The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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For, "The love of money is the root of all evil." It groweth up a
little plant of coveting; presently the leaves get rank, the branches
spread, and feed on petty thefts; then in their early season come the
blossoms, black designs, plots, involved and undeveloped yet, of foul
conspiracies, extortions on the weak, rich robbings of the wealthy, the
threatened slander, the rewarded lie, malice, perjury, sacrilege; then
speedily cometh on the climax, the consummate flower, dark-red murder:
and the fruit bearing in itself the seeds that never die, is righteous,
wrathful condemnation.

Dyed with all manner of iniquity, tinged with many colours like the
Mohawk in his woods, goeth forth in a morning the covetous soul. His
cheek is white with envy, his brow black with jealous rage, his livid
lips are full of lust, his thievish hands spotted over with the crimson
drops of murder. "The poison of asps is under his lips; and his feet are
swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in his ways; and there
is no fear of God before his eyes."

O, ye thousands--the covetous of this world's good--behold at what a
fire ye do warm yourselves! dread it: even now, ye have imagined many
deaths, whereby your gains may be the greater; ye have caught, in
wishful fancy, many a parting sigh; ye have closed, in a heartless
revery, many a glazing eye--yea, of those your very nearest, whom your
hopes have done to death: and are ye guiltless? God and conscience be
your judges!

Even now ye have compassed many frauds, connived at many meannesses,
trodden down the good, and set the bad on high--all for gold--hard gold;
and are ye the honest--the upright? Speak out manfully your excuse, if
you can find one, ye respectables of merchandise, ye traders, bartering
all for cash, ye Scribes, ye Pharisees, hypocrites, all honourable men.

Even now, your dreams are full of money-bags; your cares are how to add
superfluity to wealth; ye fawn upon the rich, ye scorn the poor, ye pine
and toil both night and day for gold, more gold; and are ye happy?
Answer me, ye covetous ones.

Yet are there righteous gains, God's blessing upon labour: yet is there
rightful hope to get those righteous gains. Who can condemn the poor
man's care, though Faith should make his load the lighter? And who will
extenuate the rich man's coveting, whose appetite grows with what it
feeds on? "Having food and raiment, be therewith content;" that is the
golden mean; to that is limited the philosophy of worldliness: the man
must live, by labour and its earnings; but having wherewithal for him
and his temperately, let him tie the mill-stone of anxiety to the wing
of Faith, and speed that burden to his God.

If Wealth come, beware of him, the smooth false friend: there is
treachery in his proffered hand, his tongue is eloquent to tempt, lust
of many harms is lurking in his eye, he hath a hollow heart; use him
cautiously.

If Penury assail, fight against him stoutly, the gaunt grim foe: the
curse of Cain is on his brow, toiling vainly; he creepeth with the worm
by day, to raven with the wolf by night: diseases battle by his side,
and crime followeth his footsteps. Therefore fight against him boldly,
and be of a good courage, for there are many with thee; not alone the
doled alms, the casual aids dropped from compassion, or wrung out by
importunity; these be only temporary helps, and indulgence in them
pampers the improvident; but look thou to a better host of strong
allies, of resolute defenders; turn again to meet thy duties, needy one:
no man ever starved, who even faintly tried to do them. Look to thy God,
O sinner! use reason wisely; cherish honour; shrink not from toil,
though somewhile unrewarded; preserve frank bearing with thy fellows;
and in spite of all thy sins--forgiven; all thy follies--flung away; all
the trickeries of this world--scorned; all competitions--disregarded;
all suspicions--trodden under foot; thou neediest and raggedest of
labourers' labourers--Enough shall be thy portion, ere a week hath
passed away.

Well did Agur-the-Wise counsel Ithiel and Ucal his disciples, when he
uttered in their ears before his God, this prayerful admonition, "Two
things have I required of Thee; deny me them not before I die: remove
far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches: feed me
with food convenient for me. Lest I be full, and deny Thee, saying, Who
is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and dishonour the name of the
Lord my God."

CHAPTER XXXII.

NEXT MORNING.

Day dawned apace; and a glorious cavalcade of flaming clouds
heralded the Sun their captain. From far away, round half the wide
horizon, their glittering spears advanced. Heaven's highway rang with
the trampling of their horse-hoofs, and the dust went up from its
jewelled pavement as spray from the bottom of a cataract. Anon, he
came, the chieftain of that on-spurring host! his banner blazed upon the
sky; his golden crest was seen beneath, nodding with its ruddy plumes;
over the south-eastern hills he arose in radiant armour. Fair Nature,
waking at her bridegroom's voice, arrived so early from a distant clime,
smiled upon him sleepily, gladdening him in beauty with her sweet
half-opened eyelids, and kissing him in faithfulness with
dew-besprinkled lips.

And he looked forth upon the world from his high chariot, holding back
the coursers that must mount the steep of noon: and he heard the morning
hymn of thankfulness to Heaven from the mountains, and the valleys, and
the islands of the sea; the prayer of man and woman, the praise of
lisping tongues, the hum of insect joy upon the air, the sheep-bell
tinkling in the distance, the wild bird's carol, and the lowing kine,
the mute minstrelsy of rising dews, and that stilly scarce-heard
universal melody of wakeful plants and trees, hastening to turn their
spring-buds to the light--this was the anthem he, the Lord of Day, now
listened to--this was the song his influences had raised to bless the
God who made him.

And he saw, from his bright throne of wide derivative glory, Hope flying
forth upon her morning missions, visiting the lonesome, comforting the
sorrowful, speaking cheerfully to Care, and singing in the ear of
Labour: and he watched that ever-welcome friend, flitting with the
gleams of light to every home, to every heart; none but gladly let her
in; her tapping finger opened the very prison doors; the heavy head of
Sloth rejoiced to hear her call; and every common Folly, every common
Sin--ay, every common Crime--warmed his unconscious soul before her
winning beauty.

Yet, yet was there one, who cursed that angel's coming; and the holy Eye
of day wept pityingly to see an awful child of man who dared not look on
Hope.

The murderer stood beside his casement, watching that tranquil scene:
with bloodshot eyes and haggard stare, he gazed upon the waking world;
for one strange minute he forgot, entranced by innocence and beauty; but
when the stunning tide of memory, that had ebbed that one strange
minute, rolled back its mighty flood upon his mind, the murderer swooned
away.

And he came to himself again all too soon; for when he arose, building
up his weak, weak limbs, as if he were a column of sand, the cruel
giant, Guilt, lifted up his club, and felled the wretch once more.

How long he lay fainting, he knew not then; if any one had vowed it was
a century, Simon, as he gradually woke, could not have gainsaid the man;
but he only lay four seconds in that white oblivious trance--for Fear,
Fear knocked at his heart:--Up, man, up!--you need have all your wits
about you now;--see, it is broad day--the house will be roused before
you know where you are, and then will be shouted out that awful
name--Simon Jennings! Simon Jennings!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE ALARM.

He arose, held up on either hand that day as if fighting
against Amalek;--despair buttressed him on one side, and secresy shored
him on the other: behind that wall of stone his heart had strength to
beat.

He arose; and listened at the key-hole anxiously: all silent, quiet,
quiet still; the whole house asleep: nothing found out yet. And he bit
his nails to the quick, that they bled again: but he never felt the
pain.

Hush!--yes, somebody's about: it is Jonathan's step; and hark, he is
humming merrily, "Hail, smiling morn, that opes the gates of day?" Wo,
wo--what a dismal gulph between Jonathan and me! And he beat his breast
miserably. But, Jonathan cannot find it out--he never goes to Mrs.
Quarles's room. Oh! this suspense is horrible: haste, haste, some kind
soul, to make the dread discovery! And he tore his hair away by
handfulls.

"Hark!--somebody else--unlatching shutters; it will be Sarah--ha! she is
tapping at the housekeeper's room--yes, yes, and she will make it known,
O terrible joy!--A scream! it is Sarah's voice--she has seen her dead,
dead, dead;--but is she indeed dead?"

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.