The Crock of Gold | Page 6

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?
CHAPTER IV.
THE LOST THEFT.
STEALTHILY and quickly "honest Roger" crept away, for his
conscience smote him on the instant: he felt he had done wrong; at any
rate, the sovereign was not his--and once the thought arose in him to
run back, and put it where he found it: but it was now become too
precious in his sight, that little bit of gold--and they, the rioters there,

could not want it, might not even miss it; and then its righteous uses--it
should be well spent, even if ill-got: and thus, so many mitigations
crowded in to excuse, if not to applaud the action, that within a little