CHAPTER VII. THE CATHEDRAL
I MUST not go on describing what cannot be described, for nothing is more wearisome.
Before they reached the sea, Diamond felt North Wind's hair just beginning to fall about him.
“Is the storm over, North Wind?” he called out.
“No, Diamond. I am only waiting a moment to set you down. You would not like to see the ship sunk, and I am going to give you a place to stop in till I come back for you.”
“Oh! thank you,” said Diamond. “I shall be sorry to leave you, North Wind, but I would rather not see the ship go down. And I'm afraid the poor people will cry, and I should hear them. Oh, dear!”
“There are a good many passengers on board; and to tell the truth, Diamond, I don't care about your hearing the cry you speak of. I am afraid you would not get it out of your little head again for a long time.”
“But how can you bear it then, North Wind? For I am sure you are kind. I shall never doubt that again.”
“I will tell you how I am able to bear it, Diamond: I am always hearing, through every noise, through all the noise I am making myself even, the sound of a far-off song. I do not exactly know where it is, or what it means; and I don't hear much of it, only the odour of its music, as it were, flitting across the great billows of the ocean outside this air in which I make such a storm; but what I do hear is quite enough to make me able to bear the cry from the drowning ship. So it would you if you could hear it.”
“No, it wouldn't,” returned Diamond, stoutly. “For they wouldn't hear the music of the far-away song; and if they did, it wouldn't do them any good. You see you and I are not going to be drowned, and so we might enjoy it.”
“But you have never heard the psalm, and you don't know what it is like. Somehow, I can't say how, it tells me that all is right; that it is coming to swallow up all cries.”
“But that won't do them any good—the people, I mean,” persisted Diamond.
“It must. It must,” said North Wind, hurriedly. “It wouldn't be the song it seems to be if it did not swallow up all their fear and pain too, and set them singing it themselves with the rest. I am sure it will. And do you know, ever since I knew I had hair, that is, ever since it began to go out and away, that song has been coming nearer and nearer. Only I must say it was some thousand years before I heard it.”
“But how can you say it was coming nearer when you did not hear it?” asked doubting little Diamond.
“Since I began to hear it, I know it is growing louder, therefore I judge it was coming nearer and nearer until I did hear it first. I'm not so very old, you know—a few thousand years only—and I was quite a baby when I heard the noise first, but I knew it must come from the voices of people ever so much older and wiser than I was. I can't sing at all, except now and then, and I can never tell what my song is going to be; I only know what it is after I have sung it.—But this will never do. Will you stop here?”
“I can't see anywhere to stop,” said Diamond. “Your hair is all down like a darkness, and I can't see through it if I knock my eyes into it ever so much.”
“Look, then,” said North Wind; and, with one sweep of her great white arm, she swept yards deep of darkness like a great curtain from before the face of the boy.
And lo! it was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did not shine with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars, except where, just opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers of a cathedral blotted out each its own shape of sky and stars.
“Oh! what's that?” cried Diamond, struck with a kind of terror, for he had never seen a cathedral, and it rose before him with an awful reality in the midst of the wide spaces, conquering emptiness with grandeur.
“A very good place for you to wait in,” said North Wind. “But we shall go in, and you shall judge for yourself.”
There was an open door in the middle of one of the towers, leading out upon the roof, and through it they passed. Then North Wind set Diamond on his feet, and he found himself at the top of a stone stair, which went twisting away down into the darkness for only a little light came in at the door. It was enough, however, to allow Diamond to see that North Wind stood beside him. He looked up to find her face, and saw that she was no longer a beautiful giantess, but the tall gracious lady he liked best to see. She took his hand, and, giving him the broad part of the spiral stair to walk on, led him down a good way; then, opening another little door, led him out upon a narrow gallery that ran all round the central part of the church, on the ledges of the windows of the clerestory, and through openings in the parts of the wall that divided the windows from each other. It was very narrow, and except when they were passing through the wall, Diamond saw nothing to keep him from falling into the church. It lay below him like a great silent gulf hollowed in stone, and he held his breath for fear as he looked down.
“What are you trembling for, little Diamond?” said the lady, as she walked gently along, with her hand held out behind her leading him, for there was not breadth enough for them to walk side by side.
“I am afraid of falling down there,” answered Diamond. “It is so deep down.”
“Yes, rather,” answered North Wind; “but you were a hundred times higher a few minutes ago.”
“Ah, yes, but somebody's arm was about me then,” said Diamond, putting his little mouth to the beautiful cold hand that had a hold of his.
“What a dear little warm mouth you've got!” said North Wind. “It is a pity you should talk nonsense with it. Don't you know I have a hold of you?”
