The vicar, too, was lying sleepless through the long hot hours, puzzling over the unexpected strike of the well-diggers, wondering at their folly, and coming very near the truth when he thought of the changed aspect of many of his parishioners, when he remembered the averted looks, the nervous salutations that had taken the place of the ready smiles, the respectful yet friendly greetings that only a few short weeks ago met him at every turn. He had really been almost too busy to notice it; and even now he thought this notion that he was losing his hold on the affections of the people he lived for and spent his life for was probably a creation of his own troubled brain, born of the heat and the anxiety and overstrain of those same past weeks. The rain could not be far off now, he thought, for all day long the sky had been overcast, and a steaming, stifling blanket seemed to have been thrown over everything. As he tossed and fretted the first heavy drops pattered on his window-sill. It had come—the blessed, blessed rain—and the long, hard drought was over!
He sprang from his bed and stood at the open casement, listening with delight to the growing volume of water that splashed down on to the baked earth and ran off the roofs into the dry, warped water-butts. He stood there, with the welcome spray leaping up and shooting into his face and dropping on to his bare feet, till he felt almost cold; and then with a thankful heart he regained his bed, and for the first time for some nights fell asleep. What mattered anything now? the rain had come—Willowton was saved—"the plague was stayed!"
There were others in the clustering houses in the back streets who, sitting up with their sick and dying, felt the bands that had tightened round their weary heads suddenly loosed, felt the killing physical strain give way as the first drops fell on their roofs.
Milly Greenacre, from behind her white dimity curtains, rubbed her sleepy eyes and turned over again, with the comforting thought that the rain had at last come. The cattle, lying out in their baked pastures, lifted their thirsty heads, lowing with pleasure for the heaven-sent moisture. The birds in the orchard awoke at dawn, and enjoyed a long-anticipated bath. Milly's white pigeons came out of their cot, and lay on the little gravel-path, with wings upturned, enjoying to the full the fall of the great cool drops. The horses in the far-off farm stables neighed joyfully at each other, and every creature alive drank in new life at every pore; even the fever-stricken patients rallied and gained strength. Soon the grass would grow green again, and the springs would begin to work, and all would be well. And yet nothing in the future could undo the past; nothing could give back to the mourners their loved ones. Willowton had indeed paid the penalty of its own disregard of the laws of health; but now, please God, the others would be saved.
All through the day that followed this blessed night the rain fell—not quietly, or even with a break, but heavily, incessantly, and unremittingly. People paddled out in it under cloaks and umbrellas, and rejoiced with each other. The work at the well was necessarily suspended for the time, for the rough wooden shelter over it proved of little protection from the tropical violence of the rain.
"That don't kinder rain at all," old Greenacre said; "that come down whole water."
CHAPTER XIV.
THE COLLAPSE
On the third day the rain abated, and work was resumed at the well. For the first few hours it went steadily on; but before noon an awful catastrophe had occurred, and it became known all over Willowton that the brickwork had fallen in, and that Chapman and Hayes were entombed under the débris.
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