Chapter 25: Conspirators and Others

Little Dorrit

by Charles Dickens

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.