THE LONELY PLOUGH
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=JOHN BARLEYCORN= JACK LONDON
=THE TEMPLE OF DAWN= I. A. R. WYLIE
=BREADANDBUTTERFLIES= DION CLAYTON CALTHROP
=THE PLAYGROUND= Author of “Mastering Flame”
=ANDREW AND HIS WIFE= THOMAS COBB
=LITTLE FAITHFUL= BEULAH MARIE DIX
=JETSAM= VICTOR BRIDGES
=PATIENCE TABERNACLE= SOPHIE COLE
=THE WEB OF LIFE= (New Edit.) ROBERT HERRICK
=GRIZEL MARRIED= MRS. G. DE HORNE VAIZEY
=THE LONELY PLOUGH= CONSTANCE HOLME
=THE PRIDE OF THE FANCY= GEORGE EDGAR
=SHOP GIRLS= ARTHUR APPLIN
=BURNT FLAX= MRS. H. H. PENROSE
=AN ABSENT HERO= MRS. FRED REYNOLDS
=HER LAST APPEARANCE= A. NUGENT ROBERTSON
=ENTERTAINING JANE= MILLICENT HEATHCOTE
=THE PROGRESS OF PRUDENCE= W. F. HEWER
=THE MAGIC TALE OF HARVANGER AND YOLANDE= G. P. BAKER
=THE PLUNDERER= ROY NORTON
=KICKS AND HA’PENCE= HENRY STACE
=HAPPY EVER AFTER= R. ALLATINI
=SARAH EDEN= E. S. STEVENS
=GAY MORNING= J. E. BUCKROSE
=COPHETUA’S SON= JOAN SUTHERLAND
=THE RELATIONS AND WHAT THEY RELATED= MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS
=HIS GREAT ADVENTURE= ROBERT HERRICK
=ONE MAN RETURNS= HAROLD SPENDER
=THE MUSIC MAKERS= LOUISE MACK
THE
LONELY PLOUGH
BY
CONSTANCE HOLME
AUTHOR OF “CRUMP FOLK GOING HOME”
“It is always one man’s work--always and everywhere.”
KIPLING.
MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON, W.
_Published 1914_
TO
THE PEACE-RULERS
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I ACROSS THE DUB 1
II THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--I. DUSK 12
III TROUBLE 26
IV THE TROUBLE SHAPING 42
V THE TOOL 50
VI HAMER’S HUT 54
VII THE TROUBLE COMING.--THE GREEN GATES OF
VISION:--II. MORNING 63
VIII NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 77
IX THE UPPER AND THE NETHER STONES 89
X TERROR BY NIGHT 102
XI THE TROUBLE COMING.--THE GREEN GATES OF
VISION:--III. MOONLIGHT 106
XII THE REAL THINGS 122
XIII HAMER’S FIRST TRAM 137
XIV THE OLD ORDER 150
XV THE BEGINNING OF THE END 175
XVI SPURS TO GLORY 184
XVII THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--IV. DARK--THE
LONELY PLOUGH 196
XVIII HAMER’S SECOND TRAM 203
XIX UNDER THE JUNIPER-TREE 216
XX WIGGIE’S FIVE MINUTES 232
XXI THE TROUBLE COMING 256
XXII COMING 266
XXIII COME. THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--V. THE
OUTER DARK 275
XXIV MOTHERING SUNDAY 296
XXV ONE MAN’S WORK 297
XXVI HIS SILLY HOME 306
XXVII THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--VI. SWEETHEART-TIME 325
XXVIII HAIL AND FAREWELL! 344
THE LONELY PLOUGH
CHAPTER I
ACROSS THE DUB
He felt very old.
Older than the old face at the table before him, than the office
furniture, which had been there before he was born, than his father’s
portrait over the desk; older even than the tulip-tree bowing its
graceful head to his window. Very old.
They said the tulip-tree blossomed no more than once in a hundred
years. It was an ancient tree, biding its time as ancient things may.
But Lancaster felt older even than that.
It had been a trying day. Helwise had made it trying, to begin with.
She had come down to breakfast in a black print flickering with white
spots, and a whirlpool frame of mind, grievance after grievance
spinning musically to the surface, only to be submerged again in the
twinkling of an eye. In the intervals of digesting a troublesome
correspondence, he found himself flinging life-belts of common sense
after long-sunk bits of wreckage, gaining nothing but an impulse of
helpless annoyance and a growing dislike for the flickering spots.
Helwise was his aunt and housekeeper, and though she could add nearly a
score of years to his thirty-seven, the weight of time lay infinitely
lighter upon her shoulders than on his; perhaps because she twitched
them so gracefully from under every descending yoke. Her delicate face
and softly greying hair gave the impression of a serene mind and a
fading constitution, and if you were not, vulgarly speaking, up to
snuff, you ran and did things for Helwise that Helwise ought to have
been doing for you, and she always let you. But the serenity was sheer
illusion and the constitution was tough. Closer inspection found her
racing through life with the objectless hurry of a cinema express. She
shimmered along a permanent way of mazy speech, and when you lived
close to her you were always breathless and hurried, and the air was
never quiet. She had the aimless velocity of a trundled hoop, and
accomplished about as much.
Various printed notices drifted across the table on the rippling
and bubbling of worries. She had a passionate habit of joining
societies in all capacities, from President or Secretary to General
Bottle-Washer, of getting herself appointed on innumerable county
committees. As Lancaster’s aunt she was considered “the right person,”
and as Lancaster’s aunt she took it for granted that his fingers
should straighten the tangle of her ensuing bewilderment, and make her
trundling path smooth.
He glanced through the circulars quickly, folding them neatly and
adding them to his own collection. He was very business-like in his
movements. The sheep and the goats of his correspondence were separated
right and left; each envelope had its pencilled name and date; while
the more important took cover in an elastic band and an inner pocket.
His brown hands were methodical and deft; his weighing eyes implied a
steady brain; his glance at the clock showed a sense of routine always
alert. He was haste without hurry, while she, like the picture-train,
rushed wildly and got nowhere.
A business-man born and made, you would have said of Lancelot
Lancaster, not of stocks and shares or rustling parchments, but an
acute, sound man of the land, a lean, light, open-air man, often in
the saddle, with no aim beyond a clear-sighted judgment of terms and
tenants, nor any desire more whimsical than a steady prosperity. It
was only when you looked at his mouth, with its hint of patience and
repression, of longing held in leash and idealism shrouded like a sin,
that you wondered if he was not, after all, only very well-trained.
Yes, Helwise had been particularly trying at breakfast. Her post had
required a lot of explanation, and his own had included a letter
from Bluecaster, one of the kindly, idiotic letters at which Lanty
smiled and swore in a breath. There was also a second letter (which
of course he had read first) totally contradicting the other; and at
the bottom of all had been one from the London solicitor, telling
him (unofficially) to take no notice of either. Bluecaster’s agent
pencilled patient comments on the three unnecessary epistles.
He had spent the morning with a prospective tenant who had seemed to
take a gloating delight in raising difficulties which would never have
so much as occurred to anybody else; the type of sportsman who goes
house-hunting for the sheer joy of pointing out to the lessor the
contemptible disabilities of his property. Getting back for lunch at
the usual time, he found that Helwise had had it early and eaten most
of it, afterwards cinematographing off to some meeting at least an hour
too soon; and the afternoon had seen him harried from pillar to post by
an inspector who kept telephoning trysting-places and never turning up.
Helwise was having tea at her meeting, so there was none for him unless
he chose to order it, and just as his hand was on the bell, tenants of
standing had arrived, wanting him. It was really the tenants who had
made him feel old.
Facing him at the office-table, Wolf Whinnerah had the light full upon
his fierce old face, with its sunk, dark eyes and thatch of silver
hair. He was over seventy, but until recently he had carried his
years with an almost miraculous lightness. Now, at last, however, the
rigorous hand of Time had touched him suddenly, breaking him in a few
weeks. Pneumonia, during a trying season, had carried him very near
the grave, and though he had fought his way back, he was nevertheless
a beaten man. The strong bones of his keen face showed their clean
lines under his furrowed skin. His height was dwindled, his step grown
uncertain, his grasp weakened, his sight dulled. The end of the things
that mattered had come to old Wolf Whinnerah.
His son--his only child--sat between the other two men, with his back
to the fireplace. He had the mountain colouring, for all that he had
been bred on a marsh-farm--the dark hair, and the gray eyes that have
the blue of mountain-mist across them, the dale length and breadth,
too, and the long, easy, almost lurching swing in his walk. And he had
the slow, soft, deep, dale voice, and its gentle, distant dignity of
manner.
He sat, for the most part, looking at the table, while his father laid
his case before the agent. It was a case that put himself hopelessly
in the wrong, but he kept his mouth shut, and stayed undefended. He
had learned to keep his mouth shut. Argument with Wolf generally led
to something perilously near unharnessed battle. He was over thirty,
now, and during all the years he had worked for his father he had
never had a penny’s wage. He had been kept and clothed, like a child,
had tips for treats doled him like a child, and like a child been
ruled in all his ways. He did not resent it; there was no question of
injustice, since it was the custom in his class, and only slowly was
it drawing towards change. But it kept a man his father’s property in
a way curiously patriarchal and out of date to an outsider, making
paternal authority a mighty weapon, and filial independence a strange,
iconoclastic crime.
“Yon’s the way of it, sir!” old Whinnerah finished, leaning back in
his chair, and spreading the long fingers of his knotted hand along
the table, opening and shutting them slowly, as if they levered the
operation of his mind. “I’m done, and the farm must go; and if the lad
won’t take it on, as he says he won’t, why, then, there’s nowt for it
but I must go an’ all!”
He looked down at his hand as he spoke, and clenched it, for it was
trembling. The other men looked at it, too, Lancaster with regretful
eyes; but the younger glanced away sharply, and set the line of his
mouth a trifle closer.
“It’s bad hearing!” the agent said at last, seeing that the son did
not mean to speak. “You’ve been at Ninekyrkes so long, you Whinnerahs.
Naturally we like to keep the farms in the family, if it’s a family
worth having. We’d be more than sorry to part with you--you don’t
need telling that. Can’t you see your way to stopping on a bit longer
yourself?”
The old man raised himself painfully to his feet, looking indeed like a
grim old wolf, with the last yard of pace run out of him, and the last
ounce of fight gone from him. His name he owed to a family tradition
tracing a connection with Hugh Lupus of the Conquest, through his
sister Lucia. Wolf’s son had the name in its Latin dignity, long since
distorted to everyday use.
“I said I was done, Mr. Lancaster! You’ve eyes in your head as’ll show
you, right enough. Yon time I was down such a terrible while, a year
come Martinmas, that finished me, or I’d have likely been good for
another nice few years. But I can’t carry the whole farm, now. I must
give it over to a younger pair o’ hands. Not that I’m grudging that; it
comes to all of us, in the end; but I’m rare an’ sore they’ll not be
Whinnerah hands, Mr. Lancaster! The lad’s set on going abroad, as I’ve
told you. He says he’ll not bide. I could have done a bit on the farm
along with him, even yet--odd jobs to earn my board and keep my old
bones warmed, but wanting him I’ll have to quit for good, and see other
folk of another breed in the old spot. It’s not what I looked for, sir,
not what I meant, and I’ll take it hard. I’ll take it hard!”
He lowered himself shakily back to his chair, and his hand slid out
again on the table, opening and shutting, opening and shutting. Lup
did not move, nor did his mouth alter. There came a second silence.
“Well, you know your own business best, of course,” Lancaster said
presently, wondering what lay behind; “but surely”--he turned to the
young man--“surely you don’t really mean leaving us? There has never
been any misunderstanding either on your side or ours that I know of.
My father thought a lot of you all--that’s old news, isn’t it?--and I’m
of his mind. What’s making you quit, Lup, just when you’re needed most?”
Lup looked at the table and his father’s hand.
“I can’t stop, sir,” he said, respectfully but quite definitely. “I’m
sorry if it’s putting folk about, but I reckon I’ll be better suited on
the other side o’ the dub.”
“Canada?” The agent smiled and frowned. “Come, Lup, we can’t part with
you, and that’s the long and the short of it! They’re taking too many
of our best men, as it is. I don’t want to preach, but doesn’t it seem
to you that it’s your duty to stay with your father as long as he wants
you?”
“Happen it be,” laconically.
“Then, for every sake, man, stop!”
“Nay, I’ll not.”
He shut his mouth again, and Lancaster looked across to the father with
a half shrug, then slewed on another tack.
“It’s a good farm, and you’ve done well by it. There’s money behind
you, and money before you, which is more than a deal of folk can
say. You’ll find nothing like Ninekyrkes, over there. Hasn’t it any
memories for you? I don’t mind laying you’ll find it tug pretty hard on
the other side!” He paused, and tried again. It was a very one-sided
conversation. “I understood you were thinking of getting married--that
there was to be a wedding on the far marsh. Do you propose taking the
lady with you ‘across the dub?’”
The blood flamed over the set obstinacy of the dark face, but died
instantly.
“I’ll not bide!” he said again, and that was all.
A wave of hysterical revolt broke over the dispossessed at his side.
Wolf’s self-command was never of a lasting quality, and it had been
very sorely tried.
“Nay, but I’ll not have you gang!” he cried, shaking from head to foot
with the terrible effort of finished age forcing its will upon dogged
youth and strength. “You’ll stop till I’m in my grave and through an’
by with my job for good! You’ll be quit of me _then_, right enough,
and free to set about any daft-like scheme you choose, but I’m not
under the sod yet, and I’ll see you do as you’re bid. I was a fool ever
to hark to you! I should have said nay and nay to it from the start.
It’s not so long since I could have broken my stick across you, an’
I’m not feared of you, now. Am I like to be feared, d’you think”--a
sneer edged his quivering voice--“of a fool as can’t stick out a bit
of a disappointment, as gets sneck-posset from the lass he’s after,
and bides door slapped in his face without so much as shoving a foot
inside? Nay, I’ll tell you what it is, my lad! she cares nowt, I tell
you--nowt----!”
He stopped, for Lup had risen to his feet and bent towards him, so that
over the table the two dark faces almost met, and before the steady
anger of his eyes and locked lips even old Wolf was stilled. Lancaster
felt the swift current of hatred and bitterness flash between them,
sensed the passionate resentment, puzzle, and pain. Then Lup turned on
his heel and went out.
“I’ll be yoking up, sir,” he threw over his shoulder as he disappeared,
and presently they heard his long, unhurrying tread across the cobbled
yard.
“What’s the trouble, Wolf?” Lancaster asked gently, as the clatter
of hoofs and the jingle of harness came in through the open window.
“What’s put the lad wrong?”
“Nowt but what puts every lad wrong, soon or late!” the other answered
bitterly, sinking back. “It’s Dockeray’s lass, her as went to boarding
school for a sight o’ years, and come back with a look an’ a way with
her fit to beat a ladyship! Lup was always set on her, ay, an’ she
on him, if seeing’s believing. They’ve been courtin’ this year past
and more, going to singin’-practice an’ pill-gills an’ such-like, and
I’ve never known her give him a wrong word. And then, when it comes
to taking on the farm and getting wed and settling down, she’ll have
none of it! She was at our spot to supper, the night it first come up.
Whinnerahs and Dockeray’s have always been rarely thick, you’ll think
on, living alongside, just them two selves right away over yon. You
could never put a pin between ’em. Well, as I told you, she was having
a bit o’ supper with us when I first spoke. I’d had it in my mind for
long, ever since I was badly, but I’d put it by, time an’ again, and
let it be. Likely I was no more ready than most to be set on the shelf,
but the lad’s getting on, an’ he’d a right to his chance. I’d had a
hard day, too, and it came over me sudden-like as I was done for good,
and in a queer sort o’ way I was glad to be through with it all and
rest, if it didn’t mean quitting. I thought of the old chair in the
corner, and the view of a summer evening, and the sea washing at the
wall, an’--an’ all the other things meaning Ninekyrkes and no other
spot whatever! I’m not saying any man cares to sit by and see his son
master where he’s held the reins, but there was a sort of pleasure in
feeling I’d done with my job. I reckon the Almighty sends you that as
a kind o’ sop, just to keep you from fretting over hard. And so I just
up an’ told them how it was. I said I’d see you, sir, about handing
the farm over, and then I says to Lup, ‘Now, Lup, my lad,’ says I,
‘You’ve been courtin’ long enough an’ to spare, and it’s time you
settled down. We’ll change jobs this Martinmas, an’ you can get wed,
an’, please God, there’ll be Whinnerahs at Ninekyrkes for many a long
year to come. It’s a bargain, lad, that’s what it is! So now, Miss
Francey, don’t you keep him waiting. You be getting your gear an’
such-like together, and we’ll have the wedding as soon as ever you can
make shape to be ready!’ Yon’s what I said, an’ I reckon I put it real
smart, eh, Mr. Lancaster?”--the agent nodded response to the appeal
for commendation--“but happen it was over-smart-like for Dockeray’s
lass! She never so much as coloured up or turned shy, but she round
with her head very slow an’ looked at me that calm--she’s got quality’s
ways with her, sir, as I said, very soft an’ kind, but with something
holding her off at the back--an’ says she, in her whyet voice, ‘And
what’s all that to do with me, Mr. Whinnerah?’ Eh! but I was rarely
bothered just for the minute! When I come to think of it, there’d never
been owt in black an’ _white_, after a manner of speaking. Lup’s not
one for tongue-wagging, you’ll have found that for yourself. For all I
could ha’ sworn to there might never have been talk o’ weddin’ betwixt
’em at all; but they’d been together a deal, an’--an’--why, I’d seen
Lup’s eyes on her acrost table, an’ I’d be like to know, I reckon, when
a Whinnerah’s set on a lass! So after a bit o’ coughing and fidging,
thinking she was happen likely just joking us, I got out as we’d always
taken it as she and Lup was sweethearts.
“‘Happen we be!’ says she, only in quality-talk, and she gives Lup the
sweetest little look sideways as set him shining like the Angel Gabriel!
“‘Why, then, what there’s nowt to find!’ says I, trying not to get
above myself. ‘If you’re courtin’, you’re likely thinking to get wed,
and now’s your time. What’s to hinder? The farm’s ready, and the lad.’
“‘Ay, but not the lass!’ says she, spirity-like. ‘The right time’s my
own time, and I’ll come when I choose!’
“‘You’ll come when Lup chooses!’ I said, fair lossing my temper out an’
out. ‘Tell her that, my lad. Tell her she’ll come when she’s fetched!’
“But Lup just sat there like a half-rocked ’un, glowering at nowt an’
saying less, as he did just now, and then my lady gets on her feet and
has her talk out.
“‘You mean kindly,’ she says, ‘and to be fair and just, but you don’t
understand how it looks to me. It’s the way things are worked, I know.
A lad slaves for his father for years after he’s a man grown, with
never so much as a penny to put between his teeth, and at last, when
the old man’s tired, he gives his son his chance. Round comes the
agent, and it’s, “You’re for getting wed, I reckon? Right!” (if it _is_
right), and the contract’s made. The lass goes into the contract along
with the farm, and along at the beck of the three men to the church.
Well, that’s your way, but it’s not mine, and you may as well know it
first as last. I’ll come when I’m ready, or I’ll never come at all!’
“And with that she took herself off, an’ after a minute Lup up an’
followed her. He didn’t come home while morning--I’ve an idea he spent
the night on the sea-wall--and after that it was Canada. Ay, an’ Canada
it’ll be, sir, and no two words about it!”
He stopped, exhausted, and Lancaster laughed.
“Why, man, you’re worrying yourself for nothing! It’s a lovers’
quarrel--no more. I thought, by the look of you, there was murder in
the wind! Come, there’s no sense in whistling up your own ill-luck.
The girl will be round again at the swing of the pendulum by this time
to-morrow. She’ll pull up to the pole all right, you take my word!”
The old man shook a dogged contradiction.
“You’ve seen Lup,” he said. “You know how far there’s bending _him_.
Have you seen the lass, sir? Nay? What, then----” on a sudden, cheering
impulse--“see here, sir, suppose _you_ put in a word?”
“What’s that?” Lancaster laughed again, amused but embarrassed. “You
want me to tackle her--talk to her nicely, point out what she’s
throwing away? That’s a bit too much to ask, Wolf! I’m not agent for
Bluecaster for that.”
“She’d happen take it from you. She’d ha’ took it from your father, Mr.
Lancaster. There’s a many he’s talked into a right way o’ thinking--ay,
an’ women-folk among ’em!--as is glad and proud of it to-day.”
“Yes, but I’m----” Lancaster looked rather helpless--“well--not my
father, Wolf!”
“You’re your father’s son. What a Lancaster says, goes--with most of
us. You’ll try it, sir?”
“I don’t see how I can. What has your wife to say about it?”
“Something of the same mak as Lup, sir--lile or nowt, an’ nowt most
often of the two. She sticks to it there’s trouble ahead, anyhow, and
it’s no odds what road it travels. She’s got a queer trick of sitting
an’ watching the tide, like as if she’s waiting to see something
happen.”
“But surely she’s tried to make Lup hear reason?”
“Ay, I reckon she has, though she’s never let wit on it to me. He’s
the very apple of her eye; she’s not like to let him go unspoken. But
you’ll have a shot, won’t you, Mr. Lancaster? Do, sir--do now!” The
tone was first wheedling, then wistful. “’Tisn’t only the lad. It means
the farm--to me.”
He looked across at the agent with a childlike trustfulness that was
almost absurdly pathetic, and Lancaster broke suddenly.
“Well, well, I’ll see what I can do!” he said, smiling somewhat wryly,
and went out to help the old man into his trap, a growing feeling upon
him of having seen the curtain rise upon some slow working of Fate. The
dog-cart jogged through the gate, and for a moment he saw Lup’s head
above the wall as he turned his horse towards the marsh. The rap of the
hoofs came to him for long enough, dying and returning, until the last
hill between swallowed them up.
And he felt old.