“Yes; but I'm walking on my own legs, and they might slip. I can't trust myself so well as your arms.”
“But I have a hold of you, I tell you, foolish child.”
“Yes, but somehow I can't feel comfortable.”
“If you were to fall, and my hold of you were to give way, I should be down after you in a less moment than a lady's watch can tick, and catch you long before you had reached the ground.”
“I don't like it though,” said Diamond.
“Oh! oh! oh!” he screamed the next moment, bent double with terror, for North Wind had let go her hold of his hand, and had vanished, leaving him standing as if rooted to the gallery.
She left the words, “Come after me,” sounding in his ears.
But move he dared not. In a moment more he would from very terror have fallen into the church, but suddenly there came a gentle breath of cool wind upon his face, and it kept blowing upon him in little puffs, and at every puff Diamond felt his faintness going away, and his fear with it. Courage was reviving in his little heart, and still the cool wafts of the soft wind breathed upon him, and the soft wind was so mighty and strong within its gentleness, that in a minute more Diamond was marching along the narrow ledge as fearless for the time as North Wind herself.
He walked on and on, with the windows all in a row on one side of him, and the great empty nave of the church echoing to every one of his brave strides on the other, until at last he came to a little open door, from which a broader stair led him down and down and down, till at last all at once he found himself in the arms of North Wind, who held him close to her, and kissed him on the forehead. Diamond nestled to her, and murmured into her bosom,—“Why did you leave me, dear North Wind?”
“Because I wanted you to walk alone,” she answered.
“But it is so much nicer here!” said Diamond.
“I daresay; but I couldn't hold a little coward to my heart. It would make me so cold!”
“But I wasn't brave of myself,” said Diamond, whom my older readers will have already discovered to be a true child in this, that he was given to metaphysics. “It was the wind that blew in my face that made me brave. Wasn't it now, North Wind?”
“Yes: I know that. You had to be taught what courage was. And you couldn't know what it was without feeling it: therefore it was given you. But don't you feel as if you would try to be brave yourself next time?”
“Yes, I do. But trying is not much.”
“Yes, it is—a very great deal, for it is a beginning. And a beginning is the greatest thing of all. To try to be brave is to be brave. The coward who tries to be brave is before the man who is brave because he is made so, and never had to try.”
“How kind you are, North Wind!”
“I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it.”
“I don't quite understand that.”
“Never mind; you will some day. There is no hurry about understanding it now.”
“Who blew the wind on me that made me brave?”
“I did.”
“I didn't see you.”
“Therefore you can believe me.”
“Yes, yes; of course. But how was it that such a little breath could be so strong?”
“That I don't know.”
“But you made it strong?”
“No: I only blew it. I knew it would make you strong, just as it did the man in the boat, you remember. But how my breath has that power I cannot tell. It was put into it when I was made. That is all I know. But really I must be going about my work.”
“Ah! the poor ship! I wish you would stop here, and let the poor ship go.”
“That I dare not do. Will you stop here till I come back?”
“Yes. You won't be long?”
“Not longer than I can help. Trust me, you shall get home before the morning.”
In a moment North Wind was gone, and the next Diamond heard a moaning about the church, which grew and grew to a roaring. The storm was up again, and he knew that North Wind's hair was flying.
The church was dark. Only a little light came through the windows, which were almost all of that precious old stained glass which is so much lovelier than the new. But Diamond could not see how beautiful they were, for there was not enough of light in the stars to show the colours of them. He could only just distinguish them from the walls, He looked up, but could not see the gallery along which he had passed. He could only tell where it was far up by the faint glimmer of the windows of the clerestory, whose sills made part of it. The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.
He began to feel his way about the place, and for a while went wandering up and down. His little footsteps waked little answering echoes in the great house. It wasn't too big to mind him. It was as if the church knew he was there, and meant to make itself his house. So it went on giving back an answer to every step, until at length Diamond thought he should like to say something out loud, and see what the church would answer. But he found he was afraid to speak. He could not utter a word for fear of the loneliness. Perhaps it was as well that he did not, for the sound of a spoken word would have made him feel the place yet more deserted and empty. But he thought he could sing. He was fond of singing, and at home he used to sing, to tunes of his own, all the nursery rhymes he knew. So he began to try `Hey diddle diddle', but it wouldn't do. Then he tried `Little Boy Blue', but it was no better. Neither would `Sing a Song of Sixpence' sing itself at all. Then he tried `Poor old Cockytoo', but he wouldn't do. They all sounded so silly! and he had never thought them silly before. So he was quiet, and listened to the echoes that came out of the dark corners in answer to his footsteps.
