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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Brother Jacob, by George Eliot
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Brother Jacob
+
+Author: George Eliot [Mary Anne Evans]
+
+Release Date: May, 2000 [eBook #2171]
+[Most recently updated: June 23, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROTHER JACOB ***
+
+
+
+
+Brother Jacob
+
+by George Eliot
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I
+ 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!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It was nearly six years after the departure of Mr. David Faux for the
+West Indies, that the vacant shop in the market-place at Grimworth was
+understood to have been let to the stranger with a sallow complexion
+and a buff cravat, whose first appearance had caused some excitement in
+the bar of the Woolpack, where he had called to wait for the coach.
+
+Grimworth, to a discerning eye, was a good place to set up shopkeeping
+in. There was no competition in it at present; the Church-people had
+their own grocer and draper; the Dissenters had theirs; and the two or
+three butchers found a ready market for their joints without strict
+reference to religious persuasion—except that the rector’s wife had
+given a general order for the veal sweet-breads and the mutton kidneys,
+while Mr. Rodd, the Baptist minister, had requested that, so far as was
+compatible with the fair accommodation of other customers, the sheep’s
+trotters might be reserved for him. And it was likely to be a growing
+place, for the trustees of Mr. Zephaniah Crypt’s Charity, under the
+stimulus of a late visitation by commissioners, were beginning to apply
+long-accumulating funds to the rebuilding of the Yellow Coat School,
+which was henceforth to be carried forward on a greatly-extended scale,
+the testator having left no restrictions concerning the curriculum, but
+only concerning the coat.
+
+The shopkeepers at Grimworth were by no means unanimous as to the
+advantages promised by this prospect of increased population and
+trading, being substantial men, who liked doing a quiet business in
+which they were sure of their customers, and could calculate their
+returns to a nicety. Hitherto, it had been held a point of honour by
+the families in Grimworth parish, to buy their sugar and their flannel
+at the shop where their fathers and mothers had bought before them;
+but, if newcomers were to bring in the system of neck-and-neck trading,
+and solicit feminine eyes by gown-pieces laid in fan-like folds, and
+surmounted by artificial flowers, giving them a factitious charm (for
+on what human figure would a gown sit like a fan, or what female head
+was like a bunch of China-asters?), or, if new grocers were to fill
+their windows with mountains of currants and sugar, made seductive by
+contrast and tickets,—what security was there for Grimworth, that a
+vagrant spirit in shopping, once introduced, would not in the end carry
+the most important families to the larger market town of Cattleton,
+where, business being done on a system of small profits and quick
+returns, the fashions were of the freshest, and goods of all kinds
+might be bought at an advantage?
+
+With this view of the times predominant among the tradespeople at
+Grimworth, their uncertainty concerning the nature of the business
+which the sallow-complexioned stranger was about to set up in the
+vacant shop, naturally gave some additional strength to the fears of
+the less sanguine. If he was going to sell drapery, it was probable
+that a pale-faced fellow like that would deal in showy and inferior
+articles—printed cottons and muslins which would leave their dye in the
+wash-tub, jobbed linen full of knots, and flannel that would soon look
+like gauze. If grocery, then it was to be hoped that no mother of a
+family would trust the teas of an untried grocer. Such things had been
+known in some parishes as tradesmen going about canvassing for custom
+with cards in their pockets: when people came from nobody knew where,
+there was no knowing what they might do. It was a thousand pities that
+Mr. Moffat, the auctioneer and broker, had died without leaving anybody
+to follow him in the business, and Mrs. Cleve’s trustee ought to have
+known better than to let a shop to a stranger. Even the discovery that
+ovens were being put up on the premises, and that the shop was, in
+fact, being fitted up for a confectioner and pastry-cook’s business,
+hitherto unknown in Grimworth, did not quite suffice to turn the scale
+in the newcomer’s favour, though the landlady at the Woolpack defended
+him warmly, said he seemed to be a very clever young man, and from what
+she could make out, came of a very good family; indeed, was most likely
+a good many people’s betters.
