They jogged forward on the road, and the day grew hot with thunder. The slowness of a walking pace, after months in the saddle, the heat to which they were unused as yet, after the more chilly north, seemed to make a league of every mile. Then the storm burst, and out of nowhere a fierce wind leaped at them, driving the rain in sheets before it. The lightning played so near at times that they seemed to be walking through arrows of barbed fire.
"A pleasant way of reaching Oxford, after all one's dreams!" grumbled Kit.
"Oh, it will lift. I'm always gayest in a storm, my lad. The end on't is so near."
The din and rain passed overhead. A league further on they stepped into clear sunlight and the song of soaring larks. Here, too, their walking ended, for a carrier overtook them. He had a light load and a strong, fast horse in the shafts; and, if their way of entry into the city of his dreams jarred on Kit's sense of fitness, he was glad to have the journey shortened.
The carrier pulled up at the gateway of St. John's, and the wonder of their day began. Oxford, to men acquainted with her charm by daily intercourse, is constantly the City Beautiful; to these men of Yoredale, reared in country spaces, roughened by campaigning on the King's behalf, it was like a town built high as heaven in the midst of fairyland. As they passed along the street, the confusion of so many streams of life, meeting and eddying back and mixing in one great swirling river, dizzied them for a while. Then their eyes grew clearer, and they saw it all with the freshness of a child's vision. There were students, absurdly youthful and ridiculously light-hearted, so Kit thought in his mood of high seriousness. There were clergy, and market-women with their vegetables, hawkers, quack doctors, fortune-tellers, gentry and their ladies, prosperous, well-fed, and nicely clothed. A bishop and a dean rubbed shoulders with them as they passed. And, above the seemly hubbub of it all, the mellow sun shone high in an over-world of blue sky streaked with amethyst and pearl.
"Was the dream worth while?" asked Michael, with his easy laugh.
"A hundred times worth while. 'Twould have been no penance to walk every mile from Yoredale hither-to, for such an ending to the journey."
They went into the High Street, and here anew the magic of the town met them face to face. Oxford, from of old, had been the cathedral city, the University, the pleasant harbourage of well-found gentry, who made their homes within sound of its many bells. Now it was harbouring the Court as well.
Along the street—so long as they lived, Christopher and Michael would remember the vision, as of knighthood palpable and in full flower—a stream of Cavaliers came riding. At their head, guarded jealously on either side, was a horseman so sad and resolute of face, so marked by a grace and dignity that seemed to halo him, that Kit turned to a butcher who stood nearest to him in the crowd.
"Why do they cheer so lustily? Who goes there?" he asked.