it.

They believed that foreigners had no independent spirit, as never

being escorted to the poll in droves by Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle,

with colours flying and the tune of Rule Britannia playing. Not to

be tedious, they had many other beliefs of a similar kind.

Against these obstacles, the lame foreigner with the stick had to

make head as well as he could; not absolutely single-handed,

because Mr Arthur Clennam had recommended him to the Plornishes (he

lived at the top of the same house), but still at heavy odds.

However, the Bleeding Hearts were kind hearts; and when they saw

the little fellow cheerily limping about with a good-humoured face,

doing no harm, drawing no knives, committing no outrageous

immoralities, living chiefly on farinaceous and milk diet, and

playing with Mrs Plornish's children of an evening, they began to

think that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still

it would be hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began

to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,'

but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his

lively gestures and his childish English--more, because he didn't

mind it, and laughed too. They spoke to him in very loud voices as

if he were stone deaf. They constructed sentences, by way of

teaching him the language in its purity, such as were addressed by

the savages to Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robinson Crusoe. Mrs

Plornish was particularly ingenious in this art; and attained so

much celebrity for saying 'Me ope you leg well soon,' that it was

considered in the Yard but a very short remove indeed from speaking

Italian. Even Mrs Plornish herself began to think that she had a

natural call towards that language. As he became more popular,

household objects were brought into requisition for his instruction

in a copious vocabulary; and whenever he appeared in the Yard

ladies would fly out at their doors crying 'Mr Baptist--tea-pot!'

'Mr Baptist--dust-pan!' 'Mr Baptist--flour-dredger!' 'Mr

Baptist--coffee-biggin!' At the same time exhibiting those

articles, and penetrating him with a sense of the appalling

difficulties of the Anglo-Saxon tongue.

It was in this stage of his progress, and in about the third week

of his occupation, that Mr Pancks's fancy became attracted by the

little man. Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs Plornish as

interpreter, he found Mr Baptist with no furniture but his bed on

the ground, a table, and a chair, carving with the aid of a few

simple tools, in the blithest way possible.

'Now, old chap,' said Mr Pancks, 'pay up!'

He had his money ready, folded in a scrap of paper, and laughingly

handed it in; then with a free action, threw out as many fingers of

his right hand as there were shillings, and made a cut crosswise in

the air for an odd sixpence.

'Oh!' said Mr Pancks, watching him, wonderingly. 'That's it, is

it? You're a quick customer. It's all right. I didn't expect to

receive it, though.'

Mrs Plornish here interposed with great condescension, and

explained to Mr Baptist. 'E please. E glad get money.'

The little man smiled and nodded. His bright face seemed

uncommonly attractive to Mr Pancks. 'How's he getting on in his

limb?' he asked Mrs Plornish.

'Oh, he's a deal better, sir,' said Mrs Plornish. 'We expect next

week he'll be able to leave off his stick entirely.' (The

opportunity being too favourable to be lost, Mrs Plornish displayed

her great accomplishment by explaining with pardonable pride to Mr

Baptist, 'E ope you leg well soon.')

'He's a merry fellow, too,' said Mr Pancks, admiring him as if he

were a mechanical toy. 'How does he live?'

'Why, sir,' rejoined Mrs Plornish, 'he turns out to have quite a

power of carving them flowers that you see him at now.' (Mr

Baptist, watching their faces as they spoke, held up his work. Mrs

Plornish interpreted in her Italian manner, on behalf of Mr Pancks,

'E please. Double good!')

'Can he live by that?' asked Mr Pancks.

'He can live on very little, sir, and it is expected as he will be

able, in time, to make a very good living. Mr Clennam got it him

to do, and gives him odd jobs besides in at the Works next door--

makes 'em for him, in short, when he knows he wants 'em.'

'And what does he do with himself, now, when he ain't hard at it?'

said Mr Pancks.

'Why, not much as yet, sir, on accounts I suppose of not being able

to walk much; but he goes about the Yard, and he chats without

particular understanding or being understood, and he plays with the

children, and he sits in the sun--he'll sit down anywhere, as if it

was an arm-chair--and he'll sing, and he'll laugh!'

'Laugh!' echoed Mr Pancks. 'He looks to me as if every tooth in

his head was always laughing.'

'But whenever he gets to the top of the steps at t'other end of the

Yard,' said Mrs Plornish, 'he'll peep out in the curiousest way!

So that some of us thinks he's peeping out towards where his own

country is, and some of us thinks he's looking for somebody he

don't want to see, and some of us don't know what to think.'

Mr Baptist seemed to have a general understanding of what she said;

or perhaps his quickness caught and applied her slight action of

peeping. In any case he closed his eyes and tossed his head with

the air of a man who had sufficient reasons for what he did, and

said in his own tongue, it didn't matter. Altro!

'What's Altro?' said Pancks.

'Hem! It's a sort of a general kind of expression, sir,' said Mrs

Plornish.

'Is it?' said Pancks. 'Why, then Altro to you, old chap. Good

afternoon. Altro!'

Mr Baptist in his vivacious way repeating the word several times,

Mr Pancks in his duller way gave it him back once. From that time

it became a frequent custom with Pancks the gipsy, as he went home

jaded at night, to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, go quietly up

the stairs, look in at Mr Baptist's door, and, finding him in his

room, to say, 'Hallo, old chap! Altro!' To which Mr Baptist would

reply with innumerable bright nods and smiles, 'Altro, signore,

altro, altro, altro!' After this highly condensed conversation, Mr

Pancks would go his way with an appearance of being lightened and

refreshed.

Read next: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 26 Nobody's State of Mind

Read previous: BOOK THE FIRST: POVERTY#CHAPTER 24 Fortune-Telling

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