At last he gave a great sigh, and said, “I'm so tired.” But he did not hear the gentle echo that answered from far away over his head, for at the same moment he came against the lowest of a few steps that stretched across the church, and fell down and hurt his arm. He cried a little first, and then crawled up the steps on his hands and knees. At the top he came to a little bit of carpet, on which he lay down; and there he lay staring at the dull window that rose nearly a hundred feet above his head.
Now this was the eastern window of the church, and the moon was at that moment just on the edge of the horizon. The next, she was peeping over it. And lo! with the moon, St. John and St. Paul, and the rest of them, began to dawn in the window in their lovely garments. Diamond did not know that the wonder-working moon was behind, and he thought all the light was coming out of the window itself, and that the good old men were appearing to help him, growing out of the night and the darkness, because he had hurt his arm, and was very tired and lonely, and North Wind was so long in coming. So he lay and looked at them backwards over his head, wondering when they would come down or what they would do next. They were very dim, for the moonlight was not strong enough for the colours, and he had enough to do with his eyes trying to make out their shapes. So his eyes grew tired, and more and more tired, and his eyelids grew so heavy that they would keep tumbling down over his eyes. He kept lifting them and lifting them, but every time they were heavier than the last. It was no use: they were too much for him. Sometimes before he had got them half up, down they were again; and at length he gave it up quite, and the moment he gave it up, he was fast asleep.
CHAPTER VIII. THE EAST WINDOW
THAT Diamond had fallen fast asleep is very evident from the strange things he now fancied as taking place. For he thought he heard a sound as of whispering up in the great window. He tried to open his eyes, but he could not. And the whispering went on and grew louder and louder, until he could hear every word that was said. He thought it was the Apostles talking about him. But he could not open his eyes.
“And how comes he to be lying there, St. Peter?” said one.
“I think I saw him a while ago up in the gallery, under the Nicodemus window. Perhaps he has fallen down.
“What do you think, St. Matthew?”
“I don't think he could have crept here after falling from such a height. He must have been killed.”
“What are we to do with him? We can't leave him lying there. And we could not make him comfortable up here in the window: it's rather crowded already. What do you say, St. Thomas?”
“Let's go down and look at him.”
There came a rustling, and a chinking, for some time, and then there was a silence, and Diamond felt somehow that all the Apostles were standing round him and looking down on him. And still he could not open his eyes.
“What is the matter with him, St. Luke?” asked one.
“There's nothing the matter with him,” answered St. Luke, who must have joined the company of the Apostles from the next window, one would think. “He's in a sound sleep.”
“I have it,” cried another. “This is one of North Wind's tricks. She has caught him up and dropped him at our door, like a withered leaf or a foundling baby. I don't understand that woman's conduct, I must say. As if we hadn't enough to do with our money, without going taking care of other people's children! That's not what our forefathers built cathedrals for.”
Now Diamond could not bear to hear such things against North Wind, who, he knew, never played anybody a trick. She was far too busy with her own work for that. He struggled hard to open his eyes, but without success.
“She should consider that a church is not a place for pranks, not to mention that we live in it,” said another.
“It certainly is disrespectful of her. But she always is disrespectful. What right has she to bang at our windows as she has been doing the whole of this night? I daresay there is glass broken somewhere. I know my blue robe is in a dreadful mess with the rain first and the dust after. It will cost me shillings to clean it.”
Then Diamond knew that they could not be Apostles, talking like this. They could only be the sextons and vergers and such-like, who got up at night, and put on the robes of deans and bishops, and called each other grand names, as the foolish servants he had heard his father tell of call themselves lords and ladies, after their masters and mistresses. And he was so angry at their daring to abuse North Wind, that he jumped up, crying—“North Wind knows best what she is about. She has a good right to blow the cobwebs from your windows, for she was sent to do it. She sweeps them away from grander places, I can tell you, for I've been with her at it.”
This was what he began to say, but as he spoke his eyes came wide open, and behold, there were neither Apostles nor vergers there—not even a window with the effigies of holy men in it, but a dark heap of hay all about him, and the little panes in the roof of his loft glimmering blue in the light of the morning. Old Diamond was coming awake down below in the stable. In a moment more he was on his feet, and shaking himself so that young Diamond's bed trembled under him.
“He's grand at shaking himself,” said Diamond. “I wish I could shake myself like that. But then I can wash myself, and he can't. What fun it would be to see Old Diamond washing his face with his hoofs and iron shoes! Wouldn't it be a picture?”
