Martin Farquhar Tupper - The Crock of Gold

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When the dowager collects "her dear five hundred friends" to parade
before the fresh young heirs her wax-light lovely daughters--when all is
glory, gallopade, and Gunter--when Rubini warbles smallest, and
Lablanche is heard as thunder on the stairs--speak, tradesmen, ye who
best can tell, the closeness that has catered for that feast; tell it
out, ye famished milliners, ground down to sixpence on a ball-dress
bill; whisper it, ye footmen, with your wages ever due; let Gath, let
Askelon re-echo with the truth, that extortion is the parent of
extravagance!

Now, that episode should have been in a foot note; but no one takes the
trouble to read notes; and with justice too; for if a man has any thing
to say, let him put it in his text, as orderly as may be. And, if order
be sometimes out of the question, as seems but clearly suitable at
present to our hero's manner of life, it is wise to go boldly on,
without so prim an usher; to introduce our thoughts as they reveal
themselves, ignorant of "their own degrees," not "standing on the order
of their coming," but, as a pit crowd on a benefit-night, bustling over
one another, helter-skelter, "in most admired disorder." This will well
comport with Roger's daily life: for, notwithstanding the frequent
interference of an Amazon wife--regardless of poor, dear Grace's gentle
voice and melancholy eyes--in spite of a conscience pricking in his
breast, with the spines of a horse-chestnut, that evil crock
appeared from the beginning to have been found for but one sole
purpose--_videlicet_, that of keeping alight in Roger's brain the fire
of mad intoxication. Yes, there were sundry other purposes, too, which
may as well be told directly.

The utter dislocation of all home comforts occupied the foremost rank.
True--in comparison with the homes of affluence and halls of
luxury--those comforts may have formerly seemed few and far between; yet
still the angel of domestic peace not seldom found a rest within the
cottage. Not seldom? always: if sweet-eyed Grace be such an angel, that
ever-abiding guest, full of love, duty, piety, and cheerfulness. But
now, after long-enduring anguish, vexed in her righteous soul by the
shocking sights and sounds of the drunkard and his parasites (for all
the idle vagabonds about soon flocked around rich Acton, and were freely
welcome to his reckless prodigality), Grace had been forced to steal
away, and seek refuge with a neighbour. Here was one blessing the less.

Another wretched change was in the wife. Granted, Mary Acton had not
ever been the pink of politeness, the violet of meekness, nor the rose
of entire amiability: but if she were a scold, that scolding was well
meant; and her irate energies were incessantly directed towards
cleanliness, economy, quiet, and other _notabilia_ of a busy house-wife.
She did her best to keep the hovel tidy, to make the bravest show with
their scanty chattels, to administer discreetly the stores of their
frugal larder, and to recompense the good-man returning from his hard
day's work, with much of rude joy and bustling kindness. But now, after
the first stupor of amazement into which the crock and its consequences
threw her, Poll Acton grew to be a fury: she raged and stormed, and well
she might, at filth and discomfort in her home, at nauseous dregs and
noisome fumes, at the orgie still kept up, day by day, and night by
night, through the length of that first foul week, which succeeded the
fortunate discovery. And not in vain she raged and stormed--and fought
too; for she did fight--ay, and conquered: and miserable Roger, now in
full possession of those joys which he had longed for at the casement of
Hurstley Hall, was glad to betake himself to the bench at Bacchus's,
whither he withdrew his ragged regiment. Thus, that crock had spoilt all
there was to spoil in the temper and conduct of the wife.

Look also at the pretty prattling babes, twin boys of two years old,
whom Roger used to hasten home to see; who had to say their simple
prayers; to be kissed, and comforted, and put to bed; to be made happier
by a wild flower picked up on his path, than if the gift had been a
coral with gold bells: where were they now? neglected, dirty, fretting
in a corner, their red eyes full of wonder at father's altered ways, and
their quick minds watching, with astonished looks, the progress of
domestic discord. How the crock of gold has nipped those early blossoms
as a killing frost!

