第 28 页

it.'

'You lead such a busy life?'

'Yes, I have always some of 'em to look up, or something to look after.

But I like business,' said Pancks, getting on a little faster. 'What's a

man made for?'

'For nothing else?' said Clennam.

Pancks put the counter question, 'What else?' It packed up, in the

smallest compass, a weight that had rested on Clennam's life; and he

made no answer.

'That's what I ask our weekly tenants,' said Pancks. 'Some of 'em will

pull long faces to me, and say, Poor as you see us, master, we're always

grinding, drudging, toiling, every minute we're awake.

I say to them, What else are you made for? It shuts them up. They

haven't a word to answer. What else are you made for? That clinches it.'

'Ah dear, dear, dear!' sighed Clennam.

'Here am I,' said Pancks, pursuing his argument with the weekly tenant.

'What else do you suppose I think I am made for? Nothing.

Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you

like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. 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; he might not have been quite in earnest,

but that the short, hard, rapid manner in which he shot out these

cinders of principles, as if it were done by mechanical revolvency,

seemed irreconcilable with banter.

'You are no great reader, I suppose?' said Clennam.

'Never read anything but letters and accounts. Never collect anything

but advertisements relative to next of kin. If that's a taste, I have

got that. You're not of the Clennams of Cornwall, Mr Clennam?'

'Not that I ever heard of.' 'I know you're not. I asked your mother,

sir. She has too much character to let a chance escape her.'

'Supposing I had been of the Clennams of Cornwall?' 'You'd have heard of

something to your advantage.'

'Indeed! I have heard of little enough to my advantage for some time.'

'There's a Cornish property going a begging, sir, and not a Cornish

Clennam to have it for the asking,' said Pancks, taking his note-book

from his breast pocket and putting it in again. 'I turn off here. I wish

you good night.'

'Good night!' said Clennam. But the Tug, suddenly lightened, and

untrammelled by having any weight in tow, was already puffing away into

the distance.

They had crossed Smithfield together, and Clennam was left alone at the

corner of Barbican. He had no intention of presenting himself in his

mother's dismal room that night, and could not have felt more depressed

and cast away if he had been in a wilderness. He turned slowly down

Aldersgate Street, and was pondering his way along towards Saint Paul's,

purposing to come into one of the great thoroughfares for the sake of

their light and life, when a crowd of people flocked towards him on the

same pavement, and he stood aside against a shop to let them pass. As

they came up, he made out that they were gathered around a something

that was carried on men's shoulders. He soon saw that it was a litter,

hastily made of a shutter or some such thing; and a recumbent figure

upon it, and the scraps of conversation in the crowd, and a muddy bundle

carried by one man, and a muddy hat carried by another, informed him

that an accident had occurred. The litter stopped under a lamp before it

had passed him half-a-dozen paces, for some readjustment of the burden;

and, the crowd stopping too, he found himself in the midst of the array.

'An accident going to the Hospital?' he asked an old man beside him, who

stood shaking his head, inviting conversation.

'Yes,' said the man, 'along of them Mails. They ought to be prosecuted

and fined, them Mails. They come a racing out of Lad Lane and Wood

Street at twelve or fourteen mile a hour, them Mails do. The only wonder

is, that people ain't killed oftener by them Mails.'

'This person is not killed, I hope?'

'I don't know!' said the man, 'it an't for the want of a will in them

Mails, if he an't.' The speaker having folded his arms, and set in

comfortably to address his depreciation of them Mails to any of the

bystanders who would listen, several voices, out of pure sympathy with

the sufferer, confirmed him; one voice saying to Clennam, 'They're a

public nuisance, them Mails, sir;' another, 'I see one on 'em pull up

within half a inch of a boy, last night;' another, 'I see one on 'em

go over a cat, sir--and it might have been your own mother;' and all

representing, by implication, that if he happened to possess any public

influence, he could not use it better than against them Mails.

'Why, a native Englishman is put to it every night of his life, to save

his life from them Mails,' argued the first old man; 'and he knows when

they're a coming round the corner, to tear him limb from limb. What can

you expect from a poor foreigner who don't know nothing about 'em!'

'Is this a foreigner?' said Clennam, leaning forward to look.

In the midst of such replies as 'Frenchman, sir,' 'Porteghee, sir,'

'Dutchman, sir,' 'Prooshan, sir,' and other conflicting testimony, he

now heard a feeble voice asking, both in Italian and in French, for

water. A general remark going round, in reply, of 'Ah, poor fellow,

he says he'll never get over it; and no wonder!' Clennam begged to be

allowed to pass, as he understood the poor creature. He was immediately

handed to the front, to speak to him.

'First, he wants some water,' said he, looking round. (A dozen good

fellows dispersed to get it.) 'Are you badly hurt, my friend?' he asked

the man on the litter, in Italian.

'Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It's my leg, it's my leg. But it pleases me to

hear the old music, though I am very bad.'

'You are a traveller! Stay! See, the water! Let me give you some.' They

had rested the litter on a pile of paving stones. It was at a convenient

height from the ground, and by stooping he could lightly raise the head

with one hand and hold the glass to his lips with the other. A little,

muscular, brown man, with black hair and white teeth. A lively face,

apparently. Earrings in his ears.

'That's well. You are a traveller?'

'Surely, sir.'

'A stranger in this city?'

'Surely, surely, altogether. I am arrived this unhappy evening.'

'From what country?' 'Marseilles.'

