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He had a lighted cigar in his hand, and brought with him airs of ale and

tobacco smoke.

'Pancks the gipsy,' he observed out of breath, 'fortune-telling.' He

stood dingily smiling, and breathing hard at them, with a most curious

air; as if, instead of being his proprietor's grubber, he were the

triumphant proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Marshal, all the turnkeys,

and all the Collegians. In his great self-satisfaction he put his cigar

to his lips (being evidently no smoker), and took such a pull at it,

with his right eye shut up tight for the purpose, that he underwent

a convulsion of shuddering and choking. But even in the midst of that

paroxysm, he still essayed to repeat his favourite introduction of

himself, 'Pa-ancks the gi-ipsy, fortune-telling.'

'I am spending the evening with the rest of 'em,' said Pancks. 'I've

been singing. I've been taking a part in White sand and grey sand.

I don't know anything about it. Never mind. I'll take any part in

anything. It's all the same, if you're loud enough.'

At first Clennam supposed him to be intoxicated. But he soon perceived

that though he might be a little the worse (or better) for ale, the

staple of his excitement was not brewed from malt, or distilled from any

grain or berry.

'How d'ye do, Miss Dorrit?' said Pancks. 'I thought you wouldn't mind my

running round, and looking in for a moment. Mr Clennam I heard was here,

from Mr Dorrit. How are you, Sir?'

Clennam thanked him, and said he was glad to see him so gay.

'Gay!' said Pancks. 'I'm in wonderful feather, sir. I can't stop a

minute, or I shall be missed, and I don't want 'em to miss me.--Eh, Miss

Dorrit?'

He seemed to have an insatiate delight in appealing to her and looking

at her; excitedly sticking his hair up at the same moment, like a dark

species of cockatoo.

'I haven't been here half an hour. I knew Mr Dorrit was in the chair,

and I said, "I'll go and support him!" I ought to be down in Bleeding

Heart Yard by rights; but I can worry them to-morrow.--Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

His little black eyes sparkled electrically. His very hair seemed to

sparkle as he roughened it. He was in that highly-charged state that one

might have expected to draw sparks and snaps from him by presenting a

knuckle to any part of his figure.

'Capital company here,' said Pancks.--'Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

She was half afraid of him, and irresolute what to say. He laughed, with

a nod towards Clennam.

'Don't mind him, Miss Dorrit. He's one of us. We agreed that you

shouldn't take on to mind me before people, but we didn't mean Mr

Clennam. He's one of us. He's in it. An't you, Mr Clennam?--Eh, Miss

Dorrit?' The excitement of this strange creature was fast communicating

itself to Clennam. Little Dorrit with amazement, saw this, and observed

that they exchanged quick looks.

'I was making a remark,' said Pancks, 'but I declare I forget what

it was. Oh, I know! Capital company here. I've been treating 'em all

round.--Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

'Very generous of you,' she returned, noticing another of the quick

looks between the two.

'Not at all,' said Pancks. 'Don't mention it. I'm coming into my

property, that's the fact. I can afford to be liberal. I think I'll give

'em a treat here. Tables laid in the yard. Bread in stacks. Pipes in

faggots. Tobacco in hayloads. Roast beef and plum-pudding for every one.

Quart of double stout a head. Pint of wine too, if they like it, and the

authorities give permission.--Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

She was thrown into such a confusion by his manner, or rather by

Clennam's growing understanding of his manner (for she looked to him

after every fresh appeal and cockatoo demonstration on the part of Mr

Pancks), that she only moved her lips in answer, without forming any

word.

'And oh, by-the-bye!' said Pancks, 'you were to live to know what was

behind us on that little hand of yours. And so you shall, you shall, my

darling.--Eh, Miss Dorrit?'

He had suddenly checked himself. Where he got all the additional black

prongs from, that now flew up all over his head like the myriads of

points that break out in the large change of a great firework, was a

wonderful mystery.

'But I shall be missed;' he came back to that; 'and I don't want 'em to

miss me. Mr Clennam, you and I made a bargain. I said you should find me

stick to it. You shall find me stick to it now, sir, if you'll step out

of the room a moment. Miss Dorrit, I wish you good night. Miss Dorrit, I

wish you good fortune.'

He rapidly shook her by both hands, and puffed down stairs. Arthur

followed him with such a hurried step, that he had very nearly tumbled

over him on the last landing, and rolled him down into the yard.

'What is it, for Heaven's sake!' Arthur demanded, when they burst out

there both together.

'Stop a moment, sir. Mr Rugg. Let me introduce him.' With those words

he presented another man without a hat, and also with a cigar, and also

surrounded with a halo of ale and tobacco smoke, which man, though not

so excited as himself, was in a state which would have been akin to

lunacy but for its fading into sober method when compared with the

rampancy of Mr Pancks. 'Mr Clennam, Mr Rugg,' said Pancks. 'Stop a

moment. Come to the pump.'

They adjourned to the pump. Mr Pancks, instantly putting his head under

the spout, requested Mr Rugg to take a good strong turn at the handle.

Mr Rugg complying to the letter, Mr Pancks came forth snorting and

blowing to some purpose, and dried himself on his handkerchief.

'I am the clearer for that,' he gasped to Clennam standing astonished.

'But upon my soul, to hear her father making speeches in that chair,

knowing what we know, and to see her up in that room in that dress,

knowing what we know, is enough to--give me a back, Mr Rugg--a little

higher, sir,--that'll do!'