Again, there used to be, till this sad week of wealth and riotous
hilarity, that constantly recurring blessing of the morn and evening
prayer which Roger read aloud, and Grace's psalm or chapter; and
afterwards the frugal meal--too scanty, perhaps, and coarse--but still
refreshing, thank the Lord, and seasoned well with health and appetite;
and the heart-felt sense of satisfaction that all around was earned by
honest labour; and there was content, and hope of better times, and
God's good blessing over every thing.

Now, all these pleasures had departed; gold, unhallowed gold, gotten
hastily in the beginning, broadcast on the rank strong soil of a heart
that coveted it earnestly, had sprung up as a crop of poisonous tares,
and choked the patch of wheat; gold, unhallowed gold, light come, light
gone, had scared or killed the flock of unfledged loves that used to
nestle in the cotter's thatch, as surely as if the cash were stones,
flung wantonly by truants at a dove-cot; and forth from the crock, that
egg of wo, had been hatched a red-eyed vulture, to tyrannize in this sad
home, where but lately the pelican had dwelt, had spread her fostering
wing, and poured out the wealth of her affections.

CHAPTER XVII.

CARE.

BUT other happy consequences soon became apparent. If Acton in
his tipsy state was mad, in his intervals of soberness he was thoroughly
miserable. And this, not merely on the score of sickness, exhaustion,
prostrated spirits, blue-devils, or other the long catalogue of a
drunkard's joys; not merely from a raging wife, and a wretched home; not
merely from the stings, however sharp, however barbed, of a conscience
ill at ease, that would rise up fiercely like a hissing snake, and
strike the black apostate to the earth: these all, doubtless, had their
pleasant influences, adding to the lucky finder's bliss: but there was
another root of misery most unlooked for, and to the poor who dream of
gold, entirely paradoxical.

The possession of that crock was the heaviest of cares. Where on earth
was he to hide it? how to keep it safely, secretly? What if he were
robbed of it in some sly way! O, thought of utter wo! it made the
fortunate possessor quiver like an aspen. Or what, if some one or more
of those blustering boon companions were to come by night with a
bludgeon and a knife, and--and cut his throat, and find the treasure?
or, worse still, were to torture him, set him on the fire like a
saucepan (he had heard of Turpin having done so with a rich old woman),
and make him tell them "where" in his extremity of pains, and give up
all, and then--and then murder him at last, outright, and afterwards
burn the hovel over his head, babes and all, that none might live to
tell the tale? These fears set him on the rack, and furnished one
inciting cause to that uninterrupted orgie; he must be either mad or
miserable, this lucky finder.

Also, even in his tipsy state, he could not cast off care: he might in
his cups reveal the dangerous secret of having found a crock of gold. A
secret still it was: Grace, his wife, and himself, were the only souls
who knew it. Dear Grace feared to say a word about the business: not in
apprehension of the law, for she never thought of that too probable
intrusion on the finder: but simply because her unsophisticated piety
believed that God, for some wise end, had allowed the Evil One to tempt
her father; she, indeed, did not know the epigram,

The devil now is wiser than of yore:
He tempts by making rich--not making poor:

but she did not conceive that notion in her mind; she contrasted the
wealthy patriarch Job, tried by poverty and pain, but just and patient
in adversity--with the poor labourer Acton, tried by luxury and wealth,
and proved to be apostate in prosperity: so she held her tongue, and
hitherto had been silent on a matter of so much local wonder as her
father's sudden wealth, in the midst of urgent curiosity and
extraordinary rumours.

Mary was kept quiet as we know, by superstition of a lower grade, the
dread of having money of the murdered, a thought she never breathed to
any but her husband; and to poor uninitiated Grace (who had not heard a
word of Ben's adventure), her answer about Mrs. Quarles and Mr. Jennings
in the dawn of the crock's first blessing, had been entirely
unintelligible: Mary, then, said never a word, but looked on dreadingly
to see the end.

