The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Princess and Curdie, by George MacDonald,
Illustrated by James Allen
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Title: The Princess and Curdie
Author: George MacDonald
Release Date: July 4, 2011 [eBook #36612]
Language: English
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[Illustration: _Frontispiece. "Come in, Curdie," said the voice._]
THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE
by
GEORGE MACDONALD, LL.D
With Eleven Illustrations by James Allen
Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co.
1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. THE MOUNTAIN
II. THE WHITE PIGEON
III. THE MISTRESS OF THE SILVER MOON
IV. CURDIE'S FATHER AND MOTHER
V. THE MINERS
VI. THE EMERALD
VII. WHAT IS IN A NAME?
VIII. CURDIE'S MISSION
IX. HANDS
X. THE HEATH
XI. LINA
XII. MORE CREATURES
XIII. THE BAKER'S WIFE
XIV. THE DOGS OF GWYNTYSTORM
XV. DERBA AND BARBARA
XVI. THE MATTOCK
XVII. THE WINE CELLAR
XVIII. THE KING'S KITCHEN
XIX. THE KING'S CHAMBER
XX. COUNTER-PLOTTING
XXI. THE LOAF
XXII. THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN
XXIII. DR. KELMAN
XXIV. THE PROPHECY
XXV. THE AVENGERS
XXVI. THE VENGEANCE
XXVII. MORE VENGEANCE
XXVIII. THE PREACHER
XXIX. BARBARA
XXX. PETER
XXXI. THE SACRIFICE
XXXII. THE KING'S ARMY
XXXIII. THE BATTLE
XXXIV. JUDGMENT
XXXV. THE END
THE PRINCESS AND CURDIE.
CHAPTER I.
THE MOUNTAIN.
Curdie was the son of Peter the miner. He lived with his father and
mother in a cottage built on a mountain, and he worked with his father
inside the mountain.
A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing
so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet
more afraid of mountains. But then somehow they had not come to see how
beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them,--and what
people hate they must fear. Now that we have learned to look at them
with admiration, perhaps we do not always feel quite awe enough of them.
To me they are beautiful terrors.
I will try to tell you what they are. They are portions of the heart of
the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up
and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of
blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted
metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump
of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried
sunlight--that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all
the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its
boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped--up and away, and
there they stand in the cool, cold sky--mountains. Think of the change,
and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about
the very look of a mountain: from the darkness--for where the light has
nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness--from the heat,
from the endless tumult of boiling unrest--up, with a sudden heavenward
shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of
snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers;
and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their
little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at
night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the
rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that
are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the
molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the
glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance--no
longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and
cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and
the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its
sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and
the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like
the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down
the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these,
think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and
be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers,
and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with
floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside,
who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their
walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or
iron, tin or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones--perhaps a
brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaseless, cold and
babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes, or
over a gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and emeralds,
perhaps diamonds and sapphires--who can tell?--and whoever can't tell
is free to think--all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of
ages--ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of fire,
and began to cool. Then there are caverns full of water, numbing cold,
fiercely hot--hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the
water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood
in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the
great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out
again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds,
through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and
rushes down the mountain side in torrents, and down the valleys in
rivers--down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is
the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in
billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by
millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last,
melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and
borne by the servant winds back to the mountain tops and the snow, the
solid ice, and the molten stream.
Well, when the heart of the earth has thus come rushing up among her
children, bringing with it gifts of all that she possesses, then
straightway into it rush her children to see what they can find there.
With pickaxe and spade and crowbar, with boring chisel and blasting
powder, they force their way back: is it to search for what toys they
may have left in their long-forgotten nurseries? Hence the mountains
that lift their heads into the clear air, and are dotted over with the
dwellings of men, are tunnelled and bored in the darkness of their
bosoms by the dwellers in the houses which they hold up to the sun and
air.
Curdie and his father were of these: their business was to bring to
light hidden things; they sought silver in the rock and found it, and
carried it out. Of the many other precious things in their mountain they
knew little or nothing. Silver ore was what they were sent to find, and
in darkness and danger they found it. But oh, how sweet was the air on
the mountain face when they came out at sunset to go home to wife and
mother! They did breathe deep then!
The mines belonged to the king of the country, and the miners were his
servants, working under his overseers and officers. He was a real
king--that is one who ruled for the good of his people, and not to
please himself, and he wanted the silver not to buy rich things for
himself, but to help him to govern the country, and pay the armies that
defended it from certain troublesome neighbours, and the judges whom he
set to portion out righteousness amongst the people, that so they might
learn it themselves, and come to do without judges at all. Nothing that
could be got from the heart of the earth could have been put to better
purposes than the silver the king's miners got for him. There were
people in the country who, when it came into their hands, degraded it by
locking it up in a chest, and then it grew diseased and was called
_mammon_, and bred all sorts of quarrels; but when first it left the
king's hands it never made any but friends, and the air of the world
kept it clean.
About a year before this story began, a series of very remarkable events
had just ended. I will narrate as much of them as will serve to show the
tops of the roots of my tree.
Upon the mountain, on one of its many claws, stood a grand old house,
half farmhouse, half castle, belonging to the king; and there his only
child, the Princess Irene, had been brought up till she was nearly nine
years old, and would doubtless have continued much longer, but for the
strange events to which I have referred.
At that time the hollow places of the mountain were inhabited by
creatures called goblins, who for various reasons and in various ways
made themselves troublesome to all, but to the little princess
dangerous. Mainly by the watchful devotion and energy of Curdie,
however, their designs had been utterly defeated, and made to recoil
upon themselves to their own destruction, so that now there were very
few of them left alive, and the miners did not believe there was a
single goblin remaining in the whole inside of the mountain.
The king had been so pleased with the boy--then approaching thirteen
years of age--that when he carried away his daughter he asked him to
accompany them; but he was still better pleased with him when he found
that he preferred staying with his father and mother. He was a right
good king, and knew that the love of a boy who would not leave his
father and mother to be made a great man, was worth ten thousand offers
to die for his sake, and would prove so when the right time came. For
his father and mother, they would have given him up without a grumble,
for they were just as good as the king, and he and they perfectly
understood each other; but in this matter, not seeing that he could do
anything for the king which one of his numerous attendants could not do
as well, Curdie felt that it was for him to decide. So the king took a
kind farewell of them all and rode away, with his daughter on his horse
before him.
A gloom fell upon the mountain and the miners when she was gone, and
Curdie did not whistle for a whole week. As for his verses, there was no
occasion to make any now. He had made them only to drive away the
goblins, and they were all gone--a good riddance--only the princess was
gone too! He would rather have had things as they were, except for the
princess's sake. But whoever is diligent will soon be cheerful, and
though the miners missed the household of the castle, they yet managed
to get on without them.
Peter and his wife, however, were troubled with the fancy that they had
stood in the way of their boy's good fortune. It would have been such a
fine thing for him and them too, they thought, if he had ridden with the
good king's train. How beautiful he looked, they said, when he rode the
king's own horse through the river that the goblins had sent out of the
hill! He might soon have been a captain, they did believe! The good,
kind people did not reflect that the road to the next duty is the only
straight one, or that, for their fancied good, we should never wish our
children or friends to do what we would not do ourselves if we were in
their position. We must accept righteous sacrifices as well as make
them.
CHAPTER II.
THE WHITE PIGEON.
When in the winter they had had their supper and sat about the fire, or
when in the summer they lay on the border of the rock-margined stream
that ran through their little meadow, close by the door of their
cottage, issuing from the far-up whiteness often folded in clouds,
Curdie's mother would not seldom lead the conversation to one peculiar
personage said and believed to have been much concerned in the late
issue of events. That personage was the great-great-grandmother of the
princess, of whom the princess had often talked, but whom neither Curdie
nor his mother had ever seen. Curdie could indeed remember, although
already it looked more like a dream than he could account for if it had
really taken place, how the princess had once led him up many stairs to
what she called a beautiful room in the top of the tower, where she went
through all the--what should he call it?--the behaviour of presenting
him to her grandmother, talking now to her and now to him, while all the
time he saw nothing but a bare garret, a heap of musty straw, a sunbeam,
and a withered apple. Lady, he would have declared before the king
himself, young or old, there was none, except the princess herself, who
was certainly vexed that he could not see what she at least believed she
saw. And for his mother, she had once seen, long before Curdie was born,
a certain mysterious light of the same description with one Irene spoke
of, calling it her grandmother's moon; and Curdie himself had seen this
same light, shining from above the castle, just as the king and princess
were taking their leave. Since that time neither had seen or heard
anything that could be supposed connected with her. Strangely enough,
however, nobody had seen her go away. If she was such an old lady, she
could hardly be supposed to have set out alone and on foot when all the
house was asleep. Still, away she must have gone, for of course, if she
was so powerful, she would always be about the princess to take care of
her.
But as Curdie grew older, he doubted more and more whether Irene had not
been talking of some dream she had taken for reality: he had heard it
said that children could not always distinguish betwixt dreams and
actual events. At the same time there was his mother's testimony: what
was he to do with that? His mother, through whom he had learned
everything, could hardly be imagined by her own dutiful son to have
mistaken a dream for a fact of the waking world. So he rather shrunk
from thinking about it, and the less he thought about it, the less he
was inclined to believe it when he did think about it, and therefore, of
course, the less inclined to talk about it to his father and mother; for
although his father was one of those men who for one word they say think
twenty thoughts, Curdie was well assured that he would rather doubt his
own eyes than his wife's testimony. There were no others to whom he
could have talked about it. The miners were a mingled company--some
good, some not so good, some rather bad--none of them so bad or so good
as they might have been; Curdie liked most of them, and was a favourite
with all; but they knew very little about the upper world, and what
might or might not take place there. They knew silver from copper ore;
they understood the underground ways of things, and they could look very
wise with their lanterns in their hands searching after this or that
sign of ore, or for some mark to guide their way in the hollows of the
earth; but as to great-great-grandmothers, they would have mocked him
all the rest of his life for the absurdity of not being absolutely
certain that the solemn belief of his father and mother was
nothing but ridiculous nonsense. Why, to them the very word
"great-great-grandmother" would have been a week's laughter! I am not
sure that they were able quite to believe there were such persons as
great-great-grandmothers; they had never seen one. They were not
companions to give the best of help towards progress, and as Curdie
grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind--with the usual
consequence, that he was getting rather stupid--one of the chief signs
of which was that he believed less and less of things he had never seen.
At the same time I do not think he was ever so stupid as to imagine that
this was a sign of superior faculty and strength of mind. Still, he was
becoming more and more a miner, and less and less a man of the upper
world where the wind blew. On his way to and from the mine he took less
and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths and dragon-flies, the
flowers and the brooks and the clouds. He was gradually changing into a
commonplace man. There is this difference between the growth of some
human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous
dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort
comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it
comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of
being taken in, so afraid of it that he takes himself in altogether, and
comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a
thing with him is to have it between his teeth. Curdie was not in a very
good way then at that time. His father and mother had, it is true, no
fault to find with him--and yet--and yet--neither of them was ready to
sing when the thought of him came up. There must be something wrong when
a mother catches herself sighing over the time when her boy was in
petticoats, or the father looks sad when he thinks how he used to carry
him on his shoulder. The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the
old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be
a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and
more. The child is not meant to die, but to be for ever fresh-born.
Curdie had made himself a bow and some arrows, and was teaching himself
to shoot with them. One evening in the early summer, as he was walking
home from the mine with them in his hand, a light flashed across his
eyes. He looked, and there was a snow-white pigeon settling on a rock in
front of him, in the red light of the level sun. There it fell at once
to work with one of its wings, in which a feather or two had got some
sprays twisted, causing a certain roughness unpleasant to the fastidious
creature of the air. It was indeed a lovely being, and Curdie thought
how happy it must be flitting through the air with a flash--a live bolt
of light. For a moment he became so one with the bird that he seemed to
feel both its bill and its feathers, as the one adjusted the other to
fly again, and his heart swelled with the pleasure of its involuntary
sympathy. Another moment and it would have been aloft in the waves of
rosy light--it was just bending its little legs to spring: that moment
it fell on the path broken-winged and bleeding from Curdie's cruel
arrow. With a gush of pride at his skill, and pleasure at its success,
he ran to pick up his prey. I must say for him he picked it up
gently--perhaps it was the beginning of his repentance. But when he had
the white thing in his hands--its whiteness stained with another red
than that of the sunset flood in which it had been revelling--ah God!
who knows the joy of a bird, the ecstasy of a creature that has neither
storehouse nor barn!--when he held it, I say, in his victorious hands,
the winged thing looked up in his face--and with such eyes! asking what
was the matter, and where the red sun had gone, and the clouds, and the
wind of its flight. Then they closed, but to open again presently, with
the same questions in them. And so they closed and opened several times,
but always when they opened, their look was fixed on his. It did not
once flutter or try to get away; it only throbbed and bled and looked at
him. Curdie's heart began to grow very large in his bosom. What could it
mean? It was nothing but a pigeon, and why should he not kill a
pigeon? But the fact was, that not till this very moment had he ever
known what a pigeon was. A good many discoveries of a similar kind have
to be made by most of us. Once more it opened its eyes--then closed them
again, and its throbbing ceased. Curdie gave a sob: its last look
reminded him of the princess--he did not know why. He remembered how
hard he had laboured to set her beyond danger, and yet what dangers she
had had to encounter for his sake: they had been saviours to each
other--and what had he done now? He had stopped saving, and had begun
killing! What had he been sent into the world for? Surely not to be a
death to its joy and loveliness. He had done the thing that was contrary
to gladness; he was a destroyer! He was not the Curdie he had been meant
to be! Then the underground waters gushed from the boy's heart. And with
the tears came the remembrance that a white pigeon, just before the
princess went away with her father, came from somewhere--yes, from the
grandmother's lamp, and flew round the king and Irene and himself, and
then flew away: this might be that very pigeon! Horrible to think! And
if it wasn't, yet it was a white pigeon, the same as it. And if she kept
a great many pigeons--and white ones, as Irene had told him, then whose
pigeon could he have killed but the grand old princess's? Suddenly
everything round about him seemed against him. The red sunset stung
him: the rocks frowned at him; the sweet wind that had been laving his
face as he walked up the hill, dropped--as if he wasn't fit to be kissed
any more. Was the whole world going to cast him out? Would he have to
stand there for ever, not knowing what to do, with the dead pigeon in
his hand? Things looked bad indeed. Was the whole world going to make a
work about a pigeon--a white pigeon? The sun went down. Great clouds
gathered over the west, and shortened the twilight. The wind gave a
howl, and then lay down again. The clouds gathered thicker. Then came a
rumbling. He thought it was thunder. It was a rock that fell inside the
mountain. A goat ran past him down the hill, followed by a dog sent to
fetch him home. He thought they were goblin creatures, and trembled. He
used to despise them. And still he held the dead pigeon tenderly in his
hand. It grew darker and darker. An evil something began to move in his
heart. "What a fool I am!" he said to himself. Then he grew angry, and
was just going to throw the bird from him and whistle, when a brightness
shone all round him. He lifted his eyes, and saw a great globe of
light--like silver at the hottest heat: he had once seen silver run from
the furnace. It shone from somewhere above the roofs of the castle: it
must be the great old princess's moon! How could she be there? Of
course she was not there! He had asked the whole household, and nobody
knew anything about her or her globe either. It couldn't be! And yet
what did that signify, when there was the white globe shining, and here
was the dead white bird in his hand? That moment the pigeon gave a
little flutter. "_It's not dead!_" cried Curdie, almost with a shriek.
The same instant he was running full speed towards the castle, never
letting his heels down, lest he should shake the poor wounded bird.
[Illustration: "_That moment the pigeon fell on the path, broken-winged
and bleeding._"]
CHAPTER III.
THE MISTRESS OF THE SILVER MOON.
When Curdie reached the castle, and ran into the little garden in front
of it, there stood the door wide open. This was as he had hoped, for
what could he have said if he had had to knock at it? Those whose
business it is to open doors, so often mistake and shut them! But the
woman now in charge often puzzled herself greatly to account for the
strange fact that however often she shut the door, which, like the rest,
she took a great deal of unnecessary trouble to do, she was certain, the
next time she went to it, to find it open. I speak now of the great
front door, of course: the back door she as persistently kept wide: if
people _could_ only go in by that, she said, she would then know what
sort they were, and what they wanted. But she would neither have known
what sort Curdie was, nor what he wanted, and would assuredly have
denied him admittance, for she knew nothing of who was in the tower. So
the front door was left open for him, and in he walked.
But where to go next he could not tell. It was not quite dark: a dull,
shineless twilight filled the place. All he knew was that he must go up,
and that proved enough for the present, for there he saw the great
staircase rising before him. When he reached the top of it, he knew
there must be more stairs yet, for he could not be near the top of the
tower. Indeed by the situation of the stair, he must be a good way from
the tower itself. But those who work well in the depths more easily
understand the heights, for indeed in their true nature they are one and
the same: mines are in mountains; and Curdie from knowing the ways of
the king's mines, and being able to calculate his whereabouts in them,
was now able to find his way about the king's house. He knew its outside
perfectly, and now his business was to get his notion of the inside
right with the outside. So he shut his eyes and made a picture of the
outside of it in his mind. Then he came in at the door of the picture,
and yet kept the picture before him all the time--for you can do that
kind of thing in your mind,--and took every turn of the stair over
again, always watching to remember, every time he turned his face, how
the tower lay, and then when he came to himself at the top where he
stood, he knew exactly where it was, and walked at once in the right
direction. On his way, however, he came to another stair, and up that he
went of course, watching still at every turn how the tower must lie. At
the top of this stair was yet another--they were the stairs up which the
princess ran when first, without knowing it, she was on her way to find
her great-great-grandmother. At the top of the second stair he could go
no farther, and must therefore set out again to find the tower, which,
as it rose far above the rest of the house, must have the last of its
stairs inside itself. Having watched every turn to the very last, he
still knew quite well in what direction he must go to find it, so he
left the stair and went down a passage that led, if not exactly towards
it, yet nearer it. This passage was rather dark, for it was very long,
with only one window at the end, and although there were doors on both
sides of it, they were all shut. At the distant window glimmered the
chill east, with a few feeble stars in it, and its light was dreary and
old, growing brown, and looking as if it were thinking about the day
that was just gone. Presently he turned into another passage, which also
had a window at the end of it; and in at that window shone all that was
left of the sunset, a few ashes, with here and there a little touch of
warmth: it was nearly as sad as the east, only there was one
difference--it was very plainly thinking of to-morrow. But at present
Curdie had nothing to do with to-day or to-morrow; his business was
with the bird, and the tower where dwelt the grand old princess to whom
it belonged. So he kept on his way, still eastward, and came to yet
another passage, which brought him to a door. He was afraid to open it
without first knocking. He knocked, but heard no answer. He was answered
nevertheless; for the door gently opened, and there was a narrow
stair--and so steep that, big lad as he was, he too, like the Princess
Irene before him, found his hands needful for the climbing. And it was a
long climb, but he reached the top at last--a little landing, with a
door in front and one on each side. Which should he knock at?
As he hesitated, he heard the noise of a spinning-wheel. He knew it at
once, because his mother's spinning-wheel had been his governess long
ago, and still taught him things. It was the spinning-wheel that first
taught him to make verses, and to sing, and to think whether all was
right inside him; or at least it had helped him in all these things.
Hence it was no wonder he should know a spinning-wheel when he heard it
sing--even although as the bird of paradise to other birds was the song
of that wheel to the song of his mother's.
He stood listening so entranced that he forgot to knock, and the wheel
went on and on, spinning in his brain songs and tales and rhymes, till
he was almost asleep as well as dreaming, for sleep does not _always_
come first. But suddenly came the thought of the poor bird, which had
been lying motionless in his hand all the time, and that woke him up,
and at once he knocked.
"Come in, Curdie," said a voice.
Curdie shook. It was getting rather awful. The heart that had never much
heeded an army of goblins, trembled at the soft word of invitation. But
then there was the red-spotted white thing in his hand! He dared not
hesitate, though. Gently he opened the door through which the sound
came, and what did he see? Nothing at first--except indeed a great
sloping shaft of moonlight, that came in at a high window, and rested on
the floor. He stood and stared at it, forgetting to shut the door.
"Why don't you come in, Curdie?" said the voice. "Did you never see
moonlight before?"
"Never without a moon," answered Curdie, in a trembling tone, but
gathering courage.
"Certainly not," returned the voice, which was thin and quavering: "_I_
never saw moonlight without a moon."
"But there's no moon outside," said Curdie.
"Ah! but you're inside now," said the voice.
The answer did not satisfy Curdie; but the voice went on.
"There are more moons than you know of, Curdie. Where there is one sun
there are many moons--and of many sorts. Come in and look out of my
window, and you will soon satisfy yourself that there is a moon looking
in at it."
The gentleness of the voice made Curdie remember his manners. He shut
the door, and drew a step or two nearer to the moonlight.
All the time the sound of the spinning had been going on and on, and
Curdie now caught sight of the wheel. Oh, it was such a thin, delicate
thing--reminding him of a spider's web in a hedge! It stood in the
middle of the moonlight, and it seemed as if the moonlight had nearly
melted it away. A step nearer, he saw, with a start, two little hands at
work with it. And then at last, in the shadow on the other side of the
moonlight which came like a river between, he saw the form to which the
hands belonged: a small, withered creature, so old that no age would
have seemed too great to write under her picture, seated on a stool
beyond the spinning-wheel, which looked very large beside her, but, as I
said, very thin, like a long-legged spider holding up its own web, which
was the round wheel itself. She sat crumpled together, a filmy thing
that it seemed a puff would blow away, more like the body of a fly the
big spider had sucked empty and left hanging in his web, than anything
else I can think of.
When Curdie saw her, he stood still again, a good deal in wonder, a very
little in reverence, a little in doubt, and, I must add, a little in
amusement at the odd look of the old marvel. Her grey hair mixed with
the moonlight so that he could not tell where the one began and the
other ended. Her crooked back bent forward over her chest, her shoulders
nearly swallowed up her head between them, and her two little hands were
just like the grey claws of a hen, scratching at the thread, which to
Curdie was of course invisible across the moonlight. Indeed Curdie
laughed within himself, just a little, at the sight; and when he thought
of how the princess used to talk about her huge great old grandmother,
he laughed more. But that moment the little lady leaned forward into the
moonlight, and Curdie caught a glimpse of her eyes, and all the laugh
went out of him.
"What do you come here for, Curdie?" she said, as gently as before.
Then Curdie remembered that he stood there as a culprit, and worst of
all, as one who had his confession yet to make. There was no time to
hesitate over it.
"Oh, ma'am! see here," he said, and advanced a step or two, holding out
the dead pigeon.
"What have you got there?" she asked.
Again Curdie advanced a few steps, and held out his hand with the
pigeon, that she might see what it was, into the moonlight. The moment
the rays fell upon it the pigeon gave a faint flutter. The old lady put
out her old hands and took it, and held it to her bosom, and rocked it,
murmuring over it as if it were a sick baby.
When Curdie saw how distressed she was he grew sorrier still, and
said,--
"I didn't mean to do any harm, ma'am. I didn't think of its being
yours."
"Ah, Curdie! if it weren't mine, what would become of it now?" she
returned. "You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any good,
Curdie?"
"No," answered Curdie.
"Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of
harm. But I try to give everybody fair play; and those that are in the
wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the right:
they can afford to do without it. Therefore I say for you that when you
shot that arrow you did not know what a pigeon is. Now that you do know,
you are sorry. It is very dangerous to do things you don't know about."
"But, please, ma'am--I don't mean to be rude or to contradict you," said
Curdie, "but if a body was never to do anything but what he knew to be
good, he would have to live half his time doing nothing."
"There you are much mistaken," said the old quavering voice. "How little
you must have thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the good of the
things you are constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I don't mean you
are good for doing them. It is a good thing to eat your breakfast, but
you don't fancy it's very good of you to do it. The thing is good--not
you."
Curdie laughed.
"There are a great many more good things than bad things to do. Now tell
me what bad thing you have done to-day besides this sore hurt to my
little white friend."
While she talked Curdie had sunk into a sort of reverie, in which he
hardly knew whether it was the old lady or his own heart that spoke. And
when she asked him that question, he was at first much inclined to
consider himself a very good fellow on the whole. "I really don't think
I did anything else that was very bad all day," he said to himself. But
at the same time he could not honestly feel that he was worth standing
up for. All at once a light seemed to break in upon his mind, and he
woke up, and there was the withered little atomy of the old lady on the
other side of the moonlight, and there was the spinning-wheel singing on
and on in the middle of it!
"I know now, ma'am; I understand now," he said. "Thank you, ma'am for
spinning it into me with your wheel. I see now that I have been doing
wrong the whole day, and such a many days besides! Indeed, I don't know
when I ever did right, and yet it seems as if I had done right some
time and had forgotten how. When I killed your bird I did not know I was
doing wrong, just because I was always doing wrong, and the wrong had
soaked all through me."
"What wrong were you doing all day, Curdie? It is better to come to the
point, you know," said the old lady, and her voice was gentler even than
before.
"I was doing the wrong of never wanting or trying to be better. And now
I see that I have been letting things go as they would for a long time.
Whatever came into my head I did, and whatever didn't come into my head
I didn't do. I never sent anything away, and never looked out for
anything to come. I haven't been attending to my mother--or my father
either. And now I think of it, I know I have often seen them looking
troubled, and I have never asked them what was the matter. And now I see
too that I did not ask because I suspected it had something to do with
me and my behaviour, and didn't want to hear the truth. And I know I
have been grumbling at my work, and doing a hundred other things that
are wrong."
"You have got it, Curdie," said the old lady, in a voice that sounded
almost as if she had been crying. "When people don't care to be better
they must be doing everything wrong. I am so glad you shot my bird!"
"Ma'am!" exclaimed Curdie. "How _can_ you be?"
"Because it has brought you to see what sort you were when you did it,
and what sort you will grow to be again, only worse, if you don't mind.
Now that you are sorry, my poor bird will be better. Look up, my dovey."
The pigeon gave a flutter, and spread out one of its red-spotted wings
across the old woman's bosom.
"I will mend the little angel," she said, "and in a week or two it will
be flying again. So you may ease your heart about the pigeon."
"Oh, thank you! thank you!" cried Curdie. "I don't know how to thank
you."
"Then I will tell you. There is only one way I care for. Do better, and
grow better, and be better. And never kill anything without a good
reason for it."
"Ma'am, I will go and fetch my bow and arrows, and you shall burn them
yourself."
"I have no fire that would burn your bow and arrows, Curdie."
"Then I promise you to burn them all under my mother's porridge-pot
to-morrow morning."
"No, no, Curdie. Keep them, and practise with them every day, and grow a
good shot. There are plenty of bad things that want killing, and a day
will come when they will prove useful. But I must see first whether you
will do as I tell you."
"That I will!" said Curdie. "What is it, ma'am?"
"Only something not to do," answered the old lady; "if you should hear
any one speak about me, never to laugh or make fun of me."
"Oh, ma'am!" exclaimed Curdie, shocked that she should think such a
request needful.
"Stop, stop," she went on. "People hereabout sometimes tell very odd and
in fact ridiculous stories of an old woman who watches what is going on,
and occasionally interferes. They mean me, though what they say is often
great nonsense. Now what I want of you is not to laugh, or side with
them in any way; because they will take that to mean that you don't
believe there is any such person a bit more than they do. Now that would
not be the case--would it, Curdie?"
"No indeed, ma'am. I've seen you."
The old woman smiled very oddly.
"Yes, you've seen me," she said. "But mind," she continued, "I don't
want you to say anything--only to hold your tongue, and not seem to side
with them."
"That will be easy," said Curdie, "now that I've seen you with my very
own eyes, ma'am."
"Not so easy as you think, perhaps," said the old lady, with another
curious smile. "I want to be your friend," she added after a little
pause, "but I don't quite know yet whether you will let me."
"Indeed I will, ma'am," said Curdie.
"That is for me to find out," she rejoined, with yet another strange
smile. "In the meantime all I can say is, come to me again when you find
yourself in any trouble, and I will see what I can do for you--only the
_canning_ depends on yourself. I am greatly pleased with you for
bringing me my pigeon, doing your best to set right what you had set
wrong."
As she spoke she held out her hand to him, and when he took it she made
use of his to help herself up from her stool, and--when or how it came
about, Curdie could not tell--the same instant she stood before him a
tall, strong woman--plainly very old, but as grand as she was old, and
only _rather_ severe-looking. Every trace of the decrepitude and
witheredness she showed as she hovered like a film about her wheel, had
vanished. Her hair was very white, but it hung about her head in great
plenty, and shone like silver in the moonlight. Straight as a pillar she
stood before the astonished boy, and the wounded bird had now spread out
both its wings across her bosom, like some great mystical ornament of
frosted silver.
"Oh, now I can never forget you!" cried Curdie. "I see now what you
really are!"
"Did I not tell you the truth when I sat at my wheel?" said the old
lady.
[Illustration: "_The wounded bird now spread out both its wings across
her bosom._"]
"Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie.
"I can do no more than tell you the truth now," she rejoined. "It is a
bad thing indeed to forget one who has told us the truth. Now go."
Curdie obeyed, and took a few steps towards the door.
"Please, ma'am,"--"what am I to call you?" he was going to say; but when
he turned to speak, he saw nobody. Whether she was there or not he could
not tell, however, for the moonlight had vanished, and the room was
utterly dark. A great fear, such as he had never before known, came upon
him, and almost overwhelmed him. He groped his way to the door, and
crawled down the stair--in doubt and anxiety as to how he should find
his way out of the house in the dark. And the stair seemed ever so much
longer than when he came up. Nor was that any wonder, for down and down
he went, until at length his foot struck on a door, and when he rose and
opened it, he found himself under the starry, moonless sky at the foot
of the tower. He soon discovered the way out of the garden, with which
he had some acquaintance already, and in a few minutes was climbing the
mountain with a solemn and cheerful heart. It was rather dark, but he
knew the way well. As he passed the rock from which the poor pigeon fell
wounded with his arrow, a great joy filled his heart at the thought that
he was delivered from the blood of the little bird, and he ran the next
hundred yards at full speed up the hill. Some dark shadows passed him:
he did not even care to think what they were, but let them run. When he
reached home, he found his father and mother waiting supper for him.
CHAPTER IV.
CURDIE'S FATHER AND MOTHER.
The eyes of the fathers and mothers are quick to read their children's
looks, and when Curdie entered the cottage, his parents saw at once that
something unusual had taken place. When he said to his mother, "I beg
your pardon for being so late," there was something in the tone beyond
the politeness that went to her heart, for it seemed to come from the
place where all lovely things were born before they began to grow in
this world. When he set his father's chair to the table, an attention he
had not shown him for a long time, Peter thanked him with more gratitude
than the boy had ever yet felt in all his life. It was a small thing to
do for the man who had been serving him since ever he was born, but I
suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which
he has the most right. There was a change upon Curdie, and father and
mother felt there must be something to account for it, and therefore
were pretty sure he had something to tell them. For when a child's heart
is _all_ right, it is not likely he will want to keep anything from his
parents. But the story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to come
out with all at once. He must wait until they had had their porridge,
and the affairs of this world were over for the day. But when they were
seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went so sweetly blundering
over the great stones of its rocky channel, for the whole meadow lay on
the top of a huge rock, then he felt that the right hour had come for
sharing with them the wonderful things that had come to him. It was
perhaps the loveliest of all hours in the year. The summer was young and
soft, and this was the warmest evening they had yet had--dusky, dark
even below, while above the stars were bright and large and sharp in the
blackest blue sky. The night came close around them, clasping them in
one universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled,
seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything they
said and did. It is a way the night has sometimes, and there is a reason
for it. The only sound was that of the brook, for there was no wind, and
no trees for it to make its music upon if there had been, for the
cottage was high up on the mountain, on a great shoulder of stone where
trees would not grow. There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it
hurried down to the valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand
true things which it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside
and in, to his father and mother. What a world had slipped in between
the mouth of the mine and his mother's cottage! Neither of them said a
word until he had ended.
"Now what am I to make of it, mother? It's so strange!" he said, and
stopped.
"It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it--isn't it,
Peter?" said the good woman, turning her face towards all she could see
of her husband's.
"It seems so to me," answered Peter, with a smile, which only the night
saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words. They were the happiest
couple in that country, because they always understood each other, and
that was because they always meant the same thing, and that was because
they always loved what was fair and true and right better--not than
anything else, but than everything else put together.
"Then will you tell Curdie?" said she.
"You can talk best, Joan," said he. "You tell him, and I will
listen--and learn how to say what I think," he added, laughing.
"_I_," said Curdie, "don't know what to think."
"It does not matter so much," said his mother. "If only you know what
to make of a thing, you'll know soon enough what to think of it. Now I
needn't tell you, surely, Curdie, what you've got to do with this?"
"I suppose you mean, mother," answered Curdie, "that I must do as the
old lady told me?"
"That is what I mean: what else could it be? Am I not right, Peter?"
"Quite right, Joan," answered Peter, "so far as my judgment goes. It is
a very strange story, but you see the question is not about believing
it, for Curdie knows what came to him."
"And you remember, Curdie," said his mother, "that when the princess
took you up that tower once before, and there talked to her
great-great-grandmother, you came home quite angry with her, and said
there was nothing in the place but an old tub, a heap of straw--oh, I
remember your inventory quite well!--an old tub, a heap of straw, a
withered apple, and a sunbeam. According to your eyes, that was all
there was in the great old musty garret. But now you have had a glimpse
of the old princess herself!"
"Yes, mother, I _did_ see her--or if I didn't,--" said Curdie very
thoughtfully--then began again. "The hardest thing to believe, though I
saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature, that seemed
almost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of the silver paper
they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief made of spider-threads,
took my hand, and rose up. She was taller and stronger than you, mother,
ever so much!--at least, she looked so."
"And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so," said Mrs.
Peterson.
"Well, I confess," returned her son, "that one thing, if there were no
other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming after all, for as
wide awake as I fancied myself to be."
"Of course," answered his mother, "it is not for me to say whether you
were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't
make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the
bunch of sweet-peas that make my heart glad with their colour and scent,
and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the
hole in the same spot in the spring. I only think how wonderful and
lovely it all is. It seems just as full of reason as it is of wonder.
How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And there is this in it
too, Curdie--of which you would not be so ready to think--that when you
come home to your father and mother, and they find you behaving more
like a dear good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at
least are not likely to think you were only dreaming."
"Still," said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, "I might have dreamed my
duty."
"Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your
dreams than in your waking thoughts. But however any of these things may
be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing as she
told you. And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such person, you
are bound to do it, for you promised."
"It seems to me," said his father, "that if a lady comes to you in a
dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake, the
least you can do is to hold your tongue."
"True, father!--Yes, mother, I'll do it," said Curdie.
Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next
took them in its arms and made them well.
CHAPTER V.
THE MINERS.
It much increased Curdie's feeling of the strangeness of the whole
affair, that, the next morning, when they were at work in the mine, the
party of which he and his father were two, just as if they had known
what had happened to him the night before, began talking about all
manner of wonderful tales that were abroad in the country, chiefly of
course those connected with the mines, and the mountains in which they
lay. Their wives and mothers and grandmothers were their chief
authorities. For when they sat by their firesides they heard their wives
telling their children the selfsame tales, with little differences, and
here and there one they had not heard before, which they had heard their
mothers and grandmothers tell in one or other of the same cottages. At
length they came to speak of a certain strange being they called Old
Mother Wotherwop. Some said their wives had seen her. It appeared as
they talked that not one had seen her more than once. Some of their
mothers and grandmothers, however, had seen her also, and they all had
told them tales about her when they were children. They said she could
take any shape she liked, but that in reality she was a withered old
woman, so old and so withered that she was as thin as a sieve with a
lamp behind it; that she was never seen except at night, and when
something terrible had taken place, or was going to take place--such as
the falling in of the roof of a mine, or the breaking out of water in
it. She had more than once been seen--it was always at night--beside
some well, sitting on the brink of it, and leaning over and stirring it
with her forefinger, which was six times as long as any of the rest. And
whoever for months after drank of that well was sure to be ill. To this
one of them, however, added that he remembered his mother saying that
whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the
majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story--for
was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do
mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman
sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all,
for she struck every man who looked upon her stone-blind. Peter ventured
the question whether she might not as likely be an angel that took the
form of an old woman, as an old woman that took the form of an angel.
But nobody except Curdie, who was holding his peace with all his might,
saw any sense in the question. They said an old woman might be very glad
to make herself look like a young one, but who ever heard of a young and
beautiful one making herself look old and ugly? Peter asked why they
were so much more ready to believe the bad that was said of her than the
good. They answered because she was bad. He asked why they believed her
to be bad, and they answered, because she did bad things. When he asked
how they knew that, they said, because she was a bad creature. Even if
they didn't know it, they said, a woman like that was so much more
likely to be bad than good. Why did she go about at night? Why did she
appear only now and then, and on such occasions? One went on to tell how
one night when his grandfather had been having a jolly time of it with
his friends in the market town, she had served him so upon his way home
that the poor man never drank a drop of anything stronger than water
after it to the day of his death. She dragged him into a bog, and
tumbled him up and down in it till he was nearly dead.
"I suppose that was her way of teaching him what a good thing water
was," said Peter; but the man, who liked strong drink, did not see the
joke.
"They do say," said another, "that she has lived in the old house over
there ever since the little princess left it. They say too that the
housekeeper knows all about it, and is hand and glove with the old
witch. I don't doubt they have many a nice airing together on
broomsticks. But I don't doubt either it's all nonsense, and there's no
such person at all."
"When our cow died," said another, "she was seen going round and round
the cowhouse the same night. To be sure she left a fine calf behind
her--I mean the cow did, not the witch. I wonder she didn't kill that
too, for she'll be a far finer cow than ever her mother was."
"My old woman came upon her one night, not long before the water broke
out in the mine, sitting on a stone on the hill-side with a whole
congregation of cobs about her. When they saw my wife they all scampered
off as fast as they could run, and where the witch was sitting there was
nothing to be seen but a withered bracken bush. I make no doubt myself
she was putting them up to it."
And so they went on with one foolish tale after another, while Peter put
in a word now and then, and Curdie diligently held his peace. But his
silence at last drew attention upon it, and one of them said,--
"Come, young Curdie, what are you thinking of?"
"How do you know I'm thinking of anything?" asked Curdie.
"Because you're not saying anything."
"Does it follow then that, as you are saying so much, you're not
thinking at all?" said Curdie.
"I know what he's thinking," said one who had not yet spoken; "--he's
thinking what a set of fools you are to talk such rubbish; as if ever
there was or could be such an old woman as you say! I'm sure Curdie
knows better than all that comes to."
"I think," said Curdie, "it would be better that he who says anything
about her should be quite sure it is true, lest she should hear him, and
not like to be slandered."
"But would she like it any better if it were true?" said the same man.
"If she is what they say--I don't know--but I never knew a man that
wouldn't go in a rage to be called the very thing he was."
"If bad things were true of her, and I _knew_ it," said Curdie, "I would
not hesitate to say them, for I will never give in to being afraid of
anything that's bad. I suspect that the things they tell, however, if we
knew all about them, would turn out to have nothing but good in them;
and I won't say a word more for fear I should say something that
mightn't be to her mind."
They all burst into a loud laugh.
"Hear the parson!" they cried. "He believes in the witch! Ha! ha!"
"He's afraid of her!"
"And says all she does is good!"
"He wants to make friends with her, that she may help him to find the
gangue."
"Give me my own eyes and a good divining rod before all the witches in
the world! and so I'd advise you too, Master Curdie; that is, when your
eyes have grown to be worth anything, and you have learned to cut the
hazel fork."
Thus they all mocked and jeered at him, but he did his best to keep his
temper and go quietly on with his work. He got as close to his father as
he could, however, for that helped him to bear it. As soon as they were
tired of laughing and mocking, Curdie was friendly with them, and long
before their midday meal all between them was as it had been.
But when the evening came, Peter and Curdie felt that they would rather
walk home together without other company, and therefore lingered behind
when the rest of the men left the mine.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EMERALD.
Father and son had seated themselves on a projecting piece of the rock
at a corner where three galleries met--the one they had come along from
their work, one to the right leading out of the mountain, and the other
to the left leading far into a portion of it which had been long
disused. Since the inundation caused by the goblins, it had indeed been
rendered impassable by the settlement of a quantity of the water,
forming a small but very deep lake, in a part where was a considerable
descent. They had just risen and were turning to the right, when a gleam
caught their eyes, and made them look along the whole gangue. Far up
they saw a pale green light, whence issuing they could not tell, about
halfway between floor and roof of the passage. They saw nothing but the
light, which was like a large star, with a point of darker colour yet
brighter radiance in the heart of it, whence the rest of the light shot
out in rays that faded towards the ends until they vanished. It shed
hardly any light around it, although in itself it was so bright as to
sting the eyes that beheld it. Wonderful stories had from ages gone been
current in the mines about certain magic gems which gave out light of
themselves, and this light looked just like what might be supposed to
shoot from the heart of such a gem. They went up the old gallery to find
out what it could be.
To their surprise they found, however, that, after going some distance,
they were no nearer to it, so far as they could judge, than when they
started. It did not seem to move, and yet they moving did not approach
it. Still they persevered, for it was far too wonderful a thing to lose
sight of so long as they could keep it. At length they drew near the
hollow where the water lay, and still were no nearer the light. Where
they expected to be stopped by the water, however, water was none:
something had taken place in some part of the mine that had drained it
off, and the gallery lay open as in former times. And now, to their
surprise, the light, instead of being in front of them, was shining at
the same distance to the right, where they did not know there was any
passage at all. Then they discovered, by the light of the lanterns they
carried, that there the water had broken through, and made an adit to a
part of the mountain of which Peter knew nothing. But they were hardly
well into it, still following the light, before Curdie thought he
recognised some of the passages he had so often gone through when he was
watching the goblins. After they had advanced a long way, with many
turnings, now to the right, now to the left, all at once their eyes
seemed to come suddenly to themselves, and they became aware that the
light which they had taken to be a great way from them was in reality
almost within reach of their hands. The same instant it began to grow
larger and thinner, the point of light grew dim as it spread, the
greenness melted away, and in a moment or two, instead of the star, a
dark, dark and yet luminous face was looking at them with living eyes.
And Curdie felt a great awe swell up in his heart, for he thought he had
seen those eyes before.
"I see you know me, Curdie," said a voice.
"If your eyes are you, ma'am, then I know you," said Curdie. "But I
never saw your face before."
"Yes, you have seen it, Curdie," said the voice.
And with that the darkness of its complexion melted away, and down from
the face dawned out the form that belonged to it, until at last Curdie
and his father beheld a lady, "beautiful exceedingly," dressed in
something pale green, like velvet, over which her hair fell in cataracts
of a rich golden colour. It looked as if it were pouring down from her
head, and, like the water of the Dustbrook, vanishing in a golden vapour
ere it reached the floor. It came flowing from under the edge of a
coronet of gold, set with alternated pearls and emeralds. In front of
the crown was a great emerald, which looked somehow as if out of it had
come the light they had followed. There was no ornament else about her,
except on her slippers, which were one mass of gleaming emeralds, of
various shades of green, all mingling lovely like the waving of grass in
the wind and sun. She looked about five-and-twenty years old. And for
all the difference, Curdie knew somehow or other, he could not have told
how, that the face before him was that of the old princess, Irene's
great-great-grandmother.
By this time all around them had grown light, and now first they could
see where they were. They stood in a great splendid cavern, which Curdie
recognised as that in which the goblins held their state assemblies.
But, strange to tell, the light by which they saw came streaming,
sparkling, and shooting from stones of many colours in the sides and
roof and floor of the cavern--stones of all the colours of the rainbow,
and many more. It was a glorious sight--the whole rugged place flashing
with colours--in one spot a great light of deep carbuncular red, in
another of sapphirine blue, in another of topaz-yellow; while here and
there were groups of stones of all hues and sizes, and again nebulous
spaces of thousands of tiniest spots of brilliancy of every conceivable
shade. Sometimes the colours ran together, and made a little river or
lake of lambent interfusing and changing tints, which, by their
variegation, seemed to imitate the flowing of water, or waves made by
the wind. Curdie would have gazed entranced, but that all the beauty of
the cavern, yes, of all he knew of the whole creation, seemed gathered
in one centre of harmony and loveliness in the person of the ancient
lady who stood before him in the very summer of beauty and strength.
Turning from the first glance at the circumfulgent splendour, it
dwindled into nothing as he looked again at the lady. Nothing flashed or
glowed or shone about her, and yet it was with a prevision of the truth
that he said,--
"I was here once before, ma'am."
"I know that, Curdie," she replied.
"The place was full of torches, and the walls gleamed, but nothing as
they do now, and there is no light in the place."
"You want to know where the light comes from?" she said, smiling.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then see: I will go out of the cavern. Do not be afraid, but watch."
She went slowly out. The moment she turned her back to go, the light
began to pale and fade; the moment she was out of their sight the place
was black as night, save that now the smoky yellow-red of their lamps,
which they thought had gone out long ago, cast a dusky glimmer around
them.
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT _IS_ IN A NAME?
For a time that seemed to them long, the two men stood waiting, while
still the Mother of Light did not return. So long was she absent that
they began to grow anxious: how were they to find their way from the
natural hollows of the mountain crossed by goblin paths, if their lamps
should go out? To spend the night there would mean to sit and wait until
an earthquake rent the mountain, or the earth herself fell back into the
smelting furnace of the sun whence she had issued--for it was all night
and no faintest dawn in the bosom of the world. So long did they wait
unrevisited, that, had there not been two of them, either would at
length have concluded the vision a home-born product of his own seething
brain. And their lamps _were_ going out, for they grew redder and
smokier! But they did not lose courage, for there is a kind of capillary
attraction in the facing of two souls, that lifts faith quite beyond
the level to which either could raise it alone: they knew that they had
seen the lady of emeralds, and it was to give them their own desire that
she had gone from them, and neither would yield for a moment to the
half-doubts and half-dreads that awoke in his heart. And still she who
with her absence darkened their air did not return. They grew weary, and
sat down on the rocky floor, for wait they would--indeed, wait they
must. Each set his lamp by his knee, and watched it die. Slowly it sank,
dulled, looked lazy and stupid. But ever as it sank and dulled, the
image in his mind of the Lady of Light grew stronger and clearer.
Together the two lamps panted and shuddered. First one, then the other
went out, leaving for a moment a great red, evil-smelling snuff. Then
all was the blackness of darkness up to their very hearts and everywhere
around them. Was it? No. Far away--it looked miles away--shone one
minute faint point of green light--where, who could tell? They only knew
that it shone. It grew larger, and seemed to draw nearer, until at last,
as they watched with speechless delight and expectation, it seemed once
more within reach of an outstretched hand. Then it spread and melted
away as before, and there were eyes--and a face--and a lovely form--and
lo! the whole cavern blazing with lights innumerable, and gorgeous, yet
soft and interfused--so blended, indeed, that the eye had to search and
see in order to separate distinct spots of special colour.
The moment they saw the speck in the vast distance they had risen and
stood on their feet. When it came nearer they bowed their heads. Yet now
they looked with fearless eyes, for the woman that was old and yet young
was a joy to see, and filled their hearts with reverent delight. She
turned first to Peter.
"I have known you long," she said. "I have met you going to and from the
mine, and seen you working in it for the last forty years."
"How should it be, madam, that a grand lady like you should take notice
of a poor man like me?" said Peter, humbly, but more foolishly than he
could then have understood.
"I am poor as well as rich," said she. "I too work for my bread, and I
show myself no favour when I pay myself my own wages. Last night when
you sat by the brook, and Curdie told you about my pigeon, and my
spinning, and wondered whether he could believe that he had actually
seen me, I heard all you said to each other. I am always about, as the
miners said the other night when they talked of me as Old Mother
Wotherwop."
The lovely lady laughed, and her laugh was a lightning of delight in
their souls.
"Yes," she went on, "you have got to thank me that you are so poor,
Peter. I have seen to that, and it has done well for both you and me, my
friend. Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the
rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be
poor, Peter--one that no man ever coveted, and but a very few have
sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. You must
not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege,
and one also that, like other privileges, may be terribly misused. Hadst
thou been rich, my Peter, thou wouldst not have been so good as some
rich men I know. And now I am going to tell you what no one knows but
myself: you, Peter, and your wife have both the blood of the royal
family in your veins. I have been trying to cultivate your family tree,
every branch of which is known to me, and I expect Curdie to turn out a
blossom on it. Therefore I have been training him for a work that must
soon be done. I was near losing him, and had to send my pigeon. Had he
not shot it, that would have been better; but he repented, and that
shall be as good in the end."
She turned to Curdie and smiled.
"Ma'am," said Curdie, "may I ask questions?"
"Why not, Curdie?"
"Because I have been told, ma'am, that nobody must ask the king
questions."
"The king never made that law," she answered, with some displeasure.
"You may ask me as many as you please--that is, so long as they are
sensible. Only I may take a few thousand years to answer some of them.
But that's nothing. Of all things time is the cheapest."
"Then would you mind telling me now, ma'am, for I feel very confused
about it--are you the Lady of the Silver Moon?"
"Yes, Curdie; you may call me that if you like. What it means is true."
"And now I see you dark, and clothed in green, and the mother of all the
light that dwells in the stones of the earth! And up there they call you
Old Mother Wotherwop! And the Princess Irene told me you were her
great-great-grandmother! And you spin the spider-threads, and take care
of a whole people of pigeons; and you are worn to a pale shadow with old
age; and are as young as anybody can be, not to be too young; and as
strong, I do believe, as I am."
The lady stooped towards a large green stone bedded in the rock of the
floor, and looking like a well of grassy light in it. She laid hold of
it with her fingers, broke it out, and gave it to Peter.
"There!" cried Curdie, "I told you so. Twenty men could not have done
that. And your fingers are white and smooth as any lady's in the land. I
don't know what to make of it."
"I could give you twenty names more to call me, Curdie, and not one of
them would be a false one. What does it matter how many names if the
person is one?"
"Ah! but it is not names only, ma'am. Look at what you were like last
night, and what I see you now!"
"Shapes are only dresses, Curdie, and dresses are only names. That which
is inside is the same all the time."
"But then how can all the shapes speak the truth?"
"It would want thousands more to speak the truth, Curdie; and then they
could not. But there is a point I must not let you mistake about. It is
one thing the shape I choose to put on, and quite another the shape that
foolish talk and nursery tale may please to put upon me. Also, it is one
thing what you or your father may think about me, and quite another what
a foolish or bad man may see in me. For instance, if a thief were to
come in here just now, he would think he saw the demon of the mine, all
in green flames, come to protect her treasure, and would run like a
hunted wild goat. I should be all the same, but his evil eyes would see
me as I was not."
"I think I understand," said Curdie.
"Peter," said the lady, turning then to him, "you will have to give up
Curdie for a little while."
"So long as he loves us, ma'am, that will not matter--much."
"Ah! you are right there, my friend," said the beautiful princess.
And as she said it she put out her hand, and took the hard, horny hand
of the miner in it, and held it for a moment lovingly.
"I need say no more," she added, "for we understand each other--you and
I, Peter."
The tears came into Peter's eyes. He bowed his head in thankfulness, and
his heart was much too full to speak.
Then the great old young beautiful princess turned to Curdie.
"Now, Curdie, are you ready?" she said.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie.
"You do not know what for."
"You do, ma'am. That is enough."
"You could not have given me a better answer, or done more to prepare
yourself, Curdie," she returned, with one of her radiant smiles. "Do you
think you will know me again?"
"I think so. But how can I tell what you may look like next?"
"Ah, that indeed! How can you tell? Or how could I expect you should?
But those who know me _well_, know me whatever new dress or shape or
name I may be in; and by-and-by you will have learned to do so too."
"But if you want me to know you again, ma'am, for certain sure," said
Curdie, "could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you
that never changes--or some other way to know you, or thing to know you
by?"
"No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me
in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or
me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to
know the sign of me--not to know me myself. It would be no better than
if I were to take this emerald out of my crown and give it you to take
home with you, and you were to call it me, and talk to it as if it heard
and saw and loved you. Much good that would do you, Curdie! No; you must
do what you can to know me, and if you do, you will. You shall see me
again--in very different circumstances from these, and, I will tell you
so much, it _may_ be in a very different shape. But come now, I will
lead you out of this cavern; my good Joan will be getting too anxious
about you. One word more: you will allow that the men knew little what
they were talking about this morning, when they told all those tales of
Old Mother Wotherwop; but did it occur to you to think how it was they
fell to talking about me at all?--It was because I came to them; I was
beside them all the time they were talking about me, though they were
far enough from knowing it, and had very little besides foolishness to
say."
As she spoke she turned and led the way from the cavern, which, as if a
door had been closed, sunk into absolute blackness behind them. And now
they saw nothing more of the lady except the green star, which again
seemed a good distance in front of them, and to which they came no
nearer, although following it at a quick pace through the mountain. Such
was their confidence in her guidance, however, and so fearless were they
in consequence, that they felt their way neither with hand nor foot, but
walked straight on through the pitch dark galleries. When at length the
night of the upper world looked in at the mouth of the mine, the green
light seemed to lose its way amongst the stars, and they saw it no more.
Out they came into the cool, blessed night. It was very late, and only
starlight. To their surprise, three paces away they saw, seated upon a
stone, an old countrywoman, in a cloak which they took for black. When
they came close up to it, they saw it was red.
"Good evening!" said Peter.
"Good evening!" returned the old woman, in a voice as old as herself.
But Curdie took off his cap and said,--
"I am your servant, princess."
The old woman replied,--
"Come to me in the dove-tower to-morrow night, Curdie--alone."
"I will, ma'am," said Curdie.
So they parted, and father and son went home to wife and mother--two
persons in one rich, happy woman.
CHAPTER VIII.
CURDIE'S MISSION.
The next night Curdie went home from the mine a little earlier than
usual, to make himself tidy before going to the dove-tower. The princess
had not appointed an exact time for him to be there; he would go as near
the time he had gone first as he could. On his way to the bottom of the
hill, he met his father coming up. The sun was then down, and the warm
first of the twilight filled the evening. He came rather wearily up the
hill: the road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he
was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed
him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a
grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed
and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take
the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.
"Ah, Curdie! there you are!" he said, seeing his son come bounding along
as if it were morning with him and not evening.
"You look tired, father," said Curdie.
"Yes, my boy. I'm not so young as you."
"Nor so old as the princess," said Curdie.
"Tell me this," said Peter: "why do people talk about going down hill
when they begin to get old? It seems to me that then first they begin to
go up hill."
"You looked to me, father, when I caught sight of you, as if you had
been climbing the hill all your life, and were soon to get to the top."
"Nobody can tell when that will be," returned Peter. "We're so ready to
think we're just at the top when it lies miles away. But I must not keep
you, my boy, for you are wanted; and we shall be anxious to know what
the princess says to you--that is, if she will allow you to tell us."
"I think she will, for she knows there is nobody more to be trusted than
my father and mother," said Curdie, with pride.
And away he shot, and ran, and jumped, and seemed almost to fly down the
long, winding, steep path, until he came to the gate of the king's
house.
There he met an unexpected obstruction: in the open door stood the
housekeeper, and she seemed to broaden herself out until she almost
filled the doorway.
"So!" she said; "it's you, is it, young man? You are the person that
comes in and goes out when he pleases, and keeps running up and down my
stairs, without ever saying by your leave, or even wiping his shoes, and
always leaves the door open! Don't you know that this is my house?"
"No, I do not," returned Curdie, respectfully. "You forget, ma'am, that
it is the king's house."
"That is all the same. The king left it to me to take care of, and that
you shall know!"
"Is the king dead, ma'am, that he has left it to you?" asked Curdie,
half in doubt from the self-assertion of the woman.
"Insolent fellow!" exclaimed the housekeeper. "Don't you see by my dress
that I am in the king's service?"
"And am I not one of his miners?"
"Ah! that goes for nothing. I am one of his household. You are an
out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I carry
the keys at my girdle. See!"
"But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken," said
Curdie.
"Go along with you!" cried the housekeeper, and would have shut the door
in his face, had she not been afraid that when she stepped back he
would step in ere she could get it in motion, for it was very heavy, and
always seemed unwilling to shut. Curdie came a pace nearer. She lifted
the great house key from her side, and threatened to strike him down
with it, calling aloud on Mar and Whelk and Plout, the men-servants
under her, to come and help her. Ere one of them could answer, however,
she gave a great shriek and turned and fled, leaving the door wide open.
Curdie looked behind him, and saw an animal whose gruesome oddity even
he, who knew so many of the strange creatures, two of which were never
the same, that used to live inside the mountain with their masters the
goblins, had never seen equalled. Its eyes were flaming with anger, but
it seemed to be at the housekeeper, for it came cowering and creeping
up, and laid its head on the ground at Curdie's feet. Curdie hardly
waited to look at it, however, but ran into the house, eager to get up
the stairs before any of the men should come to annoy--he had no fear of
their preventing him. Without halt or hindrance, though the passages
were nearly dark, he reached the door of the princess's workroom, and
knocked.
"Come in," said the voice of the princess.
Curdie opened the door,--but, to his astonishment, saw no room there.
Could he have opened a wrong door? There was the great sky, and the
stars, and beneath he could see nothing--only darkness! But what was
that in the sky, straight in front of him? A great wheel of fire,
turning and turning, and flashing out blue lights!
"Come in, Curdie," said the voice again.
"I would at once, ma'am," said Curdie, "if I were sure I was standing at
your door."
"Why should you doubt it, Curdie?"
"Because I see neither walls nor floor, only darkness and the great
sky."
"That is all right, Curdie. Come in."
Curdie stepped forward at once. He was indeed, for the very crumb of a
moment, tempted to feel before him with his foot; but he saw that would
be to distrust the princess, and a greater rudeness he could not offer
her. So he stepped straight in--I will not say without a little tremble
at the thought of finding no floor beneath his foot. But that which had
need of the floor found it, and his foot was satisfied.
No sooner was he in than he saw that the great revolving wheel in the
sky was the princess's spinning-wheel, near the other end of the room,
turning very fast. He could see no sky or stars any more, but the wheel
was flashing out blue--oh such lovely sky-blue light!--and behind it of
course sat the princess, but whether an old woman as thin as a skeleton
leaf, or a glorious lady as young as perfection, he could not tell for
the turning and flashing of the wheel.
"Listen to the wheel," said the voice which had already grown dear to
Curdie: its very tone was precious like a jewel, not _as_ a jewel, for
no jewel could compare with it in preciousness.
And Curdie listened and listened.
"What is it saying?" asked the voice.
"It is singing," answered Curdie.
"What is it singing?"
Curdie tried to make out, but thought he could not; for no sooner had he
got a hold of something than it vanished again. Yet he listened, and
listened, entranced with delight.
"Thank you, Curdie," said the voice.
"Ma'am," said Curdie, "I did try hard for a while, but I could not make
anything of it."
"Oh, yes, you did, and you have been telling it to me! Shall I tell you
again what I told my wheel, and my wheel told you, and you have just
told me without knowing it?"
"Please, ma'am."
Then the lady began to sing, and her wheel spun an accompaniment to her
song, and the music of the wheel was like the music of an Æolian harp
blown upon by the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Oh! the sweet
sounds of that spinning-wheel! Now they were gold, now silver, now
grass, now palm-trees, now ancient cities, now rubies, now mountain
brooks, now peacock's feathers, now clouds, now snowdrops, and now
mid-sea islands. But for the voice that sang through it all, about that
I have no words to tell. It would make you weep if I were able to tell
you what that was like, it was so beautiful and true and lovely. But
this is something like the words of its song:--
The stars are spinning their threads,
And the clouds are the dust that flies,
And the suns are weaving them up
For the time when the sleepers shall rise.
The ocean in music rolls,
And gems are turning to eyes,
And the trees are gathering souls
For the time when the sleepers shall rise.
The weepers are learning to smile,
And laughter to glean the sighs;
Burn and bury the care and guile,
For the day when the sleepers shall rise.
Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy-red,
The larks and the glimmers and flows!
The lilies and sparrows and daily bread,
And the something that nobody knows!
The princess stopped, her wheel stopped, and she laughed. And her laugh
was sweeter than song and wheel; sweeter than running brook and silver
bell; sweeter than joy itself, for the heart of the laugh was love.
"Come now, Curdie, to this side of my wheel, and you will find me," she
said; and her laugh seemed sounding on still in the words, as if they
were made of breath that had laughed.
Curdie obeyed, and passed the wheel, and there she stood to receive
him!--fairer than when he saw her last, a little younger still, and
dressed not in green and emeralds, but in pale blue, with a coronet of
silver set with pearls, and slippers covered with opals, that gleamed
every colour of the rainbow. It was some time before Curdie could take
his eyes from the marvel of her loveliness. Fearing at last that he was
rude, he turned them away; and, behold, he was in a room that was for
beauty marvellous! The lofty ceiling was all a golden vine, whose great
clusters of carbuncles, rubies, and chrysoberyls, hung down like the
bosses of groined arches, and in its centre hung the most glorious lamp
that human eyes ever saw--the Silver Moon itself, a globe of silver, as
it seemed, with a heart of light so wondrous potent that it rendered the
mass translucent, and altogether radiant.
The room was so large that, looking back, he could scarcely see the end
at which he entered; but the other was only a few yards from him--and
there he saw another wonder: on a huge hearth a great fire was burning,
and the fire was a huge heap of roses, and yet it was fire. The smell of
the roses filled the air, and the heat of the flames of them glowed upon
his face. He turned an inquiring look upon the lady, and saw that she
was now seated in an ancient chair, the legs of which were crusted with
gems, but the upper part like a nest of daisies and moss and green
grass.
"Curdie," she said in answer to his eyes, "you have stood more than one
trial already, and have stood them well: now I am going to put you to a
harder. Do you think you are prepared for it?"
"How can I tell, ma'am?" he returned, "seeing I do not know what it is,
or what preparation it needs? Judge me yourself, ma'am."
"It needs only trust and obedience," answered the lady.
"I dare not say anything, ma'am. If you think me fit, command me."
"It will hurt you terribly, Curdie, but that will be all; no real hurt,
but much real good will come to you from it."
Curdie made no answer, but stood gazing with parted lips in the lady's
face.
"Go and thrust both your hands into that fire," she said quickly, almost
hurriedly.
Curdie dared not stop to think. It was much too terrible to think about.
He rushed to the fire, and thrust both his hands right into the middle
of the heap of flaming roses, and his arms halfway up to the elbows. And
it _did_ hurt! But he did not draw them back. He held the pain as if it
were a thing that would kill him if he let it go--as indeed it would
have done. He was in terrible fear lest it should conquer him. But when
it had risen to the pitch that he thought he _could_ bear it no longer,
it began to fall again, and went on growing less and less until by
contrast with its former severity it had become rather pleasant. At last
it ceased altogether, and Curdie thought his hands must be burnt to
cinders if not ashes, for he did not feel them at all. The princess told
him to take them out and look at them. He did so, and found that all
that was gone of them was the rough hard skin; they were white and
smooth like the princess's.
"Come to me," she said.
He obeyed, and saw, to his surprise, that her face looked as if she had
been weeping.
"Oh, princess! what _is_ the matter?" he cried. "Did I make a noise and
vex you?"
"No, Curdie," she answered; "but it was very bad."
"Did you feel it too then?"
"Of course I did. But now it is over, and all is well.--Would you like
to know why I made you put your hands in the fire?"
Curdie looked at them again--then said,--
"To take the marks of the work off them, and make them fit for the
king's court, I suppose."
"No, Curdie," answered the princess, shaking her head, for she was not
pleased with the answer. "It would be a poor way of making your hands
fit for the king's court to take off them all signs of his service.
There is a far greater difference on them than that. Do you feel none?"
"No, ma'am."
"You will, though, by and by, when the time comes. But perhaps even then
you might not know what had been given you, therefore I will tell
you.--Have you ever heard what some philosophers say--that men were all
animals once?"
"No, ma'am."
"It is of no consequence. But there is another thing that is of the
greatest consequence--this: that all men, if they do not take care, go
down the hill to the animals' country; that many men are actually, all
their lives, going to be beasts. People knew it once, but it is long
since they forgot it."
"I am not surprised to hear it, ma'am, when I think of some of our
miners."
"Ah! but you must beware, Curdie, how you say of this man or that man
that he is travelling beastward. There are not nearly so many going that
way as at first sight you might think. When you met your father on the
hill to-night, you stood and spoke together on the same spot; and
although one of you was going up and the other coming down, at a little
distance no one could have told which was bound in the one direction and
which in the other. Just so two people may be at the same spot in
manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better and the other
worse, which is just the greatest of all differences that could possibly
exist between them."
"But, ma'am," said Curdie, "where is the good of knowing that there is
such a difference, if you can never know where it is?"
"Now, Curdie, you must mind exactly what words I use, because although
the right words cannot do exactly what I want them to do, the wrong
words will certainly do what I do not want them to do. I did not say
_you can never know_. When there is a necessity for your knowing, when
you have to do important business with this or that man, there is always
a way of knowing enough to keep you from any great blunder. And as you
will have important business to do by and by, and that with people of
whom you yet know nothing, it will be necessary that you should have
some better means than usual of learning the nature of them. Now
listen. Since it is always what they _do_, whether in their minds or
their bodies, that makes men go down to be less than men, that is,
beasts, the change always comes first in their hands--and first of all
in the inside hands, to which the outside ones are but as the gloves.
They do not know it of course; for a beast does not know that he is a
beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it.
Neither can their best friends, or their worst enemies indeed, _see_ any
difference in their hands, for they see only the living gloves of them.
But there are not a few who feel a vague something repulsive in the hand
of a man who is growing a beast. Now here is what the rose-fire has done
for you: it has made your hands so knowing and wise, it has brought your
real hands so near the outside of your flesh-gloves, that you will
henceforth be able to know at once the hand of a man who is growing into
a beast; nay, more--you will at once feel the foot of the beast he is
growing, just as if there were no glove made like a man's hand between
you and it. Hence of course it follows that you will be able often, and
with further education in zoology, will be able always to tell, not only
when a man is growing a beast, but what beast he is growing to, for you
will know the foot--what it is and what beast's it is. According then to
your knowledge of that beast, will be your knowledge of the man you
have to do with. Only there is one beautiful and awful thing about it,
that if any one gifted with this perception once uses it for his own
ends, it is taken from him, and then, not knowing that it is gone, he is
in a far worse condition than before, for he trusts to what he has not
got."
"How dreadful!" said Curdie. "I must mind what I am about."
"Yes, indeed, Curdie."
"But may not one sometimes make a mistake without being able to help
it?"
"Yes. But so long as he is not after his own ends, he will never make a
serious mistake."
"I suppose you want me, ma'am, to warn every one whose hand tells me
that he is growing a beast--because, as you say, he does not know it
himself."
The princess smiled.
"Much good that would do, Curdie! I don't say there are no cases in
which it would be of use, but they are very rare and peculiar cases, and
if such come you will know them. To such a person there is in general no
insult like the truth. He cannot endure it, not because he is growing a
beast, but because he is ceasing to be a man. It is the dying man in him
that it makes uncomfortable, and he trots, or creeps, or swims, or
flutters out of its way--calls it a foolish feeling, a whim, an old
wives' fable, a bit of priests' humbug, an effete superstition, and so
on."
"And is there no hope for him? Can nothing be done? It's so awful to
think of going down, down, down like that!"
"Even when it is with his own will?"
"That's what seems to me to make it worst of all," said Curdie.
"You are right," answered the princess, nodding her head; "but there is
this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember--that they do not
know what or how horrid their coming fate is. Many a lady, so delicate
and nice that she can bear nothing coarser than the finest linen to
touch her body, if she had a mirror that could show her the animal she
is growing to, as it lies waiting within the fair skin and the fine
linen and the silk and the jewels, would receive a shock that might
possibly wake her up."
"Why then, ma'am, shouldn't she have it?"
The princess held her peace.
"Come here, Lina," she said after a long pause.
From somewhere behind Curdie, crept forward the same hideous animal
which had fawned at his feet at the door, and which, without his knowing
it, had followed him every step up the dove-tower. She ran to the
princess, and lay down at her feet, looking up at her with an
expression so pitiful that in Curdie's heart it overcame all the
ludicrousness of her horrible mass of incongruities. She had a very
short body, and very long legs made like an elephant's, so that in lying
down she kneeled with both pairs. Her tail, which dragged on the floor
behind her, was twice as long and quite as thick as her body. Her head
was something between that of a polar bear and a snake. Her eyes were
dark green, with a yellow light in them. Her under teeth came up like a
fringe of icicles, only very white, outside of her upper lip. Her throat
looked as if the hair had been plucked off. It showed a skin white and
smooth.
"Give Curdie a paw, Lina," said the princess.
The creature rose, and, lifting a long fore leg, held up a great
dog-like paw to Curdie. He took it gently. But what a shudder, as of
terrified delight, ran through him, when, instead of the paw of a dog,
such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great mining fist the
soft, neat little hand of a child! He took it in both of his, and held
it as if he could not let it go. The green eyes stared at him with their
yellow light, and the mouth was turned up towards him with its constant
half-grin; but here _was_ the child's hand! If he could but pull the
child out of the beast! His eyes sought the princess. She was watching
him with evident satisfaction.
"Ma'am, here is a child's hand!" said Curdie.
"Your gift does more for you than it promised. It is yet better to
perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil."
"But," began Curdie.
"I am not going to answer any more questions this evening," interrupted
the princess. "You have not half got to the bottom of the answers I have
already given you. That paw in your hand now might almost teach you the
whole science of natural history--the heavenly sort, I mean."
"I will think," said Curdie. "But oh! please! one word more: may I tell
my father and mother all about it?"
"Certainly--though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a little
difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell them."
"They shall see that I believe it all this time," said Curdie.
"Tell them that to-morrow morning you must set out for the court--not
like a great man, but just as poor as you are. They had better not speak
about it. Tell them also that it will be a long time before they hear of
you again, but they must not lose heart. And tell your father to lay
that stone I gave him last night in a safe place--not because of the
greatness of its price, although it is such an emerald as no prince has
in his crown, but because it will be a news-bearer between you and him.
As often as he gets at all anxious about you, he must take it and lay it
in the fire, and leave it there when he goes to bed. In the morning he
must find it in the ashes, and if it be as green as ever, then all goes
well with you; if it have lost colour, things go ill with you; but if it
be very pale indeed, then you are in great danger, and he must come to
me."
"Yes, ma'am," said Curdie. "Please, am I to go now?"
"Yes," answered the princess, and held out her hand to him.
Curdie took it, trembling with joy. It was a very beautiful hand--not
small, very smooth, but not very soft--and just the same to his
fire-taught touch that it was to his eyes. He would have stood there all
night holding it if she had not gently withdrawn it.
"I will provide you a servant," she said, "for your journey, and to wait
upon you afterwards."
"But where am I to go, ma'am, and what am I to do? You have given me no
message to carry, neither have you said what I am wanted for. I go
without a notion whether I am to walk this way or that, or what I am to
do when I get I don't know where."
"Curdie!" said the princess, and there was a tone of reminder in his own
name as she spoke it, "did I not tell you to tell your father and mother
that you were to set out for the court? and you _know_ that lies to the
north. You must learn to use far less direct directions than that. You
must not be like a dull servant that needs to be told again and again
before he will understand. You have orders enough to start with, and you
will find, as you go on, and as you need to know, what you have to do.
But I warn you that perhaps it will not look the least like what you may
have been fancying I should require of you. I have one idea of you and
your work, and you have another. I do not blame you for that--you cannot
help it yet; but you must be ready to let my idea, which sets you
working, set your idea right. Be true and honest and fearless, and all
shall go well with you and your work, and all with whom your work lies,
and so with your parents--and me too, Curdie," she added after a little
pause.
The young miner bowed his head low, patted the strange head that lay at
the princess's feet, and turned away.
As soon as he passed the spinning-wheel, which looked, in the midst of
the glorious room, just like any wheel you might find in a country
cottage--old and worn and dingy and dusty--the splendour of the place
vanished, and he saw but the big bare room he seemed at first to have
entered, with the moon--the princess's moon no doubt--shining in at one
of the windows upon the spinning-wheel.
CHAPTER IX.
HANDS.
Curdie went home, pondering much, and told everything to his father and
mother. As the old princess had said, it was now their turn to find what
they heard hard to believe. If they had not been able to trust Curdie
himself, they would have refused to believe more than the half of what
he reported, then they would have refused that half too, and at last
would most likely for a time have disbelieved in the very existence of
the princess, what evidence their own senses had given them
notwithstanding. For he had nothing conclusive to show in proof of what
he told them. When he held out his hands to them, his mother said they
looked as if he had been washing them with soft soap, only they did
smell of something nicer than that, and she must allow it was more like
roses than anything else she knew. His father could not see any
difference upon his hands, but then it was night, he said, and their
poor little lamp was not enough for his old eyes. As to the feel of
them, each of his own hands, he said, was hard and horny enough for two,
and it must be the fault of the dulness of his own thick skin that he
felt no change on Curdie's palms.
"Here, Curdie," said his mother, "try my hand, and see what beast's paw
lies inside it."
"No, mother," answered Curdie, half-beseeching, half-indignant, "I will
not insult my new gift by making pretence to try it. That would be
mockery. There is no hand within yours but the hand of a true woman, my
mother."
"I should like you just to take hold of my hand, though," said his
mother. "You are my son, and may know all the bad there is in me."
Then at once Curdie took her hand in his. And when he had it, he kept
it, stroking it gently with his other hand.
"Mother," he said at length, "your hand feels just like that of the
princess."
"What! my horny, cracked, rheumatic old hand, with its big joints, and
its short nails all worn down to the quick with hard work--like the hand
of the beautiful princess! Why, my child, you will make me fancy your
fingers have grown very dull indeed, instead of sharp and delicate, if
you talk such nonsense. Mine is such an ugly hand I should be ashamed
to show it to any but one that loved me. But love makes all
safe--doesn't it, Curdie?"
"Well, mother, all I can say is that I don't feel a roughness, or a
crack, or a big joint, or a short nail. Your hand feels just and
exactly, as near as I can recollect, and it's not now more than two
hours since I had it in mine,--well, I will say, very like indeed to
that of the old princess."
"Go away, you flatterer," said his mother, with a smile that showed how
she prized the love that lay beneath what she took for its hyperbole.
The praise even which one cannot accept is sweet from a true mouth. "If
that is all your new gift can do, it won't make a warlock of you," she
added.
"Mother, it tells me nothing but the truth," insisted Curdie, "however
unlike the truth it may seem. It wants no gift to tell what anybody's
outside hands are like. But by it I _know_ your inside hands are like
the princess's."
"And I am sure the boy speaks true," said Peter. "He only says about
your hand what I have known ever so long about yourself, Joan. Curdie,
your mother's foot is as pretty a foot as any lady's in the land, and
where her hand is not so pretty it comes of killing its beauty for you
and me, my boy. And I can tell you more, Curdie. I don't know much
about ladies and gentlemen, but I am sure your inside mother must be a
lady, as her hand tells you, and I will try to say how I know it. This
is how: when I forget myself looking at her as she goes about her
work--and that happens oftener as I grow older--I fancy for a moment or
two that I am a gentleman; and when I wake up from my little dream, it
is only to feel the more strongly that I must do everything as a
gentleman should. I will try to tell you what I mean, Curdie. If a
gentleman--I mean a real gentleman, not a pretended one, of which sort
they say there are a many above ground--if a real gentleman were to lose
all his money and come down to work in the mines to get bread for his
family--do you think, Curdie, he would work like the lazy ones? Would he
try to do as little as he could for his wages? I know the sort of the
true gentleman--pretty near as well as he does himself. And my wife,
that's your mother, Curdie, she's a true lady, you may take my word for
it, for it's she that makes me want to be a true gentleman. Wife, the
boy is in the right about your hand."
"Now, father, let me feel yours," said Curdie, daring a little more.
"No, no, my boy," answered Peter. "I don't want to hear anything about
my hand or my head or my heart. I am what I am, and I hope growing
better, and that's enough. No, you shan't feel my hand. You must go to
bed, for you must start with the sun."
It was not as if Curdie had been leaving them to go to prison, or to
make a fortune, and although they were sorry enough to lose him, they
were not in the least heart-broken or even troubled at his going.
As the princess had said he was to go like the poor man he was, Curdie
came down in the morning from his little loft dressed in his working
clothes. His mother, who was busy getting his breakfast for him, while
his father sat reading to her out of an old book, would have had him put
on his holiday garments, which, she said, would look poor enough amongst
the fine ladies and gentlemen he was going to. But Curdie said he did
not know that he was going amongst ladies and gentlemen, and that as
work was better than play, his work-day clothes must on the whole be
better than his play-day clothes; and as his father accepted the
argument, his mother gave in.
When he had eaten his breakfast, she took a pouch made of goatskin, with
the long hair on it, filled it with bread and cheese, and hung it over
his shoulder. Then his father gave him a stick he had cut for him in the
wood, and he bade them good-bye rather hurriedly, for he was afraid of
breaking down. As he went out, he caught up his mattock and took it with
him. It had on the one side a pointed curve of strong steel, for
loosening the earth and the ore, and on the other a steel hammer for
breaking the stones and rocks. Just as he crossed the threshold the sun
showed the first segment of his disc above the horizon.
CHAPTER X.
THE HEATH.
He had to go to the bottom of the hill to get into a country he could
cross, for the mountains to the north were full of precipices, and it
would have been losing time to go that way. Not until he had reached the
king's house was it any use to turn northwards. Many a look did he
raise, as he passed it, to the dove-tower, and as long as it was in
sight, but he saw nothing of the lady of the pigeons.
On and on he fared, and came in a few hours to a country where there
were no mountains more--only hills, with great stretches of desolate
heath. Here and there was a village, but that brought him little
pleasure, for the people were rougher and worse-mannered than those in
the mountains, and as he passed through, the children came behind and
mocked him.
"There's a monkey running away from the mines!" they cried.
Sometimes their parents came out and encouraged them.
"He don't want to find gold for the king any longer,--the lazybones!"
they would say. "He'll be well taxed down here though, and he won't like
that either."
But it was little to Curdie that men who did not know what he was about
should not approve of his proceedings. He gave them a merry answer now
and then, and held diligently on his way. When they got so rude as
nearly to make him angry, he would treat them as he used to treat the
goblins, and sing his own songs to keep out their foolish noises. Once a
child fell as he turned to run away after throwing a stone at him. He
picked him up, kissed him, and carried him to his mother. The woman had
run out in terror when she saw the strange miner about, as she thought,
to take vengeance on her boy. When he put him in her arms, she blessed
him, and Curdie went on his way rejoicing.
And so the day went on, and the evening came, and in the middle of a
great desolate heath he began to feel tired, and sat down under an
ancient hawthorn, through which every now and then a lone wind that
seemed to come from nowhere and to go nowhither sighed and hissed. It
was very old and distorted. There was not another tree for miles all
around. It seemed to have lived so long, and to have been so torn and
tossed by the tempests on that moor, that it had at last gathered a wind
of its own, which got up now and then, tumbled itself about, and lay
down again.
Curdie had been so eager to get on that he had eaten nothing since his
breakfast. But he had had plenty of water, for many little streams had
crossed his path. He now opened the wallet his mother had given him, and
began to eat his supper. The sun was setting. A few clouds had gathered
about the west, but there was not a single cloud anywhere else to be
seen.
Now Curdie did not know that this was a part of the country very hard to
get through. Nobody lived there, though many had tried to build in it.
Some died very soon. Some rushed out of it. Those who stayed longest
went raving mad, and died a terrible death. Such as walked straight on,
and did not spend a night there, got through well, and were nothing the
worse. But those who slept even a single night in it were sure to meet
with something they could never forget, and which often left a mark
everybody could read. And that old hawthorn might have been enough for a
warning--it looked so like a human being dried up and distorted with age
and suffering, with cares instead of loves, and things instead of
thoughts. Both it and the heath around it, which stretched on all sides
as far as he could see, were so withered that it was impossible to say
whether they were alive or not.
And while Curdie ate there came a change. Clouds had gathered over his
head, and seemed drifting about in every direction, as if not
"shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind," but hunted in all directions
by wolfish flaws across the plains of the sky. The sun was going down in
a storm of lurid crimson, and out of the west came a wind that felt red
and hot the one moment, and cold and pale the other. And very strangely
it sung in the dreary old hawthorn tree, and very cheerily it blew about
Curdie, now making him creep close up to the tree for shelter from its
shivery cold, now fan himself with his cap, it was so sultry and
stifling. It seemed to come from the death-bed of the sun, dying in
fever and ague.
And as he gazed at the sun, now on the verge of the horizon, very large
and very red and very dull--for though the clouds had broken away a
dusty fog was spread all over him--Curdie saw something strange appear
against him, moving about like a fly over his burning face. It looked as
if it were coming out of his hot furnace-heart, and was a living
creature of some kind surely; but its shape was very uncertain, because
the dazzle of the light all around it melted its outlines. It was
growing larger, it must be approaching! It grew so rapidly that by the
time the sun was half down its head reached the top of his arch, and
presently nothing but its legs were to be seen, crossing and recrossing
the face of the vanishing disc. When the sun was down he could see
nothing of it more, but in a moment he heard its feet galloping over the
dry crackling heather, and seeming to come straight for him. He stood
up, lifted his pickaxe, and threw the hammer end over his shoulder: he
was going to have a fight for his life! And now it appeared again,
vague, yet very awful, in the dim twilight the sun had left behind him.
But just before it reached him, down from its four long legs it dropped
flat on the ground, and came crawling towards him, wagging a huge tail
as it came.
CHAPTER XI.
LINA.
It was Lina. All at once Curdie recognised her--the frightful creature
he had seen at the princess's. He dropped his pickaxe, and held out his
hand. She crept nearer and nearer, and laid her chin in his palm, and he
patted her ugly head. Then she crept away behind the tree, and lay down,
panting hard. Curdie did not much like the idea of her being behind him.
Horrible as she was to look at, she seemed to his mind more horrible
when he was not looking at her. But he remembered the child's hand, and
never thought of driving her away. Now and then he gave a glance behind
him, and there she lay flat, with her eyes closed and her terrible teeth
gleaming between her two huge fore-paws.
After his supper and his long day's journey it was no wonder Curdie
should now be sleepy. Since the sun set the air had been warm and
pleasant. He lay down under the tree, closed his eyes, and thought to
sleep. He found himself mistaken however. But although he could not
sleep, he was yet aware of resting delightfully. Presently he heard a
sweet sound of singing somewhere, such as he had never heard before--a
singing as of curious birds far off, which drew nearer and nearer. At
length he heard their wings, and, opening his eyes, saw a number of very
large birds, as it seemed, alighting around him, still singing. It was
strange to hear song from the throats of such big birds. And still
singing, with large and round but not the less bird-like voices, they
began to weave a strange dance about him, moving their wings in time
with their legs. But the dance seemed somehow to be troubled and broken,
and to return upon itself in an eddy, in place of sweeping smoothly on.
And he soon learned, in the low short growls behind him, the cause of
the imperfection: they wanted to dance all round the tree, but Lina
would not permit them to come on her side.
Now Curdie liked the birds, and did not altogether _like_ Lina. But
neither, nor both together, made a _reason_ for driving away the
princess's creature. Doubtless she _had been_ a goblins' creature, but
the last time he saw her was in the king's house and the dove-tower, and
at the old princess's feet. So he left her to do as she would, and the
dance of the birds continued only a semicircle, troubled at the edges,
and returning upon itself. But their song and their motions,
nevertheless, and the waving of their wings, began at length to make him
very sleepy. All the time he had kept doubting every now and then
whether they could really be birds, and the sleepier he got, the more he
imagined them something else, but he suspected no harm. Suddenly, just
as he was sinking beneath the waves of slumber, he awoke in fierce pain.
The birds were upon him--all over him--and had begun to tear him with
beaks and claws. He had but time, however, to feel that he could not
move under their weight, when they set up a hideous screaming, and
scattered like a cloud. Lina was amongst them, snapping and striking
with her paws, while her tail knocked them over and over. But they flew
up, gathered, and descended on her in a swarm, perching upon every part
of her body, so that he could see only a huge misshapen mass, which
seemed to go rolling away into the darkness. He got up and tried to
follow, but could see nothing, and after wandering about hither and
thither for some time, found himself again beside the hawthorn. He
feared greatly that the birds had been too much for Lina, and had torn
her to pieces. In a little while, however, she came limping back, and
lay down in her old place. Curdie also lay down, but, from the pain of
his wounds, there was no sleep for him. When the light came he found
his clothes a good deal torn and his skin as well, but gladly wondered
why the wicked birds had not at once attacked his eyes. Then he turned
looking for Lina. She rose and crept to him. But she was in far worse
plight than he--plucked and gashed and torn with the beaks and claws of
the birds, especially about the bare part of her neck, so that she was
pitiful to see. And those worst wounds she could not reach to lick.
"Poor Lina!" said Curdie; "you got all those helping me."
She wagged her tail, and made it clear she understood him. Then it
flashed upon Curdie's mind that perhaps this was the companion the
princess had promised him. For the princess did so many things
differently from what anybody looked for! Lina was no beauty certainly,
but already, the first night, she had saved his life.
"Come along, Lina," he said; "we want water."
She put her nose to the earth, and after snuffing for a moment, darted
off in a straight line. Curdie followed. The ground was so uneven, that
after losing sight of her many times, at last he seemed to have lost her
altogether. In a few minutes, however, he came upon her waiting for him.
Instantly she darted off again. After he had lost and found her again
many times, he found her the last time lying beside a great stone. As
soon as he came up she began scratching at it with her paws. When he had
raised it an inch or two, she shoved in first her nose and then her
teeth, and lifted with all the might of her strong neck.
When at length between them they got it up, there was a beautiful little
well. He filled his cap with the clearest and sweetest water, and drank.
Then he gave to Lina, and she drank plentifully. Next he washed her
wounds very carefully. And as he did so, he noted how much the bareness
of her neck added to the strange repulsiveness of her appearance. Then
he bethought him of the goatskin wallet his mother had given him, and
taking it from his shoulders, tried whether it would do to make a collar
of for the poor animal. He found there was just enough, and the hair so
similar in colour to Lina's, that no one could suspect it of having
grown somewhere else. He took his knife, ripped up the seams of the
wallet, and began trying the skin to her neck. It was plain she
understood perfectly what he wished, for she endeavoured to hold her
neck conveniently, turning it this way and that while he contrived, with
his rather scanty material, to make the collar fit. As his mother had
taken care to provide him with needles and thread, he soon had a nice
gorget ready for her. He laced it on with one of his boot-laces, which
its long hair covered. Poor Lina looked much better in it. Nor could any
one have called it a piece of finery. If ever green eyes with a yellow
light in them looked grateful, hers did.
As they had no longer any bag to carry them in, Curdie and Lina now ate
what was left of the provisions. Then they set out again upon their
journey. For seven days it lasted. They met with various adventures, and
in all of them Lina proved so helpful, and so ready to risk her life for
the sake of her companion, that Curdie grew not merely very fond but
very trustful of her, and her ugliness, which at first only moved his
pity, now actually increased his affection for her. One day, looking at
her stretched on the grass before him, he said,--
"Oh, Lina! if the princess would but burn you in her fire of roses!"
She looked up at him, gave a mournful whine like a dog, and laid her
head on his feet. What or how much he could not tell, but clearly she
had gathered something from his words.
CHAPTER XII.
MORE CREATURES.
One day from morning till night they had been passing through a forest.
As soon as the sun was down Curdie began to be aware that there were
more in it than themselves. First he saw only the swift rush of a figure
across the trees at some distance. Then he saw another and then another
at shorter intervals. Then he saw others both further off and nearer. At
last, missing Lina and looking about after her, he saw an appearance
almost as marvellous as herself steal up to her, and begin conversing
with her after some beast fashion which evidently she understood.
Presently what seemed a quarrel arose between them, and stranger noises
followed, mingled with growling. At length it came to a fight, which had
not lasted long, however, before the creature of the wood threw itself
upon its back, and held up its paws to Lina. She instantly walked on,
and the creature got up and followed her. They had not gone far before
another strange animal appeared, approaching Lina, when precisely the
same thing was repeated, the vanquished animal rising and following with
the former. Again, and yet again and again, a fresh animal came up,
seemed to be reasoned and certainly was fought with and overcome by
Lina, until at last, before they were out of the wood, she was followed
by forty-nine of the most grotesquely ugly, the most extravagantly
abnormal animals imagination can conceive. To describe them were a
hopeless task. I knew a boy who used to make animals out of heather
roots. Wherever he could find four legs, he was pretty sure to find a
head and a tail. His beasts were a most comic menagerie, and right
fruitful of laughter. But they were not so grotesque and extravagant as
Lina and her followers. One of them, for instance, was like a boa
constrictor walking on four little stumpy legs near its tail. About the
same distance from its head were two little wings, which it was for ever
fluttering as if trying to fly with them. Curdie thought it fancied it
did fly with them, when it was merely plodding on busily with its four
little stumps. How it managed to keep up he could not think, till once
when he missed it from the group: the same moment he caught sight of
something at a distance plunging at an awful serpentine rate through
the trees, and presently, from behind a huge ash, this same creature
fell again into the group, quietly waddling along on its four stumps.
Watching it after this, he saw that, when it was not able to keep up any
longer, and they had all got a little space ahead, it shot into the wood
away from the route, and made a great round, serpenting along in huge
billows of motion, devouring the ground, undulating awfully, galloping
as if it were all legs together, and its four stumps nowhere. In this
mad fashion it shot ahead, and, a few minutes after, toddled in again
amongst the rest, walking peacefully and somewhat painfully on its few
fours.
From the time it takes to describe one of them it will be readily seen
that it would hardly do to attempt a description of each of the
forty-nine. They were not a goodly company, but well worth contemplating
nevertheless; and Curdie had been too long used to the goblins'
creatures in the mines and on the mountain, to feel the least
uncomfortable at being followed by such a herd. On the contrary the
marvellous vagaries of shape they manifested amused him greatly, and
shortened the journey much. Before they were all gathered, however, it
had got so dark that he could see some of them only a part at a time,
and every now and then, as the company wandered on, he would be startled
by some extraordinary limb or feature, undreamed of by him before,
thrusting itself out of the darkness into the range of his ken.
Probably there were some of his old acquaintances among them, although
such had been the conditions of semi-darkness in which alone he had ever
seen any of them, that it was not likely he would be able to identify
any of them.
On they marched solemnly, almost in silence, for either with feet or
voice the creatures seldom made any noise. By the time they reached the
outside of the wood it was morning twilight. Into the open trooped the
strange torrent of deformity, each one following Lina. Suddenly she
stopped, turned towards them, and said something which they understood,
although to Curdie's ear the sounds she made seemed to have no
articulation. Instantly they all turned, and vanished in the forest, and
Lina alone came trotting lithely and clumsily after her master.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE BAKER'S WIFE.
They were now passing through a lovely country of hill and dale and
rushing stream. The hills were abrupt, with broken chasms for
water-courses, and deep little valleys full of trees. But now and then
they came to a larger valley, with a fine river, whose level banks and
the adjacent meadows were dotted all over with red and white kine, while
on the fields above, that sloped a little to the foot of the hills, grew
oats and barley and wheat, and on the sides of the hills themselves
vines hung and chestnuts rose. They came at last to a broad, beautiful
river, up which they must go to arrive at the city of Gwyntystorm, where
the king had his court. As they went the valley narrowed, and then the
river, but still it was wide enough for large boats. After this, while
the river kept its size, the banks narrowed, until there was only room
for a road between the river and the great cliffs that overhung it. At
last river and road took a sudden turn, and lo! a great rock in the
river, which dividing flowed around it, and on the top of the rock the
city, with lofty walls and towers and battlements, and above the city
the palace of the king, built like a strong castle. But the
fortifications had long been neglected, for the whole country was now
under one king, and all men said there was no more need for weapons or
walls. No man pretended to love his neighbour, but every one said he
knew that peace and quiet behaviour was the best thing for himself, and
that, he said, was quite as useful, and a great deal more reasonable.
The city was prosperous and rich, and if anybody was not comfortable,
everybody else said he ought to be.
When Curdie got up opposite the mighty rock, which sparkled all over
with crystals, he found a narrow bridge, defended by gates and
portcullis and towers with loopholes. But the gates stood wide open, and
were dropping from their great hinges; the portcullis was eaten away
with rust, and clung to the grooves evidently immovable; while the
loopholed towers had neither floor nor roof, and their tops were fast
filling up their interiors. Curdie thought it a pity, if only for their
old story, that they should be thus neglected. But everybody in the city
regarded these signs of decay as the best proof of the prosperity of the
place. Commerce and self-interest, they said, had got the better of
violence, and the troubles of the past were whelmed in the riches that
flowed in at their open gates. Indeed there was one sect of philosophers
in it which taught that it would be better to forget all the past
history of the city, were it not that its former imperfections taught
its present inhabitants how superior they and their times were, and
enabled them to glory over their ancestors. There were even certain
quacks in the city who advertised pills for enabling people to think
well of themselves, and some few bought of them, but most laughed, and
said, with evident truth, that they did not require them. Indeed, the
general theme of discourse when they met was, how much wiser they were
than their fathers.
Curdie crossed the river, and began to ascend the winding road that led
up to the city. They met a good many idlers, and all stared at them. It
was no wonder they should stare, but there was an unfriendliness in
their looks which Curdie did not like. No one, however, offered them any
molestation: Lina did not invite liberties. After a long ascent, they
reached the principal gate of the city and entered.
The street was very steep, ascending towards the palace, which rose in
great strength above all the houses. Just as they entered, a baker,
whose shop was a few doors inside the gate, came out in his white apron,
and ran to the shop of his friend the barber on the opposite side of
the way. But as he ran he stumbled and fell heavily. Curdie hastened to
help him up, and found he had bruised his forehead badly. He swore
grievously at the stone for tripping him up, declaring it was the third
time he had fallen over it within the last month; and saying what was
the king about that he allowed such a stone to stick up for ever on the
main street of his royal residence of Gwyntystorm! What was a king for
if he would not take care of his people's heads! And he stroked his
forehead tenderly.
"Was it your head or your feet that ought to bear the blame of your
fall?" asked Curdie.
"Why, you booby of a miner! my feet, of course," answered the baker.
"Nay, then," said Curdie, "the king can't be to blame."
"Oh, I see!" said the baker. "You're laying a trap for me. Of course, if
you come to that, it was my head that ought to have looked after my
feet. But it is the king's part to look after us all, and have his
streets smooth."
"Well, I don't see," said Curdie, "why the king should take care of the
baker, when the baker's head won't take care of the baker's feet."
"Who are you to make game of the king's baker?" cried the man in a
rage.
But, instead of answering, Curdie went up to the bump on the street
which had repeated itself on the baker's head, and turning the hammer
end of his mattock, struck it such a blow that it flew wide in pieces.
Blow after blow he struck, until he had levelled it with the street.
But out flew the barber upon him in a rage.
"What do you break my window for, you rascal, with your pickaxe?"
"I am very sorry," said Curdie. "It must have been a bit of stