The lonely plough

It was a strange and fearful world that lifted its mangled face to the growing day. The wind was still blowing, but with less violence, and the rain drifted in a kind of desultory fretfulness between the weary grays of earth and sky. From all the districts round folk had come to see what the storm had made of the marsh, and the wreck of Lancaster’s Lugg had sped on wire and rail through the country. On all hands men were at work saving what they could of the remnant of stock; here, a sheep crawled on a fence within a few inches of the reaching water; there, cattle still deep in it long after noon had struck. Pippin Hall was completely surrounded, but friends had crossed the swollen river with food, and from an upper window Holliday asked shakingly for news of the Pride. Pippin had lost almost everything it could lose—ewes, new lambs, calves, poultry, stacks, turnips, mangolds, carts—and had half a ruined house to top the account. Only, by some miracle, the prize beasts had been saved. Standing up to their necks, half a mile from dry land, they could only be approached by boat, and the difficult and dangerous rescue extended far into the afternoon. Poor Denny had lost a valuable horse as well as half his flock. Nearly every farm had suffered with its sheep, and the “dead, woolly things” of Brack’s prophecy covered the marsh.

On the sea-roads the water rose level with the hedges all day, and, when it left, the scars of the land crept shudderingly into sight. Great holes five and six feet deep where had been metalled surface, uprooted fences and railings twisted like cord; and everywhere dead things, rabbits, hares, poultry—and always sheep. The peaceful, cared-for country lay broken and horribly disfigured, as if by the riving hands of a maddened giant.

And over it all—gray; the gray of desolation, of cowering shame, of finished defeat and despair.

Lancaster stood in the wet kitchen at Ladyford, and stared at his wrecked world. He looked utterly changed, years older, stunned and almost wondering, like a man struck from empty skies. His face and hands were blue with cold, and his wet clothes clung to him soddenly. Before him he could see the Lugg heaving out of the clearing sands, and the Pride still girthed in flood—guard and trap, betrayer and betrayed. In the room above him he could hear footsteps, hushed and slow. The Pride had given up its dead that Ladyford might take them in.

Lup was dropped at the table with his head on his arms, and opposite him Francey stood stiffly, white as the new scrubbing-stone on the hastily fettled hearth. When Lancaster turned from the window with a definite movement, Whinnerah lifted his face and looked from him to the girl. So, to the slow music of the hushed steps, they stared at each other, the three who had sent the proud old couple to their doom.

“They went on my word!” Lancaster said at last, in a curious voice. “I wonder if they forgave me before they died?”

“They went because of me!” Francey put in passionately. “They could have stopped at Ninekyrkes, but I drove them out. They went because of me.”

And though he was right, she was right, too. Far away, far back had been sown the seed of this trouble, when an upright, loving pair had put their savings to the bettering of their only girl.

But Lup denied them both with a sharp gesture full of the dignity of possession.

“They were my folk—not yours. If I’d stopped, they’d be here to-day. They were my folk, and I drowned them!”

And he also was right.

Yet Lancaster, listening, knew that from the leader and not the led is toll exacted, on the head and not the hand is judgment passed. This debt was his, this judgment his. The two had been but tools in the carving of his fate.

He saw Lup sink back, and Francey fall to her knees beside him, and he went out and shut the door. They would mend their broken lives together, but he was alone.

Michael ferried him to a point from which he could reach an untouched road by means of climbing fences and skirting meadows. The day was fading into quiet and dusk with the death-exhaustion more terrible than the height of wrack and pain. The trouble that was passing was physical, rending the body and stupefying the mind. The trouble that followed was the still, corroding trouble of the soul.

Behind him the Lugg, broken monument and draggled standard. Behind, the Pride, tomb of more than human flesh. Before him, Pippin, with the water still at its door, and the stretch of ruin around. With the marks of the long hours upon them, agent and tenant parted on the soaking grass.

“Don’t fret yourself overmuch, sir!” Michael said earnestly. “It had to happen. It was nobody’s blame. It had to come.”

And all across the marsh he met men who said the same, men spent with giant exertions, who had lost heavily, and saved even their lives only by sheer good luck.

“It had to be, sir! It’s bad, but it might have been worse. If the Lugg hadn’t given, the whole of the top marsh would ha’ went, and that would have settled a deal more folk than just two. There wasn’t room for a tide such as yon. Why, it was like to have taken the whole Wythe valley! It wasn’t anybody’s blame. Who would have looked for such a flood, and that sharp like? The Lugg had been a smart bit of framing, and had done its best. There were volcanoes and such-like abroad, ready to brast up any minute, but that didn’t stop folk building nigh ’em. With luck, the Lugg might have stood another fifty year. It was nobody’s blame.”

