‘Young, old, or middle-aged, Pancks,’ he said, when there was a favourable pause, ‘I am in a very anxious and uncertain state; a state that even leads me to doubt whether anything now seeming to belong to me, may be really mine. Shall I tell you how this is? Shall I put a great trust in you?’
‘You shall, sir,’ said Pancks, ‘if you believe me worthy of it.’
‘I do.’
‘You may!’ Mr Pancks’s short and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the sudden outstretching of his coaly hand, was most expressive and convincing. Arthur shook the hand warmly.
He then, softening the nature of his old apprehensions as much as was possible consistently with their being made intelligible and never alluding to his mother by name, but speaking vaguely of a relation of his, confided to Mr Pancks a broad outline of the misgivings he entertained, and of the interview he had witnessed. Mr Pancks listened with such interest that, regardless of the charms of the Eastern pipe, he put it in the grate among the fire-irons, and occupied his hands during the whole recital in so erecting the loops and hooks of hair all over his head, that he looked, when it came to a conclusion, like a journeyman Hamlet in conversation with his father’s spirit.
‘Brings me back, sir,’ was his exclamation then, with a startling touch on Clennam’s knee, ‘brings me back, sir, to the Investments! I don’t say anything of your making yourself poor to repair a wrong you never committed. That’s you. A man must be himself. But I say this, fearing you may want money to save your own blood from exposure and disgrace—make as much as you can!’
Arthur shook his head, but looked at him thoughtfully too.
‘Be as rich as you can, sir,’ Pancks adjured him with a powerful concentration of all his energies on the advice. ‘Be as rich as you honestly can. It’s your duty. Not for your sake, but for the sake of others. Take time by the forelock. Poor Mr Doyce (who really is growing old) depends upon you. Your relative depends upon you. You don’t know what depends upon you.’
‘Well, well, well!’ returned Arthur. ‘Enough for to-night.’
‘One word more, Mr Clennam,’ retorted Pancks, ‘and then enough for to-night. Why should you leave all the gains to the gluttons, knaves, and impostors? Why should you leave all the gains that are to be got to my proprietor and the like of him? Yet you’re always doing it. When I say you, I mean such men as you. You know you are. Why, I see it every day of my life. I see nothing else. It’s my business to see it. Therefore I say,’ urged Pancks, ‘Go in and win!’