The lonely plough

It was dark when Brack got in, pitch-dark and blowing the very roof off the world. He found his housekeeper slumbering peacefully in the kitchen, with a bottle of gin peeping coyly from under the table. He shook her into some measure of wakefulness, but coherence was beyond her. Ay, Lup Whinnerah had called, sure enough, and kept her yammering in a draught fit to blow the flesh off her old bones. “Message? What-like message? Nay, now, master, ye said nowt o’ t’ sort! T’ lad didn’t bide long or say much neyther, barrin’ he’d happen look in later. Ay, he’d a manbody o’ sorts wi’ him, but I don’t mind who. It was ower black.”

She had let out a screech at first sight of the dripping figure with haggard cheeks and staring eyes, and even after he had thrown off his coat and emerged as the elegant, somewhat ineffectual master she knew, her fear of him scarcely lessened. He told her to make him some tea, shooting out sharp questions as she dragged to and fro, and swearing helplessly at the maddening vagueness of her replies. When the tea came, he drank it black and strong, and ate nothing, sitting at the table with his wet hands locked, the flying firelight on his white, strained face and drooped shoulders. At every fresh blow of the gale he started, and more than once he went to the door to peer into the dark, looking for Lup’s form on the step, and returning breathless from the fight with the entering storm. As the hours wore on, he could not sit still even for a few minutes together, but was forced to pace the flags, straining and listening, his restless eyes on the banging windows and the shaking rugs, coughing as the wind in the chimney drove great clouds of smoke into the room. The housekeeper had fallen asleep again, taking no heed of his mutterings as he passed continually behind her.

The stock was safe, anyhow, up in those far pens. Were they doing anything at Pippin?—Pippin, on the very edge of the sand, hobnobbing with every tide that ran in? Probably they were all gallivanting off to the “Duke,” eating and drinking with that Lancaster-worshipping fool from Watters. Was Lup there, too, blind and deaf to the call of the storm? and, if not, where was he? That was the torturing, unanswerable problem. He’d never have come to Thweng, though, if he hadn’t thought something was up—why, he would never have left Liverpool at all! What had that old hag really told him? She might easily have given him the message, after all, and forgotten all about it. If he had gone straight to the Pride, Brack would certainly never set eyes on him to-night. If, on the other hand, it was true that he meant to call again, he might be here, any minute. Should he wait, or should he go himself? God! What was that? A fresh, tearing roar from the gale drove him to a scream that brought the old woman leaping out of her happy, drunken sleep. He was struggling back into his coat, trying to control himself. It had only been the wind, after all.

“I’m off out again!” he threw at her, tying a scarf over his mouth to keep the force of the air from choking him. “Come and bar the door after me, and if you don’t stop awake with your eye on that fire, you’ll sure be cinders in hell by to-morrow morning! Do you take me? And if Lup’s round again, tell him I’ve gone to the Pride!”

It took all their united strength to force the door back when once it was open, and after the bolts were shot, the old creature sank on the floor, shaking with long, sobbing breaths. She could not hear what direction the master took, nor catch the note of the car as it turned out presently through the yard. She could only hear the song of the wind as it swept up from under the door in a maniac scream, playing over her crouching form like the gust of a thresher’s flail.

Within the cheer of Ladyford, the storm seemed of less account, and there was no tide yet, washing at its foot, to add the sinister dread of live water close at hand in the dark and a flying gale. They had known many a night as wild, though none worked to such a pitch in so short a time; yet the women looked anxiously at the clock, and wished Michael safe back from the “Duke.” He had turned out again reluctantly—nothing but an urgent business-matter to be put to Lancaster would have dragged him to Sandwath—and would have a bad time, coming back. It was nearly midnight, now. He should be home before long behind a horse who knew his road like a homing pigeon; yet in the warmth and jollity of the “Duke” the wildness without might pass unfelt. Mrs. Dockeray fidgeted, sighed, set the kettle boiling, stole a look at her daughter and sighed again.

Michael had told them of Lup’s return, and, between the three of them, thrash it out as they might, they could make nothing of it. He seemed anxious about his folks, but that hadn’t prevented him stopping the night at Lockholme instead of coming on to the far marsh. He’d no call to be anxious, either, unless some busybody had been writing him lies. Happen he’d taken boggle at the big ship and the far-off country, but that wasn’t like Lup, who had always found the hardest thing in life to be turning back or changing his mind. Happen he was home-sick, or just taking steck and no more; happen, and happen to it. The riddle would not read, any way round.