As for Roger himself, he was too much in apprehension of a landlord's
claims, and of a task-master's extortions, to breath a syllable about
the business. So he hid his crock as best he could--we shall soon hear
how and where--took out sovereign after sovereign day by day, and made
his flush of instant wealth a mystery, a miracle, a legacy, good luck,
any thing, every thing but the truth: and he would turn fiercely round
to the frequent questioner with a "What's that to you?--Nobody's
business but mine:" and then would coaxingly add the implied bribe to
secresy, in his accustomed invitation--"And now, what'll you take?"--a
magical phrase, which could suffice to quell murmurs for the time, and
postponed curiosity to appetite. Thus the fact was still unknown, and
weighed on Roger's mind as a guilty concealment, an oppressive secret.
What if any found it out?

For immediate safety--the evening after his memorable first fifteen
hours of joy--he buried the crock deeply in a hole in his garden,
filling all up hard with stones and brick-bats; and when he had
smoothed it straight and workmanlike, remembered that he surely hadn't
kept out enough to last him; so up it had to come again--five more taken
out, and the crock was restored to its unquiet grave.

Scarcely had he done this, than it became dark, and he began to fancy
some one might have seen him hide it; those low mean tramps (never
before had he refused the wretched wayfarers his sympathy) were always
sneaking about, and would come and dig it up in the night: so he went
out in the dark and the rain, got at it with infinite trouble and a
broken pickaxe, and exultingly brought the crock in-doors; where he
buried it a third time, more securely, underneath the grouted floor,
close beside the fire in the chimney-corner: it was now nearly midnight,
and he went to bed.

Hardly had he tumbled in, after pulling on a nightcap of the flagon,
than the dread idea overtook him that his treasure might be melted! Was
there ever such a fool as he? Well, well, to think he could fling his
purse on the fire! What a horrid thought! Metallurgy was a science quite
unknown to Roger; he only considered gold as heavy as lead, and
therefore probably as fusible: so down he bustled, made another hole, a
deeper one too this time, in the floor under the dresser, where,
exhausted with his toil and care, he deposited the crock by four in the
morning--and so retired once more.

All in vain--nobody ever knew when Black Burke might be returning from
his sporting expeditions--and that beast of a lurcher would be sure to
be creeping in this morning, and would scratch it up, and his brute of a
master would get it all! This fancy was the worst possible: and Roger
rose again, quite sick at heart, pale, worn, and trembling with a
miser's haggard joys. Where should he hide that crock--the epithet
"cursed" crock escaped him this time in his vexed impatience. In the
house and in the garden, it was equally unsafe.

Ha! a bright thought indeed: the hollow in the elm-tree, creaking
overhead, just above the second arm: so the poor, shivering wretch,
almost unclad, swarmed up that slimy elm, and dropped his treasure in
the hollow. Confusion! how deep it was: he never thought of that; here
was indeed something too much of safety: and then those boys of
neighbour Goode's were birds'-nesting continually, specially round the
lake this spring. What an idiot he was not to have remembered this! And
up he climbed again, thrust in his arm to the shoulder, and managed to
repossess himself a fifth time of that blessed crock.

Would that the elm had been hollow to its root, and beneath the root a
chasm bottomless, and that Plutus in that Narbonne jar had served as a
supper to Pluto in the shades! Better had it been for thee, my Roger.

But he had not hid it yet; so, that night--or rather that cold morning
about six, the drenched, half-frozen Fortunatus carried it to bed with
him: and a precious warming-pan it made: for nothing would satisfy the
finder of its presence but perpetual bodily contact:--accordingly, he
placed it in his bosom, and it chilled him to the back-bone.

