This morning, as he leaned over the gate and searched for rain-clouds, he went through one of these battles with despair. When it was nearly ended, and the colour was returning to his face, the doctor’s big, fiddle-head nag came up the slope, and Gaunt started when the rider’s voice broke the silence.
“What news, Mr. Gaunt?” he asked, reining in and giving Reuben a quick, professional glance.
“No news,” Gaunt answered, with a touch of dry humour. “We’re penned like birds in a cage, doctor, and have nothing to listen to, save this cursed stillness. If you could give us a promise of rain, now—”
“Well, I can help you there,” put in the other briskly. “I ought to have learned something from the weather by this time, for I’ve been plagued enough by it. The hot spell is nearly done with; and now you may call me a fool for prophesying in face of such a sky as that.”
It was curious to see how eagerly Reuben caught at the hope. This conspiracy of sun and stark, blue sky against him had grown to be in sober fact a menace; a few more days of the strain, and fear might give an easy inroad to the fever.
“There’s not a sign of it,” he said, anxious to have his word disproved.
“Wait till you’ve had twenty years more of this queer climate, Mr. Gaunt, and then you may be just beginning to know it. I’ve seen a dozen little signs of rain as I came up the moor, but I trust more to what old Lamach of High Farm calls a feeling in his bones.”
Gaunt remembered the doctor’s reputation as a weather seer. “I hope to God you’re in the right, doctor.”
“Of course I’m in the right! ’Tis a habit of mine. Only a fool puts himself in the wrong. I’m right, too—under Providence, of course, d’ye understand—in saying that you and the widow will win through. Tough, both of you—not cowards—plenty of fresh air inside your bodies. Oh, ye’ll weather it. Well, good day, Mr. Gaunt. I’ve a long round before me.”
Gaunt would not let him go just yet. It was a relief to exchange any sort of talk with another man. “We’ve noticed that you ride past the gate once every day, doctor, since you knew fever had come.”