Perhaps it was a result quite different from your expectations, that
Mr. David Faux should have returned from the West Indies only a few
years after his arrival there, and have set up in his old business,
like any plain man who has never travelled. But these cases do occur in
life. Since, as we know, men change their skies and see new
constellations without changing their souls, it will follow sometimes
that they don’t change their business under those novel circumstances.
Certainly, this result was contrary to David’s own expectations. He had
looked forward, you are aware, to a brilliant career among “the
blacks”; but, either because they had already seen too many white men,
or for some other reason, they did not at once recognize him as a
superior order of human being; besides, there were no princesses among
them. Nobody in Jamaica was anxious to maintain David for the mere
pleasure of his society; and those hidden merits of a man which are so
well known to himself were as little recognized there as they
notoriously are in the effete society of the Old World. So that in the
dark hints that David threw out at the Oyster Club about that life of
Sultanic self-indulgence spent by him in the luxurious Indies, I really
think he was doing himself a wrong; I believe he worked for his bread,
and, in fact, took to cooking as, after all, the only department in
which he could offer skilled labour. He had formed several ingenious
plans by which he meant to circumvent people of large fortune and small
faculty; but then he never met with exactly the right circumstances.
David’s devices for getting rich without work had apparently no direct
relation with the world outside him, as his confectionery receipts had.
It is possible to pass a great many bad half pennies and bad
half-crowns, but I believe there has no instance been known of passing
a halfpenny or a half-crown as a sovereign. A sharper can drive a brisk
trade in this world: it is undeniable that there may be a fine career
for him, if he will dare consequences; but David was too timid to be a
sharper, or venture in any way among the mantraps of the law. He dared
rob nobody but his mother. And so he had to fall back on the genuine
value there was in him—to be content to pass as a good halfpenny, or,
to speak more accurately, as a good confectioner. For in spite of some
additional reading and observation, there was nothing else he could
make so much money by; nay, he found in himself even a capability of
extending his skill in this direction, and embracing all forms of
cookery; while, in other branches of human labour, he began to see that
it was not possible for him to shine. Fate was too strong for him; he
had thought to master her inclination and had fled over the seas to
that end; but she caught him, tied an apron round him, and snatching
him from all other devices, made him devise cakes and patties in a
kitchen at Kingstown. He was getting submissive to her, since she paid
him with tolerable gains; but fevers and prickly heat, and other evils
incidental to cooks in ardent climates, made him long for his native
land; so he took ship once more, carrying his six years’ savings, and
seeing distinctly, this time, what were Fate’s intentions as to his
career. If you question me closely as to whether all the money with
which he set up at Grimworth consisted of pure and simple earnings, I
am obliged to confess that he got a sum or two for charitably
abstaining from mentioning some other people’s misdemeanours.
Altogether, since no prospects were attached to his family name, and
since a new christening seemed a suitable commencement of a new life,
Mr. David Faux thought it as well to call himself Mr. Edward Freely.
But lo! now, in opposition to all calculable probability, some benefit
appeared to be attached to the name of David Faux. Should he neglect
it, as beneath the attention of a prosperous tradesman? It might bring
him into contact with his family again, and he felt no yearnings in
that direction: moreover, he had small belief that the “something to
his advantage” could be anything considerable. On the other hand, even
a small gain is pleasant, and the promise of it in this instance was so
surprising, that David felt his curiosity awakened. The scale dipped at
last on the side of writing to the lawyer, and, to be brief, the
correspondence ended in an appointment for a meeting between David and
his eldest brother at Mr. Strutt’s, the vague “something” having been
defined as a legacy from his father of eighty-two pounds, three
shillings.
