Paul Clifford — Complete
my right ear, I looked the very picture of staid respectability. My face
grew an inch longer every day. Nothing is so respectable as a long face;
and a subdued expression of countenance is the surest sign of commercial
prosperity. Well, we went on splendidly enough for about a year.
Meanwhile I was wonderfully improved in philosophy. You have no idea how
a scolding wife sublimes and rarefies one's intellect. Thunder clears
the air, you know! At length, unhappily for my fame (for I contemplated
a magnificent moral history of man, which, had she lived a year longer,
I should have completed), my wife died in child-bed. My father-in-law
and I were talking over the event, and finding fault with civilization
for the enervating habits by which women die of their children instead
of bringing them forth without being even conscious of the circumstance,
when a bit of paper, sealed awry, was given to my partner. He looked
over it, finished the discussion, and then told me our bank had stopped
payment. 'Now, Augustus,' said he, lighting his pipe with the bit of
paper, 'you see the good of having nothing to lose.'
“We did not pay quite sixpence in the pound; but my partner was thought
so unfortunate that the British public raised a subscription for
him, and he retired on an annuity, greatly respected and very much
compassionated. As I had not been so well known as a moralist, and had
not the prepossessing advantage of a bald, benevolent head, nothing was
done for me, and I was turned once more on the wide world, to moralize
on the vicissitudes of fortune. My cousin the bookseller was no more,
and his son cut me. I took a garret in Warwick Court, and with a few
books, my only consolation, I endeavoured to nerve my mind to the
future. It was at this time, Paul, that my studies really availed me.
I meditated much, and I became a true philosopher, namely, a practical
one. My actions were henceforth regulated by principle; and at some time
or other, I will convince you that the road of true morals never avoids
the pockets of your neighbour. So soon as my mind had made the grand
discovery which Mr. Asgrave had made before me, that one should live
according to a system,--for if you do wrong, it is then your system
that errs, not you,--I took to the road, without any of those stings of
conscience which had hitherto annoyed me in such adventures. I formed
one of a capital knot of 'Free Agents,' whom I will introduce to you
some day or other, and I soon rose to distinction among them. But about
six weeks ago, not less than formerly preferring byways to highways, I
attempted to possess myself of a carriage, and sell it at discount. I
was acquitted on the felony, but sent hither by Justice Burnflat on the
misdemeanour. Thus far, my young friend, hath as yet proceeded the
life of Augustus Tomlinson.” The history of this gentleman made a deep
impression on Paul. The impression was strengthened by the conversations
subsequently holden with Augustus. That worthy was a dangerous and
subtle persuader. He had really read a good deal of history, and
something of morals; and he had an ingenious way of defending his
rascally practices by syllogisms from the latter, and examples from the
former. These theories he clenched, as it were, by a reference to
the existing politics of the day. Cheaters of the public, on false
pretences, he was pleased to term “moderate Whigs;” bullying demanders
of your purse were “high Tories;” and thieving in gangs was “the effect
of the spirit of party.” There was this difference between Augustus
Tomlinson and Long Ned,--Ned was the acting knave, Augustus the
reasoning one; and we may see therefore, by a little reflection, that
Tomlinson was a far more perilous companion than Pepper,--for showy
theories are always more seductive to the young and clever than suasive
examples, and the vanity of the youthful makes them better pleased by
being convinced of a thing than by being enticed to it.
A day or two after the narrative of Mr. Tomlinson, Paul was again
visited by Mrs. Lobkins,--for the regulations against frequent visitors
were not then so strictly enforced as we understand them to be now;
and the good dame came to deplore the ill-success of her interview with
Justice Burnflat.
We spare the tender-hearted reader a detail of the affecting interview
that ensued. Indeed, it was but a repetition of the one we have before
narrated. We shall only say, as a proof of Paul's tenderness of heart,
that when he took leave of the good matron, and bade “God bless her,”
his voice faltered, and the tears stood in his eyes,--just as they were
wont to do in the eyes of George the Third, when that excellent monarch
was pleased graciously to encore “God save the King!”
“I'll be hanged,” soliloquized our hero, as he slowly bent his course
towards the subtle Augustus,--“I'll be hanged (humph! the denunciation
is prophetic), if I don't feel as grateful to the old lady for her care
of me as if she had never ill-used me. As for my parents, I believe
I have little to be grateful for or proud of in that quarter. My poor
mother, by all accounts, seems scarcely to have had even the brute
virtue of maternal tenderness; and in all human likelihood I shall never
know whether I had one father or fifty. But what matters it? I rather
like the better to be independent; and, after all, what do nine tenths
of us ever get from our parents but an ugly name, and advice which, if
we follow, we are wretched, and if we neglect, we are disinherited?”
Comforting himself with these thoughts, which perhaps took their
philosophical complexion from the conversations he had lately held with
Augustus, and which broke off into the muttered air of--
“Why should we quarrel for riches?”
Paul repaired to his customary avocations.
