“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.