So saying, he got up and dressed himself. Then he went out into the garden. There must have been a tremendous wind in the night, for although all was quiet now, there lay the little summer-house crushed to the ground, and over it the great elm-tree, which the wind had broken across, being much decayed in the middle. Diamond almost cried to see the wilderness of green leaves, which used to be so far up in the blue air, tossing about in the breeze, and liking it best when the wind blew it most, now lying so near the ground, and without any hope of ever getting up into the deep air again.
“I wonder how old the tree is!” thought Diamond. “It must take a long time to get so near the sky as that poor tree was.”
“Yes, indeed,” said a voice beside him, for Diamond had spoken the last words aloud.
Diamond started, and looking around saw a clergyman, a brother of Mrs. Coleman, who happened to be visiting her. He was a great scholar, and was in the habit of rising early.
“Who are you, my man?” he added.
“Little Diamond,” answered the boy.
“Oh! I have heard of you. How do you come to be up so early?”
“Because the sham Apostles talked such nonsense, they waked me up.”
The clergyman stared. Diamond saw that he had better have held his tongue, for he could not explain things.
“You must have been dreaming, my little man,” said he. “Dear! dear!” he went on, looking at the tree, “there has been terrible work here. This is the north wind's doing. What a pity! I wish we lived at the back of it, I'm sure.”
“Where is that sir?” asked Diamond.
“Away in the Hyperborean regions,” answered the clergyman, smiling.
“I never heard of the place,” returned Diamond.
“I daresay not,” answered the clergyman; “but if this tree had been there now, it would not have been blown down, for there is no wind there.”
“But, please, sir, if it had been there,” said Diamond, “we should not have had to be sorry for it.”
“Certainly not.”
“Then we shouldn't have had to be glad for it, either.”
“You're quite right, my boy,” said the clergyman, looking at him very kindly, as he turned away to the house, with his eyes bent towards the earth. But Diamond thought within himself, “I will ask North Wind next time I see her to take me to that country. I think she did speak about it once before.”
CHAPTER IX. HOW DIAMOND GOT TO THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
WHEN Diamond went home to breakfast, he found his father and mother already seated at the table. They were both busy with their bread and butter, and Diamond sat himself down in his usual place. His mother looked up at him, and, after watching him for a moment, said:
“I don't think the boy is looking well, husband.”
“Don't you? Well, I don't know. I think he looks pretty bobbish. How do you feel yourself, Diamond, my boy?”
“Quite well, thank you, father; at least, I think I've got a little headache.”
“There! I told you,” said his father and mother both at once.
“The child's very poorly” added his mother.
“The child's quite well,” added his father.
And then they both laughed.
“You see,” said his mother, “I've had a letter from my sister at Sandwich.”
“Sleepy old hole!” said his father.
“Don't abuse the place; there's good people in it,” said his mother.
“Right, old lady,” returned his father; “only I don't believe there are more than two pair of carriage-horses in the whole blessed place.”
“Well, people can get to heaven without carriages—or coachmen either, husband. Not that I should like to go without my coachman, you know. But about the boy?”
“What boy?”
“That boy, there, staring at you with his goggle-eyes.”
“Have I got goggle-eyes, mother?” asked Diamond, a little dismayed.
“Not too goggle,” said his mother, who was quite proud of her boy's eyes, only did not want to make him vain.
“Not too goggle; only you need not stare so.”
“Well, what about him?” said his father.
“I told you I had got a letter.”
“Yes, from your sister; not from Diamond.”
“La, husband! you've got out of bed the wrong leg first this morning, I do believe.”
“I always get out with both at once,” said his father, laughing.
“Well, listen then. His aunt wants the boy to go down and see her.”
“And that's why you want to make out that he ain't looking well.”
“No more he is. I think he had better go.”
“Well, I don't care, if you can find the money,” said his father.
“I'll manage that,” said his mother; and so it was agreed that Diamond should go to Sandwich.
I will not describe the preparations Diamond made. You would have thought he had been going on a three months' voyage. Nor will I describe the journey, for our business is now at the place. He was met at the station by his aunt, a cheerful middle-aged woman, and conveyed in safety to the sleepy old town, as his father called it. And no wonder that it was sleepy, for it was nearly dead of old age.
Diamond went about staring with his beautiful goggle-eyes, at the quaint old streets, and the shops, and the houses. Everything looked very strange, indeed; for here was a town abandoned by its nurse, the sea, like an old oyster left on the shore till it gaped for weariness. It used to be one of the five chief seaports in England, but it began to hold itself too high, and the consequence was the sea grew less and less intimate with it, gradually drew back, and kept more to itself, till at length it left it high and dry: Sandwich was a seaport no more; the sea went on with its own tide-business a long way off, and forgot it. Of course it went to sleep, and had no more to do with ships. That's what comes to cities and nations, and boys and girls, who say, “I can do without your help. I'm enough for myself.”
