Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (141 page)

“Perhaps he is,” said Godfrey, rather absently.
 
Then rousing himself, he said, with an effort at carelessness, “We shall hear of him soon enough, I’ll be bound.”

“Well, here’s my turning,” said Bryce, not surprised to perceive that Godfrey was rather “down”; “so I’ll bid you good-day, and wish I may bring you better news another time.”

Godfrey rode along slowly, representing to himself the scene of confession to his father from which he felt that there was now no longer any escape.
 
The revelation about the money must be made the very next morning; and if he withheld the rest, Dunstan would be sure to come back shortly, and, finding that he must bear the brunt of his father’s anger, would tell the whole story out of spite, even though he had nothing to gain by it.
 
There was one step, perhaps, by which he might still win Dunstan’s silence and put off the evil day: he might tell his father that he had himself spent the money paid to him by Fowler; and as he had never been guilty of such an offence before, the affair would blow over after a little storming. But Godfrey could not bend himself to this.
 
He felt that in letting Dunstan have the money, he had already been guilty of a breach of trust hardly less culpable than that of spending the money directly for his own behoof; and yet there was a distinction between the two acts which made him feel that the one was so much more blackening than the other as to be intolerable to him.

“I don’t pretend to be a good fellow,” he said to himself; “but I’m not a scoundrel--at least, I’ll stop short somewhere.
 
I’ll bear the consequences of what I
have
done sooner than make believe I’ve done what I never would have done.
 
I’d never have spent the money for my own pleasure--I was tortured into it.”

Through the remainder of this day Godfrey, with only occasional fluctuations, kept his will bent in the direction of a complete avowal to his father, and he withheld the story of Wildfire’s loss till the next morning, that it might serve him as an introduction to heavier matter.
 
The old Squire was accustomed to his son’s frequent absence from home, and thought neither Dunstan’s nor Wildfire’s non-appearance a matter calling for remark.
 
Godfrey said to himself again and again, that if he let slip this one opportunity of confession, he might never have another; the revelation might be made even in a more odious way than by Dunstan’s malignity:
she
might come as she had threatened to do.
 
And then he tried to make the scene easier to himself by rehearsal: he made up his mind how he would pass from the admission of his weakness in letting Dunstan have the money to the fact that Dunstan had a hold on him which he had been unable to shake off, and how he would work up his father to expect something very bad before he told him the fact.
 
The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided-- as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock.
 
Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard.
 
This was his system with his tenants: he allowed them to get into arrears, neglect their fences, reduce their stock, sell their straw, and otherwise go the wrong way,--and then, when he became short of money in consequence of this indulgence, he took the hardest measures and would listen to no appeal.
 
Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father’s sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy.
 
(He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits;
that
seemed to him natural enough.)
 
Still there was just the chance, Godfrey thought, that his father’s pride might see this marriage in a light that would induce him to hush it up, rather than turn his son out and make the family the talk of the country for ten miles round.

This was the view of the case that Godfrey managed to keep before him pretty closely till midnight, and he went to sleep thinking that he had done with inward debating.
 
But when he awoke in the still morning darkness he found it impossible to reawaken his evening thoughts; it was as if they had been tired out and were not to be roused to further work.
 
Instead of arguments for confession, he could now feel the presence of nothing but its evil consequences: the old dread of disgrace came back--the old shrinking from the thought of raising a hopeless barrier between himself and Nancy-- the old disposition to rely on chances which might be favourable to him, and save him from betrayal.
 
Why, after all, should he cut off the hope of them by his own act?
 
He had seen the matter in a wrong light yesterday.
 
He had been in a rage with Dunstan, and had thought of nothing but a thorough break-up of their mutual understanding; but what it would be really wisest for him to do, was to try and soften his father’s anger against Dunsey, and keep things as nearly as possible in their old condition.
 
If Dunsey did not come back for a few days (and Godfrey did not know but that the rascal had enough money in his pocket to enable him to keep away still longer), everything might blow over.

CHAPTER IX

Godfrey rose and took his own breakfast earlier than usual, but lingered in the wainscoted parlour till his younger brothers had finished their meal and gone out; awaiting his father, who always took a walk with his managing-man before breakfast.
 
Every one breakfasted at a different hour in the Red House, and the Squire was always the latest, giving a long chance to a rather feeble morning appetite before he tried it.
 
The table had been spread with substantial eatables nearly two hours before he presented himself-- a tall, stout man of sixty, with a face in which the knit brow and rather hard glance seemed contradicted by the slack and feeble mouth.
 
His person showed marks of habitual neglect, his dress was slovenly; and yet there was something in the presence of the old Squire distinguishable from that of the ordinary farmers in the parish, who were perhaps every whit as refined as he, but, having slouched their way through life with a consciousness of being in the vicinity of their “betters”, wanted that self-possession and authoritativeness of voice and carriage which belonged to a man who thought of superiors as remote existences with whom he had personally little more to do than with America or the stars.
 
