CHAPTER VI
RUMOUR was not less busy in Garth than elsewhere where folk congregate, and Reuben Gaunt gave food for it these days. His rules of conduct, or the lack of them, were a constant puzzle; his wish to play the gentleman, when by rights he should have been a yeoman, and proud of the same, perplexed them; moreover, he could be brave and generous on occasion, and this fitted ill with their notions of a scamp.
Ne’er-do-wells, pure and simple, they could understand. There were two or three of the breed in Garth, but these consistently were idle at the best, and in dire mischief at the worst.
Gaunt was a puzzle to them, and therefore a whetstone for their tongues. Then, too, he was fond of horses, and master of them; fond of dogs, and knowledgeable as regards their ways; and these were qualities that Garth village liked to see in any man.
Just now, indeed, it was his love of horseflesh that was talked of most in Garth. They said that his patrimony was rich, as a farming yeoman counted riches, but not enough to let him hand over the direction of his lands to a bailiff—as he had already done—while he himself rode idly up and down the countryside, or followed race-meetings.
“Galloping to the devil, eh, as many a lad has done before him,” one would say to the other.
“Ay. Seems like as a horse is the best thing God ever made—barring a good human-chap at his best,” the other would answer; “yet a horse is the devil and all when ye get a man o’er-fond of him.”
Another whisper was abroad in Garth, one remote altogether from bankruptcy or horseflesh. They said that Priscilla of the Good Intent was not herself of late, that Reuben Gaunt was seen too often in her company.
“Too good for the likes of you—eh, Silas Faweather?” one would say.
“Aye, a mile and a half too good; but what’s to come has got to come, and lasses are mostly fools i’ the springtime of their life. Not just such fools, I take it, come later times, when the fairies’ pranks are over with, and bairns arrive, like, and a sackless husband still runs daft-wit, following what he calls his pleasure.”