Diamond soon made great friends with an old woman who kept a toyshop, for his mother had given him twopence for pocket-money before he left, and he had gone into her shop to spend it, and she got talking to him. She looked very funny, because she had not got any teeth, but Diamond liked her, and went often to her shop, although he had nothing to spend there after the twopence was gone.
One afternoon he had been wandering rather wearily about the streets for some time. It was a hot day, and he felt tired. As he passed the toyshop, he stepped in.
“Please may I sit down for a minute on this box?” he said, thinking the old woman was somewhere in the shop. But he got no answer, and sat down without one. Around him were a great many toys of all prices, from a penny up to shillings. All at once he heard a gentle whirring somewhere amongst them. It made him start and look behind him. There were the sails of a windmill going round and round almost close to his ear. He thought at first it must be one of those toys which are wound up and go with clockwork; but no, it was a common penny toy, with the windmill at the end of a whistle, and when the whistle blows the windmill goes. But the wonder was that there was no one at the whistle end blowing, and yet the sails were turning round and round—now faster, now slower, now faster again.
“What can it mean?” said Diamond, aloud.
“It means me,” said the tiniest voice he had ever heard.
“Who are you, please?” asked Diamond.
“Well, really, I begin to be ashamed of you,” said the voice. “I wonder how long it will be before you know me; or how often I might take you in before you got sharp enough to suspect me. You are as bad as a baby that doesn't know his mother in a new bonnet.”
“Not quite so bad as that, dear North Wind,” said Diamond, “for I didn't see you at all, and indeed I don't see you yet, although I recognise your voice. Do grow a little, please.”
“Not a hair's-breadth,” said the voice, and it was the smallest voice that ever spoke. “What are you doing here?”
“I am come to see my aunt. But, please, North Wind, why didn't you come back for me in the church that night?”
“I did. I carried you safe home. All the time you were dreaming about the glass Apostles, you were lying in my arms.”
“I'm so glad,” said Diamond. “I thought that must be it, only I wanted to hear you say so. Did you sink the ship, then?”
“Yes.”
“And drown everybody?”
“Not quite. One boat got away with six or seven men in it.”
“How could the boat swim when the ship couldn't?”
“Of course I had some trouble with it. I had to contrive a bit, and manage the waves a little. When they're once thoroughly waked up, I have a good deal of trouble with them sometimes. They're apt to get stupid with tumbling over each other's heads. That's when they're fairly at it. However, the boat got to a desert island before noon next day.”
“And what good will come of that?”
“I don't know. I obeyed orders. Good bye.”
“Oh! stay, North Wind, do stay!” cried Diamond, dismayed to see the windmill get slower and slower.
“What is it, my dear child?” said North Wind, and the windmill began turning again so swiftly that Diamond could scarcely see it. “What a big voice you've got! and what a noise you do make with it? What is it you want? I have little to do, but that little must be done.”
“I want you to take me to the country at the back of the north wind.”
“That's not so easy,” said North Wind, and was silent for so long that Diamond thought she was gone indeed. But after he had quite given her up, the voice began again.
“I almost wish old Herodotus had held his tongue about it. Much he knew of it!”
“Why do you wish that, North Wind?”
“Because then that clergyman would never have heard of it, and set you wanting to go. But we shall see. We shall see. You must go home now, my dear, for you don't seem very well, and I'll see what can be done for you. Don't wait for me. I've got to break a few of old Goody's toys; she's thinking too much of her new stock. Two or three will do. There! go now.”
Diamond rose, quite sorry, and without a word left the shop, and went home.
It soon appeared that his mother had been right about him, for that same afternoon his head began to ache very much, and he had to go to bed.
He awoke in the middle of the night. The lattice window of his room had blown open, and the curtains of his little bed were swinging about in the wind.
“If that should be North Wind now!” thought Diamond.
But the next moment he heard some one closing the window, and his aunt came to his bedside. She put her hand on his face, and said—
“How's your head, dear?”
“Better, auntie, I think.”
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Oh, yes! I should, please.”
So his aunt gave him some lemonade, for she had been used to nursing sick people, and Diamond felt very much refreshed, and laid his head down again to go very fast asleep, as he thought. And so he did, but only to come awake again, as a fresh burst of wind blew the lattice open a second time. The same moment he found himself in a cloud of North Wind's hair, with her beautiful face, set in it like a moon, bending over him.
“Quick, Diamond!” she said. “I have found such a chance!”
“But I'm not well,” said Diamond.
