thought he could distinguish the vapoury form of North Wind, seated as
he had left her, on the other side. Hastily he descended the tree, and
to his amazement found that the map or model of the country still lay at
his feet. He stood in it. With one stride he had crossed the river; with
another he had reached the ridge of ice; with the third he stepped over
its peaks, and sank wearily down at North Wind's knees. For there she
sat on her doorstep. The peaks of the great ridge of ice were as lofty
as ever behind her, and the country at her back had vanished from
Diamond's view.
North Wind was as still as Diamond had left her. Her pale face was white
as the snow, and her motionless eyes were as blue as the caverns in the
ice. But the instant Diamond touched her, her face began to change like
that of one waking from sleep. Light began to glimmer from the blue of
her eyes.
A moment more, and she laid her hand on Diamond's head, and began
playing with his hair. Diamond took hold of her hand, and laid his face
to it. She gave a little start.
“How very alive you are, child!” she murmured. “Come nearer to me.”
By the help of the stones all around he clambered up beside her, and
laid himself against her bosom. She gave a great sigh, slowly lifted her
arms, and slowly folded them about him, until she clasped him close. Yet
a moment, and she roused herself, and came quite awake; and the cold of
her bosom, which had pierced Diamond's bones, vanished.
“Have you been sitting here ever since I went through you, dear North
Wind?” asked Diamond, stroking her hand.
“Yes,” she answered, looking at him with her old kindness.
“Ain't you very tired?”
“No; I've often had to sit longer. Do you know how long you have been?”
“Oh! years and years,” answered Diamond.
“You have just been seven days,” returned North Wind.
“I thought I had been a hundred years!” exclaimed Diamond.
“Yes, I daresay,” replied North Wind. “You've been away from here seven
days; but how long you may have been in there is quite another thing.
Behind my back and before my face things are so different! They don't go
at all by the same rule.”
“I'm very glad,” said Diamond, after thinking a while.
“Why?” asked North Wind.
“Because I've been such a long time there, and such a little while away
from mother. Why, she won't be expecting me home from Sandwich yet!”
“No. But we mustn't talk any longer. I've got my orders now, and we must
be off in a few minutes.”
Next moment Diamond found himself sitting alone on the rock. North Wind
had vanished. A creature like a great humble-bee or cockchafer flew past
his face; but it could be neither, for there were no insects amongst the
ice. It passed him again and again, flying in circles around him, and he
concluded that it must be North Wind herself, no bigger than Tom Thumb
when his mother put him in the nutshell lined with flannel. But she was
no longer vapoury and thin. She was solid, although tiny. A moment more,
and she perched on his shoulder.
“Come along, Diamond,” she said in his ear, in the smallest and highest
of treble voices; “it is time we were setting out for Sandwich.”
Diamond could just see her, by turning his head towards his shoulder as
far as he could, but only with one eye, for his nose came between her
and the other.
“Won't you take me in your arms and carry me?” he said in a whisper, for
he knew she did not like a loud voice when she was small.
“Ah! you ungrateful boy,” returned North Wind, smiling “how dare you
make game of me? Yes, I will carry you, but you shall walk a bit for
your impertinence first. Come along.”
She jumped from his shoulder, but when Diamond looked for her upon the
ground, he could see nothing but a little spider with long legs that
made its way over the ice towards the south. It ran very fast indeed for
a spider, but Diamond ran a long way before it, and then waited for
it. It was up with him sooner than he had expected, however, and it
had grown a good deal. And the spider grew and grew and went faster and
faster, till all at once Diamond discovered that it was not a spider,
but a weasel; and away glided the weasel, and away went Diamond after
it, and it took all the run there was in him to keep up with the weasel.
And the weasel grew, and grew, and grew, till all at once Diamond saw
that the weasel was not a weasel but a cat. And away went the cat, and
Diamond after it. And when he had run half a mile, he found the cat
waiting for him, sitting up and washing her face not to lose time. And
away went the cat again, and Diamond after it. But the next time he came
up with the cat, the cat was not a cat, but a hunting-leopard. And the
hunting-leopard grew to a jaguar, all covered with spots like eyes.
