Chapter 9 Second Golden Wire Network - five years later

Tellson's Bank, by the gates of the Law Society of London, was an old-fashioned place even in 1780.It's cramped, dark, ugly, and inconvenient.And it was an old-fashioned place because, morally speaking, the shareholders of the bank took pride in its smallness, its darkness, its ugliness, its inconvenience.They even boasted of its eminent features, and their blood boiled with a peculiar belief that it would not be so respectable if it were not so repulsive.This is not a passive belief, but an active weapon that can be wielded in more convenient business situations.They say Tellson's doesn't need room, light, bells and whistles, Knock's might, Snook Brothers might, but Tellson's, thank God! --

If any of the director's children tried to reform Tellson's Bank, he would be disinherited.In this matter, Tellson's Bank was on par with the State.The state has always disinherited the sons who proposed to change the laws and customs, which are all the more respectable precisely because they have long been repugnant. The result was that the inconvenience of Tellson's Bank was a perfect achievement.Its door is idiotically stubborn, and when you push it open, a weak grunt will come out of its throat, causing you to stagger straight down two steps and fall into the bank. A poor shop.There were two little counters where old clerks checked and signed at the darkest windows and made your checks tremble like a wind blows.That window was forever showered with muddy water from Fleet Street, and made darker by its own iron bars and the screens of the Law Society.If you had to meet the "banking authorities" for business purposes, you were sent to a sort of "death row" in the back, where you brooded over your misguided behavior until the "authorities" walked around with their hands in their pockets. came in, and in the eerie gloom you could scarcely blink in astonishment.Your money was taken from the moth-eaten wooden drawer and sent there too.Wood dust flies up your nose and down your throat when you open and close the drawers.Your banknotes smell musty and look like they're about to disintegrate into shreds.Your gold and silver are stuffed into a filthy place, and within a day or two their luster is corroded by their surroundings.Your files are stuffed into a makeshift vault that's been converted from a kitchen sink.All the fat was squeezed out of the parchment and mixed into the air in the bank.Your lighter boxes of family papers are sent upstairs to a Bammyside-style hall where there is always a huge dining table, but there is never a feast.There, even in the year 1780, the love letters of your first loves to you and the first letters to you from your infant children have not long been spared the horror of a row of heads watching.The row of heads hung at the gate of the Law Society for public display.The insensitivity, brutality, and ferocity of this practice are comparable to those of Abyssinia and Ashanti.

But the fact is that the death penalty is a fashionable trick in all walks of life.Tellson Bank is naturally not far behind.Since death is nature's best solution to all problems, why can't it be adopted in legislation?Hence death for forgery of papers; death for use of counterfeit money; death for opening letters; death for stealing four and sixpence; death for stealing horses and running away while in charge of Tellson's Bank; death for counterfeiting shillings. execute. There are three-quarters of the notes in the entire scale of the "crime" instrument, and anyone who touches it will be executed.It's not all crime-preventing--it's almost worth mentioning: quite the opposite--but it cuts out the troubles that each particular case brings to the world, and wipes out a lot of the mess.Thus Tellson's Bank claimed as many lives as its larger contemporaries did during its existence.If the heads that landed in front of it were not disposed of quietly, but lined up at the gate of the law school, they may have blocked the already scarce light on the bottom of the bank to a considerable extent.

Crouching over the various dim cupboards and half-doors of Tellson's Bank, there are decrepit people working earnestly.As soon as a young man enters Tellson's Bank, he is sent somewhere to be hidden until he becomes an old man.They stored him like a cheese in a dark corner until he would grow blue mold and give off the unmistakable Tellsonian scent before he could be seen.Already he was poring over the great ledger with dignity, and had cast his breeches and overshoes into the institution to add to its weight. There was an odd job outside Tellson's Bank who answered the door occasionally, ran errands, and never came in unless called.This man acts as a living sign for the bank.He was never absent from work, unless he was running errands.But when he was gone, his son stood in for him: an ugly, twelve-year-old urchin who looked exactly like that man.Tellson's was known to put up with the odd job with style.Banks have always had to put up with one man for this kind of work, and it was he who was sent to this position by the times and the tide.This man, surnamed Cruncher, had accepted the name Jerry in his early years in the Eastern Diocese of Huntsditch when his godparents proclaimed the act of spurning the devil.

Location: Mr. Cruncher's private apartment in Xuanjian Alley, Baipao Seng District.Time: Seven o'clock on a windy March morning in 780 A.D. (Mr. Cruncher always referred to "Arnold Domino" as "Anna Domino," apparently thinking that the Christian era began with a The lady who invented the domino and named it after herself). The environment of Mr. Cruncher's apartment is not cozy. There are only two numbers in total, and the other number one is a small room with only one piece of glass as a window.But these two houses were tidied up neatly.Although it was still early that windy March morning, the room in which he slept was scoured and cleaned.A very clean white table-cloth had been spread on a rough pine table, on which breakfast plates were laid.

Mr. Cruncher had a garish quilt of white skirt pattern, like a buffoon at home.At first he slept deeply, and gradually began to toss and turn, and finally he rolled over on the quilt, revealing his hair that was parted like ears of wheat, as if he would tear the quilt into rags.Then he cried out in great annoyance: "Damn it, she's at it again!" A neat, tidy, and later diligent woman stood up from a corner (where she was kneeling just now), and her movements were quick, but with trepidation, showing that it was she who had been scolded. "Why," said Mr. Cruncher, looking for his boots on the bed, "you're doing it again, aren't you?"

