Martin Farquhar Tupper - The Crock of Gold

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The miscreant quivered with new fears; she might still mutter "Simon did
it!"

And now the house is thoroughly astir; running about in all directions;
and shouting for help; and many knocking loudly at the murderer's own
door--"Mr. Jennings! Mr. Jennings!--quick--get up--come down--quick,
quick--your aunt's found dead in her bed!"

What a relief to the trembling wretch!--she _was_ dead. He could have
blessed the voice that told him his dread secret was so safe. But his
parched tongue may never bless again: curses, curses are all its
blessings now.

And Jennings came out calmly from his chamber, a white, stern,
sanctimonious man, lulling the storm with his wise presence:--"God's
will be done," said he; "what can poor weak mortals answer Him?" And he
played cleverly the pious elder, the dignified official, the
affectionate nephew: "Ah, well, my humble friends, behold what life is:
the best of us must come to this; my poor, dear aunt, the late
house-keeper, rest her soul--I feared it might be this way some night or
other: she was a stout woman, was our dear, deceased Bridget--and,
though a good kind soul, lived much on meat and beer: ah well, ah well!"
And he concealed his sentimental hypocrisy in a cotton pocket-handkerchief.

"Alas, and well-a-day! that it should have come to this. Apoplexy--you
see, apoplexy caught her as she slept: we may as well get her buried at
once: it is unfortunately too clear a case for any necessity to open the
body; and our young master is coming down on Tuesday, and I could not
allow my aunt's corpse to be so disrespectful as to stop till it became
offensive. I will go to the vicar myself immediately."

"Begging pardon, Mr. Jennings," urged Jonathan Floyd, "there's a strange
mark here about the throat, poor old 'ooman."

"Ay," added Sarah, "and now I come to think of it, Mrs. Quarles's
room-door was ajar; and bless me, the lawn-door's not locked neither!
Who could have murdered her?"

"Murdered? there's no murder here, silly wench," said Jennings, with a
nervous sneer.

"I don't know that, Mr. Simon," gruffly interposed the coachman; "it's a
case for a coroner, I'll be bail; so here I goes to bring him: let all
bide as it is, fellow-sarvents; murder will out, they say."

And off he set directly--not without a shrewd remark from Mr. Jennings,
about letting him escape that way; which seemed all very sage and
likely, till the honest man came back within the hour, and a _posse
comitatus_ at his heels.

We all know the issue of that inquest.

Now, if any one requests to be informed how Jennings came to be looked
for as usual in his room, after that unavailing search last night, I
reply, this newer, stronger excitement for the minute made the house
oblivious of that mystery; and if people further will persist to know,
how that mystery of his absence was afterwards explained (though I for
my part would gladly have said nothing of the bailiff's own excuse), let
it be enough to hint, that Jennings winked with a knowing and gallant
expression of face; alluded to his private key, and a secret return at
two in the morning from some disreputable society in the neighbourhood;
made the men laugh, and the women blush; and, altogether, as he might
well have other hats and coats, the delicate affair was not unlikely.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

DOUBTS.

AND so, this crock of gold--gained through extortion, by the
frauds of every day, the meannesses of every hour--this concrete
oppression to the hireling in his wages--this mass of petty pilferings
from poverty--this continuous obstruction to the charities of
wealth--this cockatrice's egg--this offspring of iniquity--had already
been baptized in blood before poor Acton found it, and slain its earthly
victim ere it wrecked his faith; already had it been perfected by crime,
and destroyed the murderer's soul, before it had endangered the life of
slandered innocence.

Is there yet more blessing in the crock? more fearful interest still, to
carry on its story to an end? Must another sacrifice bleed before the
shrine of Mammon, and another head lie crushed beneath the heel of that
monster--his disciple?

Come on with me, and see the end; push further still, there is a
labyrinth ahead to attract and to excite; from mind to mind crackles the
electric spark: and when the heart thrillingly conceives, its
children-thoughts are as arrows from the hand of the giant, flying
through that mental world--the hearts of other men. Fervent still from
its hot internal source, this fountain gushes up; no sluggish
Lethe-stream is here, dull, forgetful, and forgotten; but liker to the
burning waves of Phlegethon, mingling at times (though its fire is still
unquenched), with the pastoral rills of Tempe, and the River from the
Mount of God.

Lower the sail--let it flap idly on the wind--helm a-port--and so to
smoother waters: return to common life and humbler thoughts.

