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.