Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

Going

Arthur continuing to lie very ill in the Marshalsea, and Mr Rugg
descrying no break in the legal sky affording a hope of his
enlargement, Mr Pancks suffered desperately from self-reproaches.
If it had not been for those infallible figures which proved that
Arthur, instead of pining in imprisonment, ought to be promenading
in a carriage and pair, and that Mr Pancks, instead of being
restricted to his clerkly wages, ought to have from three to five
thousand pounds of his own at his immediate disposal, that unhappy
arithmetician would probably have taken to his bed, and there have
made one of the many obscure persons who turned their faces to the
wall and died, as a last sacrifice to the late Mr Merdle's
greatness. Solely supported by his unimpugnable calculations, Mr
Pancks led an unhappy and restless life; constantly carrying his
figures about with him in his hat, and not only going over them
himself on every possible occasion, but entreating every human
being he could lay hold of to go over them with him, and observe
what a clear case it was. Down in Bleeding Heart Yard there was
scarcely an inhabitant of note to whom Mr Pancks had not imparted
his demonstration, and, as figures are catching, a kind of
cyphering measles broke out in that locality, under the influence
of which the whole Yard was light-headed.

The more restless Mr Pancks grew in his mind, the more impatient he
became of the Patriarch. In their later conferences his snorting
assumed an irritable sound which boded the Patriarch no good;
likewise, Mr Pancks had on several occasions looked harder at the
Patriarchal bumps than was quite reconcilable with the fact of his
not being a painter, or a peruke-maker in search of the living
model.

However, he steamed in and out of his little back Dock according as
he was wanted or not wanted in the Patriarchal presence, and
business had gone on in its customary course. Bleeding Heart Yard
had been harrowed by Mr Pancks, and cropped by Mr Casby, at the
regular seasons; Mr Pancks had taken all the drudgery and all the
dirt of the business as his share; Mr Casby had taken all the
profits, all the ethereal vapour, and all the moonshine, as his
share; and, in the form of words which that benevolent beamer
generally employed on Saturday evenings, when he twirled his fat
thumbs after striking the week's balance, 'everything had been
satisfactory to all parties--all parties--satisfactory, sir, to all
parties.'

The Dock of the Steam-Tug, Pancks, had a leaden roof, which, frying
in the very hot sunshine, may have heated the vessel. Be that as
it may, one glowing Saturday evening, on being hailed by the
lumbering bottle-green ship, the Tug instantly