Текст книги "Страна Северного Ветра / At the Back of the North Wind"

Автор книги: Джордж МакДональд

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 35 страниц)

“I am quite well, mother,” returned Diamond, who was only puzzled.

“I think you had better go to bed,” she added.

“Very well, mother,” he answered.

He stopped for one moment to look out of the window. Above the moon the

clouds were going different ways. Somehow or other this troubled him,

but, notwithstanding, he was soon fast asleep.

He woke in the middle of the night and the darkness. A terrible noise

was rumbling overhead, like the rolling beat of great drums echoing

through a brazen vault. The roof of the loft in which he lay had no

ceiling; only the tiles were between him and the sky. For a while he

could not come quite awake, for the noise kept beating him down, so that

his heart was troubled and fluttered painfully. A second peal of thunder

burst over his head, and almost choked him with fear. Nor did he recover

until the great blast that followed, having torn some tiles off the

roof, sent a spout of wind down into his bed and over his face, which

brought him wide awake, and gave him back his courage. The same moment

he heard a mighty yet musical voice calling him.

“Come up, Diamond,” it said. “It's all ready. I'm waiting for you.”

He looked out of the bed, and saw a gigantic, powerful, but most lovely

arm–with a hand whose fingers were nothing the less ladylike that they

could have strangled a boa-constrictor, or choked a tigress off its

prey–stretched down through a big hole in the roof. Without a moment's

hesitation he reached out his tiny one, and laid it in the grand palm

before him.

CHAPTER VI. OUT IN THE STORM

THE hand felt its way up his arm, and, grasping it gently and strongly

above the elbow, lifted Diamond from the bed. The moment he was through

the hole in the roof, all the winds of heaven seemed to lay hold upon

him, and buffet him hither and thither. His hair blew one way, his

night-gown another, his legs threatened to float from under him, and

his head to grow dizzy with the swiftness of the invisible assailant.

Cowering, he clung with the other hand to the huge hand which held his

arm, and fear invaded his heart.

“Oh, North Wind!” he murmured, but the words vanished from his lips as

he had seen the soap-bubbles that burst too soon vanish from the mouth

of his pipe. The wind caught them, and they were nowhere. They couldn't

get out at all, but were torn away and strangled. And yet North Wind

heard them, and in her answer it seemed to Diamond that just because she

was so big and could not help it, and just because her ear and her mouth

must seem to him so dreadfully far away, she spoke to him more tenderly

and graciously than ever before. Her voice was like the bass of a deep

organ, without the groan in it; like the most delicate of violin tones

without the wail in it; like the most glorious of trumpet-ejaculations

without the defiance in it; like the sound of falling water without

the clatter and clash in it: it was like all of them and neither

of them–all of them without their faults, each of them without its

peculiarity: after all, it was more like his mother's voice than

anything else in the world.

“Diamond, dear,” she said, “be a man. What is fearful to you is not the

least fearful to me.”

“But it can't hurt you,” murmured Diamond, “for you're it.”

“Then if I'm it, and have you in my arms, how can it hurt you?”

“Oh yes! I see,” whispered Diamond. “But it looks so dreadful, and it

pushes me about so.”

“Yes, it does, my dear. That is what it was sent for.”

At the same moment, a peal of thunder which shook Diamond's heart

against the sides of his bosom hurtled out of the heavens: I cannot

say out of the sky, for there was no sky. Diamond had not seen the

lightning, for he had been intent on finding the face of North Wind.

Every moment the folds of her garment would sweep across his eyes and

blind him, but between, he could just persuade himself that he saw great

glories of woman's eyes looking down through rifts in the mountainous

clouds over his head.

He trembled so at the thunder, that his knees failed him, and he sunk

down at North Wind's feet, and clasped her round the column of her

ankle. She instantly stooped, lifted him from the roof–up–up into her

bosom, and held him there, saying, as if to an inconsolable child–

“Diamond, dear, this will never do.”

“Oh yes, it will,” answered Diamond. “I am all right now–quite

comfortable, I assure you, dear North Wind. If you will only let me stay

here, I shall be all right indeed.”

“But you will feel the wind here, Diamond.”

“I don't mind that a bit, so long as I feel your arms through it,”

 answered Diamond, nestling closer to her grand bosom.

“Brave boy!” returned North Wind, pressing him closer.

“No,” said Diamond, “I don't see that. It's not courage at all, so long

as I feel you there.”

“But hadn't you better get into my hair? Then you would not feel the

wind; you will here.”

“Ah, but, dear North Wind, you don't know how nice it is to feel your

arms about me. It is a thousand times better to have them and the wind

together, than to have only your hair and the back of your neck and no

wind at all.”

“But it is surely more comfortable there?”

“Well, perhaps; but I begin to think there are better things than being

comfortable.”

