Mr Pancks

“ 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 ”

“ This mound of meekness, this lump of love, this bottle-green smiler, this is your driver!’ said Pancks. ‘If you want to see the man who would flay you alive—here he is! Don’t look for him in me, at thirty shillings a week, but look for him in Casby, at I don’t know how much a year!’
‘Good!’ cried several voices. ‘Hear Mr Pancks!’
‘Hear Mr Pancks?’ cried that gentleman (after repeating the popular performance) . ‘Yes, I should think so! It’s almost time to hear Mr Pancks. Mr Pancks has come down into the Yard to-night on purpose that you should hear him. Pancks is only the Works ”

“ He was out of breath by that time, as he might well be, and his heart seemed to jerk faster than the little shop-bell, as it quivered and jingled behind him with his hasty shutting of the door.
‘Hallo, old chap!’ said Mr Pancks. ‘Altro, old boy! What’s the matter?’
Mr Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, understood English now almost as well as Mr Pancks himself, and could speak it very well too. Nevertheless, Mrs Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in that accomplishment of hers which made her all but Italian, stepped in as interpreter. ”

“ Mr Pancks did not? No, Mr Pancks did not. Did Mr Pancks know anything about her?
‘I expect,’ rejoined that worthy, ‘I know as much about her as she knows about herself. She is somebody’s child—anybody’s, nobody’s. Put her in a room in London here with any six people old enough to be her parents, and her parents may be there for anything she knows. They may be in any house she sees, they may be in any churchyard she passes, she may run against ‘em in any street, she may make chance acquaintance of ‘em at any time ”

“ In this dilemma, Mr Pancks, whose resources appeared equal to any emergency in the Patriarchal waters, slipped on his hat, slipped out at the counting-house door, and slipped in again a moment afterwards with an artificial freshness upon him, as if he had been in the country for some weeks. ‘Why, bless my heart, ma’am!’ said Mr Pancks, rubbing up his hair in great astonishment, ‘is that you? How do you do, ma’am? You are looking charming to-day! I am delighted to see you. Favour me with your arm, ma’am ”

“ Besides that Mr Pancks took every opportunity afforded him in Mr Casby’s house of significantly glancing at her and snorting at her—which was not much, after what he had done already—he began to pervade her daily life. She saw him in the street, constantly. When she went to Mr Casby’s, he was always there. When she went to Mrs Clennam’s, he came there on any pretence, as if to keep her in his sight. A week had not gone by, when she found him to her astonishment in the Lodge one night, conversing with the turnkey on duty, and to all appearance one of his familiar companions. ”

“ Better for our sakes, and better for yours, too. You wouldn’t have to worry no one, then, sir. You wouldn’t have to worry us, and you wouldn’t have to worry yourself. You’d be easier in your own mind, sir, and you’d leave others easier, too, you would, if you were Mr Merdle.’
Mr Pancks, in whom these impersonal compliments produced an irresistible sheepishness, never rallied after such a charge. He could only bite his nails and puff away to the next Defaulter. ”

“ You Pancks,’ said Mrs Clennam, bending her brows upon him angrily, ‘you Casby’s clerk! Attend to your employer’s business and your own. Go. And take that other man with you.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ returned Mr Pancks, ‘I am glad to say I see no objection to our both retiring. We have done all we undertook to do for Mr Clennam. His constant anxiety has been (and it grew worse upon him when he became a prisoner) , that this agreeable gentleman should be brought back here to the place from which he slipped away. ”

“ They don’t mean to be, but they’re right.’
‘Right in sharing Cavalletto’s inclination to speculate with Mr Merdle?’
‘Per-fectly, sir,’ said Pancks. ‘I’ve gone into it. I’ve made the calculations. I’ve worked it. They’re safe and genuine.’ Relieved by having got to this, Mr Pancks took as long a pull as his lungs would permit at his Eastern pipe, and looked sagaciously and steadily at Clennam while inhaling and exhaling too.
In those moments, Mr Pancks began to give out the dangerous infection with which he was laden. It is the manner of communicating these diseases ”

“ Mr Pancks brought his friend and professional adviser, Mr Rugg, back with him. Mr Rugg had had such ample experience, on the road, of Mr Pancks’s being at that present in an irrational state of mind, that he opened his professional mediation by requesting that gentleman to take himself out of the way. Mr Pancks, crushed and submissive, obeyed.
‘He is not unlike what my daughter was, sir, when we began the Breach of Promise action of Rugg and Bawkins, in which she was Plaintiff,’ said Mr Rugg. ‘He takes too strong and direct an interest in the case. His feelings are worked upon. ”

“ The last of the Patriarchs had always been a mighty eater, and he disposed of an immense quantity of solid food with the benignity of a good soul who was feeding some one else. Mr Pancks, who was always in a hurry, and who referred at intervals to a little dirty notebook which he kept beside him (perhaps containing the names of the defaulters he meant to look up by way of dessert) , took in his victuals much as if he were coaling; with a good deal of noise, a good deal of dropping about, and a puff and a snort occasionally, as if he were nearly ready to steam away. ”

