Paul Clifford Part 10

"Well, Paul, shortly after this adventure I made your acquaintance. I continued ostensibly my literary profession, but only as a mask for the labours I did not profess. A circ.u.mstance obliged me to leave London rather precipitately. Lord Dunshunner joined me in Edinburgh. D---it, instead of doing anything there, we were done! The veriest urchin that ever crept through the High Street is more than a match for the most scientific of Englishmen. With us it is art; with the Scotch it is nature. They pick your pockets without using their fingers for it; and they prevent reprisal by having nothing for you to pick.

"We left Edinburgh with very long faces, and at Carlisle we found it necessary to separate. For my part, I went as a valet to a n.o.bleman who had just lost his last servant at Carlisle by a fever; my friend gave me the best of characters! My new master was a very clever man. He astonished people at dinner by the impromptus he prepared at breakfast; in a word, he was a wit. He soon saw, for he was learned himself, that I had received a cla.s.sical education, and he employed me in the confidential capacity of finding quotations for him. I cla.s.sed these alphabetically and under three heads,--'Parliamentary, Literary, Dining-out.' These were again subdivided into 'Fine,' 'Learned,' and 'Jocular;' so that my master knew at once where to refer for genius, wisdom, and wit. He was delighted with my management of his intellects.

In compliment to him, I paid more attention to politics than I had done before; for he was a 'great Whig,' and uncommonly liberal in everything--but money! Hence, Paul, the origin of my political principles; and I thank Heaven there is not now a rogue in England who is a better--that is to say, more of a moderate-Whig than your humble servant! I continued with him nearly a year. He discharged me for a fault worthy of my genius: other servants may lose the watch or the coat of their master; I went at n.o.bler game, and lost him--his private character!"

"How do you mean?"

"Why, I was enamoured of a lady who would not have looked at me as Mr.

Tomlinson; so I took my master's clothes and occasionally his carriage, and made love to my nymph as Lord. Her vanity made her indiscreet. The Tory papers got hold of it; and my master, in a change of ministers, was declared by George the Third to be 'too gay for a Chancellor of the Exchequer.' An old gentleman who had had fifteen children by a wife like a Gorgon, was chosen instead of my master; and although the new minister was a fool in his public capacity, the moral public were perfectly content with him, because of his private virtues!

"My master was furious, made the strictest inquiry, found me out, and turned me out too!

"A Whig not in place has an excuse for disliking the Const.i.tution. My distress almost made me a republican; but, true to my creed, I must confess that I would only have levelled upwards. I especially disaffected the inequality of riches; I looked moodily on every carriage that pa.s.sed; I even frowned like a second Catiline at the steam of a gentle man's kitchen! My last situation had not been lucrative; I had neglected my perquisites, in my ardour for politics. My master, too, refused to give me a character: who would take me without one?

"I was asking myself this melancholy question one morning, when I suddenly encountered one of the fine friends I had picked up at my old haunt, the ordinary, in St. James's. His name was Pepper."

"Pepper!" cried Paul.

Without heeding the exclamation, Tomlinson continued:--"We went to a tavern and drank a bottle together. Wine made me communicative; it also opened my comrade's heart. He asked me to take a ride with him that night towards Hounslow. I did so, and found a purse."

"How fortunate! Where?"

"In a gentleman's pocket. I was so pleased with my luck that I went the same road twice a week, in order to see if I could pick up any more purses. Fate favoured me, and I lived for a long time the life of the blessed. Oh, Paul, you know not--you know not what a glorious life is that of a highwayman; but you shall taste it one of these days,--you shall, on my honour.

