Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  “The jidge favoured me more than the jury — for he asked how old the boy was, and whether I could produce him? The little fellow was brought into court, and it was surprising how clear he told his story. The jidge listened to the child, young as he was. But M’Crule was on the jury, and said that he knew the child to be as cunning as any in Ireland, and that he would not believe a word that came out of his mouth. So the short and the long of it was, I was condemned to be transported.

  “It would have done you good, if you’d heard the cry in the court when sentence was given, for I was loved in the country. Poor Peggy and Sheelah! — But I’ll not be troubling your honour’s tender heart with our parting. I was transmuted to Dublin, to be put on board the tender, and lodged in Kilmainham, waiting for the ship that was to go to Botany. I had not been long there, when another prisoner was brought to the same room with me. He was a handsome-looking man, about thirty years of age, of the most penetrating eye and determined countenance that I ever saw. He appeared to be worn down with ill-health, and his limbs much swelled: notwithstanding which, he had strong handcuffs on his wrists, and he seemed to be guarded with uncommon care. He begged the turnkey to lay him down upon the miserable iron bed that was in the cell; and he begged him, for God’s sake, to let him have a jug of water by his bedside, and to leave him to his fate.

  “I could not help pitying this poor cratur; I went to him, and offered him any assistance in my power. He answered me shortly, ‘What are you here for?’ — I told him. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘whether you are guilty or not, is your affair, not mine; but answer me at once — are you a good man? — Can you go through with a thing? — and are you steel to the back-bone?’—’I am,’ said I. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘you are a lucky man — for he that is talking to you is Michael Dunne, who knows how to make his way out of any jail in Ireland.’ Saying this, he sprung with great activity from the bed. ‘It is my cue,’ said he, ‘to be sick and weak, whenever the turnkey comes in, to put him off his guard — for they have all orders to watch me strictly; because as how, do you see, I broke out of the jail of Trim; and when they catched me, they took me before his honour the police magistrate, who did all he could to get out of me the way which I made my escape.’ ‘Well,’ says the magistrate, ‘I’ll put you in a place where you can’t get out — till you’re sent to ‘Botany.’ ‘Plase your worship,’ says I, ‘if there’s no offence in saying it, there’s no such place in Ireland.’—’No such place as what?’ ‘No such place as will hold Michael Dunne.’—’What do you think of Kilmainbam?’ says he. ‘I think it’s a fine jail — and it will be no asy matter to get out of it — but it is not impossible.’—’Well, Mr. Dunne,’ said the magistrate, ‘I have heard of your fame, and that you have secrets of your own for getting out. Now, if you’ll tell me how you got out of the jail of Trim, I’ll make your confinement at Kilmainham as asy as may be, so as to keep you safe; and if you do not, you must be ironed, and I will have sentinels from an English regiment, who shall be continually changed: so that you can’t get any of them to help you.’—’Plase your worship,’ said Dunne, ‘that’s very hard usage; but I know as how that you are going to build new jails all over Ireland, and that you’d be glad to know the best way to make them secure. If your worship will promise me that if I get out of Kilmainham, and if I tell you how I do it, then you’ll get me a free pardon, I’ll try hard but what before three months are over I’ll be a prisoner at large.’—’That’s more than I can promise you,’ said the magistrate; ‘but if you will disclose to me the best means of keeping other people in, I will endeavour to keep you from Botany Bay.’—’Now, sir,’ says Dunne, ‘I know your worship to be a man of honour, and that your own honour regards yourself, and not me; so that if I was ten times as bad as I am, you’d keep your promise with me, as well as if I was the best gentleman in Ireland. So that now, Mr. Moriarty,’ said Dunne, ‘do you see, if I get out, I shall be safe; and if you get out along with me, you have nothing to do but to go over to America. And if you are a married man, and tired of your wife, you’ll get rid of her. If you are not tired of her, and you have any substance, she may sell it and follow you.’

  “There was something, Master Harry, about the man that made me have great confidence in him — and I was ready to follow his advice. Whenever the turnkey was coming he was groaning and moaning on the bed. At other times he made me keep bathing his wrists with cold water, so that in three or four days they were not half the size they were at first. This change he kept carefully from the jailor. I observed that he frequently asked what day of the month it was, but that he never made any attempt to speak to the sentinels; nor did he seem to make any preparation, or to lay any scheme for getting out. I held my tongue, and waited qui’tely. At last, he took out of his pocket a little flageolet, and began to play upon it. He asked me if I could play: I said I could a little, but very badly. ‘I don’t care how bad it is, if you can play at all.’ He got off the bed where he was lying, and with the utmost ease pulled his hands out of his handcuffs. Besides the swelling of his wrists having gone down, he had some method of getting rid of his thumb that I never could understand. Says I, ‘Mr. Dunne, the jailor will miss the fetters,’—’No,’ said he, ‘for I will put them on again;’ and so he did, with great ease. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘it is time to begin our work.’

