"I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it. There's a drop of rain, and didn't I hear thunder in the distance? I said so. John's got the start of it to be sure. We shall have it first, but if it don't catch him before he gets home never you believe me again."
"A very unpleasant alternative," said Mr. Bland, following her into the cottage.
The storm, once gathered and rising, broke rapidly, and overtook John before he was half-way home. It burst upon him in the middle of a long, bare hill, without even a hedge to give him a little shelter, the road being bounded on each side by wide-spreading slopes where wheat was growing. These stretched away to great dark woods, which looked almost black in their heavy midsummer foliage as the evening closed in unnaturally dark.
Dog Down, as that hill was called, was a part of the road dreaded by travellers in winter, when bitter north-east winds swept across it without any break or defence. It was a serious adventure to cross Dog Down in the face of a snowstorm; there were stories of men, horses, and carts having been blown bodily into the ditch by the roadside, and rescued with difficulty after lying there in the freezing snow for hours. No such danger as this, of course, lay in wait for John. The heat of the day had been so great, the air even now was so fatiguing and sultry, that he had been glad to come out of the oppression of the woods into the open road down hill. But it was not by any means pleasant, even for a strong man used to being out in all weathers, to be caught in a violent thunderstorm on the very face of Dog Down.
The flashes of lightning were continuous; they dazzled John's eyes. All the air round him seemed alive and alight with flame, while the roaring and cracking of the thunder almost made the earth shake under his feet. At first there was no rain; but in a few minutes it came down like a waterspout, and as he walked steadily on, his head bent, his parcel tucked under his coat for safety, it soaked him from head to foot as effectually as if a large tank of water had been overturned just above his head. In two minutes the dry dusty road was a running stream, which cut ditches for itself in the chalk soil. The roar of the thunder and the rushing of the rain seemed to melt together into one great noise which filled the world, while every half minute the brooding gloom of the clouds was broken by keen, sudden flashes of light. It is at all times a lonely country, with few farmhouses, the farms being very large; with villages several miles apart, and cottages standing alone here and there, half hidden in corners of the woods. Travellers on the roads are few, and that evening it seemed to John as if nobody was out but himself, for during more than half-an-hour's walk through constant thunder and lightning and drowning rain, he saw neither a human being nor an animal on the road. All the better for them; it was not weather to be braved with much safety, not to mention pleasure. Twice, in a moment's lull, John heard strange crashes in the woods at the foot of the hill, towards which he was walking, and he was afterwards told that several fine trees had been struck and split by the lightning. He thought then that his own escape on the face of that bare down had been rather wonderful. But even then he did not regret having refused Mrs. Bland's kind offer of a bed till Monday: and when he was in the midst of the storm he only thought of his mother's anxiety, and what a good thing it was that he had insisted on getting home to-night.
"I was that set on getting home," he said afterwards, "one might have thought I'd guessed what was going to happen."
"It was ordered so," his mother answered in her quiet way; and presently she turned to a friend and quoted the sweet old proverb, "Who goes a-mothering finds violets in the lane."
The storm was lessening, the lightning had become less vivid, the thunder less tremendous, the intervals between them longer, though heavy sheets of rain still poured from the low-hanging clouds, when John, after two miles of level walking along the white road between the woods that clustered at the foot of Dog Down, entered the long scattered village or little town of Carsham. His own home was nearly four miles further on. The broad street of Carsham lay still, as if everybody was asleep, in that stormy summer twilight. There was no sound but the splashing of the rain, as it ran in a hundred little watercourses and poured in cascades over the roofs, and flooded the spouts of the long row of houses. Here and there a light glimmered from a window; the ten or a dozen public-houses of which Carsham street boasted had lit up early that dismal evening, and their red blinds looked warm and cheery. At the Red Lion, the largest inn, the door stood open, and there was a noise of voices inside. Four more miles! A good fire to dry one's self at, and a snug corner to rest in till the storm was over. John almost stopped and turned in. He did not really know why with a sudden, impatient movement he shook the rain from his shoulders, and muttering to himself, "I'd best get on," strode past the Red Lion, past the White Horse, the Dog and Duck, the Wheatsheaf, the Nag's Head, past the line of low cottages, over the bridge, where the mill stream came tearing down with a mighty noise, and so on in the shadow of tall trees, under the wall of Carsham Park, Sir Henry Smith's great empty mansion, whose grounds ran a long way beside the high road here.
Gradually, as John walked steadily on, the violence of the rain became less. Before he was clear of Carsham Park it had almost stopped; a lovely gold light was beginning to shine in the sky, and through the noise of the dripping trees and bushes which bordered the road, and of the little streams which ran beside and across it, the sweet voices of the birds broke out suddenly in their evening hymn.
The road here was bordered on the left by high park palings, behind which a row of great beech-trees only half hid a sheet of water in the valley, now shining gold in the sunset. From this the broad green slopes of the park, bordered with masses of trees, led up to the broad grey front of a large house, Carsham Park itself, with long rows of shuttered windows gazing dismally down its beautiful view. On the right-hand side of the road were high park-like fields, with a low steep bank descending to the road, along which stood a row of large old thorn-trees; their blossom, almost dead, still filled the air with its faint heavy scent, and their stems and roots, lying against the bank, were twisted into all manner of strange shapes. The low sun, now shining down the road, dazzling John's eyes as it made the watery world flash and sparkle like a thousand mirrors, fell full upon the roots of the largest of these old trees as he walked past it. He stood still and stared at the strangest sight on which his eyes had ever fallen.