THE CONTRAST.
Thus, full of carking care, while he pushed aside the proffered
consolation, Roger Acton walked abroad. There was yet but a glimmer of
faint light, and the twittering of birds told more assuringly of morning
than any cheerful symptom on the sky: however, it had pretty well ceased
raining, that was one comfort, and, as Roger, shouldering his spade, and
with the day's provision in a handkerchief, trudged out upon his daily
duty, those good old thoughts of thankfulness came upon his mind, and he
forgot awhile the dream that had unstrung him. Turning for a moment to
look upon his hovel, and bless its inmates with a prayer, he half
resolved to run back, and hear a few more words, if only not to vex his
darling child: but there was now no time to spare; and then, as he gazed
upon her desolate abode--so foul a casket for so fair a jewel--his
bitter thoughts returned to him again, and he strode away, repining.
Acton's cottage was one of those doubtful domiciles, whose only
recommendation it is, that they are picturesque in summer. At present we
behold a reeking rotting mass of black thatch in a cheerless swamp; but,
as the year wears on, those time-stained walls, though still both damp
and mouldy, will be luxuriantly overspread with creeping
plants--honeysuckle, woodbine, jessamine, and the everblowing monthly
rose. Many was the touring artist it had charmed, and Suffolk-street had
seen it often: spectators looked upon the scene as on an old familiar
friend, whose face they knew full well, but whose name they had
forgotten for the minute. Many were the fair hands that had immortalized
its beauties in their albums, and frequent the notes of admiration
uttered by attending swains: particularly if there chanced to be taken
into the view a feathery elm that now creaked overhead, and dripped on
the thatch like the dropping-well at Knaresborough, and (in the near
distance) a large pond, or rather lake, upon whose sedgy banks, gay--not
now, but soon about to be--with flowering reeds and bright green
willows, the pretty cottage stood. In truth, if man were but an
hibernating animal, invisible as dormice in the winter, and only to be
seen with summer swallows, Acton's cottage at Hurstley might have been a
cantle cut from the Elysian-fields. But there are certain other seasons
in the year, and human nature cannot long exist on the merely
"picturesque in summer."
Some fifty yards, or so, from the hither shore, we discern a roughly
wooded ait, Pike Island to wit, a famous place for fish, and the grand
rendezvous for woodcocks; which, among other useful and ornamental
purposes, serves to screen out the labourer's hovel, at this the
narrowest part of the lake, from a view of that fine old mansion on the
opposite shore, the seat of Sir John Vincent, a baronet just of age, and
the great landlord of the neighbourhood. Toward this mansion, scarcely
yet revealed in the clear gray eye of morning, our humble hero, having
made the long round of the lake, is now fast trudging; and it may merit
a word or two of plain description, to fill up time and scene, till he
gets nearer.
A smooth grassy eminence, richly studded with park-like clumps of trees,
slopes up from the water's very edge to--Hurstley Hall; yonder goodly,
if not grand, Elizabethan structure, full of mullioned windows, carved
oak panels, stone-cut coats of arms, pinnacles, and traceries, and
lozenges, and drops; and all this glory crowned by a many-gabled,
high-peaked roof. A grove of evergreens and American shrubs hides the
lower windows from vulgarian gaze--for, in the neighbourly feeling of
our ancestors, a public way leads close along the front; while, behind
the house, and inaccessible to eyes profane, are drawn terraced gardens,
beautifully kept, and blooming with a perpetual succession of the
choicest flowers. The woods and shrubberies around, attempted some half
a century back to be spoilt by the meddlesome bad taste of Capability
Brown, have been somewhat too resolutely robbed of the formal avenues,
clipped hedges, and other topiarian adjuncts which comport so well with
the starch prudery of things Elizabethan; but they are still replete
with grotto, fountain, labyrinth, and alcove--a very paradise for the
more court-bred rank of sylphs, and the gentler elves of Queen Titania.
However, we have less to do with the gardens than, probably, the elves
have; and as Roger now, just at breaking day, is approaching the windows
somewhat too curiously for a poor man's manners, it may not be amiss if
we bear him company. He had pretty well recovered of his fit of
discontent, for morning air and exercise can soon chase gloom away; so
he cheerily tramped along, thinking as he went, how that, after all, it
is a middling happy world, and how that the raindrops, now that it had
cleared up, hung like diamonds on the laurels, when of a sudden, as he
turned a corner near the house, there broke upon his ear, at that quiet
hour, such a storm of boisterous sounds--voices so loud with oaths and
altercation--such a calling, clattering, and quarrelling, as he had
never heard the like before. So no wonder that he stepped aside to see
it.