+
+It certainly made a blaze of light and colour, almost as if a rainbow
+had suddenly descended into the market-place, when, one fine morning,
+the shutters were taken down from the new shop, and the two windows
+displayed their decorations. On one side, there were the variegated
+tints of collared and marbled meats, set off by bright green leaves,
+the pale brown of glazed pies, the rich tones of sauces and bottled
+fruits enclosed in their veil of glass—altogether a sight to bring
+tears into the eyes of a Dutch painter; and on the other, there was a
+predominance of the more delicate hues of pink, and white, and yellow,
+and buff, in the abundant lozenges, candies, sweet biscuits and icings,
+which to the eyes of a bilious person might easily have been blended
+into a faëry landscape in Turner’s latest style. What a sight to dawn
+upon the eyes of Grimworth children! They almost forgot to go to their
+dinner that day, their appetites being preoccupied with imaginary
+sugar-plums; and I think even Punch, setting up his tabernacle in the
+market-place, would not have succeeded in drawing them away from those
+shop-windows, where they stood according to gradations of size and
+strength, the biggest and strongest being nearest the window, and the
+little ones in the outermost rows lifting wide-open eyes and mouths
+towards the upper tier of jars, like small birds at meal-time.
+
+The elder inhabitants pished and pshawed a little at the folly of the
+new shopkeeper in venturing on such an outlay in goods that would not
+keep; to be sure, Christmas was coming, but what housewife in Grimworth
+would not think shame to furnish forth her table with articles that
+were not home-cooked? No, no. Mr. Edward Freely, as he called himself,
+was deceived, if he thought Grimworth money was to flow into his
+pockets on such terms.
+
+Edward Freely was the name that shone in gilt letters on a mazarine
+ground over the doorplace of the new shop—a generous-sounding name,
+that might have belonged to the open-hearted, improvident hero of an
+old comedy, who would have delighted in raining sugared almonds, like a
+new manna-gift, among that small generation outside the windows. But
+Mr. Edward Freely was a man whose impulses were kept in due
+subordination: he held that the desire for sweets and pastry must only
+be satisfied in a direct ratio with the power of paying for them. If
+the smallest child in Grimworth would go to him with a halfpenny in its
+tiny fist, he would, after ringing the halfpenny, deliver a just
+equivalent in “rock.” He was not a man to cheat even the smallest
+child—he often said so, observing at the same time that he loved
+honesty, and also that he was very tender-hearted, though he didn’t
+show his feelings as some people did.
+
+Either in reward of such virtue, or according to some more hidden law
+of sequence, Mr. Freely’s business, in spite of prejudice, started
+under favourable auspices. For Mrs. Chaloner, the rector’s wife, was
+among the earliest customers at the shop, thinking it only right to
+encourage a new parishioner who had made a decorous appearance at
+church; and she found Mr. Freely a most civil, obliging young man, and
+intelligent to a surprising degree for a confectioner; well-principled,
+too, for in giving her useful hints about choosing sugars he had thrown
+much light on the dishonesty of other tradesmen. Moreover, he had been
+in the West Indies, and had seen the very estate which had been her
+poor grandfather’s property; and he said the missionaries were the only
+cause of the negro’s discontent—an observing young man, evidently. Mrs.
+Chaloner ordered wine-biscuits and olives, and gave Mr. Freely to
+understand that she should find his shop a great convenience. So did
+the doctor’s wife, and so did Mrs. Gate, at the large carding-mill,
+who, having high connexions frequently visiting her, might be expected
+to have a large consumption of ratafias and macaroons.
+
+The less aristocratic matrons of Grimworth seemed likely at first to
+justify their husbands’ confidence that they would never pay a
+percentage of profits on drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or
+get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of
+collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper. But it is my task to
+narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from their
+primitive simplicity—a melancholy task, if it were not cheered by the
+prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which the progress of
+the corruption was ultimately checked.
+
+It was young Mrs. Steene, the veterinary surgeons wife, who first gave
+way to temptation. I fear she had been rather over-educated for her
+station in life, for she knew by heart many passages in _Lalla Rookh_,
+the _Corsair_, and the _Siege of Corinth_, which had given her a
+distaste for domestic occupations, and caused her a withering
+disappointment at the discovery that Mr. Steene, since his marriage,
+had lost all interest in the “bulbul,” openly preferred discussing the
+nature of spavin with a coarse neighbour, and was angry if the pudding
+turned out watery—indeed, was simply a top-booted “vet.”, who came in
+hungry at dinner-time; and not in the least like a nobleman turned
+Corsair out of pure scorn for his race, or like a renegade with a
+turban and crescent, unless it were in the irritability of his temper.
+And scorn is such a very different thing in top-boots!
+
+This brutal man had invited a supper-party for Christmas eve, when he
+would expect to see mince-pies on the table. Mrs. Steene had prepared
+her mince-meat, and had devoted much butter, fine flour, and labour, to
+the making of a batch of pies in the morning; but they proved to be so
+very heavy when they came out of the oven, that she could only think
+with trembling of the moment when her husband should catch sight of
+them on the supper-table. He would storm at her, she was certain; and
+before all the company; and then she should never help crying: it was
+so dreadful to think she had come to that, after the bulbul and
+everything! Suddenly the thought darted through her mind that _this
+once_ she might send for a dish of mince-pies from Freely’s: she knew
+he had some. But what was to become of the eighteen heavy mince-pies?
+Oh, it was of no use thinking about that; it was very expensive—indeed,
+making mince-pies at all was a great expense, when they were not sure
+to turn out well: it would be much better to buy them ready-made. You
+paid a little more for them, but there was no risk of waste.
+
+Such was the sophistry with which this misguided young woman—enough.
+Mrs. Steene sent for the mince-pies, and, I am grieved to add, garbled
+her household accounts in order to conceal the fact from her husband.
+This was the second step in a downward course, all owing to a young
+woman’s being out of harmony with her circumstances, yearning after
+renegades and bulbuls, and being subject to claims from a veterinary
+surgeon fond of mince-pies. The third step was to harden herself by
+telling the fact of the bought mince-pies to her intimate friend Mrs.
+Mole, who had already guessed it, and who subsequently encouraged
+herself in buying a mould of jelly, instead of exerting her own skill,
+by the reflection that “other people” did the same sort of thing. The
+infection spread; soon there was a party or clique in Grimworth on the
+side of “buying at Freely’s”; and many husbands, kept for some time in
+the dark on this point, innocently swallowed at two mouthfuls a tart on
+which they were paying a profit of a hundred per cent., and as
+innocently encouraged a fatal disingenuousness in the partners of their
+bosoms by praising the pastry. Others, more keen-sighted, winked at the
+too frequent presentation on washing-days, and at impromptu suppers, of
+superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the cold
+remnants they had formerly been contented with. Every housewife who had
+once “bought at Freely’s” felt a secret joy when she detected a similar
+perversion in her neighbour’s practice, and soon only two or three
+old-fashioned mistresses of families held out in the protest against
+the growing demoralization, saying to their neighbours who came to sup
+with them, “I can’t offer you Freely’s beef, or Freely’s cheesecakes;
+everything in our house is home-made; I’m afraid you’ll hardly have any
+appetite for our plain pastry.” The doctor, whose cook was not
+satisfactory, the curate, who kept no cook, and the mining agent, who
+was a great _bon vivant_, even began to rely on Freely for the greater
+part of their dinner, when they wished to give an entertainment of some
+brilliancy. In short, the business of manufacturing the more fanciful
+viands was fast passing out of the hinds of maids and matrons in
+private families, and was becoming the work of a special commercial
+organ.
+
+I am not ignorant that this sort of thing is called the inevitable
+course of civilization, division of labour, and so forth, and that the
+maids and matrons may be said to have had their hands set free from
+cookery to add to the wealth of society in some other way. Only it
+happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the
+maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than
+cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery
+pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at
+Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men,
+the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening prosperity of Mr.
