The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2

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To return to the narrative.--Agnes had not, nor could have, the most
remote suspicion of this Barratt's connection with the shop which she
had not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch
it was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and
degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her
natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the depth
of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And not only
had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design in what before
had seemed accident, and links uniting remote incidents which else
seemed casual and disconnected, greatly disturbed and confused her
manner, which confusion again had become more intense upon her own
consciousness that she _was_ confused, and that her manner was greatly
to her disadvantage; but--which was the worst effect of all, because the
rest could not operate against her, except upon those who were present
to witness it, whereas this was noted down and recorded--so utterly did
her confusion strip her of all presence of mind, that she did not
consciously notice (and consequently could not protest against at the
moment when it was most important to do so, and most natural) the
important circumstance of the muff. This capital objection, therefore,
though dwelt upon and improved to the utmost at the trial, was looked
upon by the judges as an after-thought; and merely because it had not
been seized upon by herself, and urged in the first moments of her
almost incapacitating terror on finding this amongst the circumstances
of the charge against her--as if an ingenuous nature, in the very act of
recoiling with horror from a criminal charge the most degrading, and in
the very instant of discovering, with a perfect rapture of alarm, the
too plausible appearance of probability amongst the circumstances, would
be likely to pause, and with attorney-like dexterity, to pick out the
particular circumstance that might admit of being _proved_ to be false,
when the conscience proclaimed, though in despondence for the result,
that all the circumstances were, as to the use made of them, one tissue
of falsehoods. Agnes, who had made a powerful effort in speaking of the
case at all, found her calmness increase as she advanced; and she now
told me, that in reality there were two discoveries which she made in
the same instant, and not one only, which had disarmed her firmness and
ordinary presence of mind. One I have mentioned--the fact of Barratt,
the proprietor of the shop, being the same person who had in former
instances persecuted her in the street; but the other was even more
alarming--it has been said already that it was _not_ a pure matter of
accident that she had visited this particular shop. In reality, that
nursery-maid, of whom some mention has been made above, and in terms
expressing the suspicion with which even then I regarded her, had
persuaded her into going thither by some representations which Agnes had
already ascertained to be altogether unwarranted. Other presumptions
against this girl's fidelity crowded dimly upon my wife's mind at the
very moment of finding her eyes thus suddenly opened. And it was not
five minutes after her first examination, and in fact five minutes after
it had ceased to be of use to her, that she remembered another
circumstance which now, when combined with the sequel, told its own
tale;--the muff had been missed some little time before the 6th of
April. Search had been made for it; but, the particular occasion which
required it having passed off, this search was laid aside for the
present, in the expectation that it would soon reappear in some corner
of the house before it was wanted: then came the sunny day, which made
it no longer useful, and would perhaps have dismissed it entirely from
the recollection of all parties, until it was now brought back in this
memorable way. The name of my wife was embroidered within, upon the
lining, and it thus became a serviceable link to the hellish cabal
against her. Upon reviewing the circumstances from first to last, upon
recalling the manner of the girl at the time when the muff was missed,
and upon combining the whole with her recent deception, by which she had
misled her poor mistress into visiting this shop, Agnes began to see the
entire truth as to this servant's wicked collusion with Barratt, though,
perhaps, it might be too much to suppose her aware of the unhappy result
to which her collusion tended. All this she saw at a glance when it was
too late, for her first examination was over. This girl, I must add, had
left our house during my illness, and she had afterwards a melancholy
end.

One thing surprised me in all this, Barratt's purpose must manifestly
have been to create merely a terror in my poor wife's mind, and to stop
short of any legal consequences, in order to profit of that panic and
confusion for extorting compliances with his hideous pretensions. It
perplexed me, therefore, that he did not appear to have pursued this
manifestly his primary purpose, the other being merely a mask to conceal
his true ends, and also (as he fancied) a means for effecting them. In
this, however, I had soon occasion to find that I was deceived. He had,
but without the knowledge of Agnes, taken such steps as were then open
to him, for making overtures to her with regard to the terms upon which
he would agree to defeat the charge against her by failing to appear.
But the law had travelled too fast for him and too determinately; so
that, by the time he supposed terror to have operated sufficiently in
favour of his views, it had already become unsafe to venture upon such
explicit proposals as he would otherwise have tried. His own safety was
now at stake, and would have been compromised by any open or written
avowal of the motives on which he had been all along acting. In fact, at
this time he was foiled by the agent in whom he confided; but much more
he had been confounded upon another point--the prodigious interest
manifested by the public. Thus it seems--that, whilst he meditated only
a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally,
to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true
motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a
manner obliged to go forward and consummate the ruin of another.