And not one of the well-meant words lifted the load an atom, or carried a shade of comfort home. It had been his choice, and he had chosen wrong; his team, and he had pulled the wrong rein. This thing had happened in his time, this record would be written against his name. The cheering words went with the wind. And as he turned for the last time to look behind, seeing always the faces of the newly dead, there came over him a hard rage against the man who had tied his hands with his plans and his pride. He cursed his father as he stood on the wrecked shore, and in that loss of faith fathomed the darkest depths of all.

His circumambulatory journey took him past Thweng, and, done though he was, a sharp impulse turned him to its door. Within, he found Brack and Denny, and, seated at the kitchen table, Bluecaster.

For more than a dozen hours he had forgotten Bluecaster completely. They had lost each other in the dark, and had gone to help, one at one farm, the other at another. He had thought of the whole matter as his own, and wondered at himself now even while he clung to the thought, for here was the real master. Yet, had Bluecaster ever been master? Again, as at Ladyford, he recognised that always the leader paid.

“You knew?” Denny was saying, half-fearful, but resentful and distressed. “Nay, you’re just getting at us! You couldn’t know.”

“I did know!” Brack answered wearily. “Guess I might as well tell the table, though, for all the understanding I’d get. I played myself out trying to make you see square, but there was no getting past that bleat of yours about the Lancasters. Well, I reckon you’ve got your head in your hands, this time! Keep to your bleating and see what you’ll get, next. Seems to me folks that don’t bleat aren’t wanted any on Bluecaster—folks with their eyes skinned ahead. For I knew—that’s sure!” He paused suddenly. “And his lordship knew!” he added.

“No,” said Bluecaster.

Brack swung round with a piercing look and opened his lips, but Bluecaster kept his eyes steady with an effort. Lanty stepped into the room.

“I thought you’d have been gone long since, my lord! They’ll be getting anxious at the House. Can you drive us home, Thomas?”

Denny turned with quick gladness on his poor, troubled face.

“Ay, that I can, sir, though I’ve lost the best horse in my stable!” He reached out and laid a hand on Lanty’s arm. “There’s folks, sir—none so far off, neither—as say the Lugg ought never to have been built, folks as think ’twas pride as put it there and pride as kept it there. But there’s other folks as say the Lancasters may build a score o’ Luggs an’ drown the lot of us; an’ the fust on ’em’s Thomas Cuthbert Dennison o’ Lockholme!”

He hurried out, leaving Brack staring curiously after him.

“What’s the cinch you’ve got on ’em all?” he asked at last. “What’s the receipt for making blind, boot-licking fools of thinking men, setting them kissing your feet and your kid gloves? How have you fixed these kow-towing cranks on the marsh?”

Lancaster came forward to the table.

“There’s only one tie, Brack, between man and man, that will stand a week, and that’s just simple faith. You think we’re out of date up here because some of us still trust each other, still hold a man’s word as his bond, unbacked by a Government stamp. You think that folks should trust themselves and nobody else, should keep looking out all the time for other folks getting ready to do them. Now, I tell you, who have seen my own faith go down to-day—I tell you, it is better to keep trust and be betrayed—ay! better even to betray trust in keeping trust, than never to have trust at all! What you knew, you knew of yourself; it could not help us. We at the helm had to take our chance, and failed. Do not doubt that always, and in every way, we shall pay.”

A flush came into Brack’s haggard cheeks. He gave a short laugh of pure nervous excitement. He straightened himself. His elegance came back to him. You looked instinctively for the Trilby and the S.-F., though both had been swept out to sea. He stepped in front of Lanty, clicking his heels together, and flinging up a hand in salute.

“Mr. Lancaster, you’re great!” he exclaimed, at his most colonial. “You’re the real goods, all the way. You’ve got me, any time you like. I’ll take a top line, please, in that drowning-list of yours, along with friend Thomas Dennison!”

He gave the same nervous laugh and went out. But, as he went, he cast one last keen and curious glance at the young man at the table.

“Sit down, won’t you?” Bluecaster said. “Dennison will be some little time yet. You look thoroughly done up.”

Lanty took the chair opposite. They were both tired out, but there were things yet to be said, things that might never be possible, perhaps, on any other day but this.

“I spoke for us both, my lord. If I took too much on myself——”

Bluecaster lifted a hand.

“You have always had to take everything. It isn’t the first time. I have never helped you. Do you think I don’t know it?”

“That’s not true!” Lanty answered warmly. “How could I achieve anything without your consent? In the end, everything comes to you, and you’ve never hindered. There’s no better landlord in the kingdom.”