Left alone, for young Rowly was in bed with a foot sprained on the shore the night before, the two women dropped the subject like a split egg, and wondered in silence, the mother glad and relieved, the girl resentful, though longing. She knew now how the dead ache of parting had weighed her down, but she had no welcome for the knowledge. She did not want him back, to begin the struggle again, yet hungered for the sight of his face. Thinking he could not leave her, she despised his weakness, yet fretted because, having returned, he had nevertheless stayed at the last mile.

He would not come in as he had come with Michael so often, wet but cheery out of the night, filling the house with a sense of safety, and stealing the fear from the storm. Yet it might have been, if she had not willed it otherwise. She might have sat in another house, too, listening and longing for her man, and have had Lup come back to her and her alone. But that also she had rejected. She had put the dream from her for always, but to-night it came every hour, passionately and insistently real, though never in all her life was it to come true on the Northern marsh.

Going to the window, as the two of them had gone by turn for the last hour, she saw blinding lights climb up the dark to the porch. They were too strong and too low-set for the lights of the trap, as she thought after the first instant, and even as she called to her mother, Brack burst in at the door. He looked distraught enough in truth as he stood with his shoulder to the panel, the rain shining on his tossed, uncovered hair, his brilliant, frantic eyes scouring the kitchen as he asked for Lup.

Mrs. Dockeray exchanged a puzzled glance with her daughter.

“Lup? Ay, Michael said he was back, setting all Witham gaping, but he’s never got the length of Ladyford. He’s to bide with Denny, isn’t he, after the supper at the ‘Duke’? We’re not looking for him to-night. Whatever’s set you seeking him here?”

“I thought he’d sure come right out.” Brack turned as if to go. “No, I’ve never put eyes on him myself. I just reckoned I’d look in on the chance.”

“Have you heard what’s brought him?” she asked curiously, and he shook his head impatiently. There was scant time for talk, and less use. She pressed him to a warm drink before leaving, but he refused; then turned again, blurting out quick speech.

“Guess I’ll trot on to the Pride! It’ll be bad going, but I reckon I can get the car most there, even to-night. She’ll come back smart enough, anyway! I promised Lup I’d keep an eye on his folks, and I’ve heard say the old woman used to funk the tide something cruel. Guess she’ll be scared out of her skin, to-night! If I can get them to move, will you take them in?”

She stared again. This was not like Brack—this unnecessary consideration and struggle for others. She was amazed, too, at his agitation, the terror-stricken eyes that would not meet her own, and the ghostly echo of lightness over hollow fear.

“Why, Whinnerahs need never go wanting as long as there’s Dockera’s, that’s certain! But they’ll be to bed a while since, lad. You’ll never stir them. They’ll not feel the wind over yon like us here. The Lugg’ll break it a good bit. You’re never really feared o’ the Lugg, as they make out? What, it stood yon storm as tore up the front at Bytham, an’ t’other as broke Cunswick Pier, ay, an’ many more! It’ll stand to-night an’ all.

“You’ll never get Martha off the spot!” she added, laughing.

“I must! I must!” Brack beat his clenched hand on the door. “Guess you might come along and help.”

“What? Me?” She laughed again, but with less heartiness. Brack was so strange, so daft. “Nay, I’d have all the breath out of me afore we’d reached the first gate! Stop here, lad, and make yourself easy.”

Francey stepped forward suddenly. Mad or no, Brack had made her afraid.

“I’ll go!” she said. “We’d be happier with them here at Ladyford. Anyhow, we can see if they’re all right and not anxious.”

Brack gave her no time to retract, but thrust her roughly into a wrap close at hand, paying no whit of attention to motherly protests, and had her out in the yard before she had drawn the streaming ends of her scarf around her head. Scrambling over her to his seat, he bade her crouch on the floor for protection, for the rain made the screen worse than useless, and, moreover, he was afraid for it against the gale. In the whirling dark he dared not reverse out, so set the car head on to the gateway, trusting to luck to turn her in the open road. With the wind behind her, she took the slight gradient free like a greyhound, and he threw in the clutch at the bottom just in time to save her mounting the sea-wall. Then, with infinite trouble and labour on the narrow track, he wrenched her head round into the storm, the gale fighting him all the time. Brack had done many a pretty piece of driving for the impressing of his friends, but to-night both vanity and pose were as far from him as the black gulf of heaven above. Straining and gasping, he pulled round on his road with a sob of relief, not even conscious of the crouching girl at his feet.

