Paul Clifford

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  ‘I attempted to falter out something like thanks. “Never interrupt me!” said he. “I had two reasons for being glad: – 1st, Because my daughter was the plague of my life, and I wanted some one to take her off my hands; – 2dly, Because I required your assistance on a particular point, and I could not venture to ask it of any one but my son-in-law. In fine, I wish to take you into partnership!!!”

  ‘“Partnership!” cried I, falling on my knees. “Noble – generous man!”

  ‘“Stay a bit,” continued my father-in-law. “What funds do you think requisite for carrying on a bank? You look puzzled! Not a shilling! You will put in just as much as I do. You will put in rather more; for you once put in five hundred pounds, which has been spent long ago. I don’t put in a shilling of my own. I live on my clients, and I very willingly offer you half of them!”

  ‘Imagine, dear Paul, my astonishment, my dismay! I saw myself married to a hideous shrew – son-in-law to a penniless scoundrel, and cheated out of my whole fortune! Compare this view of the question with that which had blazed on me when I contemplated being son-in-law to the rich Mr Asgrave. I stormed at first. Mr Asgrave took up Bacon On the Advancement of Learning, and made no reply till I was cooled in my explosion. You will perceive that, when passion subsided, I necessarily saw that nothing was left for me but adopting my father-in-law’s proposal. Thus, by the fatality which attended me, at the very time I meant to reform, I was forced into scoundrelism, and I was driven into defrauding a vast number of persons by the accident of being son-in-law to a great moralist. As Mr Asgrave was an indolent man, who passed his mornings in speculations on virtue, I was made the active partner. I spent the day at the counting-house; and when I came home for recreation, my wife scratched my eyes out.’

  ‘But were you never recognized as “the stranger,” or “the adventurer,” in your new capacity?’

  ‘No; for, of course, I assumed, in all my changes, both aliases and disguises. And, to tell you the truth, my marriage so altered me that, what with a snuff-coloured coat and a brown scratch wig, with a pen in 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 rarifies 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, by 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, viz., 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 by-ways 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 a 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 us
eful 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 con–si–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 meanwhile, will, I venture to augur, 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 recover breath! The latter then, – the descent to the ground was not very great, – letting his body down by his hands, dropped into the garden.

  ‘Hurt?’ asked the prudent Augustus in a hoarse whisper before he descended from his ‘bad eminence,’ being even willing

  To bear those ills he had,

  Than fly to others that he knew not of,

  without taking every previous precaution in his power.

  ‘No!’ was the answer in the same voice, and Augustus dropped.

  So soon as this latter worthy had recovered the shock of his fall, he lost not a moment in running to the other end of the garden: Paul followed. By the way Tomlinson stopped at a heap of rubbish, and picked up an immense stone; when they came to the part of the wall they had agreed to scale, they found the watchman, about whom they needed not, by the by, to have concerned themselves; for had it not been arranged that he was to have met them, the deep fog would have effectually prevented him from seeing them: this faithful guardian Augustus knocked down, not with the stone, but with ten guineas; he then drew forth from his dress a thickish cord, which he had procured some days before, from the turnkey, and fastening the stone firmly to one end, threw that end over the wall. Now the wall had (as walls of great strength mostly have) an overhanging sort of battlement on either side, and the stone, when flung over and drawn to the tether of the cord to which it was attached, necessarily hitched against this projection; and thus the cord was, as it were, fastened to the wall, and Tomlinson was enabled by it to draw himself up to the top of the barrier. He performed this feat with gymnastic address, like one who had often practised it; albeit, the discreet adventurer had not mentioned in his narrative to Paul any previous occasion for the practice. As soon as he had gained the top of the wall, he threw down the cord to his companion, and, in consideration of Paul’s inexperience in that manner of climbing, gave the fastening of the rope an additional security by holding it himself. With slowness and labour Paul hoisted himself up; and then, by transferring the stone to the other side of the wall, where it made, of course, a similar hitch, our two adventurers were enabled successively to slide down, and consummate their escape from the house of correction.