“I know that, but you will be better for a little fresh air. You shall have plenty of that.”
“You want me to go, then?”
“Yes, I do. It won't hurt you.”
“Very well,” said Diamond; and getting out of the bed-clothes, he jumped into North Wind's arms.
“We must make haste before your aunt comes,” said she, as she glided out of the open lattice and left it swinging.
The moment Diamond felt her arms fold around him he began to feel better. It was a moonless night, and very dark, with glimpses of stars when the clouds parted.
“I used to dash the waves about here,” said North Wind, “where cows and sheep are feeding now; but we shall soon get to them. There they are.”
And Diamond, looking down, saw the white glimmer of breaking water far below him.
“You see, Diamond,” said North Wind, “it is very difficult for me to get you to the back of the north wind, for that country lies in the very north itself, and of course I can't blow northwards.”
“Why not?” asked Diamond.
“You little silly!” said North Wind. “Don't you see that if I were to blow northwards I should be South Wind, and that is as much as to say that one person could be two persons?”
“But how can you ever get home at all, then?”
“You are quite right—that is my home, though I never get farther than the outer door. I sit on the doorstep, and hear the voices inside. I am nobody there, Diamond.”
“I'm very sorry.”
“Why?”
“That you should be nobody.”
“Oh, I don't mind it. Dear little man! you will be very glad some day to be nobody yourself. But you can't understand that now, and you had better not try; for if you do, you will be certain to go fancying some egregious nonsense, and making yourself miserable about it.”
“Then I won't,” said Diamond.
“There's a good boy. It will all come in good time.”
“But you haven't told me how you get to the doorstep, you know.”
“It is easy enough for me. I have only to consent to be nobody, and there I am. I draw into myself and there I am on the doorstep. But you can easily see, or you have less sense than I think, that to drag you, you heavy thing, along with me, would take centuries, and I could not give the time to it.”
“Oh, I'm so sorry!” said Diamond.
“What for now, pet?”
“That I'm so heavy for you. I would be lighter if I could, but I don't know how.”
“You silly darling! Why, I could toss you a hundred miles from me if I liked. It is only when I am going home that I shall find you heavy.”
“Then you are going home with me?”
“Of course. Did I not come to fetch you just for that?”
“But all this time you must be going southwards.”
“Yes. Of course I am.”
“How can you be taking me northwards, then?”
“A very sensible question. But you shall see. I will get rid of a few of these clouds—only they do come up so fast! It's like trying to blow a brook dry. There! What do you see now?”
“I think I see a little boat, away there, down below.”
“A little boat, indeed! Well! She's a yacht of two hundred tons; and the captain of it is a friend of mine; for he is a man of good sense, and can sail his craft well. I've helped him many a time when he little thought it. I've heard him grumbling at me, when I was doing the very best I could for him. Why, I've carried him eighty miles a day, again and again, right north.”
“He must have dodged for that,” said Diamond, who had been watching the vessels, and had seen that they went other ways than the wind blew.
“Of course he must. But don't you see, it was the best I could do? I couldn't be South Wind. And besides it gave him a share in the business. It is not good at all—mind that, Diamond—to do everything for those you love, and not give them a share in the doing. It's not kind. It's making too much of yourself, my child. If I had been South Wind, he would only have smoked his pipe all day, and made himself stupid.”
“But how could he be a man of sense and grumble at you when you were doing your best for him?”
“Oh! you must make allowances,” said North Wind, “or you will never do justice to anybody.—You do understand, then, that a captain may sail north——”
“In spite of a north wind—yes,” supplemented Diamond.
“Now, I do think you must be stupid, my dear” said North Wind. “Suppose the north wind did not blow where would he be then?”
“Why then the south wind would carry him.”
“So you think that when the north wind stops the south wind blows. Nonsense. If I didn't blow, the captain couldn't sail his eighty miles a day. No doubt South Wind would carry him faster, but South Wind is sitting on her doorstep then, and if I stopped there would be a dead calm. So you are all wrong to say he can sail north in spite of me; he sails north by my help, and my help alone. You see that, Diamond?”
“Yes, I do, North Wind. I am stupid, but I don't want to be stupid.”
“Good boy! I am going to blow you north in that little craft, one of the finest that ever sailed the sea. Here we are, right over it. I shall be blowing against you; you will be sailing against me; and all will be just as we want it. The captain won't get on so fast as he would like, but he will get on, and so shall we. I'm just going to put you on board. Do you see in front of the tiller—that thing the man is working, now to one side, now to the other—a round thing like the top of a drum?”
“Yes,” said Diamond.