The Squire had been used to parish homage all his life, used to the presupposition that his family, his tankards, and everything that was his, were the oldest and best; and as he never associated with any gentry higher than himself, his opinion was not disturbed by comparison.

He glanced at his son as he entered the room, and said, “What, sir! haven’t
you
had your breakfast yet?”
 
but there was no pleasant morning greeting between them; not because of any unfriendliness, but because the sweet flower of courtesy is not a growth of such homes as the Red House.

“Yes, sir,” said Godfrey, “I’ve had my breakfast, but I was waiting to speak to you.”

“Ah!
 
well,” said the Squire, throwing himself indifferently into his chair, and speaking in a ponderous coughing fashion, which was felt in Raveloe to be a sort of privilege of his rank, while he cut a piece of beef, and held it up before the deer-hound that had come in with him.
 
“Ring the bell for my ale, will you?
 
You youngsters’ business is your own pleasure, mostly.
 
There’s no hurry about it for anybody but yourselves.”

The Squire’s life was quite as idle as his sons’, but it was a fiction kept up by himself and his contemporaries in Raveloe that youth was exclusively the period of folly, and that their aged wisdom was constantly in a state of endurance mitigated by sarcasm. Godfrey waited, before he spoke again, until the ale had been brought and the door closed--an interval during which Fleet, the deer-hound, had consumed enough bits of beef to make a poor man’s holiday dinner.

“There’s been a cursed piece of ill-luck with Wildfire,” he began; “happened the day before yesterday.”

“What!
 
broke his knees?”
 
said the Squire, after taking a draught of ale.
 
“I thought you knew how to ride better than that, sir. I never threw a horse down in my life.
 
If I had, I might ha’ whistled for another, for
my
father wasn’t quite so ready to unstring as some other fathers I know of.
 
But they must turn over a new leaf--
they
must.
 
What with mortgages and arrears, I’m as short o’ cash as a roadside pauper.
 
And that fool Kimble says the newspaper’s talking about peace.
 
Why, the country wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.
 
Prices ‘ud run down like a jack, and I should never get my arrears, not if I sold all the fellows up.
 
And there’s that damned Fowler, I won’t put up with him any longer; I’ve told Winthrop to go to Cox this very day.
 
The lying scoundrel told me he’d be sure to pay me a hundred last month.
 
He takes advantage because he’s on that outlying farm, and thinks I shall forget him.”

The Squire had delivered this speech in a coughing and interrupted manner, but with no pause long enough for Godfrey to make it a pretext for taking up the word again.
 
He felt that his father meant to ward off any request for money on the ground of the misfortune with Wildfire, and that the emphasis he had thus been led to lay on his shortness of cash and his arrears was likely to produce an attitude of mind the utmost unfavourable for his own disclosure. But he must go on, now he had begun.

“It’s worse than breaking the horse’s knees--he’s been staked and killed,” he said, as soon as his father was silent, and had begun to cut his meat.
 
“But I wasn’t thinking of asking you to buy me another horse; I was only thinking I’d lost the means of paying you with the price of Wildfire, as I’d meant to do.
 
Dunsey took him to the hunt to sell him for me the other day, and after he’d made a bargain for a hundred and twenty with Bryce, he went after the hounds, and took some fool’s leap or other that did for the horse at once.
 
If it hadn’t been for that, I should have paid you a hundred pounds this morning.”

The Squire had laid down his knife and fork, and was staring at his son in amazement, not being sufficiently quick of brain to form a probable guess as to what could have caused so strange an inversion of the paternal and filial relations as this proposition of his son to pay him a hundred pounds.

“The truth is, sir--I’m very sorry--I was quite to blame,” said Godfrey.
 
“Fowler did pay that hundred pounds.
 
He paid it to me, when I was over there one day last month.
 
And Dunsey bothered me for the money, and I let him have it, because I hoped I should be able to pay it you before this.”

The Squire was purple with anger before his son had done speaking, and found utterance difficult.
 
“You let Dunsey have it, sir?
 
And how long have you been so thick with Dunsey that you must
collogue
with him to embezzle my money?
 
Are you turning out a scamp?
 
I tell you I won’t have it.
 
I’ll turn the whole pack of you out of the house together, and marry again.
 
I’d have you to remember, sir, my property’s got no entail on it;--since my grandfather’s time the Casses can do as they like with their land.
 
Remember that, sir. Let Dunsey have the money!
 
Why should you let Dunsey have the money?
 
There’s some lie at the bottom of it.”

“There’s no lie, sir,” said Godfrey.
 
“I wouldn’t have spent the money myself, but Dunsey bothered me, and I was a fool, and let him have it.
 