+Edward Freely.
+
+The Yellow Coat School was a double source of profit to the calculating
+confectioner; for he opened an eating-room for the superior workmen
+employed on the new school, and he accommodated the pupils at the old
+school by giving great attention to the fancy-sugar department. When I
+think of the sweet-tasted swans and other ingenious white shapes
+crunched by the small teeth of that rising generation, I am glad to
+remember that a certain amount of calcareous food has been held good
+for young creatures whose bones are not quite formed; for I have
+observed these delicacies to have an inorganic flavour which would have
+recommended them greatly to that young lady of the _Spectator’s_
+acquaintance who habitually made her dessert on the stems of
+tobacco-pipes.
+
+As for the confectioner himself, he made his way gradually into
+Grimworth homes, as his commodities did, in spite of some initial
+repugnance. Somehow or other, his reception as a guest seemed a thing
+that required justifying, like the purchasing of his pastry. In the
+first place, he was a stranger, and therefore open to suspicion;
+secondly, the confectionery business was so entirely new at Grimworth,
+that its place in the scale of rank had not been distinctly
+ascertained. There was no doubt about drapers and grocers, when they
+came of good old Grimworth families, like Mr. Luff and Mr. Prettyman:
+they visited with the Palfreys, who farmed their own land, played many
+a game at whist with the doctor, and condescended a little towards the
+timber-merchant, who had lately taken to the coal-trade also, and had
+got new furniture; but whether a confectioner should be admitted to
+this higher level of respectability, or should be understood to find
+his associates among butchers and bakers, was a new question on which
+tradition threw no light. His being a bachelor was in his favour, and
+would perhaps have been enough to turn the scale, even if Mr. Edward
+Freely’s other personal pretensions had been of an entirely
+insignificant cast. But so far from this, it very soon appeared that he
+was a remarkable young man, who had been in the West Indies, and had
+seen many wonders by sea and land, so that he could charm the ears of
+Grimworth Desdemonas with stories of strange fishes, especially sharks,
+which he had stabbed in the nick of time by bravely plunging overboard
+just as the monster was turning on his side to devour the cook’s mate;
+of terrible fevers which he had undergone in a land where the wind
+blows from all quarters at once; of rounds of toast cut straight from
+the breadfruit trees; of toes bitten off by land-crabs; of large
+honours that had been offered to him as a man who knew what was what,
+and was therefore particularly needed in a tropical climate; and of a
+Creole heiress who had wept bitterly at his departure. Such
+conversational talents as these, we know, will overcome disadvantages
+of complexion; and young Towers, whose cheeks were of the finest pink,
+set off by a fringe of dark whisker, was quite eclipsed by the presence
+of the sallow Mr. Freely. So exceptional a confectioner elevated the
+business, and might well begin to make disengaged hearts flutter a
+little.
+
+Fathers and mothers were naturally more slow and cautious in their
+recognition of the newcomer’s merits.
+
+“He’s an amusing fellow,” said Mr. Prettyman, the highly respectable
+grocer. (Mrs. Prettyman was a Miss Fothergill, and her sister had
+married a London mercer.) “He’s an amusing fellow; and I’ve no
+objection to his making one at the Oyster Club; but he’s a bit too fond
+of riding the high horse. He’s uncommonly knowing, I’ll allow; but how
+came he to go to the Indies? I should like that answered. It’s
+unnatural in a confectioner. I’m not fond of people that have been
+beyond seas, if they can’t give a good account how they happened to go.
+When folks go so far off, it’s because they’ve got little credit nearer
+home—that’s my opinion. However, he’s got some good rum; but I don’t
+want to be hand and glove with him, for all that.”
+
+It was this kind of dim suspicion which beclouded the view of Mr.
