The lonely plough

“Afraid I’ve got to worry you a bit!” Bluecaster began apologetically in his slow, shy voice. He was big and broad-shouldered, with a manner toiling anxiously to meet your approval, and never quite sure of getting there. Yet there was the charm of breeding in his diffident speech and pleasant smile, and under all his patient horror of responsibility was a real desire to do “the decent thing.” He looked at his agent much as a conscientious hound looks at a kind and skilful but strict whip. If you were fond of dogs, you reached out your hand and patted him when nobody was looking, and he licked your hand in return.

“You’ll wonder, I expect, why I never dropped you a line to say I was coming, but, as a matter of fact, I hadn’t meant turning up again just yet. Had to leave the mixed doubles at Sledhammer. Ripping tennis we were having, too—and yet they say we landowners never do anything for our property! But the fact is, I’ve been put out about something, and I wanted to talk it over. How have things been going? Any news?”

Lanty thought of the careful letters he had written at such short intervals, detailed, explicit letters, suggesting, accounting, and wondered how much, if any, of the information had been grasped by his employer. He did not refer to them, however, but gave him the outstanding points of several situations as simply and rapidly as possible. Bluecaster was obviously glad when it was over.

The Ninekyrkes problem, though, had a chapter to itself.

“That’s curious!” he said thoughtfully. “It was about the land round there that I wanted to see you. Nothing to do with the matrimonial mix-up, of course! Very awkward for everybody, the girl cutting up rough like that. I wonder they didn’t call you in, Lancaster! They seem to think you can settle most things.”

“Well, they did,” the agent confessed, “but I wasn’t a success. I think I made matters worse, if anything! There’s no other trouble, though, that I know of, on the marsh. What have you heard, my lord?”

Bluecaster, however, still beat about his particular bush, inquiring after Helwise, the factotum, even the Church Army Van. He always remembered Helwise with little, quietly administered courtesies, though she pestered him to martyrdom when he came within reach.

“I’ve had a letter,” he broke out at last, with a rush. “Yesterday—no, the day before. It’s from a tenant, of course; though when I say of course, of course I don’t mean of course, because they never do write to me, at least, scarcely ever. They don’t need to, when they’ve you.”

Lancaster wondered a little. A sense of coming ill was in the air.

“They’ve a right to go straight to you, if they choose,” he said, “though, as you say, they don’t seem to find it necessary, as a rule.”

“Or much use, either!” Bluecaster smiled shamefacedly. “You’re not so much older than I am, but they wouldn’t give a brass farthing for my opinion against yours. Neither would I, for the matter of that! I don’t believe they ever remember that you’re really a young man, yet. They come to you with all their worries and woes, don’t they?—even the women! You’re the real king of this little, ring-fenced pheasant-run. I’m only a sort of Privy Seal that you carry about on your watch-chain. The tenants know that as well as I do. Half the time they forget my existence, but they believe in you like their prayers—all except this blithering nuisance with his letter.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?” Lancaster was longing for the point.

“Well—that’s just it. I don’t know. But you’ll know, of course. That’s why I say it seems a bit low-down writing me behind your back, so to speak. Still, perhaps he thought it the right thing to do. You see, it’s almost personal.”

“Personal?” Lanty smiled. “You needn’t be worrying about my private character, if that’s the trouble.”

“Good Lord, no!” Bluecaster almost blushed. “Afraid I’m getting mixed and making an ass of myself. But I think you’ll take this rather worse than libel, if I’m not mistaken. Your father did so much for the place. It’s seems such ghastly cheek, calling any of his work in question.”

“Who’s the man, my lord? New, I suppose?”

“Yes, of course. At least, a new freak of an old breed. The others would string themselves up before they’d throw mud at a Lancaster. It’s Bracken Holliday over at Thweng—little tin god in a Trilby and a Studebaker-Flanders. Claimed me as a sort of long-lost brother at Cunswick Races, and seemed to think I was by way of being blessed of the gods in having him on the estate. What made you let him Thweng?”

“He’s old Holliday’s nephew—Willie of Pippin Hall. Willie kept him as an orphaned lad until he cleared out to Canada, and made money there, somehow. He wrote to me from abroad about the farm, and I thought he ought to have his chance. He’s not framing over well, but I’m still hoping the old blood will tell when he’s settled down, and that he’ll find his level after a bit.”