Then began the struggle out to the Pride, the engine biting its way yard by yard through the opposing force, often almost stopping, as an extra weight of air drove upon it, but always gallantly picking up again. Brack had learned to see through slashing rain, like most drivers, but this torrent of wind and water made as though it would hurl him off the face of the earth. With numb hands he kept the car on the road by some sense that seemed outside himself altogether.

Francey, with her head buried on her knees, feeling the striving engine growing hot and hotter beneath her, and Brack’s feet moving beside her, wondered what tremendous motive could have brought them both to this shared nightmare. She remembered the former occasion when he had asked her to drive with him, and she had refused, little dreaming of this that lay before. In the comparative tranquillity of Ladyford it had seemed easy to talk of going over to the Pride. On a reasonable day it was no more than fifteen minutes’ walk. To-night, behind a powerful engine, it seemed as far away as Whitehaven.

She had little hope of persuading the Whinnerahs, and, indeed, dreaded for them the shock of this sudden midnight descent, but at least they would know that they were not unthought of at their lonely post. Did Brack really think that the Lugg might go to-night? She remembered all the tests it had passed, triumphantly as Wythebarrow itself. She thought of the gale that had overthrown the Whitehaven express in the dead of a black night on the viaduct crossing the sands. The fury and passion of that tempest had left the Lugg untouched, as had many another. Why should Brack fume and fret and struggle to reach the lonely house on the farthest marsh? And—still more—why should she have joined forces with him? Her heart gave her the answer. She went to carry the news of Lup’s return. Whatever they might say, however puzzle and condemn, how glad they would be over the main fact, the three of them together, father, mother and lover!

The road ceased suddenly, and they were on the grass-grown trail leading to the Pride, the wheels squelching and sticking on the sodden land; and at once, by the lessened force of the wind, they knew the Lugg to be risen at their left hand. They were still swept and buffeted, but not with the pitiless malignacy of the open, and the run along the difficult waste was accomplished in less time than that on the metal. So thick was the darkness, however, that they did not raise the Pride until practically at its door, and saw a warm-eyed window peer unblinking into the immeasurable solitude. Through the unshuttered pane they could see Wolf and his wife at either side of the hearth, staring into the red cavern of magic and memory that was built between them. The light of it fondled the old faces and shot along the walls, turning steel to silver and copper to gold, drawing the deep blues out of the china, and chasing itself in molten streams along oak and stone. Only the fire and the dogs stirred in that absolute, happy peace of reaching back. The latter were plainly uneasy, lifting themselves out of sleep with pricked ears; and at intervals the older dog laid a wistful muzzle on his master’s knee and cried softly. Then Wolf would set a hand on its head without look or word, and it would sink back to the hearth, yet keeping its questioning eyes on his dreaming face. It was a curious picture to be seen in the heart of a waste that should by rights have been covered with rolling billows, and to the watchers it had the effect of a tiny gem on the mourning folds of a widow’s robe, of a lost star in an illimitably shrouded heaven.

Brack’s knock broke the peace like a hammer, and through the wind they heard the dogs bark, springing, bristling, on guard. Wolf came presently to the door.

He let them in at once when he knew them, for talk without was impossible, but they found more bewilderment than welcome waiting them.

What, for the land’s sake, had brought them out on such a night at such an hour, scaring folks out of their senses? Brack, exhausted with his fight, was almost speechless, but Francey broke into the kitchen with her woman’s wit alive and ready.

They’d been worrying about them at Ladyford, she explained quickly. They felt lonely, somehow, with Ninekyrkes at hand empty, and their old friends such a way off. It was the first wild night for many and many a winter that they had spent so far apart. Brack had been calling with his car, so she’d taken it into her head to come along with him to have a look at them. Father was down at Sandwath, at Mr. Shaw’s supper, or he’d have been over himself. And there was news, too, clamouring to be out.

Kneeling between the dogs and spreading her cold fingers to the flame, she told them of Lup’s return, startling the whole neighbourhood by its apparent lack of reason. Brack fidgeted in the background, chafing to get at their chief cause for coming, but she checked him with a look. There was only one way of working to that.

Wolf dropped back into his chair, clinging to his stick, interrogation, wrath and wonder stamped out in turn by unwilling and sharply-suffocated joy, but the old woman said nothing, smiling and staring on into the fire. She did not even look surprised, Francey thought. Had she summoned him back at the last moment? How strange and reasonless it all was! And what would be the end?

Catching Brack’s agonised glance of entreaty, she went on hurriedly, laying her hand on the mother’s knee.

Lup was at the hotpot with Denny, but there was more than a chance Michael would bring him back to Ladyford. He’d never get out to the Pride to-night on foot, and he’d be wearying to see them. Wouldn’t they venture the short run in Brack’s car, in the hope that he might turn up? Her mother was looking for them, and with the wind at their back they’d not be more than five minutes on the way. Like as not, they would find Lup waiting on the doorstep. They must wrap up warm, and with the dickey seat they could manage, somehow. She could sit on the step.

She got no further than that, for Wolf growled her into silence with the utmost fierce contempt, having battered down his first delight. He was like to gang scuttering off to meet yon wastrel as had ought to be well loosed out o’ dock by now—ay, wasn’t he! He’d see him strung afore he stirred a foot on such a night to reach Ladyford or any spot in the kingdom! The news could well have kept while morning. They might have spared themselves their trouble, and the sooner they were away and back at home the better for all concerned. Mrs. Whinnerah stared and smiled.

Brack broke in, then, bursting into a torrent of entreaty and command.

“I’ll not leave you! I’ll not stir without you! You’re sitting here snug and asleep, putting your trust in your one-eyed Lancasters, and you’ll drown in your trust like rats in a trapped hole! But it’s up to me to see you don’t. I’ll hike you out, with or without your will. I’ll get a move on you in spite of you!”

He seized the old man by the shoulder, but Wolf shook him off, striking at him furiously with his heavy stick. Then he turned to the woman, stammering, hysterical, almost weeping, his voice rising in desperate appeal.

“You know what’s coming! I guess I needn’t tell you! You know what the tide’s bringing, ’way out on the dark sand! You hear it, same as I do, what it’s seeking, what it sure means to have. It’s all in for the Lugg to-night, and yet you’ll set your life and his to foot the account, just to make good on a Lancaster’s word, a Lancaster’s honour going plum to hell for ever and ever and ever——”

He stuttered into silence before the smiling dreadfulness of her eyes on his working face, and, when he stopped, she turned them again with complete and horrible definiteness to the fire. Wolf staggered to his feet, the dogs close at his knee, half-crouched to spring. Across Brack’s hand where he had struck him the blood showed in a vivid streak.

“You’ll say nowt agen the Lancasters under this roof, Bracken Holliday! We all ken the trouble you’ve made on the marsh, and the tales you’ve set agog about the Lugg and the old master; an’ I tell you now, if it’s with the last breath God Almighty puts into my mouth, that they’re every one on ’em lies! The Lugg’ll last many a long year after us as saw it built, an’ many a year after such as you an’ all; just as the Lancasters’ honour will stand, an’ their word an’ their righteous judgment, long after the likes o’ you is mouldered away an’ forgot.”

He tottered across to his wife and held out his hand for hers.

“Wilta bide wimma, Martha?” he asked in a dropped voice, and she looked up at him, resting her gray head against his sleeve.

“Ay, lad, I will that!” she answered, in the same tone of rarest intimacy, and he remembered in a lightning-flash how she had spoken those very words, in just that way, to his rough courting of long ago.

Cursing and sobbing, Brack tore out into the night, calling to Francey to follow, and after a last look of pity and pain she obeyed, the tears rolling down her cheeks. In that moment all her theories and doubts and surface convictions went by the board. Before her eyes she saw made manifest the one thing that holds human life safe and unafraid against all the unknown terrors of the dark, and knew that to end it thus with Lup, her hand in his, her cheek against his arm, was to have for ever all of the very best that God could offer.

