第 120 页

door.

A footman of rainbow hues, in the public eye, was sitting up for his

master--that is to say, was fast asleep in the kitchen over a couple

of candles and a newspaper, demonstrating the great accumulation of

mathematical odds against the probabilities of a house being set on fire

by accident When this serving man was roused, Physician had still to

await the rousing of the Chief Butler. At last that noble creature came

into the dining-room in a flannel gown and list shoes; but with his

cravat on, and a Chief Butler all over. It was morning now. Physician

had opened the shutters of one window while waiting, that he might see

the light. 'Mrs Merdle's maid must be called, and told to get Mrs Merdle

up, and prepare her as gently as she can to see me. I have dreadful news

to break to her.'

Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. The latter, who had a candle in his

hand, called his man to take it away. Then he approached the window with

dignity; looking on at Physician's news exactly as he had looked on at

the dinners in that very room.

'Mr Merdle is dead.'

'I should wish,' said the Chief Butler, 'to give a month's notice.'

'Mr Merdle has destroyed himself.'

'Sir,' said the Chief Butler, 'that is very unpleasant to the feelings

of one in my position, as calculated to awaken prejudice; and I should

wish to leave immediately.'

'If you are not shocked, are you not surprised, man?' demanded the

Physician, warmly.

The Chief Butler, erect and calm, replied in these memorable words.

'Sir, Mr Merdle never was the gentleman, and no ungentlemanly act on

Mr Merdle's part would surprise me. Is there anybody else I can send to

you, or any other directions I can give before I leave, respecting what

you would wish to be done?'

When Physician, after discharging himself of his trust up-stairs,

rejoined Bar in the street, he said no more of his interview with Mrs

Merdle than that he had not yet told her all, but that what he had told

her she had borne pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure in the street

to the construction of a most ingenious man-trap for catching the whole

of his jury at a blow; having got that matter settled in his mind,

it was lucid on the late catastrophe, and they walked home slowly,

discussing it in every bearing. Before parting at the Physician's door,

they both looked up at the sunny morning sky, into which the smoke of a

few early fires and the breath and voices of a few early stirrers were

peacefully rising, and then looked round upon the immense city, and

said, if all those hundreds and thousands of beggared people who were

yet asleep could only know, as they two spoke, the ruin that impended

over them, what a fearful cry against one miserable soul would go up to

Heaven!

The report that the great man was dead, got about with astonishing

rapidity. At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were

known, and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of

Light to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from

infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from his

grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every morning

of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the explosion of

important veins in his body after the manner of fireworks, he had had

something the matter with his lungs, he had had something the matter

with his heart, he had had something the matter with his brain. Five

hundred people who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the

whole subject, believed before they had done breakfast, that they

privately and personally knew Physician to have said to Mr Merdle, 'You

must expect to go out, some day, like the snuff of a candle;' and that

they knew Mr Merdle to have said to Physician, 'A man can die but once.'

By about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the

brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve the

something had been distinctly ascertained to be 'Pressure.'

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and seemed to

make everybody so comfortable, that it might have lasted all day but for

Bar's having taken the real state of the case into Court at half-past

nine. This led to its beginning to be currently whispered all over

London by about one, that Mr Merdle had killed himself. Pressure,

however, so far from being overthrown by the discovery, became a greater

favourite than ever. There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in

every street. All the people who had tried to make money and had not

been able to do it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote

yourself to the pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. The idle people

improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what you

brought yourself to by work, work, work! You persisted in working, you

overdid it. Pressure came on, and you were done for! This consideration

was very potent in many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the

young clerks and partners who had never been in the slightest danger

of overdoing it. These, one and all, declared, quite piously, that they

hoped they would never forget the warning as long as they lived, and

that their conduct might be so regulated as to keep off Pressure, and

preserve them, a comfort to their friends, for many years.

But, at about the time of High 'Change, Pressure began to wane, and

appalling whispers to circulate, east, west, north, and south. At first

they were faint, and went no further than a doubt whether Mr Merdle's

wealth would be found to be as vast as had been supposed; whether there

might not be a temporary difficulty in 'realising' it; whether there

might not even be a temporary suspension (say a month or so), on the

part of the wonderful Bank. As the whispers became louder, which they

did from that time every minute, they became more threatening. He had

sprung from nothing, by no natural growth or process that any one could

account for; he had been, after all, a low, ignorant fellow; he had been

a down-looking man, and no one had ever been able to catch his eye;

he had been taken up by all sorts of people in quite an unaccountable

manner; he had never had any money of his own, his ventures had been

utterly reckless, and his expenditure had been most enormous. In steady

progression, as the day declined, the talk rose in sound and purpose.