And the jaguar grew to a Bengal tiger. And at none of them was Diamond
afraid, for he had been at North Wind's back, and he could be afraid of
her no longer whatever she did or grew. And the tiger flew over the snow
in a straight line for the south, growing less and less to Diamond's
eyes till it was only a black speck upon the whiteness; and then it
vanished altogether. And now Diamond felt that he would rather not run
any farther, and that the ice had got very rough. Besides, he was near
the precipices that bounded the sea, so he slackened his pace to a walk,
saying aloud to himself:
“When North Wind has punished me enough for making game of her, she will
come back to me; I know she will, for I can't go much farther without
her.”
“You dear boy! It was only in fun. Here I am!” said North Wind's voice
behind him.
Diamond turned, and saw her as he liked best to see her, standing beside
him, a tall lady.
“Where's the tiger?” he asked, for he knew all the creatures from a
picture book that Miss Coleman had given him. “But, of course,” he
added, “you were the tiger. I was puzzled and forgot. I saw it such a
long way off before me, and there you were behind me. It's so odd, you
know.”
“It must look very odd to you, Diamond: I see that. But it is no more
odd to me than to break an old pine in two.”
“Well, that's odd enough,” remarked Diamond.
“So it is! I forgot. Well, none of these things are odder to me than it
is to you to eat bread and butter.”
“Well, that's odd too, when I think of it,” persisted Diamond. “I should
just like a slice of bread and butter! I'm afraid to say how long it
is--how long it seems to me, that is--since I had anything to eat.”
“Come then,” said North Wind, stooping and holding out her arms. “You
shall have some bread and butter very soon. I am glad to find you want
some.”
Diamond held up his arms to meet hers, and was safe upon her bosom.
North Wind bounded into the air. Her tresses began to lift and rise and
spread and stream and flow and flutter; and with a roar from her hair
and an answering roar from one of the great glaciers beside them, whose
slow torrent tumbled two or three icebergs at once into the waves at
their feet, North Wind and Diamond went flying southwards.
CHAPTER XII. WHO MET DIAMOND AT SANDWICH
As THEY flew, so fast they went that the sea slid away from under them
like a great web of shot silk, blue shot with grey, and green shot with
purple. They went so fast that the stars themselves appeared to sail
away past them overhead, “like golden boats,” on a blue sea turned
upside down. And they went so fast that Diamond himself went the other
way as fast--I mean he went fast asleep in North Wind's arms.
When he woke, a face was bending over him; but it was not North Wind's;
it was his mother's. He put out his arms to her, and she clasped him to
her bosom and burst out crying. Diamond kissed her again and again to
make her stop. Perhaps kissing is the best thing for crying, but it will
not always stop it.
“What is the matter, mother?” he said.
“Oh, Diamond, my darling! you have been so ill!” she sobbed.
“No, mother dear. I've only been at the back of the north wind,”
returned Diamond.
“I thought you were dead,” said his mother.
But that moment the doctor came in.
“Oh! there!” said the doctor with gentle cheerfulness; “we're better
to-day, I see.”
Then he drew the mother aside, and told her not to talk to Diamond, or
to mind what he might say; for he must be kept as quiet as possible. And
indeed Diamond was not much inclined to talk, for he felt very strange
and weak, which was little wonder, seeing that all the time he had been
away he had only sucked a few lumps of ice, and there could not be much
nourishment in them.
Now while he is lying there, getting strong again with chicken broth and
other nice things, I will tell my readers what had been taking place at
his home, for they ought to be told it.
