About five o'clock of that same afternoon, Gerald Malloring went to see
Tod. An open-air man himself, who often deplored the long hours he was
compelled to spend in the special atmosphere of the House of Commons,
he rather envied Tod his existence in this cottage, crazed from age,
and clothed with wistaria, rambler roses, sweetbrier, honeysuckle, and
Virginia creeper. Freeland had, in his opinion, quite a jolly life of
it—the poor fellow not being able, of course, to help having a cranky
wife and children like that. He pondered, as he went along, over a talk
at Becket, when Stanley, still under the influence of Felix's outburst,
had uttered some rather queer sayings. For instance, he had supposed
that they (meaning, apparently, himself and Malloring) WERE rather
unable to put themselves in the position of these Trysts and Gaunts. He
seemed to speak of them as one might speak generically of Hodge, which
had struck Malloring as singular, it not being his habit to see anything
in common between an individual case, especially on his own estate, and
the ethics of a general proposition. The place for general propositions
was undoubtedly the House of Commons, where they could be supported
one way or the other, out of blue books. He had little use for them in
private life, where innumerable things such as human nature and all that
came into play. He had stared rather hard at his host when Stanley had
followed up that first remark with: “I'm bound to say, I shouldn't care
to have to get up at half past five, and go out without a bath!” What
that had to do with the land problem or the regulation of village
morality Malloring had been unable to perceive. It all depended on what
one was accustomed to; and in any case threw no light on the question,
as to whether or not he was to tolerate on his estate conduct of which
his wife and himself distinctly disapproved. At the back of national
life there was always this problem of individual conduct, especially
sexual conduct—without regularity in which, the family, as the unit of
national life, was gravely threatened, to put it on the lowest ground.
And he did not see how to bring it home to the villagers that they had
got to be regular, without making examples now and then.
He had hoped very much to get through his call without coming across
Freeland's wife and children, and was greatly relieved to find Tod,
seated on a window-sill in front of his cottage, smoking, and gazing
apparently at nothing. In taking the other corner of the window-sill,
the thought passed through his mind that Freeland was really a very
fine-looking fellow. Tod was, indeed, about Malloring's own height of
six feet one, with the same fairness and straight build of figure and
feature. But Tod's head was round and massive, his hair crisp and uncut;
Malloring's head long and narrow, his hair smooth and close-cropped.
Tod's eyes, blue and deep-set, seemed fixed on the horizon, Malloring's,
blue and deep-set, on the nearest thing they could light on. Tod smiled,
as it were, without knowing; Malloring seemed to know what he was
smiling at almost too well. It was comforting, however, that Freeland
was as shy and silent as himself, for this produced a feeling that
there could not be any real difference between their points of view.
Perceiving at last that if he did not speak they would continue sitting
there dumb till it was time for him to go, Malloring said:
“Look here, Freeland; about my wife and yours and Tryst and the Gaunts,
and all the rest of it! It's a pity, isn't it? This is a small place,
you know. What's your own feeling?”
Tod answered:
“A man has only one life.”
Malloring was a little puzzled.
“In this world. I don't follow.”
“Live and let live.”
A part of Malloring undoubtedly responded to that curt saying, a part of
him as strongly rebelled against it; and which impulse he was going to
follow was not at first patent.
“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 passed
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 passed 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.
Passing 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
ass, too? Hopeless, stubborn lot!' And his mind passed 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 passed
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 passed.”
“Sir Gerald 'e can goo to hell. 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 passed 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 butter.' And he contemplated his son.
“Where are you goin', then?” he said.
Tom Gaunt rustled the greenish paper he was reading, and his little,
hard gray eyes fixed his father.
“Who said I was going?”
Old Gaunt, smoothing and smoothing the lined, thin cheeks of the
parchmenty, thin-nosed face that Frances Freeland had thought to be
almost like a gentleman's, answered: “I thart you said you was goin'.”
“You think too much, then—that's what 'tis. You think too much, old
man.”
With a slight deepening of the sardonic patience in his face, old Gaunt
rose, took a bowl and spoon down from a shelf, and very slowly proceeded
to make himself his evening meal. It consisted of crusts of bread soaked
in hot water and tempered with salt, pepper, onion, and a touch of
butter. And while he waited, crouched over the kettle, his son smoked
his grayish clay and read his greenish journal; an old clock ticked and
a little cat purred without provocation on the ledge of the tight-closed
window. Then the door opened and the rogue-girl appeared. She shook her
shoulders as though to dismiss the wetting she had got, took off her
turn-down, speckly, straw hat, put on an apron, and rolled up her
sleeves. Her arms were full and firm and red; the whole of her was full
and firm. From her rosy cheeks to her stout ankles she was superabundant
with vitality, the strangest contrast to her shadowy, thin old
grandfather. About the preparation of her father's tea she moved with a
sort of brooding stolidity, out of which would suddenly gleam a twinkle
of rogue-sweetness, as when she stopped to stroke the little cat or to
tickle the back of her grandfather's lean neck in passing. Having set
the tea, she stood by the table and said slowly: “Tea's ready, father.
I'm goin' to London.”
Tom Gaunt put down his pipe and journal, took his seat at the table,
filled his mouth with sausage, and said: “You're goin' where I tell
you.”
“I'm goin' to London.”
Tom Gaunt stayed the morsel in one cheek and fixed her with his little,
wild boar's eye.
“Ye're goin' to catch the stick,” he said. “Look here, my girl, Tom
Gaunt's been put about enough along of you already. Don't you make no
mistake.”
“I'm goin' to London,” repeated the rogue-girl stolidly. “You can get
Alice to come over.”
“Oh! Can I? Ye're not goin' till I tell you. Don't you think it!”
“I'm goin'. I saw Mr. Derek this mornin'. They'll get me a place there.”
Tom Gaunt remained with his fork as it were transfixed. The effort of
devising contradiction to the chief supporters of his own rebellion was
for the moment too much for him. He resumed mastication.
“You'll go where I want you to go; and don't you think you can tell me
where that is.”
In the silence that ensued the only sound was that of old Gaunt supping
at his crusty-broth. Then the rogue-girl went to the window and, taking
the little cat on her breast, sat looking out into the rain. Having
finished his broth, old Gaunt got up, and, behind his son's back, he
looked at his granddaughter and thought:
'Goin' to London! 'Twud be best for us all. WE shudn' need to be movin',
then. Goin' to London!' But he felt desolate.