The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper

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At length, that fearful hue and cry began to subside--the hubbub came
to be quieter: neighbour-folks went home, and inmates went to bed. Sarah
Stack put aside her work, and left the room.

What a relief to that hidden caitiff! his feet, standing on the cold,
damp iron so many hours, bare of brogues, were mere ice--only that they
ached intolerably: he had not dared to move, to breathe, and was all
over in one cramp: he did not bring the brandy-bottle with him, as he
once had planned; for calculation whispered--"Don't, your head will be
the clearer; you must not muddle your brains;" and so his caution
over-reached itself, as usual; his head was in a fog, and his brains in
a whirlwind, for lack of other stimulants than fear and pain.

O Simon, how your prudence cheats you! five mortal hours of anguish and
anxiety in one unalterable posture, without a single drop of
creature-comfort; and all this preconcerted too!

CHAPTER XXVI.

PRELIMINARIES.

At last, just as the nephew was positively fainting from
exhaustion, in came his kind old aunt to bed. She talked a good deal to
herself, did Mrs. Quarles, and Simon heard her say,

"Poor fellow--poor, dear Simon, he was taken bad last night, and has
seemed queerish in the head all day: pray God nothing's amiss with the
boy!"

The boy's heart (he was forty) smote him as he heard: yes, even he was
vexed that Aunt Bridget could be so foolishly fond of him. But he would
go on now, and not have all his toil for nothing. "I'm in for it," said
he, "and there's an end."

Ay, Simon, you are, indeed, in for it; the devil has locked you in--but
as to the end, we shall see, we shall see.

"I shouldn't wonder now," the good old soul went on to say, "if
Simon's wentured out without his hat to cool a head-ache: his
grand-father--peace be with him! died, poor man, in a Lunacy 'Sylum:
alack, Si, I wish you mayn't be going the same road. No, no, I hope
not--he's always so prudent-like, and wise, and good; so kind, too, to a
poor old fool like me:" and the poor old fool began to cry again.

"Silly boy--but he'll take cold at any rate: Sarah!" (here Mrs. Quarles
rung her bell, and the still-maid answered it.) "Sarah Stack, sit up
awhile for Mr. Jennings, and when he comes in, send him here to me. Poor
boy," she went on soliloquizing, "he shall have a drop or two to comfort
his stomach, and keep the chill out."

The poor boy, lying _perdu_, shuddered at the word chill, and really
wished his aunt would hold her tongue. But she didn't.

"Maybe now," the affectionate old creature proceeded, "maybe Simon was
vexed at what I let drop last night about the money. I know he loves his
sister Scott, as I do: but it'll seem hard, too, to leave him nothing. I
must make my will some day, I 'spose; but don't half like the job: it's
always so nigh death. Yes--yes, dear Si shall have a snug little
corner."

The real Simon Pure, in his own snug little corner, writhed again. Mrs.
Quarles started at the noise, looked up the chimney, under the bed,
tried the doors and windows, and actually went so near the mark as to
turn the handle of the shower-bath; "Drat it," said she, "Sarah must ha'
took away the key: well, there can't be nothing there but cloaks, that's
one comfort."

Last of all, a thought struck her--it must have been a mouse at the
preserves. And Mrs. Quarles forthwith opened the important cupboard,
where Jennings now well knew the idol of his heart was shrined. Then
another thought struck Mrs. Quarles, though probably no unusual one, and
she seemed to have mounted on a chair, and to be bringing down some
elevated piece of crockery. Simon could see nothing with his eyes, but
his ears made up for them: if ever Dr. Elliotson produced clairvoyance
in the sisters Okey, the same sharpened apprehensions ministered to the
inner man of Simon Jennings through the instrumental magnet of his
inordinately covetous desires. Therefore, though his retina bore no
picture of the scene, the feelers of his mind went forth, informing him
of every thing that happened.