The car went back as rooks go home on a slanting gale. More than once Brack felt her slide up and off the bank, on the other side of which lay the waiting sands. And, as they fled, with the tempest-roar in their ears, above it and behind them they heard the voice of the coming tide.

Over the telephone, Hamer had offered to motor Lancaster to the “Duke,” and the latter had accepted, adding that he would walk to Watters by the short cut. Driving home from Witham, his mind had been so deep in ruts of law that he scarcely noticed the increasing violence of the sinking day, but when he left the house again about seven o’clock he was appalled by its gathered strength. He wished now that he had asked Hamer to send the car round, but the Lane would soon take him, and he would be sheltered under the tall hedges. Knowing the road so well, he carried no light, and consequently stumbled into Dandy in the pelting dark, feeling her way home in a state of abject misery. To his astonished questioning she made answer in a voice very close on tears, and she was more than a little cross. She had had a trying experience, and even her beautiful temper had snapped under the strain.

“I’ve been losing myself!” she explained, conscious of sopping boots, clinging skirts, rat-tail hair and tingling fingers, from which she had long since cast away ruined gloves. He could not see her here, but he would certainly see her in the hall at Watters, and though, out of all heaven and earth and any other stray universe, he was the one and only person she wanted, she naturally used him as the whipping-boy of her pent-up wrath and distress.

“I’ve come from Wild Duck. Harriet had gone to Witham—perhaps you saw her—so I went over to have lunch with Wiggie, and as I knew the car would be out again to-night, I said I’d walk back. It’s not so far, and I meant to be home long before dark. However, Harriet was late in coming in, and I didn’t like to leave Cyril alone with Stubbs (the nurse was resting, and Stubbs talks him to death), so tea was over before I got away. It was still light, then, but very wet and blowing hard, so Harriet told Stubbs to see me home, and we started off, but we hadn’t got far before he announced that he wanted to call at Rakestraw. He’d got it into his head that it would do Wiggie good to go out in a bath-chair, with himself to push, and he knew they had a bath-chair at Rakestraw, which he meant to borrow. I asked him if he couldn’t go some other time, but he said no. No time like the present was his motto. It had been his father’s motto. In fact, it was in the family. Always in the family. I said that Wiggie might not care about a bath-chair, but that, if he did, Father would hire him the latest pattern from Manchester, but he wouldn’t hear of that; and when finally I suggested that he should go chair-hunting by himself and let me go home, he wouldn’t hear of that, either. He said that, coming from a town, I must naturally know all about bath-chair charges, and he would want me to tell him what to pay if he couldn’t get it borrowed. If I wouldn’t help, he’d have to call for advice at the ‘White Lion,’ so for Harriet’s sake I went. The Rakestraw people dug the chair out of the barn, and said they’d be delighted to lend it, and Stubbs was so overjoyed that he started practising on it at once, with Newby’s daughter as passenger. He’d evidently forgotten all about me, so when I was thoroughly tired and chilled to the bone I slipped out, hoping he’d go on practising until I was safely away. Unfortunately, I took the wrong turning and had to ask the road, as I didn’t dare to go back. A boy told me to keep on up the ginnel, and I’d strike a gate opening on to the main road, so I rushed on without taking much notice where I was going, until I’d lost the farm and everything else as well. It was getting dark, by then, and every bush looked exactly like every other bush, and I suppose I went on walking round them, as I never found the gate at all. I ginnelled and ginnelled and ginnelled and ginnelled, but nothing ever ended anywhere. I found all sorts of glades and walls and little woods and streams I’d never seen or dreamed of before, and that I’m perfectly sure are not there at all in the daytime, but there was no way out. I felt just as if I were bewitched, and all the bushes seemed like little stunted men jeering and leering; and when it got quite dark I was properly lost altogether. I was just getting ready to die and deciding what I meant to say about Stubbs at the Judgment, when young Newby ginnelled up and found me. He’d thought he’d seen me wandering about earlier, and was anxious in case I was really lost, so hunted me up. He wanted to bring me home, but I knew he’d to get down to the ‘Duke’ by eight o’clock, so I wouldn’t let him. He’d only just gone when you caught me up. They’ll be out of their minds about me at Watters, and I shall probably die there if not in the ginnel; but even if I don’t, I mean to file that Judgment Bill against Stubbs!”

