CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER I
Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of
blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been
sufficiently considered. How is the son of a British yeoman, who has
been fed principally on salt pork and yeast dumplings, to know that
there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradise of glass jars
full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and that the tedium of life
can reach a pitch where plum-buns at discretion cease to offer the
slightest excitement? Or how, at the tender age when a confectioner
seems to him a very prince whom all the world must envy—who breakfasts
on macaroons, dines on meringues, sups on twelfth-cake, and fills up
the intermediate hours with sugar-candy or peppermint—how is he to
foresee the day of sad wisdom, when he will discern that the
confectioner’s calling is not socially influential, or favourable to a
soaring ambition? I have known a man who turned out to have a
metaphysical genius, incautiously, in the period of youthful buoyancy,
commence his career as a dancing-master; and you may imagine the use
that was made of this initial mistake by opponents who felt themselves
bound to warn the public against his doctrine of the Inconceivable. He
could not give up his dancing-lessons, because he made his bread by
them, and metaphysics would not have found him in so much as salt to
his bread. It was really the same with Mr. David Faux and the
confectionery business. His uncle, the butler at the great house close
by Brigford, had made a pet of him in his early boyhood, and it was on
a visit to this uncle that the confectioners’ shops in that brilliant
town had, on a single day, fired his tender imagination. He carried
home the pleasing illusion that a confectioner must be at once the
happiest and the foremost of men, since the things he made were not
only the most beautiful to behold, but the very best eating, and such
as the Lord Mayor must always order largely for his private recreation;
so that when his father declared he must be put to a trade, David chose
his line without a moment’s hesitation; and, with a rashness inspired
by a sweet tooth, wedded himself irrevocably to confectionery. Soon,
however, the tooth lost its relish and fell into blank indifference;
and all the while, his mind expanded, his ambition took new shapes,
which could hardly be satisfied within the sphere his youthful ardour
had chosen. But what was he to do? He was a young man of much mental
activity, and, above all, gifted with a spirit of contrivance; but
then, his faculties would not tell with great effect in any other
medium than that of candied sugars, conserves, and pastry. Say what you
will about the identity of the reasoning process in all branches of
thought, or about the advantage of coming to subjects with a fresh
mind, the adjustment of butter to flour, and of heat to pastry, is
_not_ the best preparation for the office of prime minister; besides,
in the present imperfectly-organized state of society, there are social
barriers. David could invent delightful things in the way of
drop-cakes, and he had the widest views of the sugar department; but in
other directions he certainly felt hampered by the want of knowledge
and practical skill; and the world is so inconveniently constituted,
that the vague consciousness of being a fine fellow is no guarantee of
success in any line of business.
This difficulty pressed with some severity on Mr. David Faux, even
before his apprenticeship was ended. His soul swelled with an impatient
sense that he ought to become something very remarkable—that it was
quite out of the question for him to put up with a narrow lot as other
men did: he scorned the idea that he could accept an average. He was
sure there was nothing average about him: even such a person as Mrs.
Tibbits, the washer-woman, perceived it, and probably had a preference
for his linen. At that particular period he was weighing out
gingerbread nuts; but such an anomaly could not continue. No position
could be suited to Mr. David Faux that was not in the highest degree
easy to the flesh and flattering to the spirit. If he had fallen on the
present times, and enjoyed the advantages of a Mechanic’s Institute, he
would certainly have taken to literature and have written reviews; but
his education had not been liberal. He had read some novels from the
adjoining circulating library, and had even bought the story of _Inkle
and Yarico_, which had made him feel very sorry for poor Mr. Inkle; so
that his ideas might not have been below a certain mark of the literary
calling; but his spelling and diction were too unconventional.
When a man is not adequately appreciated or comfortably placed in his
own country, his thoughts naturally turn towards foreign climes; and
David’s imagination circled round and round the utmost limits of his
geographical knowledge, in search of a country where a young gentleman
of pasty visage, lipless mouth, and stumpy hair, would be likely to be
received with the hospitable enthusiasm which he had a right to expect.