The noise proceeded from a ground-floor window, or rather from three
windows, lighted up, and hung with draperies of crimson and gold: one of
the casements, flaring meretriciously in the modest eye of morn, stood
wide open down to the floor, probably to cool a heated atmosphere; and
when Roger Acton, with a natural curiosity, went on tiptoe, looked in,
and just put aside the curtain for a peep, to know what on earth could
be the matter, he saw a vision of waste and wealth, at which he stood
like one amazed, for a poor man's mind could never have conceived its
equal.
Evidently, he had intruded on the latter end of a long and luxurious
revel. Wax-lights, guttering down in gilded chandeliers, poured their
mellow radiance round in multiplied profusion--for mirrors made them
infinite; crimson and gold were the rich prevailing tints in that wide
and warm banqueting-room; gayly-coloured pictures, set in frames that
Roger fancied massive gold, hung upon the walls at intervals; a
wagon-load of silver was piled upon the sideboard; there blazed in the
burnished grate such a fire as poverty might imagine on a frozen
winter's night, but never can have thawed its blood beside: fruits, and
wines, and costly glass were scattered in prodigal disorder on the
board--just now deserted of its noisy guests, who had crowded round a
certain green table, where cards and heaps of sovereigns appeared to be
mingled in a mass. Roger had never so much as conceived it possible that
there could be wealth like this: it was a fairy-land of Mammon in his
eyes: he stood gasping like a man enchanted; and in the contemplation of
these little hills of gold--in their covetous longing contemplation, he
forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned aside to see, and thirsted for
that rich store earnestly.
In an instant, as he looked (after the comparative lull that must
obviously have succeeded to the clamours he had first heard), the roar
and riot broke out worse than ever. There were the stormy revellers, as
the rabble rout of Comus and his crew, filling that luxurious room with
the sounds of noisy execration and half-drunken strife. Young Sir John,
a free and generous fellow, by far the best among them all, has
collected about him those whom he thought friends, to celebrate his
wished majority; they had now kept it up, night after night, hard upon a
week; and, as well became such friends--the gambler, the duellist, the
man of pleasure, and the fool of Fashion--they never yet had separated
for their day-light beds, without a climax to their orgie, something
like the present scene.
Henry Mynton, high in oath, and dashing down his cards, has charged Sir
Richard Hunt with cheating (it was _sauter la coupe_ or _couper la
saut_, or some such mystery of iniquity, I really cannot tell which):
Sir Richard, a stout dark man, the patriarch of the party, glossily
wigged upon his head, and imperially tufted on his chin, retorts with a
pungent sarcasm, calmly and coolly uttered; that hot-headed fool
Silliphant, clearly quite intoxicated, backs his cousin Mynton's view of
the case by the cogent argument of a dice-box at Sir Richard's head--and
at once all is struggle, strife, and uproar. The other guests, young
fellows of high fashion, now too much warmed with wine to remember their
accustomed Mohican cold-bloodedness--those happy debtors to the prowess
of a Stultz, and walking advertisers of Nugee--take eager part with the
opposed belligerents: more than one decanter is sent hissing through
the air; more than one bloody coxcomb witnesses to the weight of a
candle-stick and its hurler's clever aim: uplifted chairs are made the
weapons of the chivalric combatants; and along with divers other less
distinguished victims in the melée, poor Sir John Vincent, rushing into
the midst, as a well-intentioned host, to quell the drunken brawl, gets
knocked down among them all; the tables are upset, the bright gold runs
about the room in all directions--ha! no one heeds it--no one owns
it--one little piece rolled right up to the window-sill where Roger
still looked on with all his eyes; it is but to put his hand in--the
window is open to the floor--nay a finger is enough: greedily, one
undecided moment, did he gaze upon the gold; he saw the hideous contrast
of his own dim hovel and that radiant chamber--he remembered the pining
faces of his babes, and gentle Grace with all her hardships--he thought
upon his poverty and well deserts--he looked upon wastefulness of wealth
and wantonness of living--these reflections struck him in a moment; no
one saw him, no one cared about the gold; that little blessed morsel,
that could do him so much good; all was confusion, all was opportunity,
and who can wonder that his fingers closed upon the sovereign, and that
he picked it up?