It may yet go hard with Roger Acton. Jennings is a man of character,
especially the farther from his home; the county round take him for a
model of propriety, a sample of the strictest conduct. We know the bad
man better; but who dare breathe against the bailiff in his
power--against the caitiff in his sleek hypocrisy--that, while he makes
a show of both humilities, he fears not God nor man? What shall hinder,
that the perjured wretch offer up to the manes of the murdered the
life-blood of the false-accused? May he not live yet many years, heaping
up gold and crime? And may not sweet Grace Acton--her now repentant
father--the kindly Jonathan--his generous master, and if there be any
other of the Hurstley folk we love, may they not all meet destruction at
his hands, as a handful of corn before the reaper's sickle? I say not
that they shall, but that they might. Acton's criminal state of mind,
and his hunger after gold--gold any how--have earned some righteous
retribution, unless Providence in mercy interpose; and young Sir John,
in nowise unblameable himself, with wealth to tempt the spoiler, lives
in the spoiler's very den; and as to Jonathan and Grace, this world has
many martyrs. If Heaven in its wisdom use the wicked as a sword, Heaven
is but just; but if in its vengeance that sword of the wicked is turned
against himself, Heaven showeth mercy all unmerited. To a criminal like
Jennings, let loose upon the world, without the clog of conscience to
retard him, and with the spur of covetousness ever urging on, any thing
in crime is possible--is probable: none can sound those depths: and when
we raise our eyes on high to the Mighty Moral Governor, and note the
clouds of mystery that thunder round his Throne--He may permit, or he
may control; who shall reach those heights?

CHAPTER XXXV.

FEARS.

MOREOVER, innocent of blood, as we know Roger Acton to be,
appearances are strongly against him: and in such a deed as secret,
midnight murder, which none but God can witness, multiplied appearances
justify the world in condemning one who seems so guilty.

The first impression against Roger is a bad one, for all the neighbours
know how strangely his character had been changing for the worse of
late: he is not like the same man; sullen and insubordinate, he was
turned away from work for his bold and free demeanor; as to church,
though he had worn that little path these forty years, all at once he
seems to have entirely forgotten the way hither.

He lives, nobody knows how--on bright, clean gold, nobody knows whence:
his daughter says, indeed, that her father found a crock of gold in his
garden--but she needs not have held her tongue so long, and borne so
many insults, if that were all the truth; and, mark this! even though
she says it, and declares it on her Bible-oath, Acton himself most
strenuously denied all such findings--but went about with impudent tales
of legacy, luck, nobody knows what; the man prevaricated continually,
and got angry when asked about it--cudgelling folks, and swearing
like--like any one but old-time "honest Roger."

Only look, too, where he lives: in a lone cottage opposite Pike Island,
on the other side of which is Hurstley Hall, the scene of robbery and
murder: was not a boat seen that night upon the lake? and was not the
lawn-door open? How strangely stupid in the coroner and jury not to have
imagined this before! how dull it was of every body round not to have
suspected murder rather more strongly, with those finger-marks about the
throat, and not to have opened their eyes a little wider, when the
murderer's cottage was within five hundred yards of that open lawn-door!

Then again--when Mr. Jennings, in his strict and searching way, accused
the culprit, he never saw a man so confused in all his life! and on
repeating the charge before those two constables, they all witnessed his
guilty consternation: experienced men, too, they were, and never saw a
felon if Acton wasn't one; the dogged manner in which he went with them
so quietly was quite sufficient; innocent men don't go to jail in that
sort of way, as if they well deserved it.

But, strongest of all, if any shadow of a doubt remained, the most
fearful proof of Roger's guilt lay in the scrap of shawl--the little
leather bags--and the very identical crock of gold! There it was,
nestled in the thatch within a yard of his head, as he lay in bed at
noon-day guarding it.

One proof, weaker than the weakest of all these banded together, has ere
now sufficed to hang the guilty; and many, many fears have I that this
multitude of seeming facts, conspiring in a focus against Roger Acton,
will be quite enough to overwhelm the innocent. "Nothing lies like a
fact," said Dr. Johnson: and statistics prove it, at least as well as
circumstantial evidence.

The matter was as clear as day-light, and long before the trial came
about, our poor labourer had been hanged outright in the just judgment
of Hurstley-cum-Piggesworth.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

PRISON COMFORTS.

MANY blessings, more than he had skill to count, had visited
poor Acton in his cell. His gentle daughter Grace, sweet minister of
good thoughts--she, like a loving angel, had been God's instrument of
penitence and peace to him. He had come to himself again, in solitude,
by nights, as a man awakened from a feverish dream; and the hallowing
ministrations of her company by day had blest reflective solitude with
sympathy and counsel.