Down came a Narbonne honey-pot--Simon saw that first, and it was as the
lamp of Aladdin in his eyes: then the bladder was whipped off, and the
crock set open on the table. Jennings, mad as Darius's horse at the
sight of the object he so longed for, once thought of rushing from his
hiding-place, taking the hoard by a _coup de main_, and running off
straightway to America: but--deary me--that'll never do; I mustn't leave
my own strong-box behind me, say nothing of hat and shoes: and if I stop
for any thing, she'd raise the house.

While this was passing through the immaculate mind of Simon Jennings,
Bridget had been cutting up an old glove, and had made one of its
fingers into a very tidy little leather sacklet; into this she deposited
a bright half sovereign, spoil of the day, being the douceur of a needy
brush-maker, who wished to keep custom, and, of course, charged all
these vails on the current bill for mops and stable-sponges.

"Ha!" muttered she, "it's your last bill here, Mr. Scrubb, I can tell
you; so, you were going to put me off with a crown-piece, were you? and
actually that bit of gold might as well have been a drop of blood wrung
from you: yes--yes, Mr. Scrubb, I could see that plainly; and so you've
done for yourself."

Then, having sewed up the clever little bag, she dropped it into the
crock: there was no jingle, all dumby: prudent that, in his aunt--for
the dear morsels of gold were worth such tender keeping, and leather
would hinder them from wear and tear, set aside the clink being
silenced. So, the nephew secretly thanked Bridget for the wrinkle, and
thought how pleasant it would be to stuff old gloves with his own yellow
store. Ah, yes, he would do that--to-morrow morning.

Meanwhile, the pig-skin is put on again, and the honey-pot stored away:
and Simon instinctively stood a tip-toe to peep ideally into that
wealthy corner cupboard. His mind's eye seemed to see more honey-pots!
Mammon help us! can they all be full of gold? why, any one of them would
hold a thousand pounds. And Simon scratched the palms of his hands, and
licked his lips at the thought of so much honey.

But see, Mrs. Quarles has, in her peculiar fashion, undressed herself:
that is to say, she has taken off her outer gown, her cap and wig--and
then has _added_ to the volume of her under garments, divers night
habiliments, flannelled and frilled: while wrappers, manifold as a
turbaned Turk's, protect ear-ache, tooth-ache, head-ache, and face-ache,
from the elves of the night.

And now, that the bedstead creaks beneath her weight, (as well it may,
for Bridget is a burden like Behemoth,) Simon's heart goes thump so
loud, that it was a wonder the poor woman never heard it. That heart in
its hard pulsations sounded to me like the carpenter hammering on her
coffin-lid: I marvel that she did not take it for a death-watch tapping
to warn her of her end. But no: Simon held his hand against his heart to
keep it quiet: he was so very fearful the pitapating would betray him.
Never mind, Simon; don't be afraid; she is fast asleep already; and her
snore is to thee as it were the challenge of a trumpeter calling to the
conflict.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ROBBERY.

Hush--hush--hush!

Stealthily on tiptoe, with finger on his lips, that fore-doomed man
crept out.

"The key is in the cupboard still--ha! how lucky: saves time that, and
trouble, and--and--risk! Oh, no--there can be no risk now," and the
wretch added, "thank God!"

The devil loves such piety as this.

So Simon quietly turned the key, and set the cupboard open: it was to
him a Bluebeard's chamber, a cave of the Forty Thieves, a garden of the
Genius in Aladdin, a mysterious secret treasure-house of wealth
uncounted and unseen.