Having a general idea of America as a country where the population was
chiefly black, it appeared to him the most propitious destination for
an emigrant who, to begin with, had the broad and easily recognizable
merit of whiteness; and this idea gradually took such strong possession
of him that Satan seized the opportunity of suggesting to him that he
might emigrate under easier circumstances, if he supplied himself with
a little money from his master’s till. But that evil spirit, whose
understanding, I am convinced, has been much overrated, quite wasted
his time on this occasion. David would certainly have liked well to
have some of his master’s money in his pocket, if he had been sure his
master would have been the only man to suffer for it; but he was a
cautious youth, and quite determined to run no risks on his own
account. So he stayed out his apprenticeship, and committed no act of
dishonesty that was at all likely to be discovered, reserving his plan
of emigration for a future opportunity. And the circumstances under
which he carried it out were in this wise. Having been at home a week
or two partaking of the family beans, he had used his leisure in
ascertaining a fact which was of considerable importance to him,
namely, that his mother had a small sum in guineas painfully saved from
her maiden perquisites, and kept in the corner of a drawer where her
baby-linen had reposed for the last twenty years—ever since her son
David had taken to his feet, with a slight promise of bow-legs which
had not been altogether unfulfilled. Mr. Faux, senior, had told his son
very frankly, that he must not look to being set up in business by
_him_: with seven sons, and one of them a very healthy and
well-developed idiot, who consumed a dumpling about eight inches in
diameter every day, it was pretty well if they got a hundred apiece at
his death. Under these circumstances, what was David to do? It was
certainly hard that he should take his mother’s money; but he saw no
other ready means of getting any, and it was not to be expected that a
young man of his merit should put up with inconveniences that could be
avoided. Besides, it is not robbery to take property belonging to your
mother: she doesn’t prosecute you. And David was very well behaved to
his mother; he comforted her by speaking highly of himself to her, and
assuring her that he never fell into the vices he saw practised by
other youths of his own age, and that he was particularly fond of
honesty. If his mother would have given him her twenty guineas as a
reward of this noble disposition, he really would not have stolen them
from her, and it would have been more agreeable to his feelings.
Nevertheless, to an active mind like David’s, ingenuity is not without
its pleasures: it was rather an interesting occupation to become
stealthily acquainted with the wards of his mother’s simple key (not in
the least like Chubb’s patent), and to get one that would do its work
equally well; and also to arrange a little drama by which he would
escape suspicion, and run no risk of forfeiting the prospective hundred
at his father’s death, which would be convenient in the improbable case
of his _not_ making a large fortune in the “Indies.”
First, he spoke freely of his intention to start shortly for Liverpool
and take ship for America; a resolution which cost his good mother some
pain, for, after Jacob the idiot, there was not one of her sons to whom
her heart clung more than to her youngest-born, David. Next, it
appeared to him that Sunday afternoon, when everybody was gone to
church except Jacob and the cowboy, was so singularly favourable an
opportunity for sons who wanted to appropriate their mothers’ guineas,
that he half thought it must have been kindly intended by Providence
for such purposes. Especially the third Sunday in Lent; because Jacob
had been out on one of his occasional wanderings for the last two days;
and David, being a timid young man, had a considerable dread and hatred
of Jacob, as of a large personage who went about habitually with a
pitchfork in his hand.
