“Well, I’ll fix no more hotpots till I get the weather ruled to order!” Hamer sighed. “I suppose the Lugg’s broken its back out and out? I saw a paper in Manchester. Those poor old souls at the Pride! I met Dennison, just now. He said Whinnerah was set on going there. You’d no choice but to let him have it, had you?”
Lanty thought a moment. There had been choice, perhaps, at the very beginning. He hardly knew; so swift had the hour of forced decision come upon him.
“They made it the test of my belief in the Lugg,” he said. “If the storm were to-morrow instead of yesterday, I would still let the cottage to-night!”
“Then you think you were right about the bank? You don’t blame it—you still think it justified?” Hamer stammered, taken aback.
For the first time Lanty turned and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Shaw, I’ve got to think it! If I didn’t, I should shoot myself. I’ve got to believe, in spite of everything, that the thing had a right to its existence. I’m not of the class that judge their fathers. I was brought up to see mine as the standing emblem of right thinking and right doing, and though out on the marsh I lost my bearings awhile and forgot it, I found my faith again here. This was his house, his office, his desk. There’s his face above it. Even now the place seems almost more his than mine, and, sitting here, I know what he saw, feel what he felt.” He laid his hand on the paper. “This is the full account of the building of the Lugg—how it was opposed and condemned, and finally sanctioned, fully sanctioned by expert authority—yes, and praised and copied! My father had the right to take the risk, both for himself and for posterity. That’s the faith I lost—and regained. The success was his. The rest—the failure—is mine.”
Hamer shook his head.
“The world won’t agree with you, my boy! It will say you had no chance, that you were bound to stand by your father’s work. It will place the fault with the man before you.”
“It will be wrong! It isn’t that I don’t believe in inheritance, in reaping and sowing from one generation to another. I’ve seen the dragon’s teeth come up too often for that. We’re bound both before and behind—I admit it all the way. Thinking of a race, from father to son, I always see—what is it?—‘the lean, locked ranks go roaring down to die.’ We’ve a hand in more fates than one. But, in spite of that, I hold that a strong man wins out on his own—wins out, or goes to the wall. There’s no other self-respecting creed. This thing fell to me. Judgment is due on me. I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Each of us in his little day represents all the rest, and in his own person stands by what he reaps. I say, I wouldn’t have it otherwise!” And he said to the father as he had said to the daughter in an hour of sympathy forgot. “It’s our job while we’re on to it. It’s our job while the light lasts, to make the best of it we can. It’s always one man’s hand on the lonely plough.”
After the long silence, Hamer rose.