Title: Brother Jacob
Author: Eliot, George
Language: English
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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)





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