“Below that is where they keep their spare sails, and some stores of that sort. I am going to blow that cover off. The same moment I will drop you on deck, and you must tumble in. Don't be afraid, it is of no depth, and you will fall on sail-cloth. You will find it nice and warm and dry-only dark; and you will know I am near you by every roll and pitch of the vessel. Coil yourself up and go to sleep. The yacht shall be my cradle and you shall be my baby.”
“Thank you, dear North Wind. I am not a bit afraid,” said Diamond.
In a moment they were on a level with the bulwarks, and North Wind sent the hatch of the after-store rattling away over the deck to leeward. The next, Diamond found himself in the dark, for he had tumbled through the hole as North Wind had told him, and the cover was replaced over his head. Away he went rolling to leeward, for the wind began all at once to blow hard. He heard the call of the captain, and the loud trampling of the men over his head, as they hauled at the main sheet to get the boom on board that they might take in a reef in the mainsail. Diamond felt about until he had found what seemed the most comfortable place, and there he snuggled down and lay.
Hours after hours, a great many of them, went by; and still Diamond lay there. He never felt in the least tired or impatient, for a strange pleasure filled his heart. The straining of the masts, the creaking of the boom, the singing of the ropes, the banging of the blocks as they put the vessel about, all fell in with the roaring of the wind above, the surge of the waves past her sides, and the thud with which every now and then one would strike her; while through it all Diamond could hear the gurgling, rippling, talking flow of the water against her planks, as she slipped through it, lying now on this side, now on that—like a subdued air running through the grand music his North Wind was making about him to keep him from tiring as they sped on towards the country at the back of her doorstep.
How long this lasted Diamond had no idea. He seemed to fall asleep sometimes, only through the sleep he heard the sounds going on. At length the weather seemed to get worse. The confusion and trampling of feet grew more frequent over his head; the vessel lay over more and more on her side, and went roaring through the waves, which banged and thumped at her as if in anger. All at once arose a terrible uproar. The hatch was blown off; a cold fierce wind swept in upon him; and a long arm came with it which laid hold of him and lifted him out. The same moment he saw the little vessel far below him righting herself. She had taken in all her sails and lay now tossing on the waves like a sea-bird with folded wings. A short distance to the south lay a much larger vessel, with two or three sails set, and towards it North Wind was carrying Diamond. It was a German ship, on its way to the North Pole.
“That vessel down there will give us a lift now,” said North Wind; “and after that I must do the best I can.”
She managed to hide him amongst the flags of the big ship, which were all snugly stowed away, and on and on they sped towards the north. At length one night she whispered in his ear, “Come on deck, Diamond;” and he got up at once and crept on deck. Everything looked very strange. Here and there on all sides were huge masses of floating ice, looking like cathedrals, and castles, and crags, while away beyond was a blue sea.
“Is the sun rising or setting?” asked Diamond.
“Neither or both, which you please. I can hardly tell which myself. If he is setting now, he will be rising the next moment.”
“What a strange light it is!” said Diamond. “I have heard that the sun doesn't go to bed all the summer in these parts. Miss Coleman told me that. I suppose he feels very sleepy, and that is why the light he sends out looks so like a dream.”
“That will account for it well enough for all practical purposes,” said North Wind.
Some of the icebergs were drifting northwards; one was passing very near the ship. North Wind seized Diamond, and with a single bound lighted on one of them—a huge thing, with sharp pinnacles and great clefts. The same instant a wind began to blow from the south. North Wind hurried Diamond down the north side of the iceberg, stepping by its jags and splintering; for this berg had never got far enough south to be melted and smoothed by the summer sun. She brought him to a cave near the water, where she entered, and, letting Diamond go, sat down as if weary on a ledge of ice.
Diamond seated himself on the other side, and for a while was enraptured with the colour of the air inside the cave. It was a deep, dazzling, lovely blue, deeper than the deepest blue of the sky. The blue seemed to be in constant motion, like the blackness when you press your eyeballs with your fingers, boiling and sparkling. But when he looked across to North Wind he was frightened; her face was worn and livid.
“What is the matter with you, dear North Wind?” he said.
“Nothing much. I feel very faint. But you mustn't mind it, for I can bear it quite well. South Wind always blows me faint. If it were not for the cool of the thick ice between me and her, I should faint altogether. Indeed, as it is, I fear I must vanish.”
Diamond stared at her in terror, for he saw that her form and face were growing, not small, but transparent, like something dissolving, not in water, but in light. He could see the side of the blue cave through her very heart. And she melted away till all that was left was a pale face, like the moon in the morning, with two great lucid eyes in it.
“I am going, Diamond,” she said.
“Does it hurt you?” asked Diamond.
