“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!”