Nothing could be easier, then, than for David on this Sunday afternoon
to decline going to church, on the ground that he was going to tea at
Mr. Lunn’s, whose pretty daughter Sally had been an early flame of his,
and, when the church-goers were at a safe distance, to abstract the
guineas from their wooden box and slip them into a small canvas
bag—nothing easier than to call to the cowboy that he was going, and
tell him to keep an eye on the house for fear of Sunday tramps. David
thought it would be easy, too, to get to a small thicket and bury his
bag in a hole he had already made and covered up under the roots of an
old hollow ash, and he had, in fact, found the hole without a moment’s
difficulty, had uncovered it, and was about gently to drop the bag into
it, when the sound of a large body rustling towards him with something
like a bellow was such a surprise to David, who, as a gentleman gifted
with much contrivance, was naturally only prepared for what he
expected, that instead of dropping the bag gently he let it fall so as
to make it untwist and vomit forth the shining guineas. In the same
moment he looked up and saw his dear brother Jacob close upon him,
holding the pitchfork so that the bright smooth prongs were a yard in
advance of his own body, and about a foot off David’s. (A learned
friend, to whom I once narrated this history, observed that it was
David’s guilt which made these prongs formidable, and that the “mens
nil conscia sibi” strips a pitchfork of all terrors. I thought this
idea so valuable, that I obtained his leave to use it on condition of
suppressing his name.) Nevertheless, David did not entirely lose his
presence of mind; for in that case he would have sunk on the earth or
started backward; whereas he kept his ground and smiled at Jacob, who
nodded his head up and down, and said, “Hoich, Zavy!” in a painfully
equivocal manner. David’s heart was beating audibly, and if he had had
any lips they would have been pale; but his mental activity, instead of
being paralysed, was stimulated. While he was inwardly praying (he
always prayed when he was much frightened)—“Oh, save me this once, and
I’ll never get into danger again!”—he was thrusting his hand into his
pocket in search of a box of yellow lozenges, which he had brought with
him from Brigford among other delicacies of the same portable kind, as
a means of conciliating proud beauty, and more particularly the beauty
of Miss Sarah Lunn. Not one of these delicacies had he ever offered to
poor Jacob, for David was not a young man to waste his jujubes and
barley-sugar in giving pleasure to people from whom he expected
nothing. But an idiot with equivocal intentions and a pitchfork is as
well worth flattering and cajoling as if he were Louis Napoleon. So
David, with a promptitude equal to the occasion, drew out his box of
yellow lozenges, lifted the lid, and performed a pantomime with his
mouth and fingers, which was meant to imply that he was delighted to
see his dear brother Jacob, and seized the opportunity of making him a
small present, which he would find particularly agreeable to the taste.
Jacob, you understand, was not an intense idiot, but within a certain
limited range knew how to choose the good and reject the evil: he took
one lozenge, by way of test, and sucked it as if he had been a
philosopher; then, in as great an ecstacy at its new and complex savour
as Caliban at the taste of Trinculo’s wine, chuckled and stroked this
suddenly beneficent brother, and held out his hand for more; for,
except in fits of anger, Jacob was not ferocious or needlessly
predatory. David’s courage half returned, and he left off praying;
pouring a dozen lozenges into Jacob’s palm, and trying to look very
fond of him. He congratulated himself that he had formed the plan of
going to see Miss Sally Lunn this afternoon, and that, as a
consequence, he had brought with him these propitiatory delicacies: he
was certainly a lucky fellow; indeed, it was always likely Providence
should be fonder of him than of other apprentices, and since he _was_
to be interrupted, why, an idiot was preferable to any other sort of
witness. For the first time in his life, David thought he saw the
advantage of idiots.
As for Jacob, he had thrust his pitchfork into the ground, and had
thrown himself down beside it, in thorough abandonment to the
unprecedented pleasure of having five lozenges in his mouth at once,
blinking meanwhile, and making inarticulate sounds of gustative
content. He had not yet given any sign of noticing the guineas, but in
seating himself he had laid his broad right hand on them, and
unconsciously kept it in that position, absorbed in the sensations of
his palate. If he could only be kept so occupied with the lozenges as
not to see the guineas before David could manage to cover them! That
was David’s best hope of safety; for Jacob knew his mother’s guineas;
it had been part of their common experience as boys to be allowed to
look at these handsome coins, and rattle them in their box on high days
and holidays, and among all Jacob’s narrow experiences as to money,
this was likely to be the most memorable.
“Here, Jacob,” said David, in an insinuating tone, handing the box to
him, “I’ll give ’em all to you. Run!—make haste!—else somebody’ll come
and take ’em.”
David, not having studied the psychology of idiots, was not aware that
they are not to be wrought upon by imaginative fears. Jacob took the
box with his left hand, but saw no necessity for running away. Was ever
a promising young man wishing to lay the foundation of his fortune by
appropriating his mother’s guineas obstructed by such a day-mare as
this? But the moment must come when Jacob would move his right hand to
draw off the lid of the tin box, and then David would sweep the guineas
into the hole with the utmost address and swiftness, and immediately
seat himself upon them. Ah, no! It’s of no use to have foresight when
you are dealing with an idiot: he is not to be calculated upon. Jacob’s
right hand was given to vague clutching and throwing; it suddenly
clutched the guineas as if they had been so many pebbles, and was
raised in an attitude which promised to scatter them like seed over a
distant bramble, when, from some prompting or other—probably of an
unwonted sensation—it paused, descended to Jacob’s knee, and opened
slowly under the inspection of Jacob’s dull eyes. David began to pray
again, but immediately desisted—another resource having occurred to
him.
