'I have been shown so too,' said Clennam, coldly.
Mr Pancks, being by that time quite ready for a start, got under steam
in a moment, and, without any other signal or ceremony, was snorting
down the step-ladder and working into Bleeding Heart Yard, before he
seemed to be well out of the counting-house.
Throughout the remainder of the day, Bleeding Heart Yard was in
consternation, as the grim Pancks cruised in it; haranguing the
inhabitants on their backslidings in respect of payment, demanding his
bond, breathing notices to quit and executions, running down defaulters,
sending a swell of terror on before him, and leaving it in his wake.
Knots of people, impelled by a fatal attraction, lurked outside any
house in which he was known to be, listening for fragments of his
discourses to the inmates; and, when he was rumoured to be coming down
the stairs, often could not disperse so quickly but that he would be
prematurely in among them, demanding their own arrears, and rooting them
to the spot.
Throughout the remainder of the day, Mr Pancks's What were
they up to? and What did they mean by it? sounded all over the Yard. Mr
Pancks wouldn't hear of excuses, wouldn't hear of complaints, wouldn't
hear of repairs, wouldn't hear of anything but unconditional money down.
Perspiring and puffing and darting about in eccentric directions, and
becoming hotter and dingier every moment, he lashed the tide of the yard
into a most agitated and turbid state. It had not settled down into calm
water again full two hours after he had been seen fuming away on the
horizon at the top of the steps.
There were several small assemblages of the Bleeding Hearts at the
popular points of meeting in the Yard that night, among whom it was
universally agreed that Mr Pancks was a hard man to have to do with; and
that it was much to be regretted, so it was, that a gentleman like Mr
Casby should put his rents in his hands, and never know him in his true
light. For (said the Bleeding Hearts), if a gentleman with that head of
hair and them eyes took his rents into his own hands, ma'am, there
would be none of this worriting and wearing, and things would be very
different.
At which identical evening hour and minute, the Patriarch--who had
floated serenely through the Yard in the forenoon before the harrying
began, with the express design of getting up this trustfulness in his
shining bumps and silken locks--at which identical hour and minute,
that first-rate humbug of a thousand guns was heavily floundering in the
little Dock of his exhausted Tug at home, and was saying, as he turned
his thumbs: 'A very bad day's work, Pancks, very bad day's work. It seems to me,
sir, and I must insist on making this observation forcibly in justice to
myself, that you ought to have got much more money, much more money.'