+Freely’s qualities in the maturer minds of Grimworth through the early
+months of his residence there. But when the confectioner ceased to be a
+novelty, the suspicions also ceased to be novel, and people got tired
+of hinting at them, especially as they seemed to be refuted by his
+advancing prosperity and importance. Mr. Freely was becoming a person
+of influence in the parish; he was found useful as an overseer of the
+poor, having great firmness in enduring other people’s pain, which
+firmness, he said, was due to his great benevolence; he always did what
+was good for people in the end. Mr. Chaloner had even selected him as
+clergyman’s churchwarden, for he was a very handy man, and much more of
+Mr. Chaloner’s opinion in everything about church business than the
+older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the
+Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more
+than hinting at a life of Sultanic self-indulgence which he had passed
+in the West Indies, shaking his head now and then and smiling rather
+bitterly, as men are wont to do when they intimate that they have
+become a little too wise to be instructed about a world which has long
+been flat and stale to them.
+
+For some time he was quite general in his attentions to the fair sex,
+combining the gallantries of a lady’s man with a severity of criticism
+on the person and manners of absent belles, which tended rather to
+stimulate in the feminine breast the desire to conquer the approval of
+so fastidious a judge. Nothing short of the very best in the department
+of female charms and virtues could suffice to kindle the ardour of Mr.
+Edward Freely, who had become familiar with the most luxuriant and
+dazzling beauty in the West Indies. It may seem incredible that a
+confectioner should have ideas and conversation so much resembling
+those to be met with in a higher walk of life, but it must be
+remembered that he had not merely travelled, he had also bow-legs and a
+sallow, small-featured visage, so that nature herself had stamped him
+for a fastidious connoisseur of the fair sex.
+
+At last, however, it seemed clear that Cupid had found a sharper arrow
+than usual, and that Mr. Freely’s heart was pierced. It was the general
+talk among the young people at Grimworth. But was it really love, and
+not rather ambition? Miss Fullilove, the timber-merchant’s daughter,
+was quite sure that if _she_ were Miss Penny Palfrey, she would be
+cautious; it was not a good sign when men looked so much above
+themselves for a wife. For it was no less a person than Miss Penelope
+Palfrey, second daughter of the Mr. Palfrey who farmed his own land,
+that had attracted Mr. Freely’s peculiar regard, and conquered his
+fastidiousness; and no wonder, for the Ideal, as exhibited in the
+finest waxwork, was perhaps never so closely approached by the Real as
+in the person of the pretty Penelope. Her yellowish flaxen hair did not
+curl naturally, I admit, but its bright crisp ringlets were such
+smooth, perfect miniature tubes, that you would have longed to pass
+your little finger through them, and feel their soft elasticity. She
+wore them in a crop, for in those days, when society was in a healthier
+state, young ladies wore crops long after they were twenty, and
+Penelope was not yet nineteen. Like the waxen ideal, she had round blue
+eyes, and round nostrils in her little nose, and teeth such as the
+ideal would be seen to have, if it ever showed them. Altogether, she
+was a small, round thing, as neat as a pink and white double daisy, and
+as guileless; for I hope it does not argue guile in a pretty damsel of
+nineteen, to think that she should like to have a beau and be
+“engaged,” when her elder sister had already been in that position a
+year and a half. To be sure, there was young Towers always coming to
+the house; but Penny felt convinced he only came to see her brother,
+for he never had anything to say to her, and never offered her his arm,
+and was as awkward and silent as possible.
+
+It is not unlikely that Mr. Freely had early been smitten by Penny’s
+charms, as brought under his observation at church, but he had to make
+his way in society a little before he could come into nearer contact
+with them; and even after he was well received in Grimworth families,
+it was a long while before he could converse with Penny otherwise than
+in an incidental meeting at Mr. Luff’s. It was not so easy to get
+invited to Long Meadows, the residence of the Palfreys; for though Mr.