“Mother! zinnies!” exclaimed the innocent Jacob. Then, looking at
David, he said, interrogatively, “Box?”
“Hush! hush!” said David, summoning all his ingenuity in this severe
strait. “See, Jacob!” He took the tin box from his brother’s hand, and
emptied it of the lozenges, returning half of them to Jacob, but
secretly keeping the rest in his own hand. Then he held out the empty
box, and said, “Here’s the box, Jacob! The box for the guineas!” gently
sweeping them from Jacob’s palm into the box.
This procedure was not objectionable to Jacob; on the contrary, the
guineas clinked so pleasantly as they fell, that he wished for a
repetition of the sound, and seizing the box, began to rattle it very
gleefully. David, seizing the opportunity, deposited his reserve of
lozenges in the ground and hastily swept some earth over them. “Look,
Jacob!” he said, at last. Jacob paused from his clinking, and looked
into the hole, while David began to scratch away the earth, as if in
doubtful expectation. When the lozenges were laid bare, he took them
out one by one, and gave them to Jacob. “Hush!” he said, in a loud
whisper, “Tell nobody—all for Jacob—hush—sh—sh! Put guineas in the
hole—they’ll come out like this!” To make the lesson more complete, he
took a guinea, and lowering it into the hole, said, “Put in _so_.”
Then, as he took the last lozenge out, he said, “Come out _so_,” and
put the lozenge into Jacob’s hospitable mouth.
Jacob turned his head on one side, looked first at his brother and then
at the hole, like a reflective monkey, and, finally, laid the box of
guineas in the hole with much decision. David made haste to add every
one of the stray coins, put on the lid, and covered it well with earth,
saying in his meet coaxing tone—
“Take ’m out to-morrow, Jacob; all for Jacob! Hush—sh—sh!”
Jacob, to whom this once indifferent brother had all at once become a
sort of sweet-tasted fetish, stroked David’s best coat with his
adhesive fingers, and then hugged him with an accompaniment of that
mingled chuckling and gurgling by which he was accustomed to express
the milder passions. But if he had chosen to bite a small morsel out of
his beneficent brother’s cheek, David would have been obliged to bear
it.
And here I must pause, to point out to you the short-sightedness of
human contrivance. This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he
had achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his
brother’s rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges. But he
had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of
you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition:
especially an idiot with a pitchfork—obviously a difficult friend to
shake off by rough usage.
It may seem to you rather a blundering contrivance for a clever young
man to bury the guineas. But, if everything had turned out as David had
calculated, you would have seen that his plan was worthy of his
talents. The guineas would have lain safely in the earth while the
theft was discovered, and David, with the calm of conscious innocence,
would have lingered at home, reluctant to say good-bye to his dear
mother while she was in grief about her guineas; till at length, on the
eve of his departure, he would have disinterred them in the strictest
privacy, and carried them on his own person without inconvenience. But
David, you perceive, had reckoned without his host, or, to speak more
precisely, without his idiot brother—an item of so uncertain and
fluctuating a character, that I doubt whether he would not have puzzled
the astute heroes of M. de Balzac, whose foresight is so remarkably at
home in the future.
It was clear to David now that he had only one alternative before him:
he must either renounce the guineas, by quietly putting them back in
his mother’s drawer (a course not unattended with difficulty); or he
must leave more than a suspicion behind him, by departing early the
next morning without giving notice, and with the guineas in his pocket.