'Why, see there! I also! Almost as much a stranger here as you, though

born here, I came from Marseilles a little while ago. Don't be cast

down.' The face looked up at him imploringly, as he rose from wiping it,

and gently replaced the coat that covered the writhing figure. 'I won't

leave you till you shall be well taken care of. Courage! You will be

very much better half an hour hence.'

'Ah! Altro, Altro!' cried the poor little man, in a faintly incredulous

tone; and as they took him up, hung out his right hand to give the

forefinger a back-handed shake in the air.

Arthur Clennam turned; and walking beside the litter, and saying an

encouraging word now and then, accompanied it to the neighbouring

hospital of Saint Bartholomew. None of the crowd but the bearers and

he being admitted, the disabled man was soon laid on a table in a cool,

methodical way, and carefully examined by a surgeon who was as near at

hand, and as ready to appear as Calamity herself. 'He hardly knows an

English word,' said Clennam; 'is he badly hurt?'

'Let us know all about it first,' said the surgeon, continuing his

examination with a businesslike delight in it, 'before we pronounce.'

After trying the leg with a finger, and two fingers, and one hand and

two hands, and over and under, and up and down, and in this direction

and in that, and approvingly remarking on the points of interest to

another gentleman who joined him, the surgeon at last clapped the

patient on the shoulder, and said, 'He won't hurt. He'll do very well.

It's difficult enough, but we shall not want him to part with his leg

this time.' Which Clennam interpreted to the patient, who was full of

gratitude, and, in his demonstrative way, kissed both the interpreter's

hand and the surgeon's several times.

'It's a serious injury, I suppose?' said Clennam.

'Ye-es,' replied the surgeon, with the thoughtful pleasure of an artist

contemplating the work upon his easel. 'Yes, it's enough. There's a

compound fracture above the knee, and a dislocation below. They are

both of a beautiful kind.' He gave the patient a friendly clap on the

shoulder again, as if he really felt that he was a very good fellow

indeed, and worthy of all commendation for having broken his leg in a

manner interesting to science.

'He speaks French?' said the surgeon.

'Oh yes, he speaks French.'

'He'll be at no loss here, then.--You have only to bear a little pain

like a brave fellow, my friend, and to be thankful that all goes as

well as it does,' he added, in that tongue, 'and you'll walk again to

a marvel. Now, let us see whether there's anything else the matter, and

how our ribs are?'

There was nothing else the matter, and our ribs were sound. Clennam

remained until everything possible to be done had been skilfully and

promptly done--the poor belated wanderer in a strange land movingly

besought that favour of him--and lingered by the bed to which he was in

due time removed, until he had fallen into a doze. Even then he wrote a

few words for him on his card, with a promise to return to-morrow, and

left it to be given to him when he should awake. All these proceedings

occupied so long that it struck eleven o'clock at night as he came out

at the Hospital Gate. He had hired a lodging for the present in Covent

Garden, and he took the nearest way to that quarter, by Snow Hill and

Holborn.

Left to himself again, after the solicitude and compassion of his last

adventure, he was naturally in a thoughtful mood. As naturally, he

could not walk on thinking for ten minutes without recalling Flora.

She necessarily recalled to him his life, with all its misdirection and

little happiness.

When he got to his lodging, he sat down before the dying fire, as he

had stood at the window of his old room looking out upon the blackened

forest of chimneys, and turned his gaze back upon the gloomy vista by

which he had come to that stage in his existence. So long, so bare,

so blank. No childhood; no youth, except for one remembrance; that one

remembrance proved, only that day, to be a piece of folly.

It was a misfortune to him, trifle as it might have been to another.

For, while all that was hard and stern in his recollection, remained

Reality on being proved--was obdurate to the sight and touch, and

relaxed nothing of its old indomitable grimness--the one tender

recollection of his experience would not bear the same test, and melted

away. He had foreseen this, on the former night, when he had dreamed

with waking eyes, but he had not felt it then; and he had now.

He was a dreamer in such wise, because he was a man who had, deep-rooted

in his nature, a belief in all the gentle and good things his life had

been without. Bred in meanness and hard dealing, this had rescued him

to be a man of honourable mind and open hand. Bred in coldness and

severity, this had rescued him to have a warm and sympathetic heart.

Bred in a creed too darkly audacious to pursue, through its process of

reserving the making of man in the image of his Creator to the making of

his Creator in the image of an erring man, this had rescued him to judge

not, and in humility to be merciful, and have hope and charity.

And this saved him still from the whimpering weakness and cruel

selfishness of holding that because such a happiness or such a virtue

had not come into his little path, or worked well for him, therefore

it was not in the great scheme, but was reducible, when found in

appearance, to the basest elements. A disappointed mind he had, but a

mind too firm and healthy for such unwholesome air. Leaving himself in

the dark, it could rise into the light, seeing it shine on others and

hailing it.

Therefore, he sat before his dying fire, sorrowful to think upon the way

by which he had come to that night, yet not strewing poison on the way

by which other men had come to it. That he should have missed so much,

and at his time of life should look so far about him for any staff to

bear him company upon his downward journey and cheer it, was a just

regret. He looked at the fire from which the blaze departed, from which

the afterglow subsided, in which the ashes turned grey, from which they

dropped to dust, and thought, 'How soon I too shall pass through such

changes, and be gone!'

To review his life was like descending a green tree in fruit and flower,

and seeing all the branches wither and drop off, one by one, as he came

down towards them.

'From the unhappy suppression of my youngest days, through the rigid and

unloving home that followed them, through my departure, my long exile,

my return, my mother's welcome, my intercourse with her since, down to