What a galaxy of pickle-pots! tier behind tier of undoubted
currant-jelly, ranged like the houses in Algiers! vasty jars of
gooseberry! delicate little cupping-glasses full of syruped fruits! Yet
all these candied joys, which probably enhance a Mrs. Rundle's heaven,
were as nothing in the eyes of Simon--sweet trash, for all he cared
they might be vulgar treacle. His ken saw nothing but the
honey-pots--embarrassing array--a round dozen of them! All alike, all
posted in a brown line, like stout Dutch sentinels with their hands in
their breeches pockets, and set aloft on that same high-reached shelf.
Must he really take them all? impracticable: a positive sack full.
What's to be done?--which is he to leave behind? that old witch
contrived this identity and multitude for safety's sake. But what if he
left the wrong one, and got clear off with the valuable booty of two
dozen pounds of honey? Confusion! that'll never do: he must take them
all, or none; all, all's the word; and forthwith, as tenderly as
possible, the puzzled thief took down eleven pots of honey to his one of
gold--all pig-bladdered, all Fortnumed--all slimy at the string;
"Confound that cunning old aunt of mine," said Simon, aloud; and took no
notice that the snores surceased.

Then did he spread upon the table a certain shawl, and set the crocks in
order on it: and it was quite impossible to leave behind that pretty
ostentatious "Savings' Bank," which the shrewd hoarder kept as a feint
to lure thieves from her hidden gold, by an open exhibition of her
silver: unluckily, though, the shillings, not being leathered up nor
branned, rattled like a Mandarin toy, as the trembling hand of Jennings
deposited the bank beside the crockeries--and, at the well-known sound,
I observed (though Simon did not, as he was in a trance of addled
triumph) or fancied I observed Mrs. Quarles's head move: but as she said
nothing, perhaps I was mistaken. Thus stood Simon at the table,
surveying his extraordinary spoils.

And while he looked, the Mercy of God, which never yet hath seen the
soul too guilty for salvation, spake to him kindly, and whispered in his
ear, "Poor, deluded man--there is yet a moment for escape--flee from
this temptation--put all back again--hasten to thy room, to thy prayers,
repent, repent: even thou shalt be forgiven, and none but God, who will
forgive thee, shall know of this bad crime. Turn now from all thy sins;
the gate of bliss is open, if thou wilt but lift the latch."

It was one moment of irresolute delay; on that hinge hung Eternity. The
gate swung upon its pivot, that should shut out hell, or heaven!

Simon knit his brow--bit his nails--and answered quite out loud, "What!
and after all to lose the crock of gold?"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MURDER.

He had waked her!

In an instant the angel form of Mercy melted away--and there stood the
devil with his arms folded.

"Murder!--fire!--rape!--thieves!--what, Nephew Jennings, is that you,
with all my honey pots? Help! help! help!"

"Phew-w-w!" whistled the devil: "I tell you what, Master Simon, you must
quiet the old woman, she bellows like a bull, the house'll be about your
ears in a twinkling--she'll hang you for this!"

Yes--he must quiet her--the game was up; he threatened, he implored, but
she would shriek on; she slept alone on the ground-floor, and knew she
must roar loudly to be heard above the drawing-rooms; she would not be
quieted--she would shriek--and she did. What must he do? she'll raise
the house!--Stop her mouth, stop her mouth, I say, can't you?--No, she's
a powerful, stout, heavy woman, and he cannot hold her: ha! she has
bitten his finger to the bone, like a very tigress! look at the blood!

"Why can't you touch her throat; no teeth there, bless you! that's the
way the wind comes: bravo! grasp it--tighter! tighter! tighter!"

She struggled, and writhed, and wrestled, and fought--but all was
strangling silence; they rolled about the floor together, tumbled on the
bed, scuffled round the room, but all in horrid silence; neither uttered
a sound, neither had a shoe on--but all was earnest, wicked,
death-dealing silence.

Ha! the desperate victim has the best of it; gripe harder, Jennings; she
has twisted her fingers in your neckcloth, and you yourself are choking:
fool! squeeze the swallow, can't you? try to make your fingers meet in
the middle--lower down, lower down, grasp the gullet, not the ears,
man--that's right; I told you so: tighter, tighter, tighter! again; ha,
ha, ha, bravo! bravo!--tighter, tighter, tighter!

