The clouds of a thunderstorm were looming slowly up as Ruth motored home, and soon after she got back a sudden deluge swept over Thorpe. In ten minutes the garden paths were running with water unable to get into the sun-baked ground and every hand on the farm was busy getting young things into shelter.
“I said we should have rain soon,” announced Miss McCox, after the triumphant manner of weather prophets, as she brought in Bertram Aurelius, busy trying to catch the falling silver flood with both hands.
“He has never seen rain before to remember. Think of it!” said Ruth. “And he isn’t a bit frightened. Where are the other children?”
“A little wet, more or less, will do them no harm,” replied Miss McCox. “They’re more in the river than out of it, I’m thinking, bringing in mess and what not.” She handed Bertram Aurelius, protesting for once vigorously, through the kitchen window to his mother. “It’s the young chicken up in the top field I’m after,” she added.
Ruth laughed as she picked up Selina’s shivering little body which was cowering round her feet, and ran for the river. She liked the rush of the rain against her face, the eager thirst of the earth as it drank after the long drought, the scent of the wet grass. It was all very good. And if it only lasted long enough, it would make just all the difference in the world to the hay crop. The thunder was muttering along the hill-tops while she rescued the children from the shelter of a big tree, helped Miss McCox with the young chicken, and hurriedly staked some carnations which should have been done days ago; then she fled for the house, barely in time to escape the full fury of the storm.
“The carnations could have been left,” said Miss McCox, as she met her at the front door. “There’s no sense in getting your feet soaked at your age. I have a hot bath turned on for you and if you don’t go at once it will be cold.”
Bathed, dressed, and glowing with content of mind and body, Ruth watched the end of the storm from the parlour window. The big clouds were drifting heavily, muttering as they went, down towards the east, the rain still fell, but softly now, each silver streak shining separately in the blaze of sunlight from the west and presently, as Ruth watched, a great rainbow, perfect and complete, arched in jewelled glory the sullen blackness of the retreating storm.
After her dinner she took the packet Roger North had given her, and sat holding it between her hands in the big armchair by the window. The beautiful gracious old room was filling with the evening shadows, but here the light was still clear and full. The sunset lingered, although already the evening star was shining brightly. Ruth sat there, as Dick Carey must often have sat after his day’s work, looking across his pleasant fields, dreaming dreams, thinking long thoughts, loving the beauty of it all.
Here he must have thought and planned for the good and welfare of the farm. The crops and flowers and fruit, the birds and beasts. And in those last days, of the children who should come, calling him father, to own the farm one day, and love it as he had loved it.
Masefield’s beautiful lines passed through Ruth’s mind: