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Home -> George Eliot -> Silas Marner -> Chapter 9

Silas Marner - Chapter 9

1. Part I, Chapter 1

2. Chapter 2

3. Chapter 3

4. Chapter 4

5. Chapter 5

6. Chapter 6

7. Chapter 7

8. Chapter 8

9. Chapter 9

10. Chapter 10

11. Chapter 11

12. Chapter 12

13. Chapter 13

14. Chapter 14

15. Chapter 15

16. Part II, Chapter 16

17. Chapter 17

18. Chapter 18

19. Chapter 19

20. Chapter 20

21. Chapter 21

22. Conclusion







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."

"Not come to live in this house? Don't tell me. You ask her,
that's all," said the Squire, with a short, scornful laugh.

"I'd rather let the thing be, at present, sir," said Godfrey. "I
hope you won't try to hurry it on by saying anything."

"I shall do what I choose," said the Squire, "and I shall let you
know I'm master; else you may turn out and find an estate to drop
into somewhere else. Go out and tell Winthrop not to go to Cox's,
but wait for me. And tell 'em to get my horse saddled. And stop:
look out and get that hack o' Dunsey's sold, and hand me the money,
will you? He'll keep no more hacks at my expense. And if you know
where he's sneaking--I daresay you do--you may tell him to spare
himself the journey o' coming back home. Let him turn ostler, and
keep himself. He shan't hang on me any more."

"I don't know where he is, sir; and if I did, it isn't my place to
tell him to keep away," said Godfrey, moving towards the door.

"Confound it, sir, don't stay arguing, but go and order my horse,"
said the Squire, taking up a pipe.

Godfrey left the room, hardly knowing whether he were more relieved
by the sense that the interview was ended without having made any
change in his position, or more uneasy that he had entangled himself
still further in prevarication and deceit. What had passed about
his proposing to Nancy had raised a new alarm, lest by some
after-dinner words of his father's to Mr. Lammeter he should be
thrown into the embarrassment of being obliged absolutely to decline
her when she seemed to be within his reach. He fled to his usual
refuge, that of hoping for some unforeseen turn of fortune, some
favourable chance which would save him from unpleasant consequences--
perhaps even justify his insincerity by manifesting its prudence.
And in this point of trusting to some throw of fortune's dice,
Godfrey can hardly be called specially old-fashioned. Favourable
Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices
instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man
of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his
mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him
from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside
his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and
he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a
possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a
possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming.
Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will
inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone
may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray
his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning
complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend
will never know. Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue
the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him,
and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance,
which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil
principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by
which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.




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