At length the hideous fight was coming to an end--though a hungry
constrictor, battling with the huge rhinoceros, and crushing his mailed
ribs beneath its folds, could not have been so fierce or fearful; fewer
now, and fainter are her struggles; that face is livid blue--the eyes
have started out, and goggle horribly; the tongue protrudes, swollen and
black. Aha! there is another convulsive effort--how strong she is still!
can you hold her, Simon?--can he?--All the fiend possessed him now with
savage exultation: can he?--only look! gripe, gripe still, you are
conquering, strong man! she is getting weaker, weaker; here is your
reward, gold! gold! a mighty store uncounted; one more grasp, and it is
all your own--relent now, she hangs you. Come, make short work of it,
break her neck--gripe harder--back with her, back with here against the
bedstead: keep her down, down I say--she must not rise again. Crack!
went a little something in her neck--did you hear it? There's the
death-rattle, the last smothery complicated gasp--what, didn't you hear
that?

And the devil congratulated Simon on his victory.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE REWARD.

Till the wretch had done the deed, he scarcely knew that it was
doing. It was a horrid, mad excitement, where the soul had spread its
wings upon the whirlwind, and heeded not whither it was hurried. A
terrible necessity had seemed to spur him onwards all the while, and
one thing so succeeded to another, that he scarce could stop at any but
the first. From the moment he had hidden in the shower-bath (but for
God's interposing mercy), his doom appeared to have been
sealed--robbery, murder, false witness, and--damnation!

Crime is the rushing rapid, which, but for some kind miracle, inevitably
carries on through circling eddies, and a foamy swinging tide, to the
cataract of death and wo: haste, poor fisherman of Erie, paddle hard
back, stem the torrent, cling to the shore, hold on tight by this
friendly bough; know you not whither the headlong current drives? hear
you not the roar of many waters, the maddening rush as of an ocean
disenthralled? feel you not the earth trembling at the thunder--see you
not the heaven clouded o'er with spray? Helpless wretch--thy frail canoe
has leapt that dizzy water-cliff, Niagara!

But if, in doing that fell deed, madness raged upon the minutes, now
that it was done--all still, all calm, all quiet, Terror held the
hour-glass of Time. There lay the corpse, motionless, though coiled and
cramped in the attitude of struggling agony; and the murderer gazed upon
his victim with a horror most intense. Fly! fly!--he dared not stop to
think: fly! fly! any whither--as you are--wait for nothing; fly! thou
caitiff, for thy life! So he caught up the blood-bought spoils, and was
fumbling with shaky fingers at the handle of the garden-door, when the
unseen tempter whispered in his ear,

"I say, Simon, did not your aunt die of apoplexy?"

O, kind and wise suggestion! O, lightsome, tranquillizing thought!
Thanks! thanks! thanks!--And if the arch fiend had revealed himself in
person at the moment, Simon would have worshipped at his feet.

"But," and as he communed with his own black heart, there needed now no
devil for his prompter--"if this matter is to be believed, I must
contrive a little that it may look likelier. Let me see:--yes, we must
lay all tidy, and the old witch shall have died in her sleep; apoplexy!
capital indeed; no tell-tales either. Well, I must set to work."

Can mortal mind conceive that sickening office?--To face the strangled
corpse, yet warm; to lift the fearful burden in his arms, and order out
the heavily-yielding limbs in the ease of an innocent sleep? To arrange
the bed, smooth down the tumbled coverlid, set every thing straight
about the room, and erase all tokens of that dread encounter? It needed
nerves of iron, a heart all stone, a cool, clear head, a strong arm, a
mindful, self-protecting spirit; but all these requisites came to
Simon's aid upon the instant; frozen up with fear, his heart-strings
worked that puppet-man rigidly as wires; guilt supplied a reckless
energy, a wild physical power, which actuates no human frame but one
saturate with crime, or madness; and in the midst of those terrific
details, the murderer's judgment was so calm and so collected, that
nothing was forgotten, nothing unconsidered--unless, indeed, it were
that he out-generalled himself by making all too tidy to be natural.
Hence, suspicion at the inquest; for the "apoplexy" thought was really
such a good one, that, but for so exact a laying out, the fat old corpse
might have easily been buried without one surmise of the way she met her
end. Again and again, in the history of crimes, it is seen that a "Judas
hangs himself;" and albeit, as we know, the murderer has hitherto
escaped detection, still his own dark hour shall arrive in its due
place.

