Brother Jacob

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BROTHER JACOB


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.