ON that same evening, whilst darkness lay on the fields, and in the dim Thackbusk meadow the two wandering figures met, there were bright fires and lights and a pleasant sense of welcome within the closed shutters of the Manor Farm. The grate in the old kitchen was aglow with flames, there was a bronze lamp on the table, and the candles on the piano were lit; and by the piano, in her black lace evening dress, sat Tina, and at intervals she played and sang. Her weird, sweet voice lent itself to this fitful music, which rose and fell like the moaning of the wind. For a while she had been silent, and so had also her companion; and then, suddenly, she broke once more into song.
‘O where are you going with your love-locks flowing,
On the west wind blowing along this valley track?’
‘The downhill path is easy, come with me an it please ye,
We shall escape the uphill by never turning back.’
‘What is that?’ asked Nat, startled by the sudden cessation from the dreams and reveries into which he had been plunged. He was sitting by the fire, with a sheet of cardboard on his knee, and some paper on which he was tracing patterns for her needle-work. Tina did not answer at once; she let her fingers wander idly amongst the chords of the music, which she was playing from memory.
‘How do you like it?’ she asked with a quick movement of her head, ‘though I need not ask, for I know it is not your style. The words are by Christina Rossetti, I found them in a book of poems; and a friend of mine made them into a song for me.’
‘I don’t like it much, miss,’ Nat answered truthfully, for his candour was not shackled by the restraints of society. He added, expressing the musical sentiment of his class, ‘I like summat that’s lively, when the day’s woork be done.’
‘This is lively,’ cried Tina, with perversity, and struck a few chords on the piano, weird and full; and then jerked her head back to see if he were listening, before she flung herself into the passion of her song. Her voice was not of unlimited strength, but in the old kitchen it sounded powerful.
‘Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,