* * * * *

The state of Agnes, as to health and bodily strength, was now becoming
such that I was forcibly warned--whatsoever I meditated doing, to do
quickly. There was this urgent reason for alarm: once conveyed into that
region of the prison in which sentences like hers were executed, it
became hopeless that I could communicate with her again. All intercourse
whatsoever, and with whomsoever, was then placed under the most rigorous
interdict; and the alarming circumstance was, that this transfer was
governed by no settled rules, but might take place at any hour, and
would certainly be precipitated by the slightest violence on my part,
the slightest indiscretion, or the slightest argument for suspicion.
Hard indeed was the part I had to play, for it was indispensable that I
should appear calm and tranquil, in order to disarm suspicions around
me, whilst continually contemplating the possibility that I myself might
be summoned to extremities which I could not so much as trust myself to
name or distinctly to conceive. But thus stood the case; the
Government, it was understood, angered by the public opposition,
resolute for the triumph of what they called 'principle,' had settled
finally that the sentence should be carried into execution. Now that
she, that my Agnes, being the frail wreck that she had become, could
have stood one week of this sentence practically and literally
enforced--was a mere chimera. A few hours probably of the experiment
would have settled that question by dismissing her to the death she
longed for; but because the suffering would be short, was I to stand by
and to witness the degradation--the pollution--attempted to be fastened
upon her. What! to know that her beautiful tresses would be shorn
ignominiously--a felon's dress forced upon her--a vile taskmaster with
authority to----; blistered be the tongue that could go on to utter, in
connection with her innocent name, the vile dishonours which were to
settle upon her person! I, however, and her brother had taken such
resolutions that this result was one barely possible; and yet I sickened
(yes, literally I many times experienced the effect of physical
sickness) at contemplating our own utter childish helplessness, and
recollecting that every night during our seclusion from the prison the
last irreversible step might be taken--and in the morning we might find
a solitary cell, and the angel form that had illuminated it gone where
we could not follow, and leaving behind her the certainty that we should
see her no more. Every night, at the hour of locking up, _she_, at
least, manifestly had a fear that she saw us for the last time; she put
her arms feebly about my neck, sobbed convulsively, and, I believe,
guessed--but, if really so, did not much reprove or quarrel with the
desperate purposes which I struggled with in regard t o her own life.
One thing was quite evident--that to the peace of her latter days, now
hurrying to their close, it was indispensable that she should pass them
undivided from me; and possibly, as was afterwards alleged, when it
became easy to allege anything, some relenting did take place in high
quarters at this time; for upon some medical reports made just now, a
most seasonable indulgence was granted, viz. that Hannah was permitted
to attend her mistress constantly; and it was also felt as a great
alleviation of the horrors belonging to this prison, that candles were
now allowed throughout the nights. But I was warned privately that these
indulgences were with no consent from the police minister; and that
circumstances might soon withdraw the momentary intercession by which we
profited. With this knowledge we could not linger in our preparations;
we had resolved upon accomplishing an escape for Agnes, at whatever risk
or price; the main difficulty was her own extreme feebleness, which
might forbid her to co-operate with us in any degree at the critical
moment; and the main danger was--delay. We pushed forward, therefore, in
our attempts with prodigious energy, and I for my part with an energy
like that of insanity.

* * * * *

The first attempt we made was upon the fidelity to his trust of the
chief jailer. He was a coarse vulgar man, brutal in his manners, but
with vestiges of generosity in his character--though damaged a good deal
by his daily associates. Him we invited to a meeting at a tavern in the
neighbourhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to
betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we
had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate
circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to
wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in
some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed
the terms of our invitation.

These proved to be effectual, as regarded our immediate object of
obtaining an interview of persuasion. The night was wet; and at seven
o'clock, the hour fixed for the interview, we were seated in readiness,
much perplexed to know whether he would take any notice of our
invitation. We had waited three quarters of an hour, when we heard a
heavy lumbering step ascending the stair. The door was thrown open to
its widest extent, and in the centre of the door-way stood a short,
stout-built man, and the very broadest I ever beheld--staring at us with
bold enquiring eyes. His salutation was something to this effect.

'What the hell do you gay fellows want with me? What the blazes is this
humbugging letter about? My son, and be hanged! what do you know of my
son?'

Upon this overture we ventured to request that he would come in and
suffer us to shut the door, which we also locked. Next we produced the
official paper nominating his son to a small place in the customs,--not
yielding much, it was true, in the way of salary, but fortunately, and
in accordance with the known wishes of the father, unburdened with any
dangerous trust.

'Well, I suppose I must say thank ye: but what comes next? What am I to
do to pay the damages?' We informed him that for this particular little
service we asked no return.

'No, no,' said he, 'that'll not go down: that cat'll not jump. I'm not
green enough for that. So, say away--what's the damage?' We then
explained that we had certainly a favour and a great one to ask: ['Ay,
I'll be bound you have,' was his parenthesis:] but that for this we were
prepared to offer a separate remuneration; repeating that with respect
to the little place procured for his son, it had not cost us anything,
and therefore we did really and sincerely decline to receive anything in
return; satisfied that, by this little offering, we had procured the
opportunity of this present interview. At this point we withdrew a
covering from a table upon which we had previously arranged a heap of
gold coins, amounting in value to twelve hundred English guineas: this
being the entire sum which circumstances allowed us to raise on so
sudden a warning: for some landed property that we both had was so
settled and limited, that we could not convert it into money either by
way of sale, loan, or mortgage. This sum, stating to him its exact
amount, we offered to his acceptance, upon the single condition that he
would look aside, or wink hard, or (in whatever way he chose to express
it) would make, or suffer to be made, such facilities for our liberating
a female prisoner as we would point out. He mused: full five minutes he
sat deliberating without opening his lips; At length he shocked us by
saying, in a firm decisive tone that left us little hope of altering his
resolution,--'No: gentlemen, it's a very fair offer, and a good deal of
money for a single prisoner. I think I can guess at the person. It's a
fair offer--fair enough. But, bless your heart! if I were to do the
thing you want----why perhaps another case might be overlooked: but this
prisoner, no: there's too much depending. No, they would turn me out of
my place. Now the place is worth more to me in the long run than what
you offer; though you bid fair enough, if it were only for my time in
it. But look here: in case I can get my son to come into harness, I'm
expecting to get the office for him after I've retired. So I can't do
it. But I'll tell you what: you've been kind to my son: and therefore
I'll not say a word about it. You're safe for me. And so good-night to
you.' Saying which, and standing no further question, he walked
resolutely out of the room and down-stairs.

Two days we mourned over this failure, and scarcely knew which way to
turn for another ray of hope;--on the third morning we received
intelligence that this very jailer had been attacked by the fever,
which, after long desolating the city, had at length made its way into
the prison. In a very few days the jailer was lying without hope of
recovery: and of necessity another person was appointed to fill his
station for the present. This person I had seen, and I liked him less by
much than the one he succeeded: he had an Italian appearance, and he
wore an air of Italian subtlety and dissimulation. I was surprised to
find, on proposing the same service to him, and on the same terms, that
he made no objection whatever, but closed instantly with my offers. In
prudence, however, I had made this change in the articles: a sum equal
to two hundred English guineas, or one-sixth part of the whole money, he
was to receive beforehand as a retaining fee; but the remainder was to
be paid only to himself, or to anybody of his appointing, at the very
moment of our finding the prison gates thrown open to us. He spoke
fairly enough, and seemed to meditate no treachery; nor was there any
obvious or known interest to serve by treachery; and yet I doubted him
grievously.

The night came: it was chosen as a gala night, one of two nights
throughout the year in which the prisoners were allowed to celebrate a
great national event: and in those days of relaxed prison management the
utmost license was allowed to the rejoicing. This indulgence was
extended to prisoners of all classes, though, of course, under more
restrictions with regard to the criminal class. Ten o'clock came--the
hour at which we had been instructed to hold ourselves in readiness. We
had been long prepared. Agnes had been dressed by Hannah in such a
costume externally (a man's hat and cloak, &c.) that, from her height,
she might easily have passed amongst a mob of masquerading figures in
the debtors' halls and galleries for a young stripling. Pierpoint and
myself were also to a certain degree disguised; so far at least, that we
should not have been recognised at any hurried glance by those of the
prison officers who had become acquainted with our persons. We were all
more or less disguised about the face; and in that age when masks were
commonly used at all hours by people of a certain rank, there would have
been nothing suspicious in any possible costume of the kind in a night
like this, if we could succeed in passing for friends of debtors.