+Palfrey had been losing money of late years, not being able quite to
+recover his feet after the terrible murrain which forced him to borrow,
+his family were far from considering themselves on the same level even
+as the old-established tradespeople with whom they visited. The
+greatest people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and
+the equals of the great are scarce. They were especially scarce at
+Grimworth, which, as I have before observed, was a low parish,
+mentioned with the most scornful brevity in gazetteers. Even the great
+people there were far behind those of their own standing in other parts
+of this realm. Mr. Palfrey’s farmyard doors had the paint all worn off
+them, and the front garden walks had long been merged in a general
+weediness. Still, his father had been called Squire Palfrey, and had
+been respected by the last Grimworth generation as a man who could
+afford to drink too much in his own house.
+
+Pretty Penny was not blind to the fact that Mr. Freely admired her, and
+she felt sure that it was he who had sent her a beautiful valentine;
+but her sister seemed to think so lightly of him (all young ladies
+think lightly of the gentlemen to whom they are not engaged), that
+Penny never dared mention him, and trembled and blushed whenever they
+met him, thinking of the valentine, which was very strong in its
+expressions, and which she felt guilty of knowing by heart. A man who
+had been to the Indies, and knew the sea so well, seemed to her a sort
+of public character, almost like Robinson Crusoe or Captain Cook; and
+Penny had always wished her husband to be a remarkable personage,
+likely to be put in Mangnall’s Questions, with which register of the
+immortals she had become acquainted during her one year at a
+boarding-school. Only it seemed strange that a remarkable man should be
+a confectioner and pastry-cook, and this anomaly quite disturbed
+Penny’s dreams. Her brothers, she knew, laughed at men who couldn’t sit
+on horseback well, and called them tailors; but her brothers were very
+rough, and were quite without that power of anecdote which made Mr.
+Freely such a delightful companion. He was a very good man, she
+thought, for she had heard him say at Mr. Luff’s, one day, that he
+always wished to do his duty in whatever state of life he might be
+placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one day he had repeated
+a verse of a song. She wondered if he had made the words of the
+valentine!—it ended in this way:—
+
+“Without thee, it is pain to live,
+But with thee, it were sweet to die.”
+
+
+Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object—she felt sure he
+would, for he always called Mr. Freely “that sugar-plum fellow.” Oh, it
+was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and all because
+Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be true to him, for
+all that, and since his being a confectioner gave her an opportunity of
+showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it. Edward Freely was a
+pretty name, much better than John Towers. Young Towers had offered her
+a rose out of his button-hole the other day, blushing very much; but
+she refused it, and thought with delight how much Mr. Freely would be
+comforted if he knew her firmness of mind.
+
+Poor little Penny! the days were so very long among the daisies on a
+grazing farm, and thought is so active—how was it possible that the
+inward drama should not get the start of the outward? I have known
+young ladies, much better educated, and with an outward world
+diversified by instructive lectures, to say nothing of literature and
+highly-developed fancy-work, who have spun a cocoon of visionary joys
+and sorrows for themselves, just as Penny did. Her elder sister
+Letitia, who had a prouder style of beauty, and a more worldly
+ambition, was engaged to a wool-factor, who came all the way from
+Cattelton to see her; and everybody knows that a wool-factor takes a
+very high rank, sometimes driving a double-bodied gig. Letty’s notions
+got higher every day, and Penny never dared to speak of her cherished
+griefs to her lofty sister—never dared to propose that they should call
+at Mr. Freely’s to buy liquorice, though she had prepared for such an
+incident by mentioning a slight sore throat. So she had to pass the
+shop on the other side of the market-place, and reflect, with a
+suppressed sigh, that behind those pink and white jars somebody was
+thinking of her tenderly, unconscious of the small space that divided
+her from him.
