They sat in the twilight of the spring evening talking about this place, and about that; and then as the darkness drew on the night became cloudy, and the rain began to patter against the window-panes. The wind rose also, and they could hear the angry rush of the waves as they came rolling up louder and louder upon the shore.
“Heaven have mercy on those who are out at sea,” said Mr. Aggland, looking forth into the gathering darkness, “for it is going to be a wild night;” and at the words Phemie shivered with the strange shivering of old.
She moved to the piano and played the first few bars of Handel’s “Lord, what is man?” then she rose again and stirred the fire into a blaze, and pulled the chairs into comfortable positions, and turned the lamp up to a desirable height, and then stood before the hearth meditatively.
“Sing for me, Phemie dear, if you are not tired,” said her uncle, who knew that when these restless moods came on, music was the best and, indeed, the only sedative. “Sing for me a song or a hymn, a ballad or a psalm—what you will, only sing.”
Obediently she walked across the room and began making melody. Now she sang, and again she played; now it was “Ave Verum,” and then she stopped abruptly and drew her hands from the instrument, only to commence that sonata of Beethoven’s which contains within its leaves the Funeral march upon the death of a Hero.
“What a night it is!” she broke off at last to say, “do you hear the rain?”
“And how the wind is howling!” answered Mr. Aggland; “it puts me in mind of the way it used to come up the valley at Tordale, running like a racehorse between the hills, and then flinging itself against our door. Do you remember how it beat for admittance—how it rattled against the windows—how it screamed and shrieked, as if it were a living thing, to be let in—only to be let in?”
“Yes,” Phemie said, pursuing the same idea; “and how it used to go away, sobbing and moaning like one in great pain, across the moor to Strammer Tarn. I often thought in those days I should have loved to be beside the Tarn when the night wind came home there; I always felt as though it lived among those great rocks and boulders. Do you not wonder whether it is as rough a night up in the Cumberland Hills as it is down here by the coast? Do you wonder who is living in the old place now, and whether they are gathered close round the fire as we had a way of gathering when the wind was howling at the door?”
“I often think about the old place, Phemie,” he said. “When I am sitting quietly here by your fireside, dear, in such peace and comfort as I once thought never to know, my fancy turns many and many a time back to Tordale; it was a sweet spot—ay, you might travel far to find one lovelier—beautiful as Roundwood is, I never can fancy it so perfect as Tordale. I wish we had a drawing of the valley. I think I shall ask Duncan, next time he is in the north, to bring me a sketch of it.”
She turned a little from the piano, and, leaning her elbow on the keys, bade him go on and talk to her about their Cumberland home—