“ This, Arthur received as an assurance that he might implicitly rely on Pancks, if he ever should come to need assistance; either in any of the matters of which they had spoken that night, or any other subject that could in any way affect himself.
At intervals all next day, and even while his attention was fixed on other things, he thought of Mr Pancks’s investment of his thousand pounds, and of his having ‘looked into it.’ He thought of Mr Pancks’s being so sanguine in this matter, and of his not being usually of a sanguine character. ”

“ Then, what did you do?’
‘Then,’ answered Pancks, ‘I borrowed a sum of my proprietor.’
‘Of Mr Casby?’ said Clennam. ‘He’s a fine old fellow.’
‘Noble old boy; an’t he?’ said Mr Pancks, entering on a series of the dryest snorts. ‘Generous old buck. Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old buck. Benevolent old boy! Twenty per cent. I engaged to pay him, sir. But we never do business for less at our shop.’
Arthur felt an awkward consciousness of having, in his exultant condition, been a little premature. ”

“ I an’t an agreeable style of chap, I know that very well.’
The auditory were divided on this point; its more uncompromising members crying, ‘No, you are not,’ and its politer materials, ‘Yes, you are.’
‘I am, in general,’ said Mr Pancks, ‘a dry, uncomfortable, dreary Plodder and Grubber. That’s your humble servant. There’s his full-length portrait, painted by himself and presented to you, warranted a likeness! But what’s a man to be, with such a man as this for his Proprietor? What can be expected of him? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mr Pancks courageously nodded his head and said, ‘All right, ma’am.’ But the effect of this mysterious communication upon Clennam was absolutely to frighten him. And another circumstance invested this old lady with peculiar terrors. Though she was always staring, she never acknowledged that she saw any individual. ”

“ What are you up to? That’s what you say to a man of that sort; and if you didn’t say it, more shame for you!’ Mr Pancks here made a singular and startling noise, produced by a strong blowing effort in the region of the nose, unattended by any result but that acoustic one.
‘You have some extent of such property about the east and north-east here, I believe?’ said Clennam, doubtful which of the two to address.
‘Oh, pretty well,’ said Pancks. ‘You’re not particular to east or north-east, any point of the compass will do for you. What you want is a good investment and a quick return. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He has been in the hospital, I believe?’
‘Yes. Through having met with an accident. He is only just now discharged.’
‘It’s pauperising a man, sir, I have been shown, to let him into a hospital?’ said Pancks. And again blew off that remarkable sound.
‘I have been shown so too,’ said Clennam, coldly.
Mr Pancks, being by that time quite ready for a start, got under steam in a moment, and, without any other signal or ceremony, was snorting down the step-ladder and working into Bleeding Heart Yard, before he seemed to be well out of the counting-house. ”

“ 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! ”

“ So devoted a man of business as you are—eh?’
For Mr Pancks had suddenly made that blowing effort with unusual force.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Pancks.
‘So devoted a man of business as yourself has a perfect understanding of a fair bargain. I wish to make a fair bargain with you, that you shall enlighten me concerning the Dorrit family when you have it in your power, as I have enlightened you. It may not give you a very flattering idea of my business habits, that I failed to make my terms beforehand,’ continued Clennam; ‘but I prefer to make them a point of honour. ”

“ How it had at length become plain to Mr Pancks that he had made a real discovery of the heir-at-law to a great fortune, and that his discovery had but to be ripened to legal fulness and perfection. How he had, thereupon, sworn his landlord, Mr Rugg, to secrecy in a solemn manner, and taken him into Moleing partnership. How they had employed John Chivery as their sole clerk and agent, seeing to whom he was devoted. And how, until the present hour, when authorities mighty in the Bank and learned in the law declared their successful labours ended, they had confided in no other human being. ”

“ Keep me always at it, and I’ll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country.’
When they had walked a little further in silence, Clennam said: ‘Have you no taste for anything, Mr Pancks?’
‘What’s taste?’ drily retorted Pancks.
‘Let us say inclination.’
‘I have an inclination to get money, sir,’ said Pancks, ‘if you will show me how.’ He blew off that sound again, and it occurred to his companion for the first time that it was his way of laughing. He was a singular man in all respects ”

“ You couldn’t do it when your Uncle George was living; much less when he’s dead.’
Mr Pancks was not slow to reply, with his usual calmness, ‘Indeed, ma’am! Bless my soul! I’m surprised to hear it.’ Despite his presence of mind, however, the speech of Mr F.‘s Aunt produced a depressing effect on the little assembly; firstly, because it was impossible to disguise that Clennam’s unoffending head was the particular temple of reason depreciated ”

“ 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. ”