David, you know, had expected to be disinherited; and so he would have
been, if he had not, like some other indifferent sons, come of
excellent parents, whose conscience made them scrupulous where much
more highly-instructed people often feel themselves warranted in
following the bent of their indignation. Good Mrs. Faux could never
forget that she had brought this ill-conditioned son into the world
when he was in that entirely helpless state which excluded the smallest
choice on his part; and, somehow or other, she felt that his going
wrong would be his father’s and mother’s fault, if they failed in one
tittle of their parental duty. Her notion of parental duty was not of a
high and subtle kind, but it included giving him his due share of the
family property; for when a man had got a little honest money of his
own, was he so likely to steal? To cut the delinquent son off with a
shilling, was like delivering him over to his evil propensities. No;
let the sum of twenty guineas which he had stolen be deducted from his
share, and then let the sum of three guineas be put back from it,
seeing that his mother had always considered three of the twenty
guineas as his; and, though he had run away, and was, perhaps, gone
across the sea, let the money be left to him all the same, and be kept
in reserve for his possible return. Mr. Faux agreed to his wife’s
views, and made a codicil to his will accordingly, in time to die with
a clear conscience. But for some time his family thought it likely that
David would never reappear; and the eldest son, who had the charge of
Jacob on his hands, often thought it a little hard that David might
perhaps be dead, and yet, for want of certitude on that point, his
legacy could not fall to his legal heir. But in this state of things
the opposite certitude—namely, that David was still alive and in
England—seemed to be brought by the testimony of a neighbour, who,
having been on a journey to Cattelton, was pretty sure he had seen
David in a gig, with a stout man driving by his side. He could “swear
it was David,” though he could “give no account why, for he had no
marks on him; but no more had a white dog, and that didn’t hinder folks
from knowing a white dog.” It was this incident which had led to the
advertisement.
The legacy was paid, of course, after a few preliminary disclosures as
to Mr. David’s actual position. He begged to send his love to his
mother, and to say that he hoped to pay her a dutiful visit by and by;
but, at present, his business and near prospect of marriage made it
difficult for him to leave home. His brother replied with much
frankness.
“My mother may do as she likes about having you to see her, but, for my
part, I don’t want to catch sight of you on the premises again. When
folks have taken a new name, they’d better keep to their new
’quinetance.”
David pocketed the insult along with the eighty-two pounds three, and
travelled home again in some triumph at the ease of a transaction which
had enriched him to this extent. He had no intention of offending his
brother by further claims on his fraternal recognition, and relapsed
with full contentment into the character of Mr. Edward Freely, the
orphan, scion of a great but reduced family, with an eccentric uncle in
the West Indies. (I have already hinted that he had some acquaintance
with imaginative literature; and being of a practical turn, he had, you
perceive, applied even this form of knowledge to practical purposes.)
It was little more than a week after the return from his fruitful
journey, that the day of his marriage with Penny having been fixed, it
was agreed that Mrs. Palfrey should overcome her reluctance to move
from home, and that she and her husband should bring their two
daughters to inspect little Penny’s future abode and decide on the new
arrangements to be made for the reception of the bride. Mr. Freely
meant her to have a house so pretty and comfortable that she need not
envy even a wool-factor’s wife. Of course, the upper room over the shop
was to be the best sitting-room; but also the parlour behind the shop
was to be made a suitable bower for the lovely Penny, who would
naturally wish to be near her husband, though Mr. Freely declared his
resolution never to allow _his_ wife to wait in the shop. The decisions
about the parlour furniture were left till last, because the party was
to take tea there; and, about five o’clock, they were all seated there
with the best muffins and buttered buns before them, little Penny
blushing and smiling, with her “crop” in the best order, and a blue
frock showing her little white shoulders, while her opinion was being
always asked and never given. She secretly wished to have a particular
sort of chimney ornaments, but she could not have brought herself to
mention it. Seated by the side of her yellow and rather withered lover,
who, though he had not reached his thirtieth year, had already
crow’s-feet about his eyes, she was quite tremulous at the greatness of
her lot in being married to a man who had travelled so much—and before
her sister Letty! The handsome Letitia looked rather proud and
contemptuous, thought her future brother-in-law an odious person, and
was vexed with her father and mother for letting Penny marry him. Dear
little Penny! She certainly did look like a fresh white-heart cherry
going to be bitten off the stem by that lipless mouth. Would no
deliverer come to make a slip between that cherry and that mouth
without a lip?