Then and there, on that Marshalsea pavement, in the shades of evening,

did Mr Pancks, of all mankind, fly over the head and shoulders of Mr

Rugg of Pentonville, General Agent, Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts.

Alighting on his feet, he took Clennam by the button-hole, led him

behind the pump, and pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of

papers. Mr Rugg, also, pantingly produced from his pocket a bundle of

papers.

'Stay!' said Clennam in a whisper.'You have made a discovery.'

Mr Pancks answered, with an unction which there is no language to

convey, 'We rather think so.'

'Does it implicate any one?'

'How implicate, sir?'

'In any suppression or wrong dealing of any kind?'

'Not a bit of it.'

'Thank God!' said Clennam to himself. 'Now show me.' 'You are to

understand'--snorted Pancks, feverishly unfolding papers, and speaking

in short high-pressure blasts of sentences, 'Where's the Pedigree?

Where's Schedule number four, Mr Rugg? Oh! all right! Here we are.--You

are to understand that we are this very day virtually complete. We

shan't be legally for a day or two. Call it at the outside a week. We've

been at it night and day for I don't know how long. Mr Rugg, you know

how long? Never mind. Don't say. You'll only confuse me. You shall tell

her, Mr Clennam. Not till we give you leave. Where's that rough total,

Mr Rugg? Oh! Here we are! There sir! That's what you'll have to break to

her. That man's your Father of the Marshalsea!'

CHAPTER 33. Mrs Merdle's Complaint

Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people,

the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught upon it, of

which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur,

Mrs Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son's marriage. In her

progress to, and happy arrival at, this resolution, she was possibly

influenced, not only by her maternal affections but by three politic

considerations.

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the

smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his ability

to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a

grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial

inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of

a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry's debts must

clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law. When,

to these three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that

Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having

yielded his, and that Mr Meagles's objection to the marriage had

been the sole obstacle in its way all along, it becomes the height of

probability that the relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing

particular, turned these ideas in her sagacious mind.

Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained her

individual dignity and the dignity of the blood of the Barnacles, by

diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most unfortunate business;

that she was sadly cut up by it; that this was a perfect fascination

under which Henry laboured; that she had opposed it for a long time,

but what could a mother do; and the like. She had already called Arthur

Clennam to bear witness to this fable, as a friend of the Meagles

family; and she followed up the move by now impounding the family itself

for the same purpose. In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles,

she slided herself into the position of disconsolately but gracefully

yielding to irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness and

good-breeding, she feigned that it was she--not he--who had made the

difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was

hers--not his. The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she

foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that

innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her

by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done to

Henry that has bewitched him so!' at the same time allowing a few tears

to carry before them, in little pills, the cosmetic powder on her nose;

as a delicate but touching signal that she suffered much inwardly for

the show of composure with which she bore her misfortune.

Among the friends of Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being

Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that

Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court

Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an

upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces

to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses,

they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the rest

of them.

To Mrs Merdle, Mrs Gowan repaired on a visit of self-condolence, after

having given the gracious consent aforesaid. She drove into town for the

purpose in a one-horse carriage irreverently called at that period of

English history, a pill-box. It belonged to a job-master in a small way,

who drove it himself, and who jobbed it by the day, or hour, to most of

the old ladies in Hampton Court Palace; but it was a point of ceremony,

in that encampment, that the whole equipage should be tacitly regarded

as the private property of the jobber for the time being, and that the

job-master should betray personal knowledge of nobody but the jobber

in possession. So the Circumlocution Barnacles, who were the largest

job-masters in the universe, always pretended to know of no other job

but the job immediately in hand.

Mrs Merdle was at home, and was in her nest of crimson and gold, with

the parrot on a neighbouring stem watching her with his head on one

side, as if he took her for another splendid parrot of a larger species.

To whom entered Mrs Gowan, with her favourite green fan, which softened

the light on the spots of bloom.

'My dear soul,' said Mrs Gowan, tapping the back of her friend's hand

with this fan after a little indifferent conversation, 'you are my only

comfort. That affair of Henry's that I told you of, is to take place.

Now, how does it strike you? I am dying to know, because you represent

and express Society so well.'

Mrs Merdle reviewed the bosom which Society was accustomed to review;

and having ascertained that show-window of Mr Merdle's and the London

jewellers' to be in good order, replied:

'As to marriage on the part of a man, my dear, Society requires that

he should retrieve his fortunes by marriage. Society requires that

he should gain by marriage. Society requires that he should found a

handsome establishment by marriage. Society does not see, otherwise,

what he has to do with marriage. Bird, be quiet!'

For the parrot on his cage above them, presiding over the conference as

if he were a judge (and indeed he looked rather like one), had wound up

the exposition with a shriek.

'Cases there are,' said Mrs Merdle, delicately crooking the little

finger of her favourite hand, and making her remarks neater by that neat

action; 'cases there are where a man is not young or elegant, and is

rich, and has a handsome establishment already. Those are of a different

kind. In such cases--'

Mrs Merdle shrugged her snowy shoulders and put her hand upon the

jewel-stand, checking a little cough, as though to add, 'why, a man

looks out for this sort of thing, my dear.' Then the parrot shrieked

again, and she put up her glass to look at him, and said, 'Bird! Do be

quiet!' 'But, young men,' resumed Mrs Merdle, 'and by young men you know

what I mean, my love--I mean people's sons who have the world before