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.