  “He took off one of his shoes, and taking out the in-sole, he showed me a hole, that was cut where the heel was, in which there was a little small flat bottle, which he told me was the most precious thing in life. And under the rest of the sole there were a number of saws, made of watch spring, that lay quite flat and snug under his foot. The next time the turnkey came in, he begged, for the love of God, to have a pipe and some tobacco, which was accordingly granted to him. What the pipes and tobacco were for, I could not then guess, but they were found to be useful. He now made a paste of some of the bread of his allowance, with which he made a cup round the bottom of one of the bars of the window; into this cup he poured some of the contents of the little bottle, which was, I believe, oil of vitriol: in a little time, this made a bad smell, and it was then I found the use of the pipe and tobacco, for the smell of the tobacco quite bothered the smell of the vitriol. When he thought he had softened the iron bar sufficiently, he began to work away with the saws, and he soon taught me how to use them; so that we kept working on continually, no matter how little we did at a time; but as we were constantly at it, what I thought never could be done was finished in three or four days. The use of the flageolet was to drown the noise of the filing; for when one filed, the other piped.

  “When the bar was cut through, he fitted the parts nicely together, and covered them over with rust. He proceeded in the same manner to cut out another bar; so that we had a free opening out of the window. Our cell was at the very top of the jail, so that even to look down to the ground was terrible.

  “Under various pretences, we had got an unusual quantity of blankets on our beds; these he examined with the utmost care, as upon their strength our lives were to depend. We calculated with great coolness the breadth of the strips into which he might cut the blankets, so as to reach from the window to the ground; allowing for the knots by which they were to be joined, and for other knots that were to hinder the hands and feet from slipping.

  “‘Now,’ said he, ‘Mr. Moriarty, all this is quite asy, and requires nothing but a determined heart and a sound head: but the difficulty is to baffle the sentinel that is below, and who is walking backward and forward continually, day and night, under the window; and there is another, you see, in a sentry-box, at the door of the yard: and, for all I know, there may be another sentinel at the other side of the wall. Now these men are never twice on the same duty: I have friends enough out of doors, who have money enough, and would have talked reason to them; but as these sentinels are changed every day, no good can be got of them: but stay till to-morrow night, and we’ll try what we can do.’

  “I was determined to follow him. The next night, t
he moment that we were locked in for the night, we set to work to cut the blankets into slips, and tied them together with great care. We put this rope round one of the fixed bars of the window; and, pulling at each knot, we satisfied ourselves that every part was sufficiently strong. Dunne looked frequently out of the window with the utmost anxiety — it was a moonlight night.

  “‘The moon,’ said he, ‘will be down in an hour and a half.’

  “In a little while we heard the noise of several girls singing at a distance from the windows, and we could see, as they approached, that they were dancing, and making free with the sentinels: I saw that they were provided with bottles of spirits, with which they pledged the deluded soldiers. By degrees the sentinels forgot their duty; and, by the assistance of some laudanum contained in some of the spirits, they were left senseless on the ground. The whole of this plan, and the very night and hour, had been arranged by Dunne with his associates, before he was put into Kilmainham. The success of this scheme, which was totally unexpected by me, gave me, I suppose, plase your honour, fresh courage. He, very honourably, gave me the choice to go down first or to follow him. I was ashamed not to go first: after I had got out of the window, and had fairly hold of the rope, my fear diminished, and I went cautiously down to the bottom. Here I waited for Dunne, and we both of us silently stole along in the dark, for the moon had gone in, and we did not meet with the least obstruction. Our out of door’s assistants had the prudence to get entirely out of sight. Dunne led me to a hiding-place in a safe part of the town, and committed me to the care of a seafaring man, who promised to get me on board an American ship.

  “‘As for my part,’ said Dunne, ‘I will go in the morning, boldly, to the magistrate, and claim his promise.’

  “He did so — and the magistrate with good sense, and good faith, kept his promise, and obtained a pardon for Dunne.

  “I wrote to Peggy, to get aboard an American ship. I was cast away on the coast of France — made my way to the first religious house that I could hear of, where I luckily found an Irishman, who saved me from starvation, and who sent me on from convent to convent, till I got to Paris, where your honour met me on that bridge, just when I was looking for Miss Dora’s house. And that’s all I’ve got to tell,” concluded Moriarty, “and all true.”

  No adventures of any sort happened to our hero in the course of his journey. The wind was fair for England when he reached Calais: he had a good passage; and with all the expedition that good horses, good roads, good money, and civil words, ensure in England, he pursued his way; and arrived in the shortest time possible in London.

  He reached town in the morning, before the usual hour when the banks are open. Leaving orders with his servant, on whose punctuality he could depend, to awaken him at the proper hour, he lay down, overcome with fatigue, and slept — yes — slept soundly.

  CHAPTER XXXI.