+
+And it was quite true that, when business permitted, Mr. Freely thought
+a great deal of Penny. He thought her prettiness comparable to the
+loveliest things in confectionery; he judged her to be of submissive
+temper—likely to wait upon him as well as if she had been a negress,
+and to be silently terrified when his liver made him irritable; and he
+considered the Palfrey family quite the best in the parish, possessing
+marriageable daughters. On the whole, he thought her worthy to become
+Mrs. Edward Freely, and all the more so, because it would probably
+require some ingenuity to win her. Mr. Palfrey was capable of
+horse-whipping a too rash pretender to his daughter’s hand; and,
+moreover, he had three tall sons: it was clear that a suitor would be
+at a disadvantage with such a family, unless travel and natural acumen
+had given him a countervailing power of contrivance. And the first idea
+that occurred to him in the matter was, that Mr. Palfrey would object
+less if he knew that the Freelys were a much higher family than his
+own. It had been foolish modesty in him hitherto to conceal the fact
+that a branch of the Freelys held a manor in Yorkshire, and to shut up
+the portrait of his great uncle the admiral, instead of hanging it up
+where a family portrait should be hung—over the mantelpiece in the
+parlour. Admiral Freely, K.C.B., once placed in this conspicuous
+position, was seen to have had one arm only, and one eye—in these
+points resembling the heroic Nelson—while a certain pallid
+insignificance of feature confirmed the relationship between himself
+and his grand-nephew.
+
+Next, Mr. Freely was seized with an irrepressible ambition to posses
+Mrs. Palfrey’s receipt for brawn, hers being pronounced on all hands to
+be superior to his own—as he informed her in a very flattering letter
+carried by his errand-boy. Now Mrs. Palfrey, like other geniuses,
+wrought by instinct rather than by rule, and possessed no
+receipts—indeed, despised all people who used them, observing that
+people who pickled by book, must pickle by weights and measures, and
+such nonsense; as for herself, her weights and measures were the tip of
+her finger and the tip of her tongue, and if you went nearer, why, of
+course, for dry goods like flour and spice, you went by handfuls and
+pinches, and for wet, there was a middle-sized jug—quite the best thing
+whether for much or little, because you might know how much a teacupful
+was if you’d got any use of your senses, and you might be sure it would
+take five middle-sized jugs to make a gallon. Knowledge of this kind is
+like Titian’s colouring, difficult to communicate; and as Mrs. Palfrey,
+once remarkably handsome, had now become rather stout and asthmatical,
+and scarcely ever left home, her oral teaching could hardly be given
+anywhere except at Long Meadows. Even a matron is not insusceptible to
+flattery, and the prospect of a visitor whose great object would be to
+listen to her conversation, was not without its charms to Mrs. Palfrey.
+Since there was no receipt to be sent in reply to Mr. Freely’s humble
+request, she called on her more docile daughter, Penny, to write a
+note, telling him that her mother would be glad to see him and talk
+with him on brawn, any day that he could call at Long Meadows. Penny
+obeyed with a trembling hand, thinking how wonderfully things came
+about in this world.
+
+In this way, Mr. Freely got himself introduced into the home of the
+Palfreys, and notwithstanding a tendency in the male part of the family
+to jeer at him a little as “peaky” and bow-legged, he presently
+established his position as an accepted and frequent guest. Young
+Towers looked at him with increasing disgust when they met at the house
+on a Sunday, and secretly longed to try his ferret upon him, as a piece
+of vermin which that valuable animal would be likely to tackle with
+unhesitating vigour. But—so blind sometimes are parents—neither Mr. nor
+Mrs. Palfrey suspected that Penny would have anything to say to a
+tradesman of questionable rank whose youthful bloom was much withered.
+Young Towers, they thought, had an eye to her, and _that_ was likely
+enough to be a match some day; but Penny was a child at present. And
+all the while Penny was imagining the circumstances under which Mr.
+Freely would make her an offer: perhaps down by the row of
+damson-trees, when they were in the garden before tea; perhaps by
+letter—in which case, how would the letter begin? “Dearest Penelope?”
+or “My dear Miss Penelope?” or straight off, without dear anything, as
+seemed the most natural when people were embarrassed? But, however he
+might make the offer, she would not accept it without her father’s
+consent: she would always be true to Mr. Freely, but she would not
+disobey her father. For Penny was a good girl, though some of her
+female friends were afterwards of opinion that it spoke ill for her not
+to have felt an instinctive repugnance to Mr. Freely.