“Quite a family likeness between the admiral and you, Mr. Freely,”
observed Mrs. Palfrey, who was looking at the family portrait for the
first time. “It’s wonderful! and only a grand-uncle. Do you feature the
rest of your family, as you know of?”
“I can’t say,” said Mr. Freely, with a sigh. “My family have mostly
thought themselves too high to take any notice of me.”
At this moment an extraordinary disturbance was heard in the shop, as
of a heavy animal stamping about and making angry noises, and then of a
glass vessel falling in shivers, while the voice of the apprentice was
heard calling “Master” in great alarm.
Mr. Freely rose in anxious astonishment, and hastened into the shop,
followed by the four Palfreys, who made a group at the parlour-door,
transfixed with wonder at seeing a large man in a smock-frock, with a
pitchfork in his hand, rush up to Mr. Freely and hug him, crying
out,—“Zavy, Zavy, b’other Zavy!”
It was Jacob, and for some moments David lost all presence of mind. He
felt arrested for having stolen his mother’s guineas. He turned cold,
and trembled in his brother’s grasp.
“Why, how’s this?” said Mr. Palfrey, advancing from the door. “Who is
he?”
Jacob supplied the answer by saying over and over again—
“I’se Zacob, b’other Zacob. Come ’o zee Zavy”—till hunger prompted him
to relax his grasp, and to seize a large raised pie, which he lifted to
his mouth.
By this time David’s power of device had begun to return, but it was a
very hard task for his prudence to master his rage and hatred towards
poor Jacob.
“I don’t know who he is; he must be drunk,” he said, in a low tone to
Mr. Palfrey. “But he’s dangerous with that pitchfork. He’ll never let
it go.” Then checking himself on the point of betraying too great an
intimacy with Jacob’s habits, he added “You watch him, while I run for
the constable.” And he hurried out of the shop.
“Why, where do you come from, my man?” said Mr. Palfrey, speaking to
Jacob in a conciliatory tone. Jacob was eating his pie by large
mouthfuls, and looking round at the other good things in the shop,
while he embraced his pitchfork with his left arm, and laid his left
hand on some Bath buns. He was in the rare position of a person who
recovers a long absent friend and finds him richer than ever in the
characteristics that won his heart.
“I’s Zacob—b’other Zacob—’t home. I love Zavy—b’other Zavy,” he said,
as soon as Mr. Palfrey had drawn his attention. “Zavy come back from z’
Indies—got mother’s zinnies. Where’s Zavy?” he added, looking round and
then turning to the others with a questioning air, puzzled by David’s
disappearance.
“It’s very odd,” observed Mr. Palfrey to his wife and daughters. “He
seems to say Freely’s his brother come back from th’ Indies.”
“What a pleasant relation for us!” said Letitia, sarcastically. “I
think he’s a good deal like Mr. Freely. He’s got just the same sort of
nose, and his eyes are the same colour.”
Poor Penny was ready to cry.
But now Mr. Freely re-entered the shop without the constable. During
his walk of a few yards he had had time and calmness enough to widen
his view of consequences, and he saw that to get Jacob taken to the
workhouse or to the lock-up house as an offensive stranger might have
awkward effects if his family took the trouble of inquiring after him.
He must resign himself to more patient measures.
“On second thoughts,” he said, beckoning to Mr. Palfrey and whispering
to him while Jacob’s back was turned, “he’s a poor half-witted fellow.
Perhaps his friends will come after him. I don’t mind giving him
something to eat, and letting him lie down for the night. He’s got it
into his head that he knows me—they do get these fancies, idiots do.
He’ll perhaps go away again in an hour or two, and make no more ado.
I’m a kind-hearted man _myself_—I shouldn’t like to have the poor
fellow ill-used.”
“Why, he’ll eat a sovereign’s worth in no time,” said Mr. Palfrey,
thinking Mr. Freely a little too magnificent in his generosity.
“Eh, Zavy, come back?” exclaimed Jacob, giving his dear brother another
hug, which crushed Mr. Freely’s features inconveniently against the
handle of the pitchfork.
“Aye, aye,” said Mr. Freely, smiling, with every capability of murder
in his mind, except the courage to commit it. He wished the Bath buns
might by chance have arsenic in them.