After saying good morning in this respectful manner, he threw his boot at the woman for a third greeting.The muddy boots illustrate the peculiar state of Mr. Cruncher's household finances: he came home from the bank every day with clean boots, but when he got up the next morning they were muddy. "What tricks are you playing again," said Mr. Cruncher, changing his greeting after missing his mark. "Are you looking for trouble again?" "I'm just saying my prayers." "Pray! What a lovely woman! What do you mean by falling on your knees and cursing me?"

"I didn't curse you, I prayed for you." "No. Would I be so mean if you prayed for me? Come here! Your mother was a good woman, Jerry Jerry, and she prayed that your father would fail and keep him from getting ahead. Your mother was very dutiful, son. Your mother Ma believes in God, boy. Come down on her knees with a thud and pray that the bread and butter will be snatched from her only son's mouth." Master Cruncher (he was now in his shirt-sleeves) was indignant at this, and turning to his mother, he protested strongly that his food should not be taken from him.

"What do you think your prayers are worth?" said Mr. Cruncher, unaware that he had been inconsistent. "You self-satisfied woman, how much do you think your prayers are worth?" "I pray from the bottom of my heart, Jerry. That's all it takes and nothing more." "Not much more," repeated Mr. Cruncher. "Then, it's not worth a lot. All in all, I don't allow anyone to pray for my bad luck, I tell you. I can't stand it. I can't let you mutter and pray for my bad luck. You can kneel if you want, you Gotta pray for your man and doll, don't pray for them bad luck. If only my wife wasn't so cruel and the poor kid wasn't so fucking cruel, I'd be making money last week, just Don't be cursed and spoiled and blessed and wretched. Damn it!" said Mr. Cruncher, as he dressed. "I was unlucky last week, with one misfortune after another, the worst that can happen to a poor decent businessman! Dress, boy, little Jerry, while I shine my boots , you keep your eyes on your mother, and if she wants to kneel down, you can call me. Because, let me tell you," he turned around and said to his wife, "I won't go out like I am now. I'm already like A cab on the verge of falling apart, sleepy like an opium addict. My back eye is so tired that if it weren't for the pain I couldn't tell where I was from someone else. But still there's nothing in my pocket Add a few texts. So I suspect that you have been praying from morning till night not to let my pockets bulge, and I will not forgive you, his grandma, what else do you have to say now!"

Mr. Cruncher muttered, "Oh, yes, you believe in God too, and you won't do anything against your man and your child, you won't!" Sparks of biting sarcasm fly from the grindstone while boots are being polished for work.At this time his son was required to monitor his mother.The kid also had spiky hair on his head, only softer, and a pair of young eyes set close together, like his father.From time to time he rushed out of his sleeping cabin (where he was washing his hands) and cried in a low voice, "You're going to kneel again, mother-father, look!" He smirked and ran into the house.In this way he continued to disturb his mother severely.

Mr. Cruncher, still in bad temper by breakfast time, had a peculiar distaste for Mrs. Cruncher's prayers. "Okay, his grandma! What are you playing again? What are you doing again?" His wife replied that she was just "begging for blessings". "Don't ask!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking around, as if wishing the bread would disappear at his wife's entreaties. "I don't want to be blessed with no house, no home, no food on the table. Shut up!" His eyes were red and he was very angry, as if he had been up all night after a party that hadn't been any fun at all.Instead of eating his breakfast, he was throwing a tantrum over it, howling at it like a zoo dweller.It wasn't until nine o'clock that he let down his bulging mane, put on a respectable businesslike air outside his true self, and went out to start his day's work. Although he likes to call himself an "honest businessman," his work can hardly be called "business."All his capital is a wooden stool.It was still made of a broken chair with the back cut off.Little Jerry would take this stool with his father to the bank building every morning, put it down under the window on the side closest to the gate of the law society, and then pull a handful of hay from a passing vehicle to let his father, who does odd jobs Not affected by cold and humidity.This completes the all-day "Set Up Camp" mission.Mr. Cruncher's reputation for doing it in Fleet Street and the Law School was as ugly as its buildings. He had "set camp" at quarter-to-eight, just in time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest old men entering Tellson's Bank.Jerry went to work on this windy March morning.When Jerry Jr. wasn't entering the law school gates to harass, to inflict sharp physical or psychological harm on passing children (provided the children were small enough for his kind of friendly activity), he stood beside his father.The father and son were so much alike that they both watched the early morning traffic on Fleet Street without saying a word.The two heads are close together like their two pairs of eyes, much like a pair of monkeys.Sometimes the grown Jerry gnawed at the hay and spat it out, and Jerry Jerry's bright eyes rolled and looked at him as they fixed everything else on Fleet Street.At this time, the two became more alike. An official courier inside Tellson's put his head out of the door and said: "I want to send a letter!" "Woo, Dad! There's business early in the morning!" Thus congratulating his father, Jerry sat down on the stool, and became interested in the study of the hay his father had just chewed, and fell into thought. "Rust forever! His fingers are rust forever!" murmured Little Jerry. "Where did my father's rust come from? There is no rust here!"