  Ormond was wakened at the proper hour — went immediately to — —’s bank. It was but just open, and beginning to do business. He had never been there before — his person was not known to any of the firm. He entered a long narrow room, so dark at the entrance from the street that he could at first scarcely see what was on either side of him — a clerk from some obscure nook, and from a desk higher than himself, put out his head, with a long pen behind his ear, and looked at Ormond as he came in. “Pray, sir, am I right? — Is this Mr. — —’s bank?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With mercantile economy of words, and a motion of his head, the clerk pointed out to Ormond the way he should go — and continued casting up his books. Ormond walked down the narrow aisle, and it became light as he advanced towards a large window at the farther end, before which three clerks sat at a table opposite to him. A person stood with his back to Ormond, and was speaking earnestly to one of the clerks, who leaned over the table listening. Just as Ormond came up he heard his own name mentioned — he recollected the voice — he recollected the back of the figure — the very bottle-green coat — it was Patrickson — Ormond stood still behind him, and waited to hear what was going on.

  “Sir,” said the clerk, “it is a very sudden order for a very large sum.”

  “True, sir — but you see my power — you know Mr. Ormond’s handwriting, and you know Sir Ulick O’Shane’s—”

  “Mr. James,” said the principal clerk, turning to one of the others, “be so good to hand me the letters we have of Mr. Ormond. As we have never seen the gentleman sign his name, sir, it is necessary that we should be more particular in comparing.”

  “Oh! sir, no doubt — compare as much as you please — no doubt people cannot be too exact and deliberate in doing business.”

  “It certainly is his signature,” said the clerk.

  “I witnessed the paper,” said Patrickson.

  “Sir, I don’t dispute it,” replied the clerk; “but you cannot blame us for being cautious when such a very large sum is in question, and when we have no letter of advice from the gentleman.”

  “But I tell you I come straight from Mr. Ormond; I saw him last Tuesday at Paris—”

  “And you see him now, sir,” said Ormond, advancing.

  Patrickson’s countenance changed beyond all power of control.

  “Mr. Ormond! — I thought you were at Paris.”

  “Mr. Patrickson! — I thought you were at Havre de Grace — what brought you here so suddenly?”

  “I acted for another,” hesitated Patrickson: “I therefore made no delay.”

  “And, thank Heaven!” said Ormond, “I have acted for myself! — but just in time! — Sir,” continued he, addressing himself to the principal clerk, “Gentlemen, I have to return you my thanks for your caution — it has actually saved me from ruin — for I understand—”

  Ormond suddenly stopped, recollecting that he might injure Sir Ulick O’Shane essentially by a premature disclosure, or by repeating a report which might be ill-founded.

  He turned again to speak to Patrickson, but Patrickson had disappeared.

  Then continuing to address himself to the clerks. “Gentlemen,” said Ormond, speaking carefully, “have you heard any thing of or from Sir Ulick O’Shane lately, except what you may have heard from this Mr. Patrickson?”

  “Not from but of Sir Ulick O’Shane we heard from our Dublin correspondent — in due course we have heard,” replied the head clerk. “Too true, I am afraid, sir, that his bank had come to paying in sixpences on Saturday.”

  The second clerk seeing great concern in Ormond’s countenance, added, “But Sunday, you know, is in their favour, sir; and Monday and Tuesday are holidays: so they may stand the run, and recover yet.”

  With the help of this gentleman’s thirty thousand, they might have recovered, perhaps — but Mr. Ormond would scarcely have recovered it.

  As to the ten thousand pounds in the Three per Cents., of which Sir Ulick had obtained possession a month ago, that was irrecoverable, if his bank should break—”If.” — The clerks all spoke with due caution; but their opinion was sufficiently plain. They were honestly indignant against the guardian who had thus attempted to ruin his ward.

  Though almost stunned and breathless with the sense of the danger he had so narrowly escaped, yet Ormond’s instinct of generosity, if we may use the expression, and his gratitude for early kindness, operated; he would not believe that Sir Ulick had been guilty of a deliberate desire to injure him. At all events, he determined that, instead of returning to France, as he had intended, he would go immediately to Ireland, and try if it were possible to assist Sir Ulick, without materially injuring himself.

  Having ordered horses, he made inquiry wherever he thought he might obtain information with respect to the Annalys. All that he could learn was, that they were at some sea-bathing place in the south of England, and that Miss Annaly was still unmarried. A ray of hope darted into the mind of our hero — and he began his journey to Ireland with feelings which every good and generous mind will know how to appreciate.

  He had escaped
at Paris from a temptation which it was scarcely possible to resist. He had by decision and activity preserved his fortune from ruin — he had under his protection an humble friend, whom he had saved from banishment and disgrace, and whom he hoped to restore to his wretched wife and family. Forgetful of the designs that had been meditated against him by his guardian, to whose necessities he attributed his late conduct, he hastened to his immediate assistance; determined to do every thing in his power to save Sir Ulick from ruin, if his difficulties arose from misfortune, and not from criminality: if, on the contrary, he should find that Sir Ulick was fraudulently a bankrupt, he determined to quit Ireland immediately, and to resume his scheme of foreign travel.