“Mother’s zinnies?” said Jacob, pointing to a glass jar of yellow
lozenges that stood in the window. “Zive ’em me.”
David dared not do otherwise than reach down the glass jar and give
Jacob a handful. He received them in his smock-frock, which he held out
for more.
“They’ll keep him quiet a bit, at any rate,” thought David, and emptied
the jar. Jacob grinned and mowed with delight.
“You’re very good to this stranger, Mr. Freely,” said Letitia; and then
spitefully, as David joined the party at the parlour-door, “I think you
could hardly treat him better, if he was really your brother.”
“I’ve always thought it a duty to be good to idiots,” said Mr. Freely,
striving after the most moral view of the subject. “We might have been
idiots ourselves—everybody might have been born idiots, instead of
having their right senses.”
“I don’t know where there’d ha’ been victual for us all then,” observed
Mrs. Palfrey, regarding the matter in a housewifely light.
“But let us sit down again and finish our tea,” said Mr. Freely. “Let
us leave the poor creature to himself.”
They walked into the parlour again; but Jacob, not apparently
appreciating the kindness of leaving him to himself, immediately
followed his brother, and seated himself, pitchfork grounded, at the
table.
“Well,” said Miss Letitia, rising, “I don’t know whether _you_ mean to
stay, mother; but I shall go home.”
“Oh, me too,” said Penny, frightened to death at Jacob, who had begun
to nod and grin at her.
“Well, I think we _had_ better be going, Mr. Palfrey,” said the mother,
rising more slowly.
Mr. Freely, whose complexion had become decidedly yellower during the
last half-hour, did not resist this proposition. He hoped they should
meet again “under happier circumstances.”
“It’s my belief the man is his brother,” said Letitia, when they were
all on their way home.
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Palfrey. “Freely’s got no brother—he’s said so
many and many a time; he’s an orphan; he’s got nothing but
uncles—leastwise, one. What’s it matter what an idiot says? What call
had Freely to tell lies?”
Letitia tossed her head and was silent.
Mr. Freely, left alone with his affectionate brother Jacob, brooded
over the possibility of luring him out of the town early the next
morning, and getting him conveyed to Gilsbrook without further
betrayals. But the thing was difficult. He saw clearly that if he took
Jacob himself, his absence, conjoined with the disappearance of the
stranger, would either cause the conviction that he was really a
relative, or would oblige him to the dangerous course of inventing a
story to account for his disappearance, and his own absence at the same
time. David groaned. There come occasions when falsehood is felt to be
inconvenient. It would, perhaps, have been a longer-headed device, if
he had never told any of those clever fibs about his uncles, grand and
otherwise; for the Palfreys were simple people, and shared the popular
prejudice against lying. Even if he could get Jacob away this time,
what security was there that he would not come again, having once found
the way? O guineas! O lozenges! what enviable people those were who had
never robbed their mothers, and had never told fibs! David spent a
sleepless night, while Jacob was snoring close by. Was this the upshot
of travelling to the Indies, and acquiring experience combined with
anecdote?
He rose at break of day, as he had once before done when he was in fear
of Jacob, and took all gentle means to rouse this fatal brother from
his deep sleep; he dared not be loud, because his apprentice was in the
house, and would report everything. But Jacob was not to be roused. He
fought out with his fist at the unknown cause of disturbance, turned
over, and snored again. He must be left to wake as he would. David,
with a cold perspiration on his brow, confessed to himself that Jacob
could not be got away that day.
Mr. Palfrey came over to Grimworth before noon, with a natural
curiosity to see how his future son-in-law got on with the stranger to
whom he was so benevolently inclined. He found a crowd round the shop.
All Grimworth by this time had heard how Freely had been fastened on by
an idiot, who called him “Brother Zavy”; and the younger population
seemed to find the singular stranger an unwearying source of
fascination, while the householders dropped in one by one to inquire
into the incident.
“Why don’t you send him to the workhouse?” said Mr. Prettyman. “You’ll
have a row with him and the children presently, and he’ll eat you up.