For if he gave notice that he was going, his mother, he knew, would
insist on fetching from her box of guineas the three she had always
promised him as his share; indeed, in his original plan, he had counted
on this as a means by which the theft would be discovered under
circumstances that would themselves speak for his innocence; but now,
as I need hardly explain, that well-combined plan was completely
frustrated. Even if David could have bribed Jacob with perpetual
lozenges, an idiot’s secrecy is itself betrayal. He dared not even go
to tea at Mr. Lunn’s, for in that case he would have lost sight of
Jacob, who, in his impatience for the crop of lozenges, might scratch
up the box again while he was absent, and carry it home—depriving him
at once of reputation and guineas. No! he must think of nothing all the
rest of this day, but of coaxing Jacob and keeping him out of mischief.
It was a fatiguing and anxious evening to David; nevertheless, he dared
not go to sleep without tying a piece of string to his thumb and great
toe, to secure his frequent waking; for he meant to be up with the
first peep of dawn, and be far out of reach before breakfast-time. His
father, he thought, would certainly cut him off with a shilling; but
what then? Such a striking young man as he would be sure to be well
received in the West Indies: in foreign countries there are always
openings—even for cats. It was probable that some Princess Yarico would
want him to marry her, and make him presents of very large jewels
beforehand; after which, he needn’t marry her unless he liked. David
had made up his mind not to steal any more, even from people who were
fond of him: it was an unpleasant way of making your fortune in a world
where you were likely to surprised in the act by brothers. Such alarms
did not agree with David’s constitution, and he had felt so much nausea
this evening that no doubt his liver was affected. Besides, he would
have been greatly hurt not to be thought well of in the world: he
always meant to make a figure, and be thought worthy of the best seats
and the best morsels.
Ruminating to this effect on the brilliant future in reserve for him,
David by the help of his check-string kept himself on the alert to
seize the time of earliest dawn for his rising and departure. His
brothers, of course, were early risers, but he should anticipate them
by at least an hour and a half, and the little room which he had to
himself as only an occasional visitor, had its window over the
horse-block, so that he could slip out through the window without the
least difficulty. Jacob, the horrible Jacob, had an awkward trick of
getting up before everybody else, to stem his hunger by emptying the
milk-bowl that was “duly set” for him; but of late he had taken to
sleeping in the hay-loft, and if he came into the house, it would be on
the opposite side to that from which David was making his exit. There
was no need to think of Jacob; yet David was liberal enough to bestow a
curse on him—it was the only thing he ever did bestow gratuitously. His
small bundle of clothes was ready packed, and he was soon treading
lightly on the steps of the horse-block, soon walking at a smart pace
across the fields towards the thicket. It would take him no more than
two minutes to get out the box; he could make out the tree it was under
by the pale strip where the bark was off, although the dawning light
was rather dimmer in the thicket. But what, in the name of—burnt
pastry—was that large body with a staff planted beside it, close at the
foot of the ash-tree? David paused, not to make up his mind as to the
nature of the apparition—he had not the happiness of doubting for a
moment that the staff was Jacob’s pitchfork—but to gather the
self-command necessary for addressing his brother with a sufficiently
honeyed accent. Jacob was absorbed in scratching up the earth, and had
not heard David’s approach.
“I say, Jacob,” said David in a loud whisper, just as the tin box was
lifted out of the hole.
Jacob looked up, and discerning his sweet-flavoured brother, nodded and
grinned in the dim light in a way that made him seem to David like a
triumphant demon. If he had been of an impetuous disposition, he would
have snatched the pitchfork from the ground and impaled this fraternal
demon. But David was by no means impetuous; he was a young man greatly
given to calculate consequences, a habit which has been held to be the
foundation of virtue. But somehow it had not precisely that effect in
David: he calculated whether an action would harm himself, or whether
it would only harm other people. In the former case he was very timid
about satisfying his immediate desires, but in the latter he would risk
the result with much courage.
“Give it me, Jacob,” he said, stooping down and patting his brother.
“Let us see.”
Jacob, finding the lid rather tight, gave the box to his brother in
perfect faith. David raised the lids and shook his head, while Jacob
put his finger in and took out a guinea to taste whether the
metamorphosis into lozenges was complete and satisfactory.
“No, Jacob; too soon, too soon,” said David, when the guinea had been
tasted. “Give it me; we’ll go and bury it somewhere else; we’ll put it
in yonder,” he added, pointing vaguely toward the distance.