“It’s easy to be kind without lifting a finger; easy to agree to a judgment you know to be right; but there’s a final responsibility that is mine and mine only, and that I’ve never faced. In this matter of the Lugg, for instance——”

There came to Lanty a memory of the meeting at which, with a single look, Bluecaster had passed the fate of the bank into his hands.

“Of course you couldn’t know!” he exclaimed incredulously. “That’s only Brack’s raving. But”—he stopped suddenly, stared, stammering and half-rising—“you don’t mean that you agreed with him, thought the Lugg ought to go—did not trust it, all the time?”

Bluecaster bowed his head without reply.

“You thrust the problem on me, convinced in your own mind of the one right course—bade me answer for us both, unjust as it was, biased as you knew I must be, certain that my answer would not be yours? I took it that you had no opinion, could not and would not choose. For that reason only I stepped into your place. Have I failed so far in my duty that you dared not set your will against mine?” Doubt assailed him, the fearful doubt besetting the strong of the unconvincedness of the consenting weak. “My lord—was it that?”

“No, it was not that,” said Bluecaster.

“It must have been! I thought you wanted help—but it was that.”

“It was not that!” Bluecaster spoke very firmly. “Sit down again, man, and listen to me. We’re neither of us fit to see very clearly to-night, but I want to get this said. You’ve never bullied me—don’t worry your head about that. You’ve been the stronger man, that’s all, and you’re suffering for it. It’s always unfair on the servant to be the stronger man. But sometimes”—he smiled his pleasant smile—“sometimes, Lancaster, old man, the master is jolly glad of it!

“I’d always thought the Lugg might be a menace to the top marsh. The neck of the bay is so narrow—it used to look to me as if the Lugg was choking it. And, like Brack, I’ve seen storms—one does see things knocking about as I do,” he added half-apologetically, the idle, rich traveller to the home-keeping worker. “And the reclaimed land always made me creep a bit. It looked so—well—snatched! I’ve a fear of the sea, although I’ve been out on it so much in all sorts of cockle-shells. It always has something in hand. You may trick it, but it generally gets its own back in the end. And though I know all the marsh has been fought out of it, yard by yard, it seemed to me to have a queer kind of grudge about the land behind the Lugg. I’d have been glad to see it go, and that’s the truth! But then—your father had built it, and I’d been brought up on the things your father did. They used to call him the Big Man of the North. He said the Lugg would stand, and it did, long after he wasn’t there to see that it was doing as it was told. Then you came—as good a man as your father—yes!—and said the same thing, and I kept quiet. All the marsh knew my opinion wasn’t worth the flick of a whip against yours. If I’d touched the bank, they’d have taken it that I meant to slight you, and I would have cut off my head rather than do that. See?”

He smote the table suddenly with his clenched fist.

“God! What a liar and a coward I am! That’s all lies—you know it, don’t you, Lancaster?—no—not lies, perhaps, but side-issues. The truth is, I was afraid, as I’ve always been afraid when it came to a big shove. I shirked having to speak out, having to decide, so I put it on to you. I knew you wouldn’t be afraid, that you would take the straight path as you saw it. I knew you’d shoulder things for me, as you’d always done. You must have despised me often; and yet I don’t think that, somehow. But I’d despise myself more than I do if I didn’t feel that they’ve given me overweight to carry—the powers up above that fix our place for us down below. I wasn’t meant to handle men. It isn’t my job. I shouldn’t have been slung up like St. Simon what’s-his-name on his pillar. I was cut out a quiet, retiring, harmless individual with a taste for sailing and rather a good eye at tennis, and I’m expected to be a symbol, a father-confessor, general caretaker, referee and prop of the State! I haven’t been any of all that except in spurts. You’ve had to be it for me; but in the end it all comes back to me. It’s slated down to my account. The responsibility’s mine. It isn’t that I don’t love the place and the people, and the feel of it all belonging to me, but those of us who stop to think what it means are paying for it all the time, even chuckle-headed idiots like myself. Do they never realise—these men who are always going for the landlords—that power and place have to be paid for, and in bitter coin? It all looks so easy from the outside; but it’s loading a horse a ton too much, setting a seasick chap to furl the tops’l, when it comes to poor beggars like me!

“But you’re clear in this,” he added presently. “The final responsibility’s mine, as I said. It’s I who will have to face the music for those lost lives when the bill comes in.”

Lancaster shook his head without lifting it from his hand where he had leaned it, listening.

“I took the responsibility from you. I need not have done it. I could have refused it. But I didn’t refuse. This is my work.”

And, as at Ladyford, so here, he saw clearly that, in every crisis, one particular soul holds the scale. Bluecaster was right, as Lup and Francey had been right, but there was a more stringent law beyond. The words that had haunted him all day came back to him now with redoubled force. “It is always one man’s work—always and everywhere.”