+
+But he was cautious, and wished to be quite sure of the ground he trod
+on. His views on marriage were not entirely sentimental, but were as
+duly mingled with considerations of what would be advantageous to a man
+in his position, as if he had had a very large amount of money spent on
+his education. He was not a man to fall in love in the wrong place; and
+so, he applied himself quite as much to conciliate the favour of the
+parents, as to secure the attachment of Penny. Mrs. Palfrey had not
+been inaccessible to flattery, and her husband, being also of mortal
+mould, would not, it might be hoped, be proof against rum—that very
+fine Jamaica rum—of which Mr. Freely expected always to have a supply
+sent him from Jamaica. It was not easy to get Mr. Palfrey into the
+parlour behind the shop, where a mild back-street light fell on the
+features of the heroic admiral; but by getting hold of him rather late
+one evening as he was about to return home from Grimworth, the aspiring
+lover succeeded in persuading him to sup on some collared beef which,
+after Mrs. Palfrey’s brawn, he would find the very best of cold eating.
+
+From that hour Mr. Freely felt sure of success: being in privacy with
+an estimable man old enough to be his father, and being rather lonely
+in the world, it was natural he should unbosom himself a little on
+subjects which he could not speak of in a mixed circle—especially
+concerning his expectations from his uncle in Jamaica, who had no
+children, and loved his nephew Edward better than any one else in the
+world, though he had been so hurt at his leaving Jamaica, that he had
+threatened to cut him off with a shilling. However, he had since
+written to state his full forgiveness, and though he was an eccentric
+old gentleman and could not bear to give away money during his life,
+Mr. Edward Freely could show Mr. Palfrey the letter which declared,
+plainly enough, who would be the affectionate uncle’s heir. Mr. Palfrey
+actually saw the letter, and could not help admiring the spirit of the
+nephew who declared that such brilliant hopes as these made no
+difference to his conduct; he should work at his humble business and
+make his modest fortune at it all the same. If the Jamaica estate was
+to come to him—well and good. It was nothing very surprising for one of
+the Freely family to have an estate left him, considering the lands
+that family had possessed in time gone by—nay, still possessed in the
+Northumberland branch. Would not Mr. Palfrey take another glass of rum?
+and also look at the last year’s balance of the accounts? Mr. Freely
+was a man who cared to possess personal virtues, and did not pique
+himself on his family, though some men would.
+
+We know how easily the great Leviathan may be led, when once there is a
+hook in his nose or a bridle in his jaws. Mr. Palfrey was a large man,
+but, like Leviathan’s, his bulk went against him when once he had taken
+a turning. He was not a mercurial man, who easily changed his point of
+view. Enough. Before two months were over, he had given his consent to
+Mr. Freely’s marriage with his daughter Penny, and having hit on a
+formula by which he could justify it, fenced off all doubts and
+objections, his own included. The formula was this: “I’m not a man to
+put my head up an entry before I know where it leads.”
+
+Little Penny was very proud and fluttering, but hardly so happy as she
+expected to be in an engagement. She wondered if young Towers cared
+much about it, for he had not been to the house lately, and her sister
+and brothers were rather inclined to sneer than to sympathize.
+Grimworth rang with the news. All men extolled Mr. Freely’s good
+fortune; while the women, with the tender solicitude characteristic of
+the sex, wished the marriage might turn out well.
+
+While affairs were at this triumphant juncture, Mr. Freely one morning
+observed that a stone-carver who had been breakfasting in the
+eating-room had left a newspaper behind. It was the _X-shire Gazette_,
+and X-shire being a county not unknown to Mr. Freely, he felt some
+curiosity to glance over it, and especially over the advertisements. A
+slight flush came over his face as he read. It was produced by the
+following announcement:—“If David Faux, son of Jonathan Faux, late of
+Gilsbrook, will apply at the office of Mr. Strutt, attorney, of Rodham,
+he will hear of something to his advantage.”
+
+“Father’s dead!” exclaimed Mr. Freely, involuntarily. “Can he have left
+me a legacy?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+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)
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROTHER JACOB ***
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