He had left a letter at the Baths addressed to his physician, and his

physician had got the letter, and the letter would be produced at the

Inquest on the morrow, and it would fall like a thunderbolt upon the

multitude he had deluded. Numbers of men in every profession and trade

would be blighted by his insolvency; old people who had been in easy

circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for

their trust in him but the workhouse; legions of women and children

would have their whole future desolated by the hand of this mighty

scoundrel. Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to

have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes; every servile

worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would

have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed

louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after

edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came,

as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the

gallery above the Dome of St Paul's would have perceived the night air

to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with

every form of execration.

For by that time it was known that the late Mr Merdle's complaint

had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such

wide-spread adulation, the sitter at great men's feasts, the roc's egg

of great ladies' assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller

of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister

for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more

acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been

bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon

all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to

testify for them, during two centuries at least--he, the shining wonder,

the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts,

until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and

disappeared--was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that

ever cheated the gallows.

CHAPTER 26. Reaping the Whirlwind

With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr Pancks

rushed into Arthur Clennam's Counting-house. The Inquest was over, the

letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of

straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical

ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates,

and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing

but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing

friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy

spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers floating dead, and

sharks.

The usual diligence and order of the Counting-house at the Works were

overthrown. Unopened letters and unsorted papers lay strewn about the

desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed

hope, the master of the Counting-house stood idle in his usual place,

with his arms crossed on the desk, and his head bowed down upon them.

Mr Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr

Pancks's arms were on the desk, and Mr Pancks's head was bowed down

upon them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and

silent, with the width of the little room between them. Mr Pancks was

the first to lift up his head and speak.

'I persuaded you to it, Mr Clennam. I know it. Say what you will.

You can't say more to me than I say to myself. You can't say more than I

deserve.'

'O, Pancks, Pancks!' returned Clennam, 'don't speak of deserving. What

do I myself deserve!'

'Better luck,' said Pancks.

'I,' pursued Clennam, without attending to him, 'who have ruined my

partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined Doyce! The honest, self-helpful,

indefatigable old man who has worked his way all through his life;

the man who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has

brought out of it such a good and hopeful nature; the man I have felt

so much for, and meant to be so true and useful to; I have ruined

him--brought him to shame and disgrace--ruined him, ruined him!'

The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing

to see, that Mr Pancks took hold of himself by the hair of his head, and

tore it in desperation at the spectacle.

'Reproach me!' cried Pancks. 'Reproach me, sir, or I'll do myself an

injury. Say,--You fool, you villain. Say,--Ass, how could you do it;

Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere.

Say something abusive to me!' All the time, Mr Pancks was tearing at his

tough hair in a most pitiless and cruel manner.

'If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,' said Clennam,

more in commiseration than retaliation, 'it would have been how much

better for you, and how much better for me!'

'At me again, sir!' cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. 'At

me again!' 'If you had never gone into those accursed calculations,

and brought out your results with such abominable clearness,' groaned

Clennam, 'it would have been how much better for you, Pancks, and how

much better for me!'

'At me again, sir!' exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair;

'at me again, and again!'

Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said

all he wanted to say, and more. He wrung his hand, only adding, 'Blind

leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce,

Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!' That brought his head down on the

desk once more.

Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first

encroached upon by Pancks.

'Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low,

on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire.

All in vain. All gone. All vanished.'

'I know it,' returned Clennam, 'too well.'

Mr Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very

depths of his soul.

'Only yesterday, Pancks,' said Arthur; 'only yesterday, Monday, I had

the fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it.'

'I can't say as much for myself, sir,' returned Pancks. 'Though it's

wonderful how many people I've heard of, who were going to realise

yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn't

been too late!'

His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more

tragic than so many groans: while from head to foot, he was in that

begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an

authentic portrait of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned

through its want of cleaning.

'Mr Clennam, had you laid out--everything?' He got over the break before

the last word, and also brought out the last word itself with great

difficulty.

'Everything.'

Mr Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench

that he pulled out several prongs of it. After looking at these with an

eye of wild hatred, he put them in his pocket.

'My course,' said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been

silently dropping down his face, 'must be taken at once. What wretched

amends I can make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner's