Time again for Uncle Conalls Saturday Tolkien. This weeks passage goes out to my friend Lisa Marshall Sinclair, who is recovering from surgery..... But Aragorn came to Eowyn, and he said: Here there is a grievous hurt and a heavy blow. The arm that was broken has been tended with due skill, and it will mend in time, if she has the strength to live. It is the shield arm that is maimed; but the chief evil comes through the sword-arm. In that there now seems no life, although it is unbroken. Alas! For she was pitted against a foe beyond the strength of her mind or body. And those who will take a weapon to such an enemy must be sterner than steel, if the very shock shall not destroy them. It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Eomer? I marvel that you should ask me, lord, he answered. for I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Eowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the kings bewitchment; and she tended the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass! My friend, said Gandalf, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff that he leaned on. Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Theodens ears? Dotard! What is the House of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sisters love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in? Then Eomer was silent, and looked on his sister, as if pondering anew all the days of their past life together. But Aragorn said: I saw also what you saw, Eomer. Few other griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness and shame for a mans heart than to behold the love of a lady so fair and brave that cannot be returned. Sorrow and pity have followed me ever since I left her desperate in Dunharrow and rode to the Paths of the Dead; and no fear for what might befall her. And yet, Eomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me; for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan. I have, maybe, the power to heal her body, and to recall her from the dark valley. But to what she will awake: hope, or forgetfulness, or despair, I do not know. And if to despair, then she will die, unless other healing comes which I cannot bring. Alas! For her deeds have set her among the queens of great renown. Then Aragorn stooped and looked in her face, and it was indeed white as a lily, cold as frost, and hard as graven stone. But he bent and kissed her on the brow, and called her softly, sayin: Eowyn Eomunds daughter, awake! For your enemy has passed away! She did not stir, but now she began again to breathe deeply, so that her breast rose and fell beneath the white linen of the sheet. Once more Aragorn bruised two of leaves of athelas and cast them into steaming water; and he laved her brow with it, and her right arm lying cold and nerveless on the coverlet. Then, whether Aragorn had indeed some forgotten power of Westernesse, or whether it was but his words of the Lady Eowyn that wrought on them, as the sweet influence of the herb stole about the chamber it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and come new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam. Awake, Eowyn, Lady of Rohan! said Aragorn again, and he took her right hand in his and felt it warm with life returnig. Awake! The shadow is gone and all darkness is washed clean! Then he laid her hand in Eomers and stepped away. Call her! he said, and he passed silently from the chamber. ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, from Chapter 8, The Houses of Healing
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 01:28:51 +0000
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