The Freelands Part 14

"You see, YOU keep apart," he said at last. "You couldn't say that so easily if you had, like us, to take up the position in which we find ourselves."

"Why take it up?"

Malloring frowned. "How would things go on?"

"All right," said Tod.

Malloring got up from the sill. This was 'laisser-faire' with a vengeance! Such philosophy had always seemed to him to savor dangerously of anarchism. And yet twenty years' experience as a neighbor had shown him that Tod was in himself perhaps the most harmless person in Worcestershire, and held in a curious esteem by most of the people about. He was puzzled, and sat down again.

"I've never had a chance to talk things over with you," he said. "There are a good few people, Freeland, who can't behave themselves; we're not bees, you know!"

He stopped, having an uncomfortable suspicion that his hearer was not listening.

"First I've heard this year," said Tod.

For all the rudeness of that interruption, Malloring felt a stir of interest. He himself liked birds. Unfortunately, he could hear nothing but the general chorus of their songs.

"Thought they'd gone," murmured Tod.

Malloring again got up. "Look here, Freeland," he said, "I wish you'd give your mind to this. You really ought not to let your wife and children make trouble in the village."

Confound the fellow! He was smiling; there was a sort of twinkle in his smile, too, that Malloring found infectious!

"No, seriously," he said, "you don't know what harm you mayn't do."

"Have you ever watched a dog looking at a fire?" asked Tod.

"Yes, often; why?"

"He knows better than to touch it."

"You mean you're helpless? But you oughtn't to be."

The fellow was smiling again!

"Then you don't mean to do anything?"

Tod shook his head.

Malloring flushed. "Now, look here, Freeland," he said, "forgive my saying so, but this strikes me as a bit cynical. D'you think I enjoy trying to keep things straight?"

Tod looked up.

"Birds," he said, "animals, insects, vegetable life--they all eat each other more or less, but they don't fuss about it."

Malloring turned abruptly and went down the path. Fuss! He never fussed.

Fuss! The word was an insult, addressed to him! If there was one thing he detested more than another, whether in public or private life, it was 'fussing.' Did he not belong to the League for Suppression of Interference with the Liberty of the Subject? Was he not a member of the party notoriously opposed to fussy legislation? Had any one ever used the word in connection with conduct of his, before? If so, he had never heard them. Was it fussy to try and help the Church to improve the standard of morals in the village? Was it fussy to make a simple decision and stick to it? The injustice of the word really hurt him. And the more it hurt him, the slower and more dignified and upright became his march toward his drive gate.

'Wild geese' in the morning sky had been forerunners; very heavy clouds were sweeping up from the west, and rain beginning to fall. He pa.s.sed an old man leaning on the gate of a cottage garden and said: "Good evening!"

The old man touched his hat but did not speak.

"How's your leg, Gaunt?"

"'Tis much the same, Sir Gerald."

"Rain coming makes it shoot, I expect."

"It do."

Malloring stood still. The impulse was on him to see if, after all, the Gaunts' affair could not be disposed of without turning the old fellow and his son out.

"Look here!" he said; "about this unfortunate business. Why don't you and your son make up your minds without more ado to let your granddaughter go out to service? You've been here all your lives; I don't want to see you go."

The least touch of color invaded the old man's carved and grayish face.

"Askin' your pardon," he said, "my son sticks by his girl, and I sticks by my son!"

"Oh! very well; you know your own business, Gaunt. I spoke for your good."

A faint smile curled the corners of old Gaunt's mouth downward beneath his gray moustaches.

"Thank you kindly," he said.

Malloring raised a finger to his cap and pa.s.sed on. Though he felt a longing to stride his feelings off, he did not increase his pace, knowing that the old man's eyes were following him. But how pig-headed they were, seeing nothing but their own point of view! Well, he could not alter his decision. They would go at the June quarter--not a day before, nor after.

Pa.s.sing Tryst's cottage, he noticed a 'fly' drawn up outside, and its driver talking to a woman in hat and coat at the cottage doorway. She avoided his eye.

'The wife's sister again!' he thought. 'So that fellow's going to be an a.s.s, too? Hopeless, stubborn lot!' And his mind pa.s.sed on to his scheme for draining the bottom fields at Cantley Bromage. This village trouble was too small to occupy for long the mind of one who had so many duties....

Old Gaunt remained at the gate watching till the tall figure pa.s.sed out of sight, then limped slowly down the path and entered his son's cottage. Tom Gaunt, not long in from work, was sitting in his shirtsleeves, reading the paper--a short, thick-set man with small eyes, round, ruddy cheeks, and humorous lips indifferently concealed by a ragged moustache. Even in repose there was about him something talkative and disputatious. He was clearly the kind of man whose eyes and wit would sparkle above a pewter pot. A good workman, he averaged out an income of perhaps eighteen shillings a week, counting the two shillings'

worth of vegetables that he grew. His erring daughter washed for two old ladies in a bungalow, so that with old Gaunt's five shillings from the parish, the total resources of this family of five, including two small boys at school, was seven and twenty shillings a week. Quite a sum! His comparative wealth no doubt contributed to the reputation of Tom Gaunt, well known as local wag and disturber of political meetings. His method with these gatherings, whether Liberal or Tory, had a certain masterly simplicity. By interjecting questions that could not be understood, and commenting on the answers received, he insured perpetual laughter, with the most salutary effects on the over-consideration of any political question, together with a tendency to make his neighbors say: "Ah! Tom Gaunt, he's a proper caution, he is!" An encomium dear to his ears. What he seriously thought about anything in this world, no one knew; but some suspected him of voting Liberal, because he disturbed their meetings most. His loyalty to his daughter was not credited to affection. It was like Tom Gaunt to stick his toes in and kick--the Quality, for choice.

To look at him and old Gaunt, one would not have thought they could be son and father, a relationship indeed ever dubious. As for his wife, she had been dead twelve years. Some said he had joked her out of life, others that she had gone into consumption. He was a reader--perhaps the only one in all the village, and could whistle like a blackbird. To work hard, but without too great method, to drink hard, but with perfect method, and to talk nineteen to the dozen anywhere except at home--was his mode of life. In a word, he was a 'character.'

Old Gaunt sat down in a wooden rocking-chair, and spoke.

"Sir Gerald 'e've a-just pa.s.sed."

"Sir Gerald 'e can goo to h.e.l.l. They'll know un there, by 'is little ears."

"'E've a-spoke about us stoppin'; so as Mettie goes out to sarvice."

"'E've a-spoke about what 'e don't know 'bout, then. Let un do what they like, they can't put Tom Gaunt about; he can get work anywhere--Tom Gaunt can, an' don't you forget that, old man."

The old man, placing his thin brown hands on his knees, was silent. And thoughts pa.s.sed through and through him. 'If so be as Tom goes, there'll be no one as'll take me in for less than three bob a week. Two bob a week, that's what I'll 'ave to feed me--Two bob a week--two bob a week!

But if so be's I go with Tom, I'll 'ave to reg'lar sit down under he for me bread and b.u.t.ter.' And he contemplated his son.

"Where are you goin', then?" he said.