RAIN AT LAST
On the following day the heat became almost intolerable. People
went about their work, and got through it somehow, but everything
in nature appeared to be at its last gasp. The farmers had given
up any further hope of a hay crop, and had begun to feel anxious
about the harvest. When night fell the tiny cool breeze that had
sprung up most evenings to refresh the earth a little was
absent--a dead weight was over everything. The Chapman children
were unusually restless, and Tom, tired with his work, grumbled
fretfully as his wife moved about, first consoling one child and
then the other, and rocking the restless infant to and fro. On
such nights as this sleep is well-nigh impossible; and it was
well for Annie that she had the children to attend to, for her
heart was heavy with a terrible foreboding. Merry, careless Annie
was smitten with an unaccountable miserable feeling of coming
calamity. It had been growing and growing ever since Tom had
"taken on" at the well, and to-night it seemed to have reached
its height, and Annie longed most intensely for morning. Never
had a night seemed so long and unbearable.
The vicar, too, was lying sleepless through the long hot hours,
puzzling over the unexpected strike of the well-diggers,
wondering at their folly, and coming very near the truth when he
thought of the changed aspect of many of his parishioners, when
he remembered the averted looks, the nervous salutations that had
taken the place of the ready smiles, the respectful yet friendly
greetings that only a few short weeks ago met him at every turn.
He had really been almost too busy to notice it; and even now he
thought this notion that he was losing his hold on the affections
of the people he lived for and spent his life for was probably a
creation of his own troubled brain, born of the heat and the
anxiety and overstrain of those same past weeks. The rain could
not be far off now, he thought, for all day long the sky had been
overcast, and a steaming, stifling blanket seemed to have been
thrown over everything. As he tossed and fretted the first heavy
drops pattered on his window-sill. It had come--the blessed,
blessed rain--and the long, hard drought was over!
He sprang from his bed and stood at the open casement, listening
with delight to the growing volume of water that splashed down on
to the baked earth and ran off the roofs into the dry, warped
water-butts. He stood there, with the welcome spray leaping up
and shooting into his face and dropping on to his bare feet, till
he felt almost cold; and then with a thankful heart he regained
his bed, and for the first time for some nights fell asleep. What
mattered anything now? the rain had come--Willowton was
saved--"the plague was stayed!"
There were others in the clustering houses in the back streets
who, sitting up with their sick and dying, felt the bands that
had tightened round their weary heads suddenly loosed, felt the
killing physical strain give way as the first drops fell on their
roofs.
Milly Greenacre, from behind her white dimity curtains, rubbed
her sleepy eyes and turned over again, with the comforting
thought that the rain had at last come. The cattle, lying out in
their baked pastures, lifted their thirsty heads, lowing with
pleasure for the heaven-sent moisture. The birds in the orchard
awoke at dawn, and enjoyed a long-anticipated bath. Milly's white
pigeons came out of their cot, and lay on the little gravel-path,
with wings upturned, enjoying to the full the fall of the great
cool drops. The horses in the far-off farm stables neighed
joyfully at each other, and every creature alive drank in new
life at every pore; even the fever-stricken patients rallied and
gained strength. Soon the grass would grow green again, and the
springs would begin to work, and all would be well. And yet
nothing in the future could undo the past; nothing could give
back to the mourners their loved ones. Willowton had indeed paid
the penalty of its own disregard of the laws of health; but now,
please God, the others would be saved.
All through the day that followed this blessed night the rain
fell--not quietly, or even with a break, but heavily,
incessantly, and unremittingly. People paddled out in it under
cloaks and umbrellas, and rejoiced with each other. The work at
the well was necessarily suspended for the time, for the rough
wooden shelter over it proved of little protection from the
tropical violence of the rain.
"That don't kinder rain at all," old Greenacre said; "that come
down whole water."