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the houses of healing 1135
father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage;
and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of
the staff he leaned on.
‘Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for
Théoden’s 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 sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to
her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard
even 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 Éomer 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, Éomer. Few other
griefs amid the ill chances of this world have more bitterness
and shame for a man’s 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 upon that
way was so present as the fear for what might befall her. And
yet, Éomer, 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