It was said afterward that never, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, had there been such a storm of rain in those parts—rain without thunder, rain in full summer, rain without reason and without restraint. The rain drifted in, as he had said it would, and abruptly a wild wind arose and tore at the hood of the car, flapped her scarf in her eyes, and whipped their faces with sharp, stinging rain. He stopped at the village inn and brought her out ginger-brandy in a little glass shaped like a thistle-flower, "to keep the cold out." Also he went into the post-office and bought peppermint bull's-eyes, "to keep us warm," he said. "How admirably fortunate that we both like peppermint!" And the journey began in earnest, up hills that were torrents, through hollows that were ponds, where the water splashed like a yellow frill from their wheels as they rushed through it. One village street was like a river, and the men were busy with spades, digging through the hedge-banks channels by which the water might escape into the flooded fields.
And so, along through Pevensey, where the great Norman castle still stands gray and threatening, through Eastbourne, like an ant-heap where the ants all use umbrellas, and, at long last, out on to the downs. Her hands were ice-cold with the rain and the effort of holding mackintosh rugs about herself and him. Her hair was blown across her eyes, the lash of rain was on her lips. Breathless, laughing for the joy of the wild rush through wind and water, they gained the top of Friston Hill, where the tall windmill is, and the pond and the sign-post and the small, gray, quiet church. And here, as suddenly as it had begun, the rain ceased; the clouds drifted away.
"As though some great tidy angel had swept them up with his wings," said she.
The sea showed again, gray with chalk stolen from the cliffs, and white with the crests of waves left angry by the wind. Under the frowning purple clouds in the west glowed a long line of sullen crimson, and they went on along the down road in the peace of a clear, translucent twilight. Below them, in a hollow, shone lights from a little house.
"Wasn't it somewhere here," she asked him, "that you left me and I didn't stay?"
"Yes," he said, "somewhere here."
And then they had reached the house—not so little, either, when you came close to it—and there were steady lights shining through the lower windows, and, in the upper rooms, the fitful, soft glimmer of firelight. The car stopped at the wooden gate from which a brick path led to the front door, hospitably open, showing gleams of brass and old mahogany in a wide hall paved with black-and-white checkered marble.
He peeled the streaming waterproof from her shoulders and gave her his hand for the descent. Side by side they passed down the wet path between dripping flower-beds, but at the threshold he stepped before her, entered the house, and turned to receive her.
"Welcome!" he said, caught her by the elbows, and lifted her lightly over the threshold.
"Why did you do that?" she asked, breathless and smiling through the drift of wet, disordered tresses.