I am impatient of these details, and I hasten over the ground. One
entire hour passed away, and no jailer appeared. We began to despond
heavily; and Agnes, poor thing! was now the most agitated of us all. At
length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few
minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars
unfastening. The jailer entered--drunk, and much disposed to be
insolent. I thought it advisable to give him another bribe, and he
resumed the fawning insinuation of his manner. He now directed us, by
passages which he pointed out, to gain the other side of the prison.
There we were to mix with the debtors and their mob of friends, and to
await his joining us, which in that crowd he could do without much
suspicion. He wished us to traverse the passages separately; but this
was impossible, for it was necessary that one of us should support Agnes
on each side. I previously persuaded her to take a small quantity of
brandy, which we rejoiced to see had given her, at this moment of
starting, a most seasonable strength and animation. The gloomy passages
were more than usually empty, for all the turnkeys were employed in a
vigilant custody of the gates, and examination of the parties going out.
So the jailer had told us, and the news alarmed us. We came at length to
a turning which brought us in sight of a strong iron gate, that divided
the two main quarters of the prison. For this we had not been prepared.
The man, however, opened the gate without a word spoken, only putting
out his hand for a fee; and in my joy, perhaps, I gave him one
imprudently large. After passing this gate, the distant uproar of the
debtors guided us to the scene of their merriment; and when there, such
was the tumult and the vast multitude assembled, that we now hoped in
good earnest to accomplish our purpose without accident. Just at this
moment the jailer appeared in the distance; he seemed looking towards
us, and at length one of our party could distinguish that he was
beckoning to us. We went forward, and found him in some agitation, real
or counterfeit. He muttered a word or two quite unintelligible about the
man at the wicket, told us we must wait a while, and he would then see
what could be done for us. We were beginning to demur, and to express
the suspicions which now too seriously arose, when he, seeing, or
affecting to see some object of alarm, pushed us with a hurried movement
into a cell opening upon the part of the gallery at which we were now
standing. Not knowing whether we really might not be retreating from
some danger, we could do no otherwise than comply with his signals; but
we were troubled at finding ourselves immediately locked in from the
outside, and thus apparently all our motions had only sufficed to
exchange one prison for another.

We were now completely in the dark, and found, by a hard breathing from
one corner of the little dormitory, that it was not unoccupied. Having
taken care to provide ourselves separately with means for striking a
light, we soon had more than one torch burning. The brilliant light
falling upon the eyes of a man who lay stretched on the iron bedstead,
woke him. It proved to be my friend the under-jailer, Ratcliffe, but no
longer holding any office in the prison. He sprang up, and a rapid
explanation took place. He had become a prisoner for debt; and on this
evening, after having caroused through the day with some friends from
the country, had retired at an early hour to sleep away his
intoxication. I on my part thought it prudent to entrust him
unreservedly with our situation and purposes, not omitting our gloomy
suspicions. Ratcliffe looked, with a pity that won my love, upon the
poor wasted Agnes. He had seen her on her first entrance into the
prison, had spoken to her, and therefore knew _from_ what she had
fallen, _to_ what. Even then he had felt for her; how much more at this
time, when he beheld, by the fierce light of the torches, her wo-worn
features!

'Who was it,' he asked eagerly, 'you made the bargain with? Manasseh?'

'The same.'

'Then I can tell you this--not a greater villain walks the earth. He is
a Jew from Portugal; he has betrayed many a man, and will many another,
unless he gets his own neck stretched, which might happen, if I told all
I know.'

'But what was it probable that this man meditated? Or how could it
profit him to betray us?'