The dreadful office done, he asked himself again, or maybe took counsel
of the devil (for that evil master always cheats his servants), "What
shall I do with my reward, this crock--these crocks of gold? It might be
easy to hide one of them, but not all; and as to leaving any behind,
that I won't do. About opening them to see which is which--"

"I tell you what," said the tempter, as the clock struck three,
"whatever you do, make haste; by morning's dawn the house and garden
will be searched, no doubt, and the crocks found in your possession.
Listen to me--I'm your friend, bless you! remember the apoplexy. Pike
Island yonder is an unfrequented place; take the punt, hide all there
now, and go at your best leisure to examine afterwards; but whatever you
do, make haste, my man."

Then Jennings crept out by the lawn-door, thereby rousing the house-dog;
but he skirted the laurels in their shadow, and it was dark and
mizzling, so he reached the punt both quickly and easily.

The quiet, and the gloom, and the dropping rain, strangely affected him
now, as he plied his punt-pole; once he could have wept in his remorse,
and another time he almost shrieked in fear. How lonesome it seemed! how
dreadful! and that death-dyed face behind him--ha! woman, away I say!
But he neared the island, and, all shoeless as he was, crept up its
muddy bank.

"Hallo! nybor, who be you a-poaching on my manor, eh? that bean't good
manners, any how."

Ben Burke has told us all the rest.

But, when Burke had got his spoils--when the biter had been bitten--the
robber robbed--the murderer stripped of his murdered victim's
money--when the bereaved miscreant, sullenly returning in the dark,
damp night, tracked again the way he came upon that lonely lake--no one
yet has told us, none can rightly tell, the feelings which oppressed
that God-forsaken man. He seemed to feel himself even a sponge which,
the evil one had bloated with his breath, had soaked it then in blood,
had squeezed it dry again, and flung away! He was Satan's broken tool--a
weed pulled up by the roots, and tossed upon the fire; alone--alone in
all the universe, without countenance or sympathy from God, or man, or
devil; he yearned to find, were it but a fiend to back him, but in vain;
they held aloof, he could see them vaguely through the gloom--he could
hear them mocking him aloud among the patter of the rain-drops--ha! ha!
ha--the pilfered fool!

Bitterly did he rue his crime--fearfully he thought upon its near
discovery--madly did he beat his miserable breast, to find that he had
been baulked of his reward, yet spent his soul to earn it.

Oh--when the house-dog bayed at him returning, how he wished he was that
dog! he went to him, speaking kindly to him, for he envied that
dog--"Good dog--good dog!"

But more than envy kept him lingering there: the wretched man did it for
delay--yes, though morn was breaking on the hills--one more--one more
moment of most precious time.

CHAPTER XXX.

SECOND THOUGHTS.

For--again he must go through that room!

No other entrance is open--not a window, not a door: all close as a
prison: and only by the way he went, by the same must he return.

He trembled all over, as a palsied man, when he touched the lock: with
stiffening hair, and staring eyes, he peeped in at that well-remembered
chamber: he entered--and crept close up to the corpse, stealthily and
dreadingly--horror! what if she be alive still?

SHE WAS.

Not quite dead--not quite dead yet! a gurgling in the bruised throat--a
shadowy gleam of light and life in those protruded eyes--an irregular
convulsive heaving at the chest: she might recover! what a fearful
hope: and, if she did, would hang him--ha! he went nearer; she was
muttering something in a moanful way--it was, "Simon did it--Simon did
it--Simon did it--Si--Si--Simon did--" he should be found out!

