Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders (most important books of all time txt) 📕

tracks so cleverly that he

would never be found out. Then father said, 'Sit down, Jacobs, for I

have got to have a long talk with you.' He had him there about an hour,

and when he finished, the fellow was completely broken down. Father told

him that there were just two courses in life for a young man to take,

and he had gotten on the wrong one. He was a young, smart fellow, and if

he turned right around now, there was a chance for him. If he didn't

there was nothing but the State's prison ahead of him, for he needn't

think he was going to gull and cheat all the world, and never be found

out. Father said he'd give him all the help in his power, if he had his

word that he'd try to be an honest man. Then he tore up the paper, and

said there was an end of his indebtedness to him.

 

"Jacobs is only a young fellow, twenty-three or thereabout, and father

says he sobbed like a baby. Then, without looking at him, father gave an

account of his afternoon's drive, just as if he was talking to himself.

He said that Pacer never to his knowledge had been on that road before,

and yet he seemed perfectly familiar with it, and that he stopped and

turned already to leave again quickly, instead of going up to the door,

and how he looked over his shoulder and started on a run down the lane,

the minute father's foot was in the cutter again. In the course of his

remarks, father mentioned the fact that on Monday, the evening that the

robbery was committed, Jacobs had borrowed Pacer to go to the Junction,

but had come in with the horse steaming, and looking as if he had been

driven a much longer distance than that. Father said that when he got

done, Jacobs had sunk down all in a heap on the stable floor, with his

hands over his face. Father left him to have it out with himself, and

went to the house.

 

"The next morning, Jacobs looked just the same as usual, and went about

with the other men doing his work, but saying nothing about going West.

Late in the afternoon, a farmer going by hailed father, and asked if

he'd heard the news.

 

"Old Miser Jerrold's box had been left on his doorstep some time through

the night, and he'd found it in the morning. The money was all there,

but the old fellow was so cute that he wouldn't tell any one how much it

was. The neighbors had persuaded him to bank it, and he was coming to

town the next morning with it, and that night some of them were going to

help him mount guard over it. Father told the men at milking time, and

he said Jacobs looked as unconscious as possible. However, from that day

there was a change in him. He never told father in so many words that

he' d resolved to be an honest man, but his actions spoke for him. He

had been a kind of sullen, unwilling fellow, but now he turned handy and

obliging, and it was a real trial to father to part with him."

 

Miss Laura was intensely interested in this story. "Where is he now,

Cousin Harry?" she asked, eagerly. "What became of him?"

 

Mr. Harry laughed in such amusement that I stared up at him, and even

Fleetfoot turned his head around to see what the joke was. We were going

very slowly up a long, steep hill, and in the clear, still air, we could

hear every word spoken in the buggy.

 

"The last part of the story is the best, to my mind," said Mr. Harry,

"and as romantic as even a girl could desire. The affair of the stolen

box was much talked about along Sudbury way, and Miss Jerrold got to be

considered quite a desirable young person among some of the youth near

there, though she is a frowsy-headed creature, and not as neat in her

personal attire as a young girl should be. Among her suitors was Jacobs.

He cut out a blacksmith, and a painter, and several young farmers, and

father said he never in his life had such a time to keep a straight

face, as when Jacobs came to him this spring, and said he was going to

marry old Miser Jerrold's daughter. He wanted to quit father's employ,

and he thanked him in a real manly way for the manner in which he had

always treated him. Well, Jacobs left, and mother says that father would

sit and speculate about him, as to whether he had fallen in love with

Eliza Jerrold, or whether he was determined to regain possession of the

box, and was going to do it honestly, or whether he was sorry for having

frightened the old man into a greater degree of imbecility, and was

marrying the girl so that he could take care of him, or whether it was

something else, and so on, and so on. He had a dozen theories, and then

mother says he would burst out laughing, and say it was one of the

cutest tricks that he had ever heard of.

 

"In the end, Jacobs got married, and father and mother went to the

wedding. Father gave the bridegroom a yoke of oxen, and mother gave the

bride a lot of household linen, and I believe they're as happy as the

day is long. Jacobs makes his wife comb her hair, and he waits on the

old man as if he was his son, and he is improving the farm that was

going to rack and ruin, and I hear he is going to build a new house."

 

"Harry," exclaimed Miss Laura, "can't you take me to see them?"

 

"Yes, indeed; mother often drives over to take them little things, and

we'll go, too, sometime. I'd like to see Jacobs myself, now that he is a

decent fellow. Strange to say, though he hadn't the best of character,

no one has ever suspected him of the robbery, and he's been cunning

enough never to say a word about it. Father says Jacobs is like all the

rest of us. There's mixture of good and evil in him, and sometimes one

predominates, and sometimes the other. But we must get on and not talk

here all day. Get up, Fleetfoot."