“It's very uncomfortable,” she answered; “but I don't mind it, for I shall come all right again before long. I thought I should be able to go with you all the way, but I cannot. You must not be frightened though. Just go straight on, and you will come all right. You'll find me on the doorstep.”
As she spoke, her face too faded quite away, only Diamond thought he could still see her eyes shining through the blue. When he went closer, however, he found that what he thought her eyes were only two hollows in the ice. North Wind was quite gone; and Diamond would have cried, if he had not trusted her so thoroughly. So he sat still in the blue air of the cavern listening to the wash and ripple of the water all about the base of the iceberg, as it sped on and on into the open sea northwards. It was an excellent craft to go with the current, for there was twice as much of it below water as above. But a light south wind was blowing too, and so it went fast.
After a little while Diamond went out and sat on the edge of his floating island, and looked down into the ocean beneath him. The white sides of the berg reflected so much light below the water, that he could see far down into the green abyss. Sometimes he fancied he saw the eyes of North Wind looking up at him from below, but the fancy never lasted beyond the moment of its birth. And the time passed he did not know how, for he felt as if he were in a dream. When he got tired of the green water, he went into the blue cave; and when he got tired of the blue cave he went out and gazed all about him on the blue sea, ever sparkling in the sun, which kept wheeling about the sky, never going below the horizon. But he chiefly gazed northwards, to see whether any land were appearing. All this time he never wanted to eat. He broke off little bits of the berg now and then and sucked them, and he thought them very nice.
At length, one time he came out of his cave, he spied far off on the horizon, a shining peak that rose into the sky like the top of some tremendous iceberg; and his vessel was bearing him straight towards it. As it went on the peak rose and rose higher and higher above the horizon; and other peaks rose after it, with sharp edges and jagged ridges connecting them. Diamond thought this must be the place he was going to; and he was right; for the mountains rose and rose, till he saw the line of the coast at their feet and at length the iceberg drove into a little bay, all around which were lofty precipices with snow on their tops, and streaks of ice down their sides. The berg floated slowly up to a projecting rock. Diamond stepped on shore, and without looking behind him began to follow a natural path which led windingly towards the top of the precipice.
When he reached it, he found himself on a broad table of ice, along which he could walk without much difficulty. Before him, at a considerable distance, rose a lofty ridge of ice, which shot up into fantastic pinnacles and towers and battlements. The air was very cold, and seemed somehow dead, for there was not the slightest breath of wind.
In the centre of the ridge before him appeared a gap like the opening of a valley. But as he walked towards it, gazing, and wondering whether that could be the way he had to take, he saw that what had appeared a gap was the form of a woman seated against the ice front of the ridge, leaning forwards with her hands in her lap, and her hair hanging down to the ground.
“It is North Wind on her doorstep,” said Diamond joyfully, and hurried on.
He soon came up to the place, and there the form sat, like one of the great figures at the door of an Egyptian temple, motionless, with drooping arms and head. Then Diamond grew frightened, because she did not move nor speak. He was sure it was North Wind, but he thought she must be dead at last. Her face was white as the snow, her eyes were blue as the air in the ice-cave, and her hair hung down straight, like icicles. She had on a greenish robe, like the colour in the hollows of a glacier seen from far off.
He stood up before her, and gazed fearfully into her face for a few minutes before he ventured to speak. At length, with a great effort and a trembling voice, he faltered out—
“North Wind!”
“Well, child?” said the form, without lifting its head.
“Are you ill, dear North Wind?”
“No. I am waiting.”
“What for?”
“Till I'm wanted.”
“You don't care for me any more,” said Diamond, almost crying now.
“Yes I do. Only I can't show it. All my love is down at the bottom of my heart. But I feel it bubbling there.”
“What do you want me to do next, dear North Wind?” said Diamond, wishing to show his love by being obedient.
“What do you want to do yourself?”
“I want to go into the country at your back.”
“Then you must go through me.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“I mean just what I say. You must walk on as if I were an open door, and go right through me.”
“But that will hurt you.”
“Not in the least. It will hurt you, though.”
“I don't mind that, if you tell me to do it.”
“Do it,” said North Wind.
Diamond walked towards her instantly. When he reached her knees, he put out his hand to lay it on her, but nothing was there save an intense cold. He walked on. Then all grew white about him; and the cold stung him like fire. He walked on still, groping through the whiteness. It thickened about him. At last, it got into his heart, and he lost all sense. I would say that he fainted—only whereas in common faints all grows black about you, he felt swallowed up in whiteness. It was when he reached North Wind's heart that he fainted and fell. But as he fell, he rolled over the threshold, and it was thus that Diamond got to the back of the north wind.