the person's self.
“Then I must not be angry with you.--You had better look and see,
though.”
“Diamond is a very pretty name,” persisted the boy, vexed that it should
not give satisfaction.
“Diamond is a useless thing rather,” said the voice.
“That's not true. Diamond is very nice--as big as two--and so quiet all
night! And doesn't he make a jolly row in the morning, getting upon his
four great legs! It's like thunder.”
“You don't seem to know what a diamond is.”
“Oh, don't I just! Diamond is a great and good horse; and he sleeps
right under me. He is old Diamond, and I am young Diamond; or, if you
like it better, for you're very particular, Mr. North Wind, he's big
Diamond, and I'm little Diamond; and I don't know which of us my father
likes best.”
A beautiful laugh, large but very soft and musical, sounded somewhere
beside him, but Diamond kept his head under the clothes.
“I'm not Mr. North Wind,” said the voice.
“You told me that you were the North Wind,” insisted Diamond.
“I did not say Mister North Wind,” said the voice.
“Well, then, I do; for mother tells me I ought to be polite.”
“Then let me tell you I don't think it at all polite of you to say
Mister to me.”
“Well, I didn't know better. I'm very sorry.”
“But you ought to know better.”
“I don't know that.”
“I do. You can't say it's polite to lie there talking--with your head
under the bed-clothes, and never look up to see what kind of person you
are talking to.--I want you to come out with me.”
“I want to go to sleep,” said Diamond, very nearly crying, for he did
not like to be scolded, even when he deserved it.
“You shall sleep all the better to-morrow night.”
“Besides,” said Diamond, “you are out in Mr. Dyves's garden, and I can't
get there. I can only get into our own yard.”
“Will you take your head out of the bed-clothes?” said the voice, just a
little angrily.
“No!” answered Diamond, half peevish, half frightened.
The instant he said the word, a tremendous blast of wind crashed in a
board of the wall, and swept the clothes off Diamond. He started up in
terror. Leaning over him was the large, beautiful, pale face of a woman.
Her dark eyes looked a little angry, for they had just begun to flash;
but a quivering in her sweet upper lip made her look as if she were
going to cry. What was the most strange was that away from her head
streamed out her black hair in every direction, so that the darkness in
the hay-loft looked as if it were made of her hair but as Diamond gazed
at her in speechless amazement, mingled with confidence--for the boy was
entranced with her mighty beauty--her hair began to gather itself out
of the darkness, and fell down all about her again, till her face looked
out of the midst of it like a moon out of a cloud. From her eyes came
all the light by which Diamond saw her face and her hair; and that was
all he did see of her yet. The wind was over and gone.
“Will you go with me now, you little Diamond? I am sorry I was forced to
be so rough with you,” said the lady.
“I will; yes, I will,” answered Diamond, holding out both his arms.
“But,” he added, dropping them, “how shall I get my clothes? They are in
mother's room, and the door is locked.”
“Oh, never mind your clothes. You will not be cold. I shall take care of
that. Nobody is cold with the north wind.”
“I thought everybody was,” said Diamond.
“That is a great mistake. Most people make it, however. They are cold
because they are not with the north wind, but without it.”
If Diamond had been a little older, and had supposed himself a good deal
wiser, he would have thought the lady was joking. But he was not older,
and did not fancy himself wiser, and therefore understood her well
enough. Again he stretched out his arms. The lady's face drew back a
little.
“Follow me, Diamond,” she said.
“Yes,” said Diamond, only a little ruefully.
“You're not afraid?” said the North Wind.
“No, ma'am; but mother never would let me go without shoes: she never
said anything about clothes, so I dare say she wouldn't mind that.”
“I know your mother very well,” said the lady. “She is a good woman.
I have visited her often. I was with her when you were born. I saw her
laugh and cry both at once. I love your mother, Diamond.”
“How was it you did not know my name, then, ma'am? Please am I to say
ma'am to you, ma'am?”
“One question at a time, dear boy. I knew your name quite well, but I
wanted to hear what you would say for it. Don't you remember that day
when the man was finding fault with your name--how I blew the window
in?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Diamond, eagerly. “Our window opens like a door,
right over the coach-house door. And the wind--you, ma'am--came in, and
blew the Bible out of the man's hands, and the leaves went all flutter,
flutter on the floor, and my mother picked it up and gave it back to him
open, and there----”
“Was your name in the Bible--the sixth stone in the high priest's
breastplate.”
