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As he took his way back through the stunted trees, each swathed in its own mist, and dripping as if it were a separate rain-cloud; and through the bushes that wetted him like pools; and through the streams that poured down the steep bank into the Glamour; he thought how different it was when he walked there with Kate, when the sun was bright, and the trees were covered with green, and the heather was in patches of blossom, and the river went clear-hearted and singing over its stony channel below.
His arms ached there was no question about it. He had never driven a pair before, and the horses needed a lot of driving. For the wind was gusty, piling up heavy masses of black-purple rain-cloud in the southeast.
One rain-cloud in the north-east, whence the wind blew strong, nearly overtook us; while another in the south-west exhausted itself on the Nundewar range. But as the wind increased the storm-clouds sank rapidly towards the part of the horizon whence it came, until the beams of the ascending sun at length overwhelmed them with a glorious flood of light, and introduced a day of brilliant sunshine.
With people on whose work they were engaged they behaved like wily courtiers, and almost every day I was reminded of Shakespeare's Polonius. "I fancy it is going to rain," the man whose house was being painted would say, looking at the sky. "It is, there is not a doubt it is," the painters would agree. "I don't think it is a rain-cloud, though. Perhaps it won't rain after all."
Vanceburgh was for the time bathed in sunlight; but, as we continued on our way, a heavy rain-cloud came creeping up over the dark Ohio hills, and, descending, cut off our view, at last lustily pelting us as we sat encased in rubber.
When the reason at length occurred to me, I felt very much disgusted with myself for being puzzled over so very simple a matter. After rain a flying swan may be visible to the eye at a vastly greater distance than during fair weather; the sun shining on its intense white plumage against the dark background of a rain-cloud making it exceedingly conspicuous.
Sometimes they chill suddenly into wet snow that packs about the lake gardens clear to the blossom frills, and melts away harmlessly. Sometimes one has the good fortune from a heather-grown headland to watch a rain-cloud forming in mid-air. Out over meadow or lake region begins a little darkling of the sky, no cloud, no wind, just a smokiness such as spirits materialize from in witch stories.
Stand for half an hour beside the fall of Schaffhausen, on the north side, where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends unbroken, in pure polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick, so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how through the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water, their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away, the dew gushing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens, which chase and chequer them with purple and silver.
There was a well-defined range of cumuli a few degrees above the horizon, and a massive, dark-gray rain-cloud above it, from which depended long, bent fringes overlapping the lower cumuli and partially veiling them; and from time to time sunbeams poured through narrow openings and painted the exposed bosses and fringes in ripe yellow tones, which, with the reflections on the water, made magnificent pictures.
Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a short time they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley, while a horizontal blaze shot across the autumn and from the Western edge of the rain-cloud. Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham, and Sir Austin was in grievous discontent. None had seen them save Austin Wentworth and Mr. Morton.
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