“Yes, indeed there are. Well, I will keep you in front of me. You will

feel the wind, but not too much. I shall only want one arm to take care

of you; the other will be quite enough to sink the ship.”

“Oh, dear North Wind! how can you talk so?”

“My dear boy, I never talk; I always mean what I say.”

“Then you do mean to sink the ship with the other hand?”

“Yes.”

“It's not like you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one

arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can't be like

you.”

“Ah! but which is me? I can't be two mes, you know.”

“No. Nobody can be two mes.”

“Well, which me is me?”

“Now I must think. There looks to be two.”

“Yes. That's the very point.–You can't be knowing the thing you don't

know, can you?”

“No.”

“Which me do you know?”

“The kindest, goodest, best me in the world,” answered Diamond, clinging

to North Wind.

“Why am I good to you?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you ever done anything for me?”

“No.”

“Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you.”

“Yes.”

“Why should I choose?”

“Because–because–because you like.”

“Why should I like to be good to you?”

“I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me.”

“That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good.”

“Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?”

“That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?”

“I don't know either. Then why shouldn't you?”

“Because I am.”

“There it is again,” said Diamond. “I don't see that you are. It looks

quite the other thing.”

“Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, you say, and that

is good.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know the other me as well?”

“No. I can't. I shouldn't like to.”

“There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one of them?”

“Yes.”

“And you are sure there can't be two mes?”

“Yes.”

“Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do

know,–else there would be two mes?”

“Yes.”

“Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you do

know?”

“Yes.”

“Besides, I tell you that it is so, only it doesn't look like it. That I

confess freely. Have you anything more to object?”

“No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied.”

“Then I will tell you something you might object. You might say that the

me you know is like the other me, and that I am cruel all through.”

“I know that can't be, because you are so kind.”

“But that kindness might be only a pretence for the sake of being more

cruel afterwards.”

Diamond clung to her tighter than ever, crying–

“No, no, dear North Wind; I can't believe that. I don't believe it. I

won't believe it. That would kill me. I love you, and you must love me,

else how did I come to love you? How could you know how to put on such a

beautiful face if you did not love me and the rest? No. You may sink

as many ships as you like, and I won't say another word. I can't say I

shall like to see it, you know.”

“That's quite another thing,” said North Wind; and as she spoke she gave

one spring from the roof of the hay-loft, and rushed up into the clouds,

with Diamond on her left arm close to her heart. And as if the clouds

knew she had come, they burst into a fresh jubilation of thunderous

light. For a few moments, Diamond seemed to be borne up through the

depths of an ocean of dazzling flame; the next, the winds were writhing

around him like a storm of serpents. For they were in the midst of

the clouds and mists, and they of course took the shapes of the wind,

eddying and wreathing and whirling and shooting and dashing about like

grey and black water, so that it was as if the wind itself had taken

shape, and he saw the grey and black wind tossing and raving most madly

all about him. Now it blinded him by smiting him upon the eyes; now it

deafened him by bellowing in his ears; for even when the thunder came he

knew now that it was the billows of the great ocean of the air dashing

against each other in their haste to fill the hollow scooped out by the

lightning; now it took his breath quite away by sucking it from his body

with the speed of its rush. But he did not mind it. He only gasped first

and then laughed, for the arm of North Wind was about him, and he was

leaning against her bosom. It is quite impossible for me to describe

what he saw. Did you ever watch a great wave shoot into a winding

passage amongst rocks? If you ever did, you would see that the water

rushed every way at once, some of it even turning back and opposing

the rest; greater confusion you might see nowhere except in a crowd of

frightened people. Well, the wind was like that, except that it went

much faster, and therefore was much wilder, and twisted and shot and

curled and dodged and clashed and raved ten times more madly than

anything else in creation except human passions. Diamond saw the threads

of the lady's hair streaking it all. In parts indeed he could not tell

which was hair and which was black storm and vapour. It seemed sometimes

that all the great billows of mist-muddy wind were woven out of the

crossing lines of North Wind's infinite hair, sweeping in endless

intertwistings. And Diamond felt as the wind seized on his hair, which

his mother kept rather long, as if he too was a part of the storm, and

some of its life went out from him. But so sheltered was he by North

Wind's arm and bosom that only at times, in the fiercer onslaught of

some curl-billowed eddy, did he recognise for a moment how wild was the

storm in which he was carried, nestling in its very core and formative

centre.

It seemed to Diamond likewise that they were motionless in this centre,

and that all the confusion and fighting went on around them. Flash after

flash illuminated the fierce chaos, revealing in varied yellow and blue

and grey and dusky red the vapourous contention; peal after peal of

thunder tore the infinite waste; but it seemed to Diamond that North

Wind and he were motionless, all but the hair. It was not so. They were

sweeping with the speed of the wind itself towards the sea.

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.