Yes; that was undoubtedly the safest way; to carry the spoil about with
him; so, next noon--how could he get up till noon after such a woful
night?--next noon he emptied the jar, and tying up its contents in a
handkerchief, proceeded to wear it as a girdle; for an hour he clattered
about the premises, making as much jingle as a wagoner's team of bells;
laden heavily with gold, like the [Greek: ibebusto] genius in Herodotus:
but he soon found out this would not do at all; for, independently of
all concealment at an end, so long as his secret store was rattling as
he walked, louder than military spurs or sabre-tackle, he soberly
reflected that he might--possibly, possibly, though not probably--get a
glass too much again, by some mere accident or other; and then to be
robbed of his golden girdle, this cincture of all joy! O, terrible
thought! as well [this is my fancy, not Rogers's] deprive Venus of her
zone, and see how the beggared Queen of Beauty could exist without her
treasury, the Cestus.

CHAPTER XVIII.

INVESTMENT.

NEXT day, the wealthy Roger had higher aspirations. Why should
not he get interest for his money, like lords and gentlefolk? His gold
had been lying idle too long; more fool he: it ought to breed money
somehow, he knew that; for, like most poor men whose sole experience of
investment is connected with the Lombard's golden balls, he took exalted
views of usury. Was he to be "hiding up his talent in a napkin--?"

Ah!--he remembered and applied the holy parable, but it smote across his
heart like a flash of frost, a chilling recollection of good things past
and gone. What had he been doing with his talents--for he once
possessed the ten? had he not squandered piety, purity, and patience?
where were now his gratitude to God, his benevolence to man? the
father's duteous care, the husband's industry and kindness, the
labourer's faith, the Christian's hope--who had spent all these?--Till
money's love came in, and money-store to feed it, the poor man had been
rich: but now, rotten to the core, by lust of gold, the rich is poor
indeed.

However, such considerations did not long afflict him--for we know that
lookers-on see more than players--and if Roger had encouraged half our
wise and sober thoughts, he might have been a better man: but Roger
quelled the thoughts, and silenced them; and thoughts are tender
intonations, shy little buzzing sounds, soon scared by coarser noise:
Roger had no mind to cherish those small fowls; so they flew back again
to Heaven's gate, homeless and uncomforted as weeping peri's.

The bank--the county bank--Shark, Breakem, and Company--this was the
specious Eldorado, the genuine gold-increaser, the hive where he would
store his wealth (as honey left for the bees in winter), and was to have
it soon returned fourfold. It was indeed a thought to make the rich man
glad, that all his shining heap was just like a sample of seed-corn, and
the pocket-full should next year fill a sack. How grudgingly he now
began to mourn over past extravagance, five pieces gone within the week!
how close and careful he resolved to be in future! how he would scrape
and economize to get and save but one more of those sweet little seeds,
that yield more gold--more gold! And if Roger had been privileged in
youth to have fed upon the wisdom of the Eton Latin grammar, he could
have now quoted with some experimental unction the "_Crescit Amor_"
line, which every body well knows how to finish. Truly, it was growing
with his growth, and rioting in strength above his weakness.

Swollen with this expanding love, he packed up his money in what were,
though he knew it not, _rouleaux_, but to his plebeian eyes looked more
like golden sausages: and he would take it to the bank, and they should
bow to him, and Sir him, and give him forthwith more than he had
brought; and if those summary gains were middling great--say twice as
much, to be moderate--he thought he might afford himself a chaise coming
back, and return to Hurstley Common like a nabob. Thus, full of wealthy
fancies, after one glass more, off set Roger to the county town, with
his treasure in a bundle.

