Brother Jacob | Page 7

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