'That's more than I can tell. He wants to get your money, and that he
doesn't know how to bring about without doing his part. But that's what
he never _will_ do, take my word for it. That would cut him out of all
chance for the head-jailer's place.' He mused a little, and then told us
that he could himself put us outside the prison-walls, and _would_ do it
without fee or reward. 'But we must be quiet, or that devil will bethink
him of me. I'll wager something he thought that I was out merry-making
like the rest; and if he should chance to light upon the truth, he'll be
back in no time.' Ratcliffe then removed an old fire-grate, at the back
of which was an iron plate, that swung round into a similar fireplace
in the contiguous cell. From that, by a removal of a few slight
obstacles, we passed, by a long avenue, into the chapel. Then he left
us, whilst he went out alone to reconnoitre his ground. Agnes was now in
so pitiable a condition of weakness, as we stood on the very brink of
our final effort, that we placed her in a pew, where she could rest as
upon a sofa. Previously we had stood upon graves, and with monuments
more or less conspicuous all around us: some raised by friends to the
memory of friends--some by subscriptions in the prison--some by
children, who had risen into prosperity, to the memory of a father,
brother, or other relative, who had died in captivity. I was grieved
that these sad memorials should meet the eye of my wife at this moment
of awe and terrific anxiety. Pierpoint and I were well armed, and all of
us determined not to suffer a recapture, now that we were free of the
crowds that made resistance hopeless. This Agnes easily perceived; and
_that_, by suggesting a bloody arbitration, did not lessen her
agitation. I hoped therefore that, by placing her in the pew, I might at
least liberate her for the moment from the besetting memorials of sorrow
and calamity. But, as if in the very teeth of my purpose, one of the
large columns which supported the roof of the chapel had its basis and
lower part of the shaft in this very pew. On the side of it, and just
facing her as she lay reclining on the cushions, appeared a mural
tablet, with a bas-relief in white marble, to the memory of two
children, twins, who had lived and died at the same time, and in this
prison--children who had never breathed another air than that of
captivity, their parents having passed many years within these walls,
under confinement for debt. The sculptures were not remarkable, being a
trite, but not the less affecting, representation of angels descending
to receive the infants; but the hallowed words of the inscription,
distinct and legible--'Suffer little children to come unto me, and
forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God'--met her eye, and,
by the thoughts they awakened, made me fear that she would become
unequal to the exertions which yet awaited her. At this moment Ratcliffe
returned, and informed us that all was right; and that, from the ruinous
state of all the buildings which surrounded the chapel, no difficulty
remained for us, who were, in fact, beyond the strong part of the
prison, excepting at a single door, which we should be obliged to break
down. But had we any means arranged for pursuing our flight, and turning
this escape to account when out of confinement? All that, I assured him,
was provided for long ago. We proceeded, and soon reached the door. We
had one crow-bar amongst us, but beyond that had no better weapons than
the loose stones found about some new-made graves in the chapel.
Ratcliffe and Pierpoint, both powerful men, applied themselves by turns
to the door, whilst Hannah and I supported Agnes. The door did not
yield, being of enormous strength; but the wall did, and a large mass of
stone-work fell outwards, twisting the door aside; so that, by
afterwards working with our hands, we removed stones many enough to
admit of our egress. Unfortunately this aperture was high above the
ground, and it was necessary to climb over a huge heap of loose rubbish
in order to profit by it. My brother-in-law passed first in order to
receive my wife, quite helpless at surmounting the obstacle by her own
efforts, out of my arms. He had gone through the opening, and, turning,
round so as to face me, he naturally could see something that I did
_not_ see. 'Look behind!' he called out rapidly. I did so, and saw the
murderous villain Manasseh with his arm uplifted and in the act of
cutting at my wife, nearly insensible as she was, with a cutlass. The
blow was not for me, but for her, as the fugitive prisoner; and the law
would have borne him out in the act. I saw, I comprehended the whole. I
groped, as far as I could without letting my wife drop, for my pistols;
but all that I could do would have been unavailing, and too late--she
would have been murdered in my arms. But--and that was what none of us
saw--neither I, nor Pierpoint, nor the hound Manasseh--one person stood
back in the shade; one person had seen, but had not uttered a word on
seeing Manasseh advancing through the shades; one person only had
forecast the exact succession of all that was coming; me she saw
embarrassed and my hands preoccupied--Pierpoint and Ratcliffe useless by
position--and the gleam of the dog's eye directed her to his aim. The
crow-bar was leaning against the shattered wall. This she had silently
seized. One blow knocked up the sword; a second laid the villain
prostrate. At this moment appeared another of the turnkeys advancing
from the rear, for the noise of our assault upon the door had drawn
attention in the interior of the prison, from which, however, no great
number of assistants could on this dangerous night venture to absent
themselves. What followed for the next few minutes hurried onwards,
incident crowding upon incident, like the motions of a dream:--Manasseh,
lying on the ground, yelled out 'The bell! the bell!' to him who
followed. The man understood, and made for the belfry-door attached to
the chapel; upon which Pierpoint drew a pistol, and sent the bullet
whizzing past his ear so truly, that fear made the man obedient to the
counter-orders of Pierpoint for the moment. He paused and awaited the
issue.--In a moment had all cleared the wall, traversed the waste
ground beyond it, lifted Agnes over the low railing, shaken hands with
our benefactor Ratcliffe and pushed onwards as rapidly as we were able
to the little dark lane, a quarter of a mile distant, where had stood
waiting for the last two hours a chaise-and-four.

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