In the third week of our hero's captivity Tomlinson communicated to him
a plan of escape that had occurred to his sagacious brain. In the yard
appropriated to the amusements of the gentlemen “misdemeaning,” there
was a water-pipe that, skirting the wall, passed over the door through
which every morning the pious captives passed in their way to the
chapel. By this Tomlinson proposed to escape; for to the pipe which
reached from the door to the wall, in a slanting and easy direction,
there was a sort of skirting-board; and a dexterous and nimble man might
readily, by the help of this board, convey himself along the pipe, until
the progress of that useful conductor (which was happily very brief) was
stopped by the summit of the wall, where it found a sequel in another
pipe, that descended to the ground on the opposite side of the wall.
Now, on this opposite side was the garden of the prison; in this garden
was a watchman, and this watchman was the hobgoblin of Tomlinson's
scheme,--“For suppose us safe in the garden,” said he, “what shall we do
with this confounded fellow?”
“But that is not all,” added Paul; “for even were there no watchman,
there is a terrible wall, which I noted especially last week, when
we were set to work in the garden, and which has no pipe, save a
perpendicular one, that a man must have the legs of a fly to be able to
climb!”
“Nonsense!” returned Tomlinson; “I will show you how to climb the
stubbornest wall in Christendom, if one has but the coast clear. It is
the watchman, the watchman, we must--”
“What?” asked Paul, observing his comrade did not conclude the sentence.
It was some time before the sage Augustus replied; he then said in a
musing tone,--
“I have been thinking, Paul, whether it would be consistent with virtue,
and that strict code of morals by which all my actions are regulated,
to--slay the watchman!”
“Good heavens!” cried Paul, horror-stricken.
“And I have decided,” continued Augustus, solemnly, without regard to
the exclamation, “that the action would be perfectly justifiable!”
“Villain!” exclaimed Paul, recoiling to the other end of the stone
box--for it was night--in which they were cooped.
“But,” pursued Augustus, who seemed soliloquizing, and whose voice,
sounding calm and thoughtful, like Young's in the famous monologue in
“Hamlet,” denoted that he heeded not the uncourteous interruption,--“but
opinion does not always influence conduct; and although it may be
virtuous to murder the watchman, I have not the heart to do it. I trust
in my future history I shall not by discerning moralists be too severely
censured for a weakness for which my physical temperament is alone to
blame!”
Despite the turn of the soliloquy, it was a long time before Paul could
be reconciled to further conversation with Augustus; and it was only
from the belief that the moralist had leaned to the jesting vein that he
at length resumed the consultation.
The conspirators did not, however, bring their scheme that night to any
ultimate decision. The next day Augustus, Paul, and some others of the
company were set to work in the garden; and Paul then observed that his
friend, wheeling a barrow close by the spot where the watchman stood,
overturned its contents. The watchman was good-natured enough to assist
him in refilling the barrow; and Tomlinson profited so well by the
occasion that that night he informed Paul that they would have nothing
to dread from the watchman's vigilance. “He has promised,” said
Augustus, “for certain consi-de-ra-tions, to allow me to knock him down;
he has also promised to be so much hurt as not to be able to move
until we are over the wall. Our main difficulty now, then, is the first
step,--namely, to climb the pipe unperceived!”
“As to that,” said Paul, who developed, through the whole of the scheme,
organs of sagacity, boldness, and invention which charmed his friend,
and certainly promised well for his future career,--“as to that, I think
we may manage the first ascent with less danger than you imagine. The
mornings of late have been very foggy; they are almost dark at the hour
we go to chapel. Let you and I close the file: the pipe passes just
above the door; our hands, as we have tried, can reach it; and a spring
of no great agility will enable us to raise ourselves up to a footing on
the pipe and the skirting-board.
“The climbing then is easy; and what with the dense fog and our own
quickness, I think we shall have little difficulty in gaining the
garden. The only precautions we need use are, to wait for a very dark
morning, and to be sure that we are the last of the file, so that no one
behind may give the alarm--”
“Or attempt to follow our example, and spoil the pie by a superfluous
plum!” added Augustus. “You counsel admirably; and one of these days, if
you are not hung in the mean while, will, I venture to auger, be a great
logician.”
The next morning was clear and frosty; but the day after was, to use
Tomlinson's simile, “as dark as if all the negroes of Africa had been
stewed down into air.” “You might have cut the fog with a knife,” as
the proverb says. Paul and Augustus could not even see how significantly
each looked at the other.
It was a remarkable trait of the daring temperament of the former, that,
young as he was, it was fixed that he should lead the attempt. At the
hour, then, for chapel the prisoners passed as usual through the door.
When it came to Paul's turn he drew himself by his hands to the pipe,
and then creeping along its sinuous course, gained the wall before he
had even fetched his breath. Rather more clumsily, Augustus followed
his friend's example. Once his foot slipped, and he was all but over.
He extended his hands involuntarily, and caught Paul by the leg. Happily
our hero had then gained the wall, to which he was clinging; and for
once in a way, one rogue raised himself without throwing over another.
Behold Tomlinson and Paul now seated for an instant on the wall to