Yet once again, for the last time, the long-suffering Mercy of the Lord
stood like Balaam's angel in the way, pleading with that miserable man
at the bed-side of her whom he had strangled. And even then, that
Guardian Spirit came not with chiding on his tongue, but He uttered
words of hope, while his eyes were streaming with sorrow and with pity.

"Most wretched of the sinful sons of men, even now there may be mercy
for thee, even now plenteous forgiveness. True, thou must die, and pay
the earthly penalty of crimes like thine: but do my righteous bidding,
and thy soul shall live. Go to that poor, suffocating creature--cherish
the spark of life--bind up the wounds which thou hast rent, pouring in
oil and wine: rouse the house--seek assistance--save her life--confess
thy sin--repent--and though thou diest for this before the tribunal of
thy fellows, God will yet be gracious--he will raise again her whom thou
hadst slain--and will cleanse thy blood-stained soul."

Thus in Simon's ear spake that better conscience.

But the reprobate had cast off Faith; he could not pledge the Present
for the Future; he shuddered at the sword of Justice, and would not
touch the ivory sceptre of Forgiveness. No: he meditated horrid
iteration--and again the fiend possessed him! What! not only lose the
crock of gold, but all his own bright store? and give up every thing of
this world's good for some imaginary other, and meekly confess, and
meanly repent--and--and all this to resuscitate that hated old aunt of
his, who would hang him, and divorce him from his gold?

No! he must do the deed again--see, she is moving--she will recover! her
chest heaves visibly--she breathes--she speaks--she knows me--ha!
down--down, I say!

Then, with deliberate and damning resolution--to screen off temporal
danger, and count his golden hoards a little longer--that awful criminal
touched the throat again: and he turned his head away not to see that
horrid face, clutched the swollen gullet with his icy hands, and
strangled her once more!

"This time all is safe," said Simon. And having set all smooth as
before, he stole up to his own chamber.

CHAPTER XXXI.

MAMMON, AND CONTENTMENT.

Ay, safe enough: and the murderer went to bed. To bed? No.

He tumbled about the clothes, to make it seem that he had lain there:
but he dared neither lie down, nor shut his eyes. Then, the darkness
terrified him: the out-door darkness he could have borne, and Mrs.
Quarles's chamber always had a night-lamp burning: but the darkness of
his own room, of his own thoughts, pressed him all around, as with a
thick, murky, suffocating vapour. So, he stood close by the window,
watching the day-break.

As for sleep, never more did wholesome sleep revisit that atrocious
mind: laudanum, an ever-increasing dose of merciless laudanum, that was
the only power which ever seemed to soothe him. For a horrid vision
always accompanied him now: go where he might, do what he would, from
that black morning to eternity, he went a haunted man--a scared,
sleepless, horror-stricken wretch. That livid face with goggling eyes,
stuck to him like a shadow; he always felt its presence, and sometimes,
also, could perceive it as if bodily peeping over his shoulder, next his
cheek; it dogged him by day, and was his incubus by night; and often he
would start and wrestle, for the desperate grasp of the dying appeared
to be clutching at his throat: so, in his ghostly fears, and bloody
conscience, he had girded round his neck a piece of thin sheet-iron in
his cravat, which he wore continually as armour against those clammy
fingers: no wonder that he held his head so stiff.

O Gold--accursed Mammon! is this the state of those who love thee
deepest? is this their joy, who desire thee with all their heart and
soul--who serve thee with all their might--who toil for thee--plot for
thee--live for thee--dare for thee--die for thee? Hast thou no better
bliss to give thy martyrs--no choicer comfort for thy most consistent
worshippers, no fairer fate for those, whose waking thoughts, and
dreaming hopes, and intricate schemes, and desperate deeds, were only
aimed at gold, more gold? God of this world, if such be thy rewards, let
me ever escape them! idol of the knave, false deity of the fool, if this
be thy blessing on thy votaries--come, curse me, Mammon, curse thou me!