It was certainly quieter in the Lane, so that Lanty was able to catch most of her troubled story, and though he sympathised warmly, and reviled Stubbs heartily, he could not help laughing, too, and when he laughed she felt hurt, and wetter than ever.

“I’m frightened of your horrid country!” she said miserably. “I’m sure there was something queer about it to-night, anyhow. I felt as if it were playing cat and mouse with me, and watching me run round and round and yet never out of reach. Don’t laugh! It laughed at me, too—I could hear it—and the wind set all the bushes catching and clawing at me as I passed. Young Newby says it’s going to be the worst storm for years, and that he’s very glad he’s farming inland—not on the bay. He says that, after midnight, if it keeps on, the marsh will be holding to its hair!”

A chill not of the striving elements came over Lancaster. For the first time he thought of Brack since Hamer’s call on the wire. Where was he to-night? He had prophesied this storm, and prayed over it. Was his madness really about to be justified? He would know by the time he got down to the “Duke.” If Brack was there he needn’t worry, though of course he wasn’t doing anything so absurd. But if he wasn’t there? Bluecaster too; not a sign of him all day. Well, to-morrow he would laugh at all this! In the meantime, he heard Dandy speaking again. He had made no answer to her last words, but had merely gone on splashing beside her without offering to help her, probably with his head full of some stupid farm-person she had never heard of. She thought him more unkind with every minute that passed.

“It will be dreadful at Watters to-night, if the wind keeps up!” she went on presently. “I shall lie awake all the time, and shiver and shake. Watters just purrs in a wind! You’d think it liked to feel its joints cracking and its slates flying and the big trees threatening it on all sides. It isn’t frightened an atom, but I am. I never remember being frightened at Halsted. I wish we were back there. I used to think I was getting to love the country, but now I’m almost sure I hate it!”

In her vehemence she stumbled into the side, and when he had picked her out again they could see, grown accustomed to the dark, the straining blackness of a giant tree beyond the still, black break in the hedge.

They could hear it groaning, too, above the storm, and, in the sense of fearful battle and pain, felt it as the impotent writhing of a soul in hell. In this his Lane, where the magic set his fancy at full play, Lancaster wondered what the soul really felt, the impotent, lost soul? As Dandy had said, there were strange things abroad to-night.

“I doubt the old shippon at Pippin will never stand,” he said absently, thinking all the time of the soul, and scarcely for an instant of the shippon, and started when she uttered a sharp little sound of misery and contempt.

“I’m sorry, but may we go on? No doubt it is very important, but I’m afraid I’m too wet and tired to care!”

He begged her pardon instantly, and then, because behind the shippon had been all his anxious thought for the men of the marsh, “You don’t understand,” he added quickly. They were the opening words of much that he wanted to tell her, seeking comfort from her and strength; but she could not know that, and she did not wait to learn.

“No, I do not understand!” she said passionately.

“I am an outsider, and you always take care to make me feel it. Very well. I will remain outside. And I do not wish to understand.”

They trudged on in silence, and after she had again walked into the hedge he offered her his arm in a detached voice that might have come from the nearest stump. She took it without answer. On her wet cheek the wind could tell no difference between salt tears and the rain.

In spite of the weather and the busy season, the men turned up fairly well at the “Duke,” making light of their wet drive. Some of the elders were absent—Holliday of Pippin, for one; but his sons were there, and Dockeray’s arrival from the far marsh was greeted with applause. He drew Lancaster into conversation at once, and, almost immediately after, attention sprang to Denny, leading in Lup with the swagger and importance of a hen with a single chick. The latter met the general curiosity with the defensive imperturbability he had shown all day; only, when Lanty came to him wondering, he asked for Brack. He saw the agent start, and the eyes of the two men met in a dumb perplexity, almost as those of trapped creatures walked stubbornly to the same snare. But neither Lancaster nor anybody else knew anything of Brack, save his late church-going mania, though they had plenty to say about that. As they sat down at the long table, his name was shuttle-cocked from mouth to jesting mouth.

It was just about the time that Brack burst in at Ladyford that Bluecaster came into the “Duke” and opened the supper-room door. The warm air was full of light and comfort, smoke, fellowship and song. The “Duke” stood well protected by the surrounding buildings, so that the storm was not only shut out, but forgotten. His lordship came to the head of the table and shook hands with Hamer. At the far end, Lancaster stood up.

