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.
CHAPTER X. AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
I HAVE now come to the most difficult part of my story. And why? Because
I do not know enough about it. And why should I not know as much about
this part as about any other part? For of course I could know nothing
about the story except Diamond had told it; and why should not Diamond
tell about the country at the back of the north wind, as well as about
his adventures in getting there? Because, when he came back, he had
forgotten a great deal, and what he did remember was very hard to tell.
Things there are so different from things here! The people there do not
speak the same language for one thing. Indeed, Diamond insisted that
there they do not speak at all. I do not think he was right, but it may
well have appeared so to Diamond. The fact is, we have different reports
of the place from the most trustworthy people. Therefore we are bound
to believe that it appears somewhat different to different people. All,
however, agree in a general way about it.
I will tell you something of what two very different people have
reported, both of whom knew more about it, I believe, than Herodotus.
One of them speaks from his own experience, for he visited the country;
the other from the testimony of a young peasant girl who came back from
it for a month's visit to her friends. The former was a great Italian
of noble family, who died more than five hundred years ago; the latter a
Scotch shepherd who died not forty years ago.
The Italian, then, informs us that he had to enter that country through
a fire so hot that he would have thrown himself into boiling glass to
cool himself. This was not Diamond's experience, but then Durante--that
was the name of the Italian, and it means Lasting, for his books will
last as long as there are enough men in the world worthy of having
them--Durante was an elderly man, and Diamond was a little boy, and so
their experience must be a little different. The peasant girl, on the
other hand, fell fast asleep in a wood, and woke in the same country.
In describing it, Durante says that the ground everywhere smelt sweetly,
and that a gentle, even-tempered wind, which never blew faster or
slower, breathed in his face as he went, making all the leaves point one
way, not so as to disturb the birds in the tops of the trees, but, on
the contrary, sounding a bass to their song. He describes also a little
river which was so full that its little waves, as it hurried along, bent
the grass, full of red and yellow flowers, through which it flowed. He
says that the purest stream in the world beside this one would look as
if it were mixed with something that did not belong to it, even although
it was flowing ever in the brown shadow of the trees, and neither sun
nor moon could shine upon it. He seems to imply that it is always the
month of May in that country. It would be out of place to describe here
the wonderful sights he saw, for the music of them is in another key
from that of this story, and I shall therefore only add from the account
of this traveller, that the people there are so free and so just and so
healthy, that every one of them has a crown like a king and a mitre like
a priest.
The peasant girl--Kilmeny was her name--could not report such grand
things as Durante, for, as the shepherd says, telling her story as I
tell Diamond's--
“Kilmeny had been she knew not where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare;
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew,
Where the rain never fell, and the wind never blew.
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung,
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spoke of the lovely forms she had seen,
And a land where sin had never been;
A land of love and a land of light,
Withouten sun, or moon, or night;
Where the river swayed a living stream,
And the light a pure and cloudless beam:
The land of vision it would seem,
And still an everlasting dream.”
The last two lines are the shepherd's own remark, and a matter of
opinion. But it is clear, I think, that Kilmeny must have described
the same country as Durante saw, though, not having his experience, she
could neither understand nor describe it so well.
Now I must give you such fragments of recollection as Diamond was able
to bring back with him.
When he came to himself after he fell, he found himself at the back of
the north wind. North Wind herself was nowhere to be seen. Neither
was there a vestige of snow or of ice within sight. The sun too had
vanished; but that was no matter, for there was plenty of a certain
still rayless light. Where it came from he never found out; but he
thought it belonged to the country itself. Sometimes he thought it came
out of the flowers, which were very bright, but had no strong colour.
He said the river--for all agree that there is a river there--flowed
not only through, but over grass: its channel, instead of being rock,
stones, pebbles, sand, or anything else, was of pure meadow grass, not
over long. He insisted that if it did not sing tunes in people's ears,
it sung tunes in their heads, in proof of which I may mention that, in
the troubles which followed, Diamond was often heard singing; and when
asked what he was singing, would answer, “One of the tunes the river
at the back of the north wind sung.” And I may as well say at once that
Diamond never told these things to any one but--no, I had better not say
who it was; but whoever it was told me, and I thought it would be well
to write them for my child-readers.
