“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.