“Oh!--a stone, was it?” said Diamond. “I thought it had been a horse--I
did.”
“Never mind. A horse is better than a stone any day. Well, you see, I
know all about you and your mother.”
“Yes. I will go with you.”
“Now for the next question: you're not to call me ma'am. You must call
me just my own name--respectfully, you know--just North Wind.”
“Well, please, North Wind, you are so beautiful, I am quite ready to go
with you.”
“You must not be ready to go with everything beautiful all at once,
Diamond.”
“But what's beautiful can't be bad. You're not bad, North Wind?”
“No; I'm not bad. But sometimes beautiful things grow bad by doing
bad, and it takes some time for their badness to spoil their beauty.
So little boys may be mistaken if they go after things because they are
beautiful.”
“Well, I will go with you because you are beautiful and good, too.”
“Ah, but there's another thing, Diamond:--What if I should look ugly
without being bad--look ugly myself because I am making ugly things
beautiful?--What then?”
“I don't quite understand you, North Wind. You tell me what then.”
“Well, I will tell you. If you see me with my face all black, don't be
frightened. If you see me flapping wings like a bat's, as big as the
whole sky, don't be frightened. If you hear me raging ten times worse
than Mrs. Bill, the blacksmith's wife--even if you see me looking in at
people's windows like Mrs. Eve Dropper, the gardener's wife--you must
believe that I am doing my work. Nay, Diamond, if I change into a
serpent or a tiger, you must not let go your hold of me, for my hand
will never change in yours if you keep a good hold. If you keep a hold,
you will know who I am all the time, even when you look at me and can't
see me the least like the North Wind. I may look something very awful.
Do you understand?”
“Quite well,” said little Diamond.
“Come along, then,” said North Wind, and disappeared behind the mountain
of hay.
Diamond crept out of bed and followed her.
CHAPTER II. THE LAWN
WHEN Diamond got round the corner of the hay, for a moment he hesitated.
The stair by which he would naturally have gone down to the door was
at the other side of the loft, and looked very black indeed; for it was
full of North Wind's hair, as she descended before him. And just beside
him was the ladder going straight down into the stable, up which his
father always came to fetch the hay for Diamond's dinner. Through the
opening in the floor the faint gleam of the-stable lantern was enticing,
and Diamond thought he would run down that way.
The stair went close past the loose-box in which Diamond the horse
lived. When Diamond the boy was half-way down, he remembered that it
was of no use to go this way, for the stable-door was locked. But at the
same moment there was horse Diamond's great head poked out of his box
on to the ladder, for he knew boy Diamond although he was in his
night-gown, and wanted him to pull his ears for him. This Diamond did
very gently for a minute or so, and patted and stroked his neck too, and
kissed the big horse, and had begun to take the bits of straw and hay
out of his mane, when all at once he recollected that the Lady North
Wind was waiting for him in the yard.
“Good night, Diamond,” he said, and darted up the ladder, across the
loft, and down the stair to the door. But when he got out into the yard,
there was no lady.
Now it is always a dreadful thing to think there is somebody and find
nobody. Children in particular have not made up their minds to it; they
generally cry at nobody, especially when they wake up at night. But it
was an especial disappointment to Diamond, for his little heart had been
beating with joy: the face of the North Wind was so grand! To have
a lady like that for a friend--with such long hair, too! Why, it was
longer than twenty Diamonds' tails! She was gone. And there he stood,
with his bare feet on the stones of the paved yard.
It was a clear night overhead, and the stars were shining. Orion in
particular was making the most of his bright belt and golden sword.
