Chapter I.

Five Years Later

Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-

fashioned place, even in the year one

thousand seven hundred and eighty.

It was very small, very dark, very ugly,

very incommodious.

It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in

the moral attribute that the partners in

the House were proud of its smallness,

proud of its darkness, proud of its

ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness.

They were even boastful of its eminence in

those particulars, and were fired by an

express conviction that, if it were less

objectionable, it would be less

respectable.

This was no passive belief, but an active

weapon which they flashed at more

convenient places of business.

Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room,

Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted

no embellishment.

Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers'

might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--!

Any one of these partners would have

disinherited his son on the question of

rebuilding Tellson's.

In this respect the House was much on a par

with the Country; which did very often

disinherit its sons for suggesting

improvements in laws and customs that had

long been highly objectionable, but were

only the more respectable.

Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's

was the triumphant perfection of

inconvenience.

After bursting open a door of idiotic

obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat,

you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and

came to your senses in a miserable little

shop, with two little counters, where the

oldest of men made your cheque shake as if

the wind rustled it, while they examined

the signature by the dingiest of windows,

which were always under a shower-bath of

mud from Fleet-street, and which were made

the dingier by their own iron bars proper,

and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar.

If your business necessitated your seeing

"the House," you were put into a species of

Condemned Hold at the back, where you

meditated on a misspent life, until the

House came with its hands in its pockets,

and you could hardly blink at it in the

dismal twilight.

Your money came out of, or went into, wormy

old wooden drawers, particles of which flew

up your nose and down your throat when they

were opened and shut.

Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if

they were fast decomposing into rags again.

Your plate was stowed away among the

neighbouring cesspools, and evil

communications corrupted its good polish in

a day or two.

Your deeds got into extemporised strong-

rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and

fretted all the fat out of their parchments

into the banking-house air.

Your lighter boxes of family papers went

up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that

always had a great dining-table in it and

never had a dinner, and where, even in the

year one thousand seven hundred and eighty,

the first letters written to you by your

old love, or by your little children, were

but newly released from the horror of being

ogled through the windows, by the heads

exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate

brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia

or Ashantee.

But indeed, at that time, putting to death

was a recipe much in vogue with all trades

and professions, and not least of all with

Tellson's.

Death is Nature's remedy for all things,

and why not Legislation's?

Accordingly, the forger was put to Death;

the utterer of a bad note was put to Death;

the unlawful opener of a letter was put to

Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and

sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a

horse at Tellson's door, who made off with

it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad

shilling was put to Death; the sounders of

three-fourths of the notes in the whole

gamut of Crime, were put to Death.

Not that it did the least good in the way

of prevention--it might almost have been

worth remarking that the fact was exactly

the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to

this world) the trouble of each particular

case, and left nothing else connected with

it to be looked after.

Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater

places of business, its contemporaries, had

taken so many lives, that, if the heads

laid low before it had been ranged on

Temple Bar instead of being privately

disposed of, they would probably have

excluded what little light the ground floor

had, in a rather significant manner.

Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and

hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men

carried on the business gravely.

When they took a young man into Tellson's

London house, they hid him somewhere till

he was old.

They kept him in a dark place, like a

cheese, until he had the full Tellson

flavour and blue-mould upon him.

Then only was he permitted to be seen,

spectacularly poring over large books, and

casting his breeches and gaiters into the

general weight of the establishment.

Outside Tellson's--never by any means in

it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man,

an occasional porter and messenger, who

served as the live sign of the house.

He was never absent during business hours,

unless upon an errand, and then he was

represented by his son: a grisly urchin of

twelve, who was his express image.

People understood that Tellson's, in a

stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man.

The house had always tolerated some person

in that capacity, and time and tide had

drifted this person to the post.

His surname was Cruncher, and on the

youthful occasion of his renouncing by

proxy the works of darkness, in the

easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he

had received the added appellation of

Jerry.

The scene was Mr. Cruncher's private

lodging in Hanging-sword-alley,

Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of

the clock on a windy March morning, Anno

Domini seventeen hundred and eighty.

(Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the

year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes:

apparently under the impression that the

Christian era dated from the invention of a

popular game, by a lady who had bestowed

her name upon it.)

Mr. Cruncher's apartments were not in a

savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in

number, even if a closet with a single pane

of glass in it might be counted as one.

But they were very decently kept.

Early as it was, on the windy March

morning, the room in which he lay abed was

already scrubbed throughout; and between

the cups and saucers arranged for

breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a

very clean white cloth was spread.

Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork

counterpane, like a Harlequin at home.

At first, he slept heavily, but, by

degrees, began to roll and surge in bed,

until he rose above the surface, with his

spiky hair looking as if it must tear the

sheets to ribbons.

At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice

of dire exasperation:

"Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!"

A woman of orderly and industrious

appearance rose from her knees in a corner,

with sufficient haste and trepidation to

show that she was the person referred to.

"What!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of

bed for a boot.

"You're at it agin, are you?"

After hailing the morn with this second

salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as

a third.

It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce

the odd circumstance connected with Mr.

Cruncher's domestic economy, that, whereas

he often came home after banking hours with

clean boots, he often got up next morning

to find the same boots covered with clay.

"What," said Mr. Cruncher, varying his

apostrophe after missing his mark--"what

are you up to, Aggerawayter?"

"I was only saying my prayers."

"Saying your prayers!

You're a nice woman!

What do you mean by flopping yourself down

and praying agin me?"

"I was not praying against you; I was

praying for you."

"You weren't.

And if you were, I won't be took the

liberty with.

Here! your mother's a nice woman, young

Jerry, going a praying agin your father's

prosperity.

You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my

son.

You've got a religious mother, you have, my

boy: going and flopping herself down, and

praying that the bread-and-butter may be

snatched out of the mouth of her only

child."

Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took

this very ill, and, turning to his mother,

strongly deprecated any praying away of his

personal board.

"And what do you suppose, you conceited

female," said Mr. Cruncher, with

unconscious inconsistency, "that the worth

of _your_ prayers may be?

Name the price that you put _your_ prayers

at!"

"They only come from the heart, Jerry.

They are worth no more than that."

"Worth no more than that," repeated Mr.

Cruncher.

"They ain't worth much, then.

Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I

tell you.

I can't afford it.

I'm not a going to be made unlucky by

_your_ sneaking.

If you must go flopping yourself down, flop

in favour of your husband and child, and

not in opposition to 'em.

If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and

this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral

mother, I might have made some money last

week instead of being counter-prayed and

countermined and religiously circumwented

into the worst of luck.

B-u-u-ust me!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all

this time had been putting on his clothes,

"if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed

thing and another, been choused this last

week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil

of a honest tradesman met with!

Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and

while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your

mother now and then, and if you see any

signs of more flopping, give me a call.

For, I tell you," here he addressed his

wife once more, "I won't be gone agin, in

this manner.

I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as

sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to

that degree that I shouldn't know, if it

wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me

and which somebody else, yet I'm none the