Half-way to it, as hospitality has ordained to be the case wherever
there be half-ways, occurred a public-house: and really,
notwithstanding all our monied neophyte's economical resolutions, his
throat was so "uncommon dry," that he needs must stop there to refresh
the muscles of his larynx: so, putting down his bundle on the settle, he
called for a foaming tankard, and thanking the crock, as his evil wont
now was, sat down to drink and think. Here was prosperity indeed, a
flood of astonishing good fortune: that he, but a little week agone, a
dirty ditcher--so was he pleased to designate his former self--a ragged
wretch, little better than a tramp, should be now progressing like a
monarch, with a mighty bag of gold to enrich his county town. To enrich,
and be thereby the richer; for Roger's actions of finance were so
simple, as to run the risk of being called sublimely indistinct: he took
it as an axiom that "money bred money," but in what way to draw forth
its generative properties, whether or not by some new-fangled manure, he
was entirely ignorant; and it clearly was his wisdom to leave all that
mystery of money-making solely to the banker. All he cared about was
this: to come back richer than he came--and, lo! how rich he was
already. Lolling at high noon, on a Wednesday too, in the extremest mode
of rustic beauism, with a bag of gold by his side, and a pot of porter
in his hand--here was an accumulation of magnificence--all the
prepositions pressed into his service. His wildest hopes exceeded, and
almost nothing left to wish. Blown up with the pride and importance of
the moment, and some little oblivious from the potent porter--he had
paid and sallied forth, and marched a mile upon his way, full of golden
fancies, a rich luxurious lord as he was--when all on a sudden the
hallucination crossed his dull pellucid mind, that he had left the store
behind him! O, pungent terror!--O, most exquisite torture! was it clean
gone, stolen, lost, lost, lost for ever? Rushing back in an agony of
fear, that made the ruddy hostess think him crazed, with his hair on
end, and a face as if it had been white-washed, he flew to the tap-room,
and--almost fainted for ecstasy of joy when he found it, where he had
laid it, on the settle!

Better had you lost it, Roger; better had your ecstasy been sorrow:
there is more trouble yet for you, from that bad crock of gold. But if
your lesson is not learnt, and you still think otherwise, go on a little
while exultingly as now I see you, and hug the treasure to your
heart--the treasure that will bring you yet more misery.

And now the town is gained, the bank approached. What! that big barred,
guarded place, looking like a mighty mouse-trap? he didn't half like to
venture in. At last he pushed the door ajar, and took a peep; there
were muskets over the mantel-piece, ostentatiously ticketed as "Loaded!
Beware!" there were leather buckets ranged around the walls: he did not
in any degree like it: was he to expose his treasure in this idiot
fashion to all the avowed danger of fire and thieves? However, since he
had come so far, he would get some interest for his money, that he
would--so he'd just make bold to step to the counter and ask a very
obsequious bald-headed gentleman, who sired him quite affably,

"How much, Master, will you be pleased to give me for my gold?"

The gentleman looked queerish, as if he did not comprehend the question,
and answered, "Oh! certainly, sir--certainly--we do not object to give
you our notes for it," at the same time producing an extremely dirty
bundle of worn-out bits of paper.

Roger stroked his chin.

"But, Master, my meaning is, not how many o' them brown bits o' paper
you'll sell me for my gold here," and he exhibited a greater store than
Mr. Breakem had seen at once upon his counter for a year, "but how much
more gold you'll send me back with than what I've brought? by way of
interest, you know, or some such law: for I don't know much about the
Funds, Master."

"Indeed, sir," replied the civil banker, who wished by any means to
catch the clodpole's spoil--"you are very obliging; we shall be glad to
allow you two-and-a-half per centum per annum for the deposit you are
good enough to leave in our keeping."

"Leave in your keeping, Master! no, I didn't say that! by your leave,
I'll keep it myself!"

"In that case, sir, I really do not see how I can do business with you."

True enough; and Roger would never have been such a monetary blockhead,
had he not been now so generally tipsy; the fumes of beer had mingled
with his plan, and all his usual shrewdness had been blunted into folly
by greediness of lucre on the one side, and potent liquors on the other.
The moment that the banker's parting speech had reached his ear, the
absurdity of Roger's scheme was evident even to himself, and with a bare
"Good day, Master," he hurriedly took his bundle from the counter, and
scuttled out as quick as he could.

His feelings, walking homeward, were any thing but pleasant; the bubble
of his ardent hope was burst: he never could have more than the paltry
little sum he carried in that bundle: what a miser he would be of it:
how mean it now seemed in his eyes--a mere sample-bag of seed, instead
of the wide-waving harvest! Ah, well; he would save and scrape--ay, and
go back to toil again--do any thing rather than spend.