Good-wife Mary, too, had been his comforting and cheering friend.
Immediately the crock of gold had been taken from its ambush in the
thatch, it seemed as if the chill which had frozen up her heart had been
melted by a sudden thaw. Roger Acton was no longer the selfish prodigal,
but the guiltless, persecuted penitent; her care was now to soothe his
griefs, not to scold him for excesses; and indignation at the false and
bloody charge made him appear a martyr in her eyes. As to his accuser,
Jennings, Mary had indeed her own vague fancies and suspicions, but
there being no evidence, nor even likelihood to support them, she did
not dare to breathe a word; she might herself accuse him falsely. Ben,
who alone could have thrown a light upon the matter, had always been
comparatively a stranger at Hurstley; he was no native of the place, and
had no ties there beyond wire and whip-cord: he would appear in that
locality now and then in his eccentric orbit, like a comet, and, soon
departing thence, would take away Tom as his tail; but even when there,
he was mainly a night-prowler, seldom seen by day, and so little versed
in village lore, so rarely mingling with its natives, that neither
Jennings nor Burke knew one another by sight. His fame indeed was known,
but not his person. At present, he and Tom were still fowling in some
distant fens, nobody could tell where; so that Roger's only witness, who
might have accounted for the crock and its finding, was as good as dead
to him; to make Ben's absence more unusually prolonged, and his
reappearance quite incalculable, he had talked of going with his cargo
of wild ducks "either to London or to Liverpool, he didn't rightly know
which."

Nevertheless, Mary comforted her husband, and more especially herself,
by the hope of his return as a saving witness; though it was always
doubtful how far Burke's numerous peccadilloes against property would
either find him at large, or authorize the poacher in walking straight
before the judges. Still Ben's possible interposition was one source of
hope and cheerful expectation. Then the good wife would leave her babes
at home, safely in a neighbour's charge, and stay and sit many long
hours with poor Roger, taking turns with Grace in talking to him
tenderly, making little of home-troubles past, encouraging him to wear a
stout heart, and filling him with gratitude for all her kindly care.
Thus did she bless, and thus was made a blessing, through the loss and
absence of that crock of gold.

For Roger himself, he had repented; bitterly and deeply, as became his
headlong fall: no sweet luxuries of grief, no soothing sorrow, no
chastened meditative melancholy--such mild penitence as this, he
thought, could be but a soberer sort of joy for virgins, saints, and
martyrs: no--he, bad man, was unworthy of those melting pleasures, and
in sturdy self-revenge he flung them from him, choosing rather to feel
overwhelmed with shame, contrition, and reproaches. A humbled man with a
broken heart within him--such was our labourer, penitent in prison; and
when he contrasted his peaceful, pure, and Christian course those forty
years of poverty, with his blasphemous and infidel career for the one
bad week of wealth, he had no patience with himself--only felt his fall
the greater; and his judgment of his own guilt, with a natural
exaggeration, went the length of saying--I am scarcely less guilty
before God and man, than if, indeed, my hands were red with murder, and
my casual finding had been robbery. He would make no strong appeals to
the bar of justice, as an innocent condemned; not he--not he: innocent,
indeed? his wicked, wicked courses--(an old man, too--gray-headed, with
no young blood in him to excuse, no inexperience to extenuate), these
deserved--did he say hanging? it was a harsher syllable--hell: and the
contrite sinner gladly would have welcomed all the terrors of the
gibbet, in hope to take full vengeance on himself for his wicked thirst
for gold and all its bitter consequences.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

GOOD COUNSEL.

BUT Grace advised him better. "Be humbled as you may before
God, my father, but stand up boldly before man: for in his sight, and by
his law, you are little short of blameless. I would not, dearest father,
speak to you of sins, except for consolation under them; for it ill
becomes a child to see the failings of a parent. But when I know at once
how innocent you are in one sense, and how not quite guiltless in
another, I wish my words may comfort you, if you will hear them, father.
Covetousness, not robbery--excess, not murder--these were your only
sins; and concealment was not wise, neither was a false report
befitting. Money, the idol of millions, was your temptation: its earnest
love, your fault; its possession, your misfortune. Forgive me, father,
if I speak too freely. Good Mr. Evans, who has been so kind to us for
years, (never kinder than since you were in prison,) can speak better
than I may, of sins forgiven, and a Friend to raise the fallen: it is
not for poor Grace to school her dear and honoured father. If you feel
yourself guilty of much evil in the sight of Him before whom the angels
bow in meekness--I need not tell you that your sorrow is most wise, and
well-becoming. But this must not harm your cause with men: though tired
of life, though hopeless in one's self, though bad, and weak, and like
to fall again, we are still God's servants upon earth, bound to guard
the life he gives us. Neither must you lightly allow the guilt of
unrighteous condemnation to fall upon the judge who tries you; nor let
your innocent blood cry to God for vengeance on your native land.
Manfully confront the false accuser, tell openly the truth, plead your
own cause firmly, warmly, wisely:--so, God defend the right!"