He could not say he was very happy there, for he had neither his father
nor mother with him, but he felt so still and quiet and patient and
contented, that, as far as the mere feeling went, it was something
better than mere happiness. Nothing went wrong at the back of the north
wind. Neither was anything quite right, he thought. Only everything was
going to be right some day. His account disagreed with that of Durante,
and agreed with that of Kilmeny, in this, that he protested there was no
wind there at all. I fancy he missed it. At all events we could not do
without wind. It all depends on how big our lungs are whether the wind
is too strong for us or not.
When the person he told about it asked him whether he saw anybody he
knew there, he answered, “Only a little girl belonging to the gardener,
who thought he had lost her, but was quite mistaken, for there she was
safe enough, and was to come back some day, as I came back, if they
would only wait.”
“Did you talk to her, Diamond?”
“No. Nobody talks there. They only look at each other, and understand
everything.”
“Is it cold there?”
“No.”
“Is it hot?”
“No.”
“What is it then?”
“You never think about such things there.”
“What a queer place it must be!”
“It's a very good place.”
“Do you want to go back again?”
“No; I don't think I have left it; I feel it here, somewhere.”
“Did the people there look pleased?”
“Yes--quite pleased, only a little sad.”
“Then they didn't look glad?”
“They looked as if they were waiting to be gladder some day.”
This was how Diamond used to answer questions about that country. And
now I will take up the story again, and tell you how he got back to this
country.
CHAPTER XI. HOW DIAMOND GOT HOME AGAIN
WHEN one at the back of the north wind wanted to know how things were
going with any one he loved, he had to go to a certain tree, climb the
stem, and sit down in the branches. In a few minutes, if he kept very
still, he would see something at least of what was going on with the
people he loved.
One day when Diamond was sitting in this tree, he began to long very
much to get home again, and no wonder, for he saw his mother crying.
Durante says that the people there may always follow their wishes,
because they never wish but what is good. Diamond's wish was to get
home, and he would fain follow his wish.
But how was he to set about it? If he could only see North Wind! But the
moment he had got to her back, she was gone altogether from his sight.
He had never seen her back. She might be sitting on her doorstep still,
looking southwards, and waiting, white and thin and blue-eyed, until she
was wanted. Or she might have again become a mighty creature, with
power to do that which was demanded of her, and gone far away upon many
missions. She must be somewhere, however. He could not go home without
her, and therefore he must find her. She could never have intended to
leave him always away from his mother. If there had been any danger of
that, she would have told him, and given him his choice about going. For
North Wind was right honest. How to find North Wind, therefore, occupied
all his thoughts.
In his anxiety about his mother, he used to climb the tree every day,
and sit in its branches. However many of the dwellers there did so, they
never incommoded one another; for the moment one got into the tree, he
became invisible to every one else; and it was such a wide-spreading
tree that there was room for every one of the people of the country
in it, without the least interference with each other. Sometimes, on
getting down, two of them would meet at the root, and then they would
smile to each other more sweetly than at any other time, as much as to
say, “Ah, you've been up there too!”
One day he was sitting on one of the outer branches of the tree, looking
southwards after his home. Far away was a blue shining sea, dotted with
gleaming and sparkling specks of white. Those were the icebergs. Nearer
he saw a great range of snow-capped mountains, and down below him the
lovely meadow-grass of the country, with the stream flowing and flowing
through it, away towards the sea. As he looked he began to wonder, for
the whole country lay beneath him like a map, and that which was near
him looked just as small as that which he knew to be miles away. The
ridge of ice which encircled it appeared but a few yards off, and no
larger than the row of pebbles with which a child will mark out the
boundaries of the kingdom he has appropriated on the sea-shore. He