Got home, the difficulty now recurred, where was he to hide it? The
store was a greater care than ever, now those rascally bankers knew of
it. He racked his brain to find a hiding-place, and, at length, really
hit upon a good one. He concealed the crock, now replenished with its
contents, in the thatch just over his bed's head: it was a rescued
darling: so he tore a deep hole, and nested it quite snugly.

Perhaps it did not matter much, but the rain leaked in by that hole all
night, and fortunate Roger woke in the morning drenched with wet, and
racked by rheumatism.

CHAPTER XIX.

CALUMNY.

MORE blessings issue from the crock; Pandora's box is set wide
open, and all the sweet inhabitants come forth. If apprehensions for its
safety made the finder full of care, the increased whisperings of the
neighbourhood gave him even deeper reason for anxiety. In vain he told
lie upon lie about a legacy of some old uncle in the clouds; in vain he
stuck to the foolish and transparent falsehood, with a dogged
pertinacity that appealed, not to reason, but to blows; in vain he made
affirmation weaker by his oath, and oaths quite unconvincing by his
cudgel: no one believed him: and the mystery was rendered more
inexplicable from his evidently nervous state and uneasy terror of
discovery.

He had resolved at the outset, cunningly as he fancied, to change no
more than one piece of gold in the same place; though Bacchus's
undoubtedly proved the rule by furnishing an exception: and the
consequence came to be, that there was not a single shop in the whole
county town, nor a farm-house in all the neighbourhood round, where
Roger Acton had not called to change a sovereign. True, the silver had
seldom been forthcoming; still, he had asked for it; and where in life
could he have got the gold? Many was the rude questioner, whose
curiosity had been quenched in drink; many the insufferable pryer, whom
club-law had been called upon to silence. Meanwhile, Roger steadily kept
on, accumulating silver where he could: for his covetous mind delighted
in the mere semblance of an increase to his store, and took some
untutored numismatic interest in those pretty variations of his
idol--money.

But if Roger's heap increased, so did the whispers and suspicions of the
country round; they daily grew louder, and more clamorous; and soon the
charitable nature of chagrined wonder assumed a shape more heart-rending
to the wretched finder of that golden hoard, than any other care, or
fear, or sin, that had hitherto torn him. It only was a miracle that the
neighbours had not thought of it before; seldom is the world so
unsuspicious; but then honest Roger's forty years of character were
something--they could scarcely think the man so base; and, above all,
gentle Grace was such a favourite with all, was such a pattern of
purity, and kindliness, and female conduct, that the tongue would have
blistered to its roots, that had uttered scorn of her till now. As
things were, though, could any thing be clearer? Was charity herself to
blame in putting one and one together? Sir John was rich, was young,
gay, and handsome; but Grace was poor--but indisputably beautiful, and
probably had once been innocent: some had seen her going to the Hall at
strange times and seasons--for in truth, she often did go there;
Jonathan and Sarah Stack, of course, were her dearest friends on earth:
and so it came to pass, that, through the blessing of the crock, honest
Roger was believed to live on the golden wages of his daughter's shame!
Oh, coarse and heartless imputation! Oh, bitter price to pay for secresy
and wonderful good fortune! In vain the wretched father stormed, and
swore, and knocked down more than one foul-spoken fellow that had
breathed against dear Grace. None but credited the lie, and many envious
wretches actually gloried in the scandal; I grieve to say that
women--divers venerable virgins--rejoiced that this pert hussey was at
last found out; she was too pretty to be good, too pious to be pure; now
at length they were revenged upon her beauty; now they had their triumph
over one that was righteous over-much. For other people, they would urge
the reasonable question, how else came Roger by the cash? and getting no
answer, or worse than none--a prevaricating, mystifying mere
put-off--they had hardly an alternative in common exercise of judgment:
therefore, "Shame on her," said the neighbours, "and the bitterest shame
on him:" and the gaffers and grand-dames shook their heads virtuously.

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