And as Grace Acton said these words, in all the fervour of a daughter's
love, with a flushed cheek, parted lips, and her right hand raised to
Him whom she invoked, she looked like an inspired prophetess, or the
fair maid of Orleans leading on to battle.

In an instant afterwards, she humbly added,

"Forgive me any thing I may have said, that seems to chide my father."

"Bless you, bless you, dearest one!" was Roger's sobbing prayer, who
had listened to her wisdom breathlessly. "Ah, daughter," then exclaimed
the humbled, happy man, "I'll try to do all you ask me, Grace; but it is
a hard thing to feel myself so wicked, and to have to speak up boldly
like a Christian man."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

EXPERIENCE.

THEN, with disjointed sentences, suited to the turmoil of his
thoughts, half in a soliloquy, half as talking to his daughter, Roger
Acton gave his hostile testimony to the worth of wealth.

"Oh, fool, fool that I have been, to set so high a price on gold! To
have hungered and thirsted for it--to have coveted earnestly so bad a
gift--to have longed for Mammon's friendship, which is enmity with God!
What has not money cost me? Happiness:--ay, wasn't it to have given me
happiness? and the little that I had (it was much, Grace, not little,
very much--too much--God be praised for it!) all, all the happiness I
had, gold took away. Look at our dear old home--shattered and scattered,
as now I wish that crock had been. Health, too; were it not for gold,
and all gold gave, I had been sturdy still, and capable; but my nights
maddened with anxieties, my days worried with care, my head feverish
with drink, my heart rent by conscience--ah, my girl, my girl, when I
thought much of poverty and its hardships, of toil, and hunger, and
rheumatics, I little imagined that wealth had heavier cares and pains: I
envied them their wanton life of pleasure at the Hall, and little knew
how hard it was: well are they called hard-livers who drink, and game,
and have nothing to do, except to do wickedness continually.
Religion--can it bide with money, child? I never knew my wicked heart,
till fortune made me rich; not until then did I guess how base, lying,
false, and bad was 'honest Roger;' how sensual, coarse, and brutal, was
that hypocrite 'steady Acton'. Money is a devil, child, or pretty near
akin. Then I complained of toil, too, didn't I?--Ah, what are all the
aches I ever felt--labouring with spade and spud in cold and rain,
hungry belike, and faint withal--what are they all at their worst (and
the worst was very seldom after all), to the gnawing cares, the hideous
fears, the sins--the sins, my girl, that tore your poor old father?
Wasn't it to be an end of troubles, too, this precious crock of gold?
Wo's me, I never knew real trouble till I had it! Look at me, and judge;
what has made me live like a beast, sin like a heathen, and lie down
here like a felon? what has made me curse Ben Burke--kind, hearty,
friendly Ben?--and given my poor good boy an ill-report as having stolen
and slain? all this crock of gold. But O, my Grace, to think that the
crock's curses touched thee, too! didn't it madden me to hear them?
Dear, pure, patient child, my darling, injured daughter, here upon my
knees I pray, forgive that wrong!" And he fell at her feet beseechingly.

"My father," said the noble girl, lifting up his head, and passionately
kissing it; "when they whispered so against me, and Jonathan heard the
wicked things men said, I would have borne it all, all in silence, and
let them all believe me bad, father, if I could have guessed that by
uttering the truth, I should have seen thee here, in a dungeon, treated
as a--murderer! How was I to tell that men could be so base, as to
charge such crimes upon the innocent, when his only fault, or his
misfortune, was to find a crock of gold? Oh! forgive me, too, this
wrong, my father!"

And they wept in each other's arms.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

JONATHAN'S TROTH.

GRACE had been all but an inmate of the prison, ever since her
father had been placed there on suspicion. Early and late, and often in
the day, was the duteous daughter at his cell, for the governor and the
turn-keys favoured her. Who could resist such beauty and affection,
entreating to stay with a father about to stand on trial for his life,
and making every effort to be allowed only to pray with him? Thus did
Grace spend all the week before those dread assizes.