"I now lived with a club of honest fellows. We called ourselves 'The Exclusives,'--for we were mighty reserved in our a.s.sociates, and only those who did business on a grand scale were admitted into our set. For my part, with all my love for my profession, I liked ingenuity still better than force, and preferred what the vulgar call swindling, even to the highroad. On an expedition of this sort, I rode once into a country town, and saw a crowd a.s.sembled in one corner; I joined it, and my feelings!--beheld my poor friend Viscount Dunshunner just about to be hanged! I rode off as fast as I could,--I thought I saw Jack Ketch at my heels. My horse threw me at a hedge, and I broke my collar-bone. In the confinement that ensued gloomy ideas floated before me. I did not like to be hanged; so I reasoned against my errors, and repented. I recovered slowly, returned to town, and repaired to my cousin the bookseller. To say truth, I had played him a little trick: collected some debts of his by a mistake,--very natural in the confusion incident on my distresses.

However, he was extremely unkind about it; and the mistake, natural as it was, had cost me his acquaintance.

"I went now to him with the penitential aspect of the prodigal son; and, faith, he would have not made a bad representation of the fatted calf about to be killed on my return,--so corpulent looked he, and so dejected! 'Graceless reprobate!' he began, 'your poor father is dead!'

I was exceedingly shocked; but--never fear, Paul, I am not about to be pathetic. My father had divided his fortune among all his children; my share was L500. The possession of this soon made my penitence seem much more sincere in the eyes of my good cousin; and after a very pathetic scene, he took me once more into favour. I now consulted with him as to the best method of laying out my capital and recovering my character. We could not devise any scheme at the first conference; but the second time I saw him, my cousin said with a cheerful countenance: 'Cheer up, Augustus, I have got thee a situation. Mr. Asgrave the banker will take thee as a clerk. He is a most worthy man; and having a vast deal of learning, he will respect thee for thy acquirements.' The same day I was introduced to Mr. Asgrave, who was a little man with a fine, bald, benevolent head; and after a long conversation which he was pleased to hold with me, I became one of his quill-drivers. I don't know how it was, but by little and little I rose in my master's good graces. I propitiated him, I fancy, by disposing of my L500 according to his advice; he laid it out for me, on what he said was famous security, on a landed estate. Mr. Asgrave was of social habits,--he had a capital house and excellent wines. As he was not very particular in his company, nor ambitious of visiting the great, he often suffered me to make one of his table, and was pleased to hold long arguments with me about the ancients. I soon found out that my master was a great moral philosopher; and being myself in weak health, sated with the ordinary pursuits of the world, in which my experience had forestalled my years, and naturally of a contemplative temperament, I turned my attention to the moral studies which so fascinated my employer. I read through nine shelves full of metaphysicians, and knew exactly the points in which those ill.u.s.trious thinkers quarrelled with each other, to the great advance of the science. My master and I used to hold many a long discussion about the nature of good and evil; as, by help of his benevolent forehead and a clear dogged voice, he always seemed to our audience to be the wiser and better man of the two, he was very well pleased with our disputes. This gentleman had an only daughter,--an awful shrew, with a face like a hatchet but philosophers overcome personal defects; and thinking only of the good her wealth might enable me to do to my fellow-creatures, I secretly made love to her. You will say that was playing my master but a scurvy trick for his kindness. Not at all; my master himself had convinced me that there was no such virtue as grat.i.tude. It was an error of vulgar moralists. I yielded to his arguments, and at length privately espoused his daughter. The day after this took place, he summoned me to his study. 'So, Augustus,' said he, very mildly, 'you have married my daughter: nay, never look confused; I saw a long time ago that you were resolved to do so, and I was very glad of it.'

"I attempted to falter out something like thanks. 'Never interrupt me!'

said he. 'I had two reasons for being glad,--first, because my daughter was the plague of my life, and I wanted some one to take her off my hands; secondly, because I required your a.s.sistance 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. 'n.o.ble, 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 L500, 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 by explosion. You will perceive that when pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed, 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 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 circ.u.mstance, 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 compa.s.sionated. 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 repet.i.tion 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 "G.o.d 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 "G.o.d 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 amus.e.m.e.nts of the gentlemen "misdemeaning," there was a water-pipe that, skirting the wall, pa.s.sed over the door through which every morning the pious captives pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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.