They may have forgotten that Miss Coleman was in a very poor state of
health. Now there were three reasons for this. In the first place,
her lungs were not strong. In the second place, there was a gentleman
somewhere who had not behaved very well to her. In the third place, she
had not anything particular to do. These three nots together are enough
to make a lady very ill indeed. Of course she could not help the first
cause; but if the other two causes had not existed, that would have been
of little consequence; she would only have to be a little careful. The
second she could not help quite; but if she had had anything to do,
and had done it well, it would have been very difficult for any man to
behave badly to her. And for this third cause of her illness, if she had
had anything to do that was worth doing, she might have borne his bad
behaviour so that even that would not have made her ill. It is not
always easy, I confess, to find something to do that is worth doing, but
the most difficult things are constantly being done, and she might have
found something if she had tried. Her fault lay in this, that she had
not tried. But, to be sure, her father and mother were to blame that
they had never set her going. Only then again, nobody had told her
father and mother that they ought to set her going in that direction. So
as none of them would find it out of themselves, North Wind had to teach
them.
We know that North Wind was very busy that night on which she left
Diamond in the cathedral. She had in a sense been blowing through
and through the Colemans' house the whole of the night. First, Miss
Coleman's maid had left a chink of her mistress's window open, thinking
she had shut it, and North Wind had wound a few of her hairs round the
lady's throat. She was considerably worse the next morning. Again, the
ship which North Wind had sunk that very night belonged to Mr. Coleman.
Nor will my readers understand what a heavy loss this was to him until
I have informed them that he had been getting poorer and poorer for some
time. He was not so successful in his speculations as he had been,
for he speculated a great deal more than was right, and it was time he
should be pulled up. It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor;
but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of
speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is
about. Poverty will not make a man worthless--he may be worth a great
deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty
goes very far indeed to make a man of no value--a thing to be thrown
out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a
dirty rag. So North Wind had to look after Mr. Coleman, and try to make
an honest man of him. So she sank the ship which was his last venture,
and he was what himself and his wife and the world called ruined.
Nor was this all yet. For on board that vessel Miss Coleman's lover was
a passenger; and when the news came that the vessel had gone down, and
that all on board had perished, we may be sure she did not think
the loss of their fine house and garden and furniture the greatest
misfortune in the world.
Of course, the trouble did not end with Mr. Coleman and his family.
Nobody can suffer alone. When the cause of suffering is most deeply
hidden in the heart, and nobody knows anything about it but the man
himself, he must be a great and a good man indeed, such as few of us
have known, if the pain inside him does not make him behave so as to
cause all about him to be more or less uncomfortable. But when a man
brings money-troubles on himself by making haste to be rich, then
most of the people he has to do with must suffer in the same way with
himself. The elm-tree which North Wind blew down that very night, as
if small and great trials were to be gathered in one heap, crushed Miss
Coleman's pretty summer-house: just so the fall of Mr. Coleman crushed
the little family that lived over his coach-house and stable. Before
Diamond was well enough to be taken home, there was no home for him
to go to. Mr. Coleman--or his creditors, for I do not know the
particulars--had sold house, carriage, horses, furniture, and
everything. He and his wife and daughter and Mrs. Crump had gone to live
in a small house in Hoxton, where he would be unknown, and whence he
could walk to his place of business in the City. For he was not an old
man, and hoped yet to retrieve his fortunes. Let us hope that he lived
to retrieve his honesty, the tail of which had slipped through his
fingers to the very last joint, if not beyond it.
Of course, Diamond's father had nothing to do for a time, but it was
not so hard for him to have nothing to do as it was for Miss Coleman. He
wrote to his wife that, if her sister would keep her there till he got
a place, it would be better for them, and he would be greatly obliged
to her. Meantime, the gentleman who had bought the house had allowed his
furniture to remain where it was for a little while.
Diamond's aunt was quite willing to keep them as long as she could. And
indeed Diamond was not yet well enough to be moved with safety.
When he had recovered so far as to be able to go out, one day his mother
got her sister's husband, who had a little pony-cart, to carry them
down to the sea-shore, and leave them there for a few hours. He had
some business to do further on at Ramsgate, and would pick them up as he
returned. A whiff of the sea-air would do them both good, she said, and
she thought besides she could best tell Diamond what had happened if she
had him quite to herself.
CHAPTER XIII. THE SEASIDE
DIAMOND and his mother sat down upon the edge of the rough grass that
bordered the sand. The sun was just far enough past its highest not to