‘Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low, on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire. All in vain. All gone. All vanished.’
‘I know it,’ returned Clennam, ‘too well.’
Mr Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very depths of his soul.
‘Only yesterday, Pancks,’ said Arthur; ‘only yesterday, Monday, I had the fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it.’
‘I can’t say as much for myself, sir,’ returned Pancks. ‘Though it’s wonderful how many people I’ve heard of, who were going to realise yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn’t been too late!’
His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more tragic than so many groans: while from head to foot, he was in that begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an authentic portrait of Misfortune which could scarcely be discerned through its want of cleaning.
‘Mr Clennam, had you laid out—everything?’ He got over the break before the last word, and also brought out the last word itself with great difficulty.
‘Everything.’
Mr Pancks took hold of his tough hair again, and gave it such a wrench that he pulled out several prongs of it. After looking at these with an eye of wild hatred, he put them in his pocket.
‘My course,’ said Clennam, brushing away some tears that had been silently dropping down his face, ‘must be taken at once. What wretched amends I can make must be made. I must clear my unfortunate partner’s reputation. I must retain nothing for myself. I must resign to our creditors the power of management I have so much abused, and I must work out as much of my fault—or crime—as is susceptible of being worked out in the rest of my days.’