“Not until he’s under the turf, I should say! Well, it seems he’s got a down on the Lugg.”

Lancaster opened his eyes. The surface of his mind scoffed, but in that instant the waiting trouble sprang into existence. In every terrible memory there is always one moment more poignantly lasting than the rest. It is generally the moment when fear first springs. All his life he remembered the tone in which Bluecaster said—“The Lugg”—the plain, leather-upholstered room and its harassed master. Yet he scoffed. He answered with a smile.

“What’s he got against it? Not æsthetic enough for him? Or has he some new patent facing that he wants to palm off on us?”

“Nothing so mild.” Bluecaster lumbered through all his pockets after a letter lying directly in front of him. “It s the old story, of course. He says—where’s the thing got to, anyhow?—that it isn’t safe.” He pushed the envelope across, avoiding the agent’s eyes. “He makes out some sort of a case—but you’ll see for yourself.”

It was not an attractive letter, since courtesy had been left in the lurch by an assurance very different from the dignified independence of the men of the old type. The writer had a good conceit of himself—you could almost have deduced the Trilby and the motor from the over-tall capitals—but in spite of the insolent tone it carried a certain conviction that could not be denied respect. He believed what he said when he called the Lugg a public danger.

“Manners just a shade worse than mine, if anything!” Bluecaster went on nervously. “His penny a week seems to have gone shouting. Still, perhaps we’d better let him down gently, as he’s so worried in his mind. He’s nothing against the Let, of course, but he’s got his knife pretty deep into the poor old Lugg. I wonder what set him raising this view-hullo? It’s in repair, I suppose, and all that kind of thing?”

“I had it overhauled at the end of the bad weather. It’s as good to-day as when my father built it.”

“That’s over fifteen years ago, isn’t it? How the county hummed!—remember? The Let was a pretty piece of work, but the Lugg fetched ’em up all standing. And what a rattling time the old lord had, sitting round and watching while your father ran the thing! He was getting a bit over age for Newmarket and all that, and fighting the sea put him on finely for amusement. People howled, and said it was defying Nature, and so on. The papers kept an eye on it for years, didn’t they? Remember that rough winter, when a lot of them sent reporters down to be ready on the spot when the bank broke, and the old serpent simply laughed at them? Why, Lancaster’s Lugg made the family famous! We’ve never done anything startling on our own account—nothing publishable, anyhow. And now this outsider has the old tale by the ears once more. Give me the gist of what he writes, will you?”

“He says—it opens well!—that nothing but the most inflated arrogance would ever have built the Lugg at all; that the land behind it is a death-trap, while the Pride is a sheer insult in the face of the Almighty. But that’s only the beginning. His main argument is that the forcing of the tide into a narrower channel is a distinct menace to the farms at the head of the bay. (Thweng’s one of them, of course.) He contends that each storm places them in imminent danger, and demands that we break the bank, sacrifice the new land, and give the flood room. (Just the original arguments dug up again.) Failing this, he promises us a tide held waiting in God’s Hand, which will arrange matters so effectually that not only the whole present world but all succeeding generations shall gnash their teeth at us and brand us with shame!”

“It’s a bit rough, isn’t it?” Bluecaster put in ruefully. “Seems pretty intimate Up Above, doesn’t he? Of course, one isn’t such a Borgia as to want to risk anybody’s life or set death-traps, or anything such rotten bad form as that—I’d sooner let the sea suck up the whole blessed income and have done with it—but your father always said the new land would make money for us eventually, and the Lloyd-Georgian era is very expensive. Surely he’s rambling a bit, Lancaster?”

“He’s certainly quite unnecessarily anxious. I can’t understand what has worked him to this pitch. Sounds almost on the verge of brain-fever about it! We had a few words when he took the farm—there may be something of that at the back of it. Sneered at our old-fashioned methods—we’ve scarcely any agreements in writing, you know—and said he was a business-man, anyway, and didn’t trust anybody. Of course, after that, I had everything down with him in black and white. This may be just his way of trumping up a grudge on that account. He can’t really consider the Lugg a danger, in spite of this fervent epistle. It’s stood the test—both ways—for so long. I’ve heard my father say that nothing short of an earthquake wave could take the bank. I’ve heard him swear that the head farms were as safe as Heaven. He would never have risked a yard of the land he loved. My father’s word is good enough for me.”

“And for me!” Bluecaster added bluntly. “It was a big undertaking, though,” he went on, with the recurring nervousness in his voice. “I’d never have had the pluck to broach it myself. The bay does look a bit caught by the throat. I suppose it’s just possible that a heavy flood with an exceptional gale behind it—well, well, that’s all settled, isn’t it? What’s to be done with this man? If he’s worrying, can’t he change farms or something?”

“I hardly think he’ll do that.” Lancaster looked again at the letter. “I can’t help feeling that there’s something more that we’ll get at, presently. Of course, as a marsh-tenant, he’s entitled to a hearing. He might have put his views rather more delicately, but that’s neither here nor there. Will you write him, or shall I see him? And, if the latter, have you any instructions?”

“Oh, see him, certainly!” Bluecaster looked alarmed. “And of course you’ll know streets better than I do what to say. As long as you think the Lugg’s all right, it can’t be wrong. I’ll stop on a few days, now I’m here, in case you want me, but you’ll manage as you think best.” He heaved a sigh, looking away. “I’m glad you’re sure about the old bank! I thought it couldn’t be anything but a false alarm, but one never knows. You do, though! A Lancaster always knows. It’s a jolly good thing for me I’ve a Lancaster to know for me!”

Lanty sighed, too, when he got outside, but it was a little impatiently. Bluecaster was a splendid chap, considerate, generous, reasonable even when he couldn’t see the point, but he so often not only did not see the point but made violent haste to escape it. Difficulties that it was his special province to unravel were transferred from his fingers to his agent’s with the rapidity of cat’s-cradle. He was no support in any problem; generally, indeed, an added factor to the puzzle. In the growing atmosphere of trouble Lancaster longed earnestly for his father.

On the gravel, a thought struck him, and he retraced his steps. Bluecaster was playing billiards by himself, and urged him to have a game. He looked resigned but amiable when Lancaster reverted to the tiresome subject he had thought happily dropped.

“With your permission, my lord, we’ll have the matter out with all the marsh-tenants. There may be something more behind, as I said. Not but what I’m sure they all trust the Lugg to a man, barring Brack. Still, they shall have their chance of speaking, if you’re willing.”

“Of course. Get ’em together when you like. Need I be there?”

“I should prefer it. It isn’t a question for me to handle alone. It wouldn’t be fair to ask me.”

That fetched Bluecaster at once, as he expected.

“Right you are! I’ll not shirk. I say—can’t you really spare time for a hundred up?”

But Lanty couldn’t. He knew that his eye along the cue would see nothing but the wriggling length of the Lugg, and he got away again as soon as possible, calling to the black spaniel that had waited on the drive. He went out through the gardens and across the park, half his mind busy with the new vexation, the other turned, as usual, upon the general condition of the property. Certainly, he had every reason to be satisfied. The gardens were perfect. The old Tudor house showed plainly enough that a keen eye watched its every need. The park, too, had had its special attention. The winding carriage-road was trim and rolled; the fences were in order, the young trees protected against cattle, and the Home Farm adjoining was a model holding. Bluecaster was certainly very well-groomed.

He climbed a hillock crowned by a ring of oaks, from which he could see for miles in all directions, and pride grew in him as he looked. Bluecaster might have done nothing startling, as its owner had said, might have sent no great statesmen or fighters to its country’s service; but it was known throughout the North for its prosperity, its careful management, tempering justice with mercy. Bluecaster tenantry were envied, for, if not pampered, they were always considered, could always find an ear for a grievance. Class-hatred was almost unknown on this particular property, where so much of it ran into isolated dales and along lonely marsh-borders. The balance between landlord and tenant swung sanely and steadily, for both had trust in the hand that held it. Only the agent himself felt the weight of the scales cut deep.

But he had not failed. He had taken hold where his father had loosed, and had kept his father’s standard, stumbling at first, but steadying himself as the years passed. He was squarely on his feet, now. His back was straight. No. He had not failed.

He allowed himself this fleeting moment of satisfaction and warm pleasure; and then the chill of the new shadow crept over him, a cloud like a man’s hand out of the west, where the marsh-farms lay. He must think the matter out, have his words in order before the tenants met. He turned his back on Bluecaster, and sought his Lane of Vision.

The thunder had passed, and there was a bright breeze flickering over the sun-touched fields like the wind of a gaily-flirted fan. Even in the lane little whiffs of it darted at him over the hedges, kissing his cheek and brushing his lashes, and when he reached the second arch, he saw it twinkling like the racing feet of airy children over the new, green corn. But, as under the brooding sky at Ninekyrkes, so here, in the fresh morning, the foreknowledge of evil weighed him down, and in his state of mental weariness, of reaction from years of over-strain, he was too weak to throw it off.

He had known that Bracken Holliday disliked him, and would be glad to wound him if he got the chance. Fresh home from the colonies, with money in his pocket, Brack was a great man in his own estimation, and if not perhaps quite on the same plane as Bluecaster himself, felt at least a perfect equality with the agent. Lanty had shown him plainly that the feeling was all on one side, and Brack hadn’t forgotten it. His acute mind had soon grasped that he could hurt Lancaster quickest through his father, and the fact that he had not had to forge his weapon, but had found it sprung to his hand, had given it a strength vastly superior to any carefully-invented grudge. Lanty’s confidence stood firm, but his opponent’s equal conviction hacked at his faith like a hedger’s bill. Of course it would pass. The meeting would laugh Brack to scorn, and that would be the end of the matter. But for the first time a tenant had openly and venomously questioned his father’s judgment and his own, and it rankled. There rose in his heart the cold anger waked by cruel criticism of our helpless dead.

He could see nothing but the corn through the Second Gate of Vision, not even the towering Mountain, though it had met him as he first stepped within.

The break came under the hill, and over the timber he could touch the land as it rose close, curved above, and then raced away into the pale sky. The grain had reached the moment when it waits the last fiery kiss of the sun; it was still ungilt and tenderly green. The crop was heavy, this year, rich as he had scarcely ever known it. Standing beneath it, he could see how thick it was down at the roots.

Just opposite the gap there was a break in the wheat no more than half a yard wide, a miniature glade that gambolled straight up into the air and vanished. Lanty found himself wishing that he was just six inches high, in a purple pansy coat, red pimpernel boots and a pale primrose cap, so that he might strut along that wonderful bridle-path, and hear what the forest was saying on either hand. He had just decided that the primrose brim should be edged with thistledown, and carry a noble lamb’s-tail bravely dipping down behind, when a lumbering, ebony body, eminently unfairy-like, with lolling tongue and gleaming eyes, crashed through his forest and down his glade, bringing up heavy and panting at his very feet. Behind his shoulder, Hamer Shaw and daughter besought the fat Labrador to return to civilisation as typified by the road. He raised his hat curtly. This girl and her roystering belongings seemed destined to shatter his most precious moments. She would think that he was always gaping into vacancy like the village idiot, leaning over a rotten gate. There seemed so particularly little, too, to see just there, unless you had the seeing eye. As before, he felt annoyed and jarred.

The fat dog was too fat to squeeze, and much too fat to jump, so, stooping wrathfully, he hauled it into the lane, leaving the field much as if an elephant had frisked through it. It greeted its owners with the passionate relief of an explorer escaped from an African bush. Lanty’s silky spaniel stayed decorously to heel.

Hamer had seen him at the sale, and introduced himself, apologising for the Labrador’s behaviour.

“He isn’t used to things yet,” Dandy explained, with a hand on the smooth head. “At Halsted—our old home—he only had town-walks and motor-rides, and behaved like an urban human being. Here, he isn’t quite sure what he is, and he’s trying very hard to find out. He’s not very strong in the upper storey, and he can’t make up his mind whether he’s a retriever or an otter-hound or only a ferret. I don’t know what he thought he was, just now.”

“A reaper and binder, I should imagine!” Lanty answered crossly, and then smiled in spite of himself, conquered by the infectious cheerfulness of Hamer’s laugh. “You’d better see and get him to heel as soon as possible,” he added, severe again instantly, “or you’ll be finding him behind a fence with a plug of lead in him. The Gilthrotin keepers won’t stand any nonsense, and he’d be difficult to miss.”

“You mean he’s too fat?” Dandy asked incredulously. “Of course, he’s better fed than yours.” She looked pityingly at the graceful spaniel, who slapped a fluffy tail against the road, but did not stir. “Grumphy has always had the same meals as ourselves. We never leave him to cooks. Perhaps you don’t care for dogs. Yours seems almost afraid to move!” She hugged the Labrador, who leaned his head against her and snored loudly, while the spaniel slapped again in welcome to one who, if not quite of the right figure, was nevertheless of the only correct shade. “Grumphy doesn’t know what it is to hear an unkind word!”

Hamer Shaw laughed again, this time at the helpless disgust in Lancaster’s face.

“You think he’d be all the better for it, I expect? Perhaps I agree with you, but he’s Dandy’s dog, you see. My little girl knows nothing of country ways yet, but she’ll learn. By the way, sir, they tell me you’ve a lot to do with the fishing, here. I’ve had some trouble over my private stretch of the river, Can you spare me a minute or two?”

They fell into talk, and Dandy, excluded, wandered to the gap and stood looking at the joy-path of her stout trespasser. Grumphy was a dear, but he was certainly also a galumphing idiot. The agent-man would think she was in the habit of taking her walks with idiots. It was only the other day that her variety-troupe had danced through his evening meditation, and now her variety-dog had pranced through his corn.

“It will straighten up in a day or two, with luck,” he broke suddenly into her thoughts, looking with her up the green aisle. “And if it doesn’t, there’s not much harm done. You needn’t put too much blame on your ten stone of dog.”

“I don’t mean to blame him!” she flashed, colouring a little. “Didn’t I tell you he was looking for himself? I’m doing the same, if it comes to that. I shall make mistakes, too. If I’m hard on him, I shall have to be hard on myself.”

“You’ll both learn the quicker.”

“Yes, but we’ve been spoilt—haven’t we, Grumphy boy? We shouldn’t take kindly to the whip.”

“Sometimes the whip is the only teacher.”

He checked himself then, feeling that the intimacy of the gap had misled him. He was in no mood to be friendly, and departed presently with a curt good-bye. Round the turn, he dropped his hand with a faint snap of the fingers, and the spaniel, close at his knee, thrust a gentle nose into his palm, looking up at him with worshipping eyes.

“Starved, are you, old lady?” he asked, with a shrug. “Neglected? Half-cowed? How would you fancy yourself at the Royal, looking like that fat Astrakhan or Saskatchewan or whatever they call it? We’ll give him a bucketing some day over Ewrigg after rabbits. Perhaps he’ll have settled what he is, by that time, unless the keepers have settled him.”

He mentioned the meeting to Helwise, and asked whether she had called yet. It seemed she had not.

“Of course one always does call at Watters, but it isn’t the thing to rush. Five or six months is quite soon enough for really old inhabitants. But I’ve been meaning to go. I was only waiting until the balance-sheet of the Kindness to Kitchenmaids came in. They’ll be sure to give to that, because, if you don’t, it looks as though you couldn’t afford a kitchenmaid, like people who profess they adore walking when you stop to offer them a lift. It was so difficult to find out what they were—the Watters crowd, I mean. One was afraid they might offer one tea in the kitchen—not that one ever does get tea at a first call, but they couldn’t be expected to know that. Still, I don’t mind going, if you think I ought. There’s the Onion-Protesters, too, and the Paper Roses.”

“They seem very decent people,” Lanty answered shortly. “Not by any means savages, as you suggest. I should be glad if you could find time to call, as I have already met the daughter twice, but I shall be extremely annoyed if you ask them for a penny at a first visit.”

“But it’s my duty to get all I can for my societies,” his aunt urged. “I do so despise people who take up causes, and then forget all about them! Let me see—is it one year’s subscription or two that I owe to the Church Army? I suppose you could tell me if I brought you my bank-book? And are you thinking of going to the Roselands garden-party, to-day?”

Lanty said no; he had work on hand, and couldn’t be taken from it; and Helwise thought how snappy he had grown of late, taciturn at meals, and quick to take all her statements awry. It was tiresome when a man began to grow middle-aged and surly. She congratulated herself upon being neither one nor the other.

And Lanty thought of the morning’s problem, and longed to speak of it, but did not. He would receive more consolation from the shut lips of his father’s portrait than from the mindless mouth of his aunt. He could not tell her, but he fancied he could have told Hamer Shaw. Hamer had captured him, even in their brief meeting. He could picture himself laying the case before the big, sane mind, feeling his burden lightened by the big, generous hand. But he knew he would not speak; he had learned to keep silence too long. He would see this through alone, as he had seen many another anxious point. He went into his office, and shut the door. Helwise spent the rest of the day hunting up subscription-lists.