But the moon was only a poor thin crescent. There was just one great,
jagged, black and gray cloud in the sky, with a steep side to it like a
precipice; and the moon was against this side, and looked as if she had
tumbled off the top of the cloud-hill, and broken herself in rolling
down the precipice. She did not seem comfortable, for she was looking
down into the deep pit waiting for her. At least that was what Diamond
thought as he stood for a moment staring at her. But he was quite wrong,
for the moon was not afraid, and there was no pit she was going down
into, for there were no sides to it, and a pit without sides to it is
not a pit at all. Diamond, however, had not been out so late before in
all his life, and things looked so strange about him!--just as if he had
got into Fairyland, of which he knew quite as much as anybody; for his
mother had no money to buy books to set him wrong on the subject. I have
seen this world--only sometimes, just now and then, you know--look as
strange as ever I saw Fairyland. But I confess that I have not yet seen
Fairyland at its best. I am always going to see it so some time. But if
you had been out in the face and not at the back of the North Wind, on a
cold rather frosty night, and in your night-gown, you would have felt it
all quite as strange as Diamond did. He cried a little, just a little,
he was so disappointed to lose the lady: of course, you, little man,
wouldn't have done that! But for my part, I don't mind people crying so
much as I mind what they cry about, and how they cry--whether they cry
quietly like ladies and gentlemen, or go shrieking like vulgar emperors,
or ill-natured cooks; for all emperors are not gentlemen, and all cooks
are not ladies--nor all queens and princesses for that matter, either.
But it can't be denied that a little gentle crying does one good. It did
Diamond good; for as soon as it was over he was a brave boy again.
“She shan't say it was my fault, anyhow!” said Diamond. “I daresay she
is hiding somewhere to see what I will do. I will look for her.”
So he went round the end of the stable towards the kitchen-garden. But
the moment he was clear of the shelter of the stable, sharp as a knife
came the wind against his little chest and his bare legs. Still he
would look in the kitchen-garden, and went on. But when he got round the
weeping-ash that stood in the corner, the wind blew much stronger, and
it grew stronger and stronger till he could hardly fight against it. And
it was so cold! All the flashy spikes of the stars seemed to have got
somehow into the wind. Then he thought of what the lady had said about
people being cold because they were not with the North Wind. How it was
that he should have guessed what she meant at that very moment I cannot
tell, but I have observed that the most wonderful thing in the world is
how people come to understand anything. He turned his back to the wind,
and trotted again towards the yard; whereupon, strange to say, it blew
so much more gently against his calves than it had blown against his
shins that he began to feel almost warm by contrast.
You must not think it was cowardly of Diamond to turn his back to
the wind: he did so only because he thought Lady North Wind had said
something like telling him to do so. If she had said to him that he must
hold his face to it, Diamond would have held his face to it. But the
most foolish thing is to fight for no good, and to please nobody.
Well, it was just as if the wind was pushing Diamond along. If he turned
round, it grew very sharp on his legs especially, and so he thought the
wind might really be Lady North Wind, though he could not see her, and
he had better let her blow him wherever she pleased. So she blew and
blew, and he went and went, until he found himself standing at a door
in a wall, which door led from the yard into a little belt of shrubbery,
flanking Mr. Coleman's house. Mr. Coleman was his father's master,
and the owner of Diamond. He opened the door, and went through the
shrubbery, and out into the middle of the lawn, still hoping to find
North Wind. The soft grass was very pleasant to his bare feet, and felt
warm after the stones of the yard; but the lady was nowhere to be seen.
Then he began to think that after all he must have done wrong, and she
was offended with him for not following close after her, but staying to
talk to the horse, which certainly was neither wise nor polite.
There he stood in the middle of the lawn, the wind blowing his
night-gown till it flapped like a loose sail. The stars were very shiny
over his head; but they did not give light enough to show that the grass
was green; and Diamond stood alone in the strange night, which looked
half solid all about him. He began to wonder whether he was in a dream
or not. It was important to determine this; “for,” thought Diamond, “if
I am in a dream, I am safe in my bed, and I needn't cry. But if I'm not
in a dream, I'm out here, and perhaps I had better cry, or, at least,
I'm not sure whether I can help it.” He came to the conclusion, however,
that, whether he was in a dream or not, there could be no harm in not
crying for a little while longer: he could begin whenever he liked.
The back of Mr. Coleman's house was to the lawn, and one of the
drawing-room windows looked out upon it. The ladies had not gone to bed;
for the light was still shining in that window. But they had no idea
that a little boy was standing on the lawn in his night-gown, or they
would have run out in a moment. And as long as he saw that light,