 

"Where did you say we were going?" asked Miss Laura, as we crossed the

bridge over the river.

 

"A little way back here in the woods," he replied. "There's an

Englishman on a small clearing that he calls Penhollow. Father loaned

him some money three years ago, and he won't pay either interest or

principal."

 

"I think I've heard of him," said Miss Laura "Isn't he the man whom the

boys call Lord Chesterfield?"

 

"The same one. He's a queer specimen of a man. Father has always stood

up for him. He has a great liking for the English. He says we ought to

be as ready to help an Englishman as an American, for we spring from

common stock."

 

"Oh, not Englishmen only," said Miss Laura, warmly; "Chinamen, and

Negroes, and everybody. There ought to be a brotherhood of nations,

Harry."

 

"Yes, Miss Enthusiasm, I suppose there ought to be," and looking up, I

could see that Mr. Harry was gazing admiringly into his cousin's face.

 

"Please tell me some more about the Englishman," said Miss Laura.

 

"There isn't much to tell. He lives alone, only coming occasionally to

the village for supplies, and though he is poorer than poverty, he

despises every soul within a ten-mile radius of him, and looks upon us

as no better than an order of thrifty, well-trained lower animals."

 

"Why is that?" asked Miss Laura, in surprise.

 

"He is a gentleman, Laura, and we are only common people. My father

can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor

can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late

dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, and know

nothing of polite society, nor can we tell exactly whom our

great-great-grandfather sprang from. I tell you, there is a gulf between

us and that Englishman, wider than the one young Curtius leaped into."

 

Miss Laura was laughing merrily. "How funny that sounds, Harry. So he

despises you," and she glanced at her good-looking cousin, and his

handsome buggy and well-kept horse, and then burst into another merry

peal of laughter.

 

Mr. Harry laughed, too. "It does seem absurd. Sometimes when I pass him

jogging along to town in his rickety old cart, and look at his pale,

cruel face, and know that he is a broken-down gambler and man of the

world, and yet considers himself infinitely superior to me--a young man

in the prime of life, with a good constitution and happy prospects, it

makes me turn away to hide a smile."

 

By this time we had left the river and the meadows far behind us, and

were passing through a thick wood. The road was narrow and very broken,

and Fleetfoot was obliged to pick his way carefully. "Why does the

Englishman live in this out-of-the-way place, if he is so fond of city

life?" said Miss Laura.

 

"I don't know," said Mr. Harry. "Father is afraid that he has committed

some misdeed, and is in hiding; but we say nothing about it. We have not

seen him for some weeks, and to tell the truth, this trip is as much to

see what has become of him, as to make a demand upon him for the money.

As he lives alone, he might lie there ill, and no one would know

anything about it. The last time that we knew of his coming to the

village was to draw quite a sum of money from the bank. It annoyed

father, for he said he might take some of it to pay his debts. I think

his relatives in England supply him with funds. Here we are at the

entrance to the mansion of Penhollow. I must get out and open the gate

that will admit us to the winding avenue."

 

We had arrived in front of some bars which were laid across an opening

in the snake fence that ran along one side of the road. I sat down and

looked about. It was a strange, lonely place. The trees almost met

overhead, and it was very dim and quiet. The sun could only send little

straggling beams through the branches. There was a muddy pool of water

before the bars that Mr. Harry was letting down, and he got his feet wet

in it. "Confound that Englishman," he said, backing out of the water,

and wiping his boots on the grass. "He hasn't even gumption enough to

throw down a load of stone there. Drive in, Laura, and I'll put up the

bars." Fleetfoot took us through the opening, and then Mr. Harry jumped

into the buggy and took up the reins again.

 

We had to go very slowly up a narrow, rough road. The bushes scratched

and scraped against the buggy, and Mr. Harry looked very much annoyed.

 

"No man liveth to himself," said Miss Laura, softly. "This man's

carelessness is giving you trouble. Why doesn't he cut these branches

that overhang the road?"

 

"He can't do it, because his abominable laziness won't let him," said

Mr. Harry. "I'd like to be behind him for a week, and I'd make him step

a little faster. We have arrived at last, thank goodness."

 

There was a small grass clearing in the midst of the woods. Chips and

bits of wood were littered about, and across the clearing was a

roughly-built house of unpainted boards. The front door was propped open

by a stick. Some of the panes of glass in the windows were broken, and

the whole house had a melancholy, dilapidated look. I thought that I had

never seen such a sad-looking place.

 

"It seems as if there was no one about," said Mr. Harry, with a puzzled

face. "Barron must be away. Will you hold Fleetfoot, Laura, while I go

and see?"

 

He drew the buggy up near a small log building that had evidently been

used for a stable, and I lay down beside it and watched Miss Laura.

 

 

 

 

 

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