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Page 1
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.
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