The workhouse is the proper place for him; let his kin claim him, if
he’s got any.”
“Those may be _your_ feelings, Mr. Prettyman,” said David, his mind
quite enfeebled by the torture of his position.
“What! _is_ he your brother, then?” said Mr. Prettyman, looking at his
neighbour Freely rather sharply.
“All men are our brothers, and idiots particular so,” said Mr. Freely,
who, like many other travelled men, was not master of the English
language.
“Come, come, if he’s your brother, tell the truth, man,” said Mr.
Prettyman, with growing suspicion. “Don’t be ashamed of your own flesh
and blood.”
Mr. Palfrey was present, and also had his eye on Freely. It is
difficult for a man to believe in the advantage of a truth which will
disclose him to have been a liar. In this critical moment, David shrank
from this immediate disgrace in the eyes of his future father-in-law.
“Mr. Prettyman,” he said, “I take your observations as an insult. I’ve
no reason to be otherwise than proud of my own flesh and blood. If this
poor man was my brother more than all men are, I should say so.”
A tall figure darkened the door, and David, lifting his eyes in that
direction, saw his eldest brother, Jonathan, on the door-sill.
“I’ll stay wi’ Zavy,” shouted Jacob, as he, too, caught sight of his
eldest brother; and, running behind the counter, he clutched David
hard.
“What, he _is_ here?” said Jonathan Faux, coming forward. “My mother
would have no nay, as he’d been away so long, but I must see after him.
And it struck me he was very like come after you, because we’d been
talking of you o’ late, and where you lived.”
David saw there was no escape; he smiled a ghastly smile.
“What! is this a relation of yours, sir?” said Mr. Palfrey to Jonathan.
“Aye, it’s my innicent of a brother, sure enough,” said honest
Jonathan. “A fine trouble and cost he is to us, in th’ eating and other
things, but we must bear what’s laid on us.”
“And your name’s Freely, is it?” said Mr. Prettyman.
“Nay, nay, my name’s Faux, I know nothing o’ Freelys,” said Jonathan,
curtly. “Come,” he added, turning to David, “I must take some news to
mother about Jacob. Shall I take him with me, or will you undertake to
send him back?”
“Take him, if you can make him loose his hold of me,” said David,
feebly.
“Is this gentleman here in the confectionery line your brother, then,
sir?” said Mr. Prettyman, feeling that it was an occasion on which
formal language must be used.
“_I_ don’t want to own him,” said Jonathan, unable to resist a movement
of indignation that had never been allowed to satisfy itself. “He ran
away from home with good reasons in his pocket years ago: he didn’t
want to be owned again, I reckon.”
Mr. Palfrey left the shop; he felt his own pride too severely wounded
by the sense that he had let himself be fooled, to feel curiosity for
further details. The most pressing business was to go home and tell his
daughter that Freely was a poor sneak, probably a rascal, and that her
engagement was broken off.
Mr. Prettyman stayed, with some internal self-gratulation that _he_ had
never given in to Freely, and that Mr. Chaloner would see now what sort
of fellow it was that he had put over the heads of older parishioners.
He considered it due from him (Mr. Prettyman) that, for the interests
of the parish, he should know all that was to be known about this
“interloper.” Grimworth would have people coming from Botany Bay to
settle in it, if things went on in this way.
It soon appeared that Jacob could not be made to quit his dear brother
David except by force. He understood, with a clearness equal to that of
the most intelligent mind, that Jonathan would take him back to skimmed
milk, apple-dumpling, broad beans, and pork. And he had found a
paradise in his brother’s shop. It was a difficult matter to use force
with Jacob, for he wore heavy nailed boots; and if his pitchfork had
been mastered, he would have resorted without hesitation to kicks.
Nothing short of using guile to bind him hand and foot would have made
all parties safe.
“Let him stay,” said David, with desperate resignation, frightened
above all things at the idea of further disturbances in his shop, which
would make his exposure all the more conspicuous. “_You_ go away again,
and to-morrow I can, perhaps, get him to go to Gilsbrook with me. He’ll
follow me fast enough, I daresay,” he added, with a half-groan.
