Four Winds Farm

"Right, right – quite right," said another voice, not exactly sharp and clear like the last, yet with a resemblance to it, though deeper and sterner and with a strange cold strength in its accents. "You are his true friend in doing so. I for my part shall always be ready to invigorate and support him – to brace him for the battles he must fight. But you, sister, have a rare gift of correction and of discerning the weak points which may lead to defeat and failure. Yours is an ungrateful task truly, but you are a valuable monitor."

"I must find my satisfaction in such considerations; it is plain I shall never get any elsewhere," replied the former speaker, rather bitterly. "What horrid things are said of me, to be sure! Every ache and pain is laid at my door – I am 'neither good for man nor beast,' I am told! and yet – I am not all grim and gray, am I, sisters? There is a rosy glow in the trail of my garments if people were not so short-sighted and colour-blind."

"True, indeed, as who knows better than I," said the sweet mellow tones of the first speaker. "When you come my way and we dance together, sister, who could be less grim than you?"

"Ah, indeed," said the cold, stern voice, but it sounded less stern now, "then her sharp and biting words came from neighbourhood with me. Ah well – I can bear the reproach."

"I should think so," said the voice which Gratian had recognised, "for you know in your heart, you great icy creature, that you love fun as well as any one. How you do whirl and leap and rush and tear about, once your spirits really get the better of you! And you have such pretty playthings – your snow-flakes and filigree and icicles – none of us can boast such treasures, not to speak of your icebergs and crystal palaces, where you hide heaven knows what. My poor waves and foam, though I allow they are pretty in their way, are nothing to your possessions."

"Never mind all that. I don't grumble, though I might. What can one do with millions of tons of sand for a toy, I should like to know? And little else comes in my way that I can play catch-and-toss with! I can waft my scents about, to be sure – there is some pleasure in that. But now for our dance – our rainbow dance, sisters – no need to wake him roughly. We need only kiss his eyelids."

And Gratian, who had not all this time, strange to say, known that his eyes were closed again, felt across his lids a breeze so fresh and sudden that he naturally unclosed them to see whence it came. And once open he did not feel inclined to shut them again, I can assure you.

The sight before him was so pretty – and not the sight only. For the voices had melted into music – far off at first, then by slow degrees coming nearer; rising, falling, swelling, sinking, bright with rejoicing like the song of the lark, then soft and low as the tones of a mother hushing her baby to sleep, again wildly triumphant like a battle strain of victory, and even while you listened changing into the mournful, solemn cadence of a dirge, till at last all mingled into a slow, even measure of stately harmony, and the colours which had been weaving themselves in the distance, like a plaited rainbow before the boy's eyes, took definite form as they drew near him.

He saw them then – the four invisible sisters; he saw them, and yet it is hard to tell what he saw! They were distinct and yet vague, separate and yet together. But by degrees he distinguished them better. There was his old friend with the floating sea-green-and-blue mantle, and the streaming fair hair and loving sad eyes, and next her the sister with the golden wings and glowing locks and laughing rosy face, and then a gray shrouded nimble figure, which seemed everywhere at once, whose features Gratian could scarcely see, though a pair of bright sparkling eyes flashed out now and then, while sometimes a gleam of radiant red lighted up the grim robe. And in and out in the meshes of the dance glided the white form of the genius of the north – cold and stately, sparkling as she moved, though shaded now and then by the steel-blue veil which covered the dusky head. But as the dance went on, the music gradually grew faster and the soft regular movements changed into a quicker measure. In and out the four figures wove and unwove themselves together, and the more quickly they moved the more varied and brilliant grew the colours which seemed a part of them, so that each seemed to have all those of the others as well as her own, and Gratian understood why they had spoken of the rainbow dance. Golden-wings glowed with every other shade reflected on her own rich background, the sister from the sea grew warmer with the red and yellow that shone out among the lapping folds of her mantle, with its feather-like trimming of foam, the gray of the East-wind's garments grew ruddier, like the sky before sunrise, and the cold white of the icy North glimmered and gleamed like an opal. And faster and faster they danced and glided and whirled about, till Gratian felt as if his breath were going, and that in another moment he would be carried away himself by the rush.

"Stop, stop," he cried at last. "It is beautiful, it is lovely, but my breath is going. Stop."

Instantly the four heads turned towards him, the four pairs of wings sheathed themselves, the eyes, laughing and gentle, piercing and grave, seemed all to be gazing at him at once, and eight outstretched arms seemed as if about to lift him upwards.

"No – no – " he said, "I don't want – I don't – ."

But with the struggle to speak he awoke. He was in his own bed of course, and by the light he saw that it must be nearly time to get up.

He stretched himself sleepily, smiling as he did so.

"What nice dreams I have had," he said to himself. "I wonder if they come of working well at my lessons? They said it was to be a treat for me. I wish I could go to sleep and dream it all over again."

But just then he heard his mother's voice calling up the stair to him.

"Are you up, Gratian? You will be late if you are not quick."

Gratian gave himself a little shake of impatience under the bedclothes; he glanced at the window – the sky was gray and overcast, with every sign of a rainy day about it. He tucked himself up again, even though he knew it was very foolish thus to delay the evil moment.

"It's too bad," he thought. "I can never do what I want. Last night I had to go to bed when I wanted to sit up, and now I have to get up when I do so want to stay in bed."

But just at that moment a strange thing happened. The little casement window burst open with a bang, and a blast of cold sharp wind dashed into the room, upsetting a chair, scattering Gratian's clothes, neatly laid together in a little heap, and flinging itself on the bed with a whirl, so that the coverlet took to playing antics in its turn, and the blankets no doubt would have followed its example had Gratian not clutched at them. But all his comfort was destroyed – no possibility of feeling warm and snug with the window open and all this uproar going on. Gratian sprang up in a rage, and ran to the window. He shut it again easily enough.

"I can't think what made it fly open," he said to himself; "there was no wind in the night, and it never burst open before."

He stood shivering and undecided. Now that the window was shut, bed looked very comfortable again.

"I'll just get in for five minutes," he said to himself; "I'm so shivering cold with that wind, I shan't get warm all day."

He turned to the bed, but just as one little foot was raised to get in, lo and behold, a rattle and bang, and again the window burst open! Gratian flew back, it shut obediently as before. But he was now thoroughly awakened and alert. There was no good going back to bed if he was to be blown out of it in this fashion, and Gratian set to to dress himself, though in a rather surly mood, and keeping an eye on the rebellious window the while. But the window behaved quite well – it showed no signs of bursting open, it did not even rattle! and Gratian was ready in good time after all.

"You look cold, my boy," said his mother, when he was seated at table and eating his breakfast.

"The wind blew my window open twice, and it made my room very cold," he replied rather dolefully.

"Blew your window open? That's strange," said his father. "The wind's not in the east this morning, and it's only an east wind that could burst in your window. You can't have shut it properly."

"Yes, father, I did – the first time I shut it just as well as the second, and it didn't blow open after the second time. But I know I shut it well both times. I think it must be in the east, for it felt so sharp when it blew in."

"It must have changed quickly then," said the farmer, eyeing the sky through the large old-fashioned kitchen window in front of him. "That's the queer thing hereabouts; many a day if I was put to it to answer, I couldn't say which way the wind was blowing."

"Or which way it wasn't blowing, would be more like it," said Mrs. Conyfer with a smile. "It's to be hoped it'll blow you the right way to school anyway, Gratian. You don't look sure of it this morning!"

"I'm cold, mother, and I've always got to do what I don't want. Last night I didn't want to go to bed, and this morning I didn't want to get up, and now I don't want to go to school, and I must."

He got up slowly and unwillingly and began putting his books together. His mother looked at him with a slight smile on her face.

"'Must''s a grand word, Gratian," she said. "I don't know what we'd be without it. You'll feel all right once you're scampering across the moor."

"Maybe," he replied. But his tone was rather plaintive still. He was feeling "sorry for himself" this morning.

Things in general, however, did seem brighter, as his mother had prophesied they would, when he found himself outside. It was really not cold after all; it was one of those breezy yet not chilly mornings when, though there is nothing depressing in the air, there is a curious feeling of mystery – as if nature were holding secret discussions, which the winds and the waves, the hills and the clouds, the trees and the birds even, know all about, but which we – clumsy creatures that we are – are as yet shut out from.

"What is it all about, I wonder?" said Gratian to himself, as he became conscious of this feeling – an autumn feeling it always is, I think. "Everything seems so grave. Are they planning about the winter coming, and how the flowers and all the tender little plants are to be taken care of till it is over? Or is there going to be a great storm up in the sky? perhaps they are trying to settle it without a battle, but it does look very gloomy up there."

For the grayness had the threatening steel-blue shade over it which betokens disturbance of some kind. Still the child's spirits rose as he ran; there was something reviving in the little gusts of moorland breeze that met him every now and then, and he forgot everything else in the pleasure of the quick movement and the glow that soon replaced the chilly feelings with which he had set out.

He had run a good way, when something white, or light-coloured, fluttering on the ground some little way before him, caught his eye. And as he drew nearer he saw that it was a book, or papers of some kind, hooked on to a low-growing furze bush. Suddenly the words of the mysterious figure of the night before returned to his mind – "Look for the furze bush on the right of the path where it turns for the last time," she had said.

Gratian stopped short. Yes – there in front of him was the landmark – the path turned here for the last time, as she had said. He looked about him in astonishment.

"This was where my books were last night, then," he said to himself. "I had no idea I had come so far! Why, I was home in half a second – it is very strange – I could fancy it was a dream, or else that last night and the rainbow dance wasn't a dream."

He ran on to where the white thing was still fluttering appealingly, as if begging him to detach it. Poor white thing! It was or had been an exercise-book. At first Gratian fancied it must be one of his copy-books, left behind by mistake after his fairy friend had given him back the rest of his books. But as soon as he took it in his hands and saw the neat, clear characters, he knew it was not his, and he did not need to look at the signature, "Anthony Ferris," to guess that it belonged to the miller's son – for Tony was a clever boy, almost at the head of the school, and famed for his very good writing.

"Ah ha," thought Gratian triumphantly, "I have you now, Master Tony."

He had recognised the book as containing Tony's dictation lessons, for here and there were the wrongly spelt words – not many of them, for Tony was a good speller too – marked by the schoolmaster.

"Tony must have meant to take the book home to copy it out clear, and correct the wrong spelling," thought Gratian. And he remembered hearing the teacher telling Tony's class that on the neatness with which this was done would depend several important good marks. "He'll not be head of his class, now he's lost this book. Serve him right for the trick he played me," said Gratian to himself, as he rolled up the tattered book and slipped it into his satchel. "It's not so badly torn but what he could have copied it out all right, but it would have been torn to pieces by this evening, now that the wind's getting up. So it isn't my fault but his own – nasty spiteful fellow. Where would all my poor books have been by now, thanks to him?"

The wind was getting up indeed – and a cold biting wind too. For just as Gratian was thus thinking, there came down such a gust as he had but seldom felt the force of. For an instant he staggered and all but fell, so unprepared had he been for the sudden buffet. It took all his strength and agility to keep his feet during the short remainder of the moorland path, so sharp and violent were the blasts. And it was with face and hands tingling and smarting painfully that he entered the schoolroom.