As to her daily maintenance, ever since that bitter morning when the
crock was found, her spiritual fears had obliged her to abstain from
touching so much as one penny of that unblest store; and, seeing that
honest pride would not let her be supported by grudged and common
charity, she had thankfully suffered the wages of her now betrothed
Jonathan to serve as means whereon she lived, and (what cost more than
all her humble wants) whereby she could administer many little comforts
to her father in his prison. When she was not in the cell, Grace was
generally at the Hall, to the scandal of more than one Hurstleyan
gossip; but perhaps they did not know how usually kind Sarah Stack was
of the company, to welcome her with Jonathan, and play propriety. Sarah
was a true friend, one for adversity, and though young herself, and not
ill-looking, did not envy Grace her handsome lover; on the contrary, she
did all to make them happy, and had gone the friendly length of
insisting to find Grace and her family in tea and sugar, while all this
lasted. I like that much in Sarah Stack.

However, the remainder of the virtuous world were not so considerate,
nor so charitable. Many neighbours shunned the poor girl, as if
contaminated by the crimes which Roger had undoubtedly committed: the
more elderly unmarried sisterhood, as we have chronicled already, were
overjoyed at the precious opportunity:--"Here was the pert vixen, whom
all the young fellows so shamelessly followed, turned out, after all, a
murderer's daughter;--they wished her joy of her eyes, and lips, and
curls, and pretty speeches: no good ever came of such naughty ways, that
the men liked so."

Nay, even the tipsy crew at Bacchus's affected to treat her name with
scorn:--"The girl had made much noise about being called a trull, as if
many a better than she wasn't one; and, after all, what was the prudish
wench? a sort of she-butcher; they had no patience with her proud
looks."

As to farmer Floyd, he made a great stir about his boy being about to
marry a felon's daughter; and the affectionate mother, with many
elaborate protestations, had "vowed to Master Jonathan, that she would
rather lay him out with her own hands, and a penny on each eye, than see
a Floyd disgrace himself in that 'ere manner."

And uncles, aunts, and cousins, most disinterestedly exhorted that the
obstinate youth be disinherited--"Ay, Mr. Floyd, I wish your son was a
high-minded man like his father; but there's a difference, Mr. Floyd; I
wish he had your true blue yeoman's honour, and the spirit that becomes
his father's son: if the lad was mine, I'd cut him off with a shilling,
to buy a halter for his drab of a wife. Dang it, Mrs. Floyd, it'll never
do to see so queer a Mrs. Jonathan Junior, a standing in your tidy shoes
beside this kitchen dresser."

These estimable counsels were, I grieve to say, of too flattering a
nature to displease, and of too lucrative a quality not to be
continually repeated; until, really, Jonathan was threatened with
beggary and the paternal malediction, if he would persist in his
disreputable attachment.

Nevertheless, Jonathan clung to the right like a hero.

"Granting poor Acton is the wretch you think--but I do not believe one
word of it--does his crime make his daughter wicked too? No; she is an
angel, a pure and blessed creature, far too good for such a one as I.
And happy is the man that has gained her love; he should not give her up
were she thrice a felon's daughter. My father and mother," Jonathan went
on to say, "never found a fault in her till now. Who was more welcome on
the hill than pretty Grace? who would oftenest come to nurse some sickly
lamb, but gentle Grace? who was wont, from her childhood up, to run home
with me so constantly, when school was over, and pleased my kinsfolk so
entirely with her nice manners and kind ways? Hadn't he fought for her
more than once, and though he came home with bruises on his face, his
mother praised him for it?" Then, with a natural divergence from the
strict subject-matter of objection, vicarious felony, Jonathan went on
to argue about other temporal disadvantages. "Hadn't he heard his father
say, that, if she had but money, she was fit to be a countess? and was
money, then, the only thing, whereof the having, or the not having,
could make her good or bad?--money, the only wealth for soul, and mind,
and body? Are affections nothing, are truth and honour nothing, religion
nothing, good sense nothing, health nothing, beauty nothing--unless
money gild them all? Nonsense!" said Jonathan, indignantly, warmed by
his amatory eloquence; "come weal, come wo, Grace and I go down to the
grave together; for better, if she can be better--for worse, if she
could sin--Grace Acton is my wealth, my treasure, and possession; and
let man do his worst, God himself will bless us!"

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