“Very well,” said Jonathan, gruffly. “I don’t see why _you_ shouldn’t
have some trouble and expense with him as well as the rest of us. But
mind you bring him back safe and soon, else mother’ll never rest.”
On this arrangement being concluded, Mr. Prettyman begged Mr. Jonathan
Faux to go and take a snack with him, an invitation which was quite
acceptable; and as honest Jonathan had nothing to be ashamed of, it is
probable that he was very frank in his communications to the civil
draper, who, pursuing the benefit of the parish, hastened to make all
the information he could gather about Freely common parochial property.
You may imagine that the meeting of the Club at the Woolpack that
evening was unusually lively. Every member was anxious to prove that he
had never liked Freely, as he called himself. Faux was his name, was
it? Fox would have been more suitable. The majority expressed a desire
to see him hooted out of the town.
Mr. Freely did not venture over his door-sill that day, for he knew
Jacob would keep at his side, and there was every probability that they
would have a train of juvenile followers. He sent to engage the
Woolpack gig for an early hour the next morning; but this order was not
kept religiously a secret by the landlord. Mr. Freely was informed that
he could not have the gig till seven; and the Grimworth people were
early risers. Perhaps they were more alert than usual on this
particular morning; for when Jacob, with a bag of sweets in his hand,
was induced to mount the gig with his brother David, the inhabitants of
the market-place were looking out of their doors and windows, and at
the turning of the street there was even a muster of apprentices and
schoolboys, who shouted as they passed in what Jacob took to be a very
merry and friendly way, nodding and grinning in return. “Huzzay, David
Faux! how’s your uncle?” was their morning’s greeting. Like other
pointed things, it was not altogether impromptu.
Even this public derision was not so crushing to David as the horrible
thought that though he might succeed now in getting Jacob home again
there would never be any security against his coming back, like a wasp
to the honey-pot. As long as David lived at Grimworth, Jacob’s return
would be hanging over him. But could he go on living at Grimworth—an
object of ridicule, discarded by the Palfreys, after having revelled in
the consciousness that he was an envied and prosperous confectioner?
David liked to be envied; he minded less about being loved.
His doubts on this point were soon settled. The mind of Grimworth
became obstinately set against him and his viands, and the new school
being finished, the eating-room was closed. If there had been no other
reason, sympathy with the Palfreys, that respectable family who had
lived in the parish time out of mind, would have determined all
well-to-do people to decline Freely’s goods. Besides, he had absconded
with his mother’s guineas: who knew what else he had done, in Jamaica
or elsewhere, before he came to Grimworth, worming himself into
families under false pretences? Females shuddered. Dreadful suspicions
gathered round him: his green eyes, his bow-legs had a criminal aspect.
The rector disliked the sight of a man who had imposed upon him; and
all boys who could not afford to purchase, hooted “David Faux” as they
passed his shop. Certainly no man now would pay anything for the
“goodwill” of Mr. Freely’s business, and he would be obliged to quit it
without a peculium so desirable towards defraying the expense of
moving.
In a few months the shop in the market-place was again to let, and Mr.
David Faux, _alias_ Mr. Edward Freely, had gone—nobody at Grimworth
knew whither. In this way the demoralization of Grimworth women was
checked. Young Mrs. Steene renewed her efforts to make light
mince-pies, and having at last made a batch so excellent that Mr.
Steene looked at her with complacency as he ate them, and said they
were the best he had ever eaten in his life, she thought less of
bulbuls and renegades ever after. The secrets of the finer cookery were
revived in the breasts of matronly house-wives, and daughters were
again anxious to be initiated in them.
You will further, I hope, be glad to hear, that some purchases of
drapery made by pretty Penny, in preparation for her marriage with Mr.
Freely, came in quite as well for her wedding with young Towers as if
they had been made expressly for the latter occasion. For Penny’s
complexion had not altered, and blue always became it best.
Here ends the story of Mr. David Faux, confectioner, and his brother
Jacob. And we see in it, I think, an admirable instance of the
unexpected forms in which the great Nemesis hides herself.
(1860)