David screwed on the lid, while Jacob, looking grave, rose and grasped
his pitchfork. Then, seeing David’s bundle, he snatched it, like a too
officious Newfoundland, stuck his pitchfork into it and carried it over
his shoulder in triumph as he accompanied David and the box out of the
thicket.
What on earth was David to do? It would have been easy to frown at
Jacob, and kick him, and order him to get away; but David dared as soon
have kicked the bull. Jacob was quiet as long as he was treated
indulgently; but on the slightest show of anger, he became
unmanageable, and was liable to fits of fury which would have made him
formidable even without his pitchfork. There was no mastery to be
obtained over him except by kindness or guile. David tried guile.
“Go, Jacob,” he said, when they were out of the thicket—pointing
towards the house as he spoke; “go and fetch me a spade—a spade. But
give _me_ the bundle,” he added, trying to reach it from the fork,
where it hung high above Jacob’s tall shoulder.
But Jacob showed as much alacrity in obeying as a wasp shows in leaving
a sugar-basin. Near David, he felt himself in the vicinity of lozenges:
he chuckled and rubbed his brother’s back, brandishing the bundle
higher out of reach. David, with an inward groan, changed his tactics,
and walked on as fast as he could. It was not safe to linger. Jacob
would get tired of following him, or, at all events, could be eluded.
If they could once get to the distant highroad, a coach would overtake
them, David would mount it, having previously by some ingenious means
secured his bundle, and then Jacob might howl and flourish his
pitchfork as much as he liked. Meanwhile he was under the fatal
necessity of being very kind to this ogre, and of providing a large
breakfast for him when they stopped at a roadside inn. It was already
three hours since they had started, and David was tired. Would no coach
be coming up soon? he inquired. No coach for the next two hours. But
there was a carrier’s cart to come immediately, on its way to the next
town. If he could slip out, even leaving his bundle behind, and get
into the cart without Jacob! But there was a new obstacle. Jacob had
recently discovered a remnant of sugar-candy in one of his brother’s
tail-pockets; and, since then, had cautiously kept his hold on that
limb of the garment, perhaps with an expectation that there would be a
further development of sugar-candy after a longer or shorter interval.
Now every one who has worn a coat will understand the sensibilities
that must keep a man from starting away in a hurry when there is a
grasp on his coat-tail. David looked forward to being well received
among strangers, but it might make a difference if he had only one tail
to his coat.
He felt himself in a cold perspiration. He could walk no more: he must
get into the cart and let Jacob get in with him. Presently a cheering
idea occurred to him: after so large a breakfast, Jacob would be sure
to go to sleep in the cart; you see at once that David meant to seize
his bundle, jump out, and be free. His expectation was partly
fulfilled: Jacob did go to sleep in the cart, but it was in a peculiar
attitude—it was with his arms tightly fastened round his dear brother’s
body; and if ever David attempted to move, the grasp tightened with the
force of an affectionate boa-constrictor.
“Th’ innicent’s fond on you,” observed the carrier, thinking that David
was probably an amiable brother, and wishing to pay him a compliment.
David groaned. The ways of thieving were not ways of pleasantness. Oh,
why had he an idiot brother? Oh, why, in general, was the world so
constituted that a man could not take his mother’s guineas comfortably?
David became grimly speculative.
Copious dinner at noon for Jacob; but little dinner, because little
appetite, for David. Instead of eating, he plied Jacob with beer; for
through this liberality he descried a hope. Jacob fell into a dead
sleep, at last, without having his arms round David, who paid the
reckoning, took his bundle, and walked off. In another half-hour he was
on the coach on his way to Liverpool, smiling the smile of the
triumphant wicked. He was rid of Jacob—he was bound for the Indies,
where a gullible princess awaited him. He would never steal any more,
but there would be no need; he would show himself so deserving, that
people would make him presents freely. He must give up the notion of
his father’s legacy; but it was not likely he would ever want that
trifle; and even if he did—why, it was a compensation to think that in
being for ever divided from his family he was divided from Jacob, more
terrible than Gorgon or Demogorgon to David’s timid green eyes. Thank
heaven, he should never see Jacob any more!