But I meant to pay it, whether he did or not.
 
That’s the whole story.
 
I never meant to embezzle money, and I’m not the man to do it.
 
You never knew me do a dishonest trick, sir.”

“Where’s Dunsey, then?
 
What do you stand talking there for?
 
Go and fetch Dunsey, as I tell you, and let him give account of what he wanted the money for, and what he’s done with it.
 
He shall repent it.
 
I’ll turn him out.
 
I said I would, and I’ll do it.
 
He shan’t brave me.
 
Go and fetch him.”

“Dunsey isn’t come back, sir.”

“What!
 
did he break his own neck, then?”
 
said the Squire, with some disgust at the idea that, in that case, he could not fulfil his threat.

“No, he wasn’t hurt, I believe, for the horse was found dead, and Dunsey must have walked off.
 
I daresay we shall see him again by-and-by.
 
I don’t know where he is.”

“And what must you be letting him have my money for?
 
Answer me that,” said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was not within reach.

“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Godfrey, hesitatingly.
 
That was a feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with invented motives.

“You don’t know?
 
I tell you what it is, sir.
 
You’ve been up to some trick, and you’ve been bribing him not to tell,” said the Squire, with a sudden acuteness which startled Godfrey, who felt his heart beat violently at the nearness of his father’s guess.
 
The sudden alarm pushed him on to take the next step--a very slight impulse suffices for that on a downward road.

“Why, sir,” he said, trying to speak with careless ease, “it was a little affair between me and Dunsey; it’s no matter to anybody else.
 
It’s hardly worth while to pry into young men’s fooleries: it wouldn’t have made any difference to you, sir, if I’d not had the bad luck to lose Wildfire.
 
I should have paid you the money.”

“Fooleries!
 
Pshaw!
 
it’s time you’d done with fooleries.
 
And I’d have you know, sir, you
must
ha’ done with ‘em,” said the Squire, frowning and casting an angry glance at his son.
 
“Your goings-on are not what I shall find money for any longer.
 
There’s my grandfather had his stables full o’ horses, and kept a good house, too, and in worse times, by what I can make out; and so might I, if I hadn’t four good-for-nothing fellows to hang on me like horse-leeches.
 
I’ve been too good a father to you all--that’s what it is.
 
But I shall pull up, sir.”

Godfrey was silent.
 
He was not likely to be very penetrating in his judgments, but he had always had a sense that his father’s indulgence had not been kindness, and had had a vague longing for some discipline that would have checked his own errant weakness and helped his better will.
 
The Squire ate his bread and meat hastily, took a deep draught of ale, then turned his chair from the table, and began to speak again.

“It’ll be all the worse for you, you know--you’d need try and help me keep things together.”

“Well, sir, I’ve often offered to take the management of things, but you know you’ve taken it ill always, and seemed to think I wanted to push you out of your place.”

“I know nothing o’ your offering or o’ my taking it ill,” said the Squire, whose memory consisted in certain strong impressions unmodified by detail; “but I know, one while you seemed to be thinking o’ marrying, and I didn’t offer to put any obstacles in your way, as some fathers would.
 
I’d as lieve you married Lammeter’s daughter as anybody.
 
I suppose, if I’d said you nay, you’d ha’ kept on with it; but, for want o’ contradiction, you’ve changed your mind.
 
You’re a shilly-shally fellow: you take after your poor mother.
 
She never had a will of her own; a woman has no call for one, if she’s got a proper man for her husband.
 
But
your
wife had need have one, for you hardly know your own mind enough to make both your legs walk one way.
 
The lass hasn’t said downright she won’t have you, has she?”

“No,” said Godfrey, feeling very hot and uncomfortable; “but I don’t think she will.”

“Think!
 
why haven’t you the courage to ask her?
 
Do you stick to it, you want to have
her
--that’s the thing?”

“There’s no other woman I want to marry,” said Godfrey, evasively.

“Well, then, let me make the offer for you, that’s all, if you haven’t the pluck to do it yourself.
 
Lammeter isn’t likely to be loath for his daughter to marry into
my
family, I should think. And as for the pretty lass, she wouldn’t have her cousin--and there’s nobody else, as I see, could ha’ stood in your way.”

“I’d rather let it be, please sir, at present,” said Godfrey, in alarm.
 
“I think she’s a little offended with me just now, and I should like to speak for myself.
 
A man must manage these things for himself.”

“Well, speak, then, and manage it, and see if you can’t turn over a new leaf.
 
That’s what a man must do when he thinks o’ marrying.”

“I don’t see how I can think of it at present, sir.
 
You wouldn’t like to settle me on one of the farms, I suppose, and I don’t think she’d come to live in this house with all my brothers.
 
It’s a different sort of life to what she’s been used to.”