But he said, with an air of unconcern: 'As you
please; but I'll have a draught of ale first.' And ringing the bell,
he threw himself across two chairs, and began to rap the window-seat
with the handle of his whip.
Godfrey stood, still with his back to the fire, uneasily moving his
fingers among the contents of his side-pockets, and looking at the
floor. That big muscular frame of his held plenty of animal courage,
but helped him to no decision when the dangers to be braved were
such as could neither be knocked down nor throttled. His natural
irresolution and moral cowardice were exaggerated by a position in
which dreaded consequences seemed to press equally on all sides, and
his irritation had no sooner provoked him to defy Dunstan and
anticipate all possible betrayals, than the miseries he must bring
on himself by such a step seemed more unendurable to him than the
present evil. The results of confession were not contingent, they were
certain; whereas betrayal was not certain. From the near vision of
that certainty he fell back on suspense and vacillation with a sense
of repose. The disinherited son of a small squire, equally disinclined
to dig and to beg, was almost as helpless as an uprooted tree,
which, by the favour of earth and sky, has grown to a handsome bulk on
the spot where it first shot upward. Perhaps it would have been
possible to think of digging with some cheerfulness if Nancy
Lammeter were to be won on those terms; but, since he must irrevocably
lose her as well as the inheritance, and must break every tie but
the one that degraded him and left him without motive for trying to
recover his better self, he could imagine no future for himself on the
other side of confession but that of 'listing for a soldier'- the most
desperate step, short of suicide, in the eyes of respectable families.
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