Bluecaster looked round the assembly with his shy, appeasing smile. His face was rather pale, but his voice was even quieter than usual.

“Are there many sheep out on the mosses, to-night?”

After the first stare of wonder, anxiety rolled like a wave from one face to another, each looking into each and back again to his lordship, and then the answers broke round the table: “Twenty in t’ lower meader—fourteen on t’ middle moss—nay, I’ve all mine penned—seventeen—ten—why, what’s the stir? Storm’s nowt, is it?”

Holliday’s lads got up and looked at the door, remembering the precious stock on the lowest land of all. Other men followed their example. Only Lup sat on, with his eyes fixed on Lanty.

“The tide is for one o’clock,” said Bluecaster. “The wind may bring it earlier. It will be a big tide.”

He said no more, but the room emptied as if by magic, the men jerking their good-nights over their shoulders as they went on.

“You will forgive me?” the intruder said to the host. Outside, he motioned Lancaster into his car.

“Pippin!” he ordered, “and——if we can get there,” he added, under his breath. The agent looked at him.

“Is it coming?” he asked.

“It is here,” said Bluecaster.

As Brack caught the dread sound that had risen so often through his tortured dreams, he uttered a cry of such agony that Francey shrank beside him. Thrusting her out at the gate of Ladyford, he leaped after her to the ground and stood straining into the dark over the sea. Then suddenly he began to run in the direction from which they had come, gasping and beating against the air in a fresh effort to get back to the Pride. But before he had gone a hundred yards, he saw ahead of him, towering over the Let, a white mountain of water as if the whole of the tidal wave had swerved and mounted its barrier. On a screamed prayer he turned and raced for his life with the monster behind him, and, as he reached the gate, a galloping horse and rocking trap burst past him into the yard, a flood also at its heels. The water poured after them up the slope, and above the shriek of the wind they heard the roar of the full tide as it swung on and past to the top of the bay.

In the kitchen, the frightened women and the roused hands were busy moving food and valuables as the sea came in at the door, until presently it was standing two feet deep on the flags. Michael and Lup (for they had driven together) came in at the back after they had stabled the horse, and a short consultation was held in the larder, raised by stone steps above the level of the kitchen. Brack had sunk into a kind of stupor in a corner.

“The banks are giving on all sides!” Michael said, as the household crowded round him. “We were near caught time an’ again as we came along. The water kept bursting through behind us before we were barely clear. The marsh-road’s gone—ay, an’ the main road an’ all, I doubt! There’s a gap like the mouth o’ hell just below there where we galloped in. The Let’s going all round the marsh, but the Lugg’s not gone yet!” He looked at Lup, rigid and silent, and went on slowly. “I feel somehow we’d know right off if the Lugg went.”

Young Whinnerah nodded. He had not looked at Francey since he came in, nor attempted to question Brack. The time for wonder was past.

“I must get out, some way,” he said. “I must learn if they are safe. Happen it’d be possible back o’ t’ house, over the land. Which of you’s game to come along?”

They were all game—no question about that—and the women made no protest. Storm and tide were no new things to the folk of the marsh, and in this case friends of tried worth were in peril out in the night. Brack dragged himself up, and joined the rest as they furnished themselves with sticks and splashed across the yard to the drier land. He had done his share already, but that did not keep him. His car was sunk in a swirling torrent, but he never thought of it. Through the web of conceit which had sealed his heart to his kin, there had sounded at last the call of the clan.

They formed a human chain and groped, with the big sticks scouting before them, in imminent danger all the time, and more than once utterly bewildered and all but lost. Wading often to their waists, trapped by deep holes, by wire fencing wrenched into sunk snares for their stumbling feet, blinded, dripping, breathless and stunned, buffeted by the wild gusts and clouds of spray beating in through the mighty breaks in the bank, they yet held on until there seemed to stretch before them a limitless expanse, and knew that the floodgates at Ninekyrkes must have smashed. For long enough they tried to get round, but in vain, and at last, in the same perilous fashion, they struggled back to the house. All over the marsh men were doing the same, risking their lives for news of each other’s safety, or in attempts to rescue stock, counting it all as just so much in a bad day’s work.

In the big bedroom upstairs, the women had lighted a fire and set food, and called the weary band to it. Michael, the old man, heartened himself to hearten the rest.

“The Lugg’s standing,” he said more than once. “I tell you we’d know right off if the Lugg went! It’ll hold its own as it’s always done. It’ll win through this lot an’ all.”

And Brack held his peace.

At the Pride the fire sank a little, and the dogs grew more restless with every five minutes that passed. The clock on the stairs struck half-past one, and Wolf stood up stiffly.

“Time we were abed,” he said.

She looked up at him for a minute without moving. She would have preferred to stay where she was, gleaning a little false assurance of security from the red coals, but, after all, what difference could it make? She raked out the fire after her usual custom, and Wolf turned the lamp to a dying flicker and lighted the bedroom candle. The whittering flame caught their son’s eyes looking down under drawn brows from the mantel, and they stared at him together in silence. At that very moment Lup was fighting to get to them in vain, and all the way his heart was saying the same words: “Wait of me, Mother! Wait—wait!”

There was no change in the wildness of the night; only, upstairs, it seemed more apparent. The frightened dogs scratched and howled at the bedroom door until it opened, when they fled under the bed and lay shivering and whining in mortal fear. The old clock beat steadily on the stairs. A shrieking gust tore at the window as the old couple knelt at the bedside for their evening prayer, but they were not afraid. In the little kitchen, Love had wrapped them round with a golden moment from the past, but here a higher angel spread protecting wings.

The roar of the night increased suddenly in volume, and after it there came the special voice that had called the whole trembling marsh to listen—the voice of the sea. And, as if listening also, in the middle of its steady swing, without whirr or warning, like the last, soft, never-repeated breath of the gently-dead, the clock stopped.

His lordship’s car never got to Pippin.

About one o’clock, old Willie woke as if a finger had touched him, and struck a light. He had barely flung on his clothes before the tide had leaped the bank and swung round the farm like the turning flow riding a stranded yacht. By the time he had roused his wife and daughter, the water was in the house, half-a-dozen feet on the ground floor and climbing the stairs. The elder woman crouched on the bed and wept for her best parlour furniture, bumping below like rocked boats anchored aside; but Holliday thought of his prize beasts drowning in their pens, of his ewes choking in the fields, and—lastly—of his lads racing home against the sea. Would they trick the tide? And more—if saved themselves—would there be any home at all for them by morning?

He guessed what had happened. The river Wythe, semi-ringing the farm, had been in flood all day, and, meeting the driven tide, had flung terrific pressure on the whole of the marsh banks. Here and there they had quickly burst, letting the tide through, and Pippin had been taken in its first stride. From the top of the stairs he watched the water, wondering how long it would continue to rise, and listening to his wife’s lamentations over the parlour carpet. He let her alone, though he knew all the provisions in the house were gone, and that they were cut off from help on all hands. What he did not know was that in the bank outside was a gap a quarter of a mile wide, but if he had known he could have done nothing. He could only watch the water creeping up.

His daughter came out to join him, and leaned a second light over the sliding, heaving enemy below. When it had passed by six inches the Great Tide-Mark on the stairs, recording the big storm of his childhood, he remembered suddenly how he had denied his nephew in the flooded room below. Brack had said this would come, and they had none of them believed or cared.

Now the water was three stairs from the top. Stooping, he could touch it. Each stair was a foot wide, and the black water over the black oak seemed to hold the depth of the bottomless pit. When it reached the third step it stayed as if uncertain, listening, waiting for some ghostly order from without. The light gleamed along the yard of shining baluster rising from the well, lending a silvery whiteness to Holliday’s bent head, and the shimmer of gold to his daughter’s drooping plaits. With strained, almost inhuman faces they leaned above their doom, waiting, as the water waited, for a fate that hung in the balance. And at last, after incredible years, something happened. Holliday let out a hoarse cry that rang through the house, and father and child, staring into each other’s eyes, read the same flashed message of sickening horror and passionate relief. The tide had dropped a foot in sixty seconds.

They fell on their knees, shuddering, and Holliday spoke.

“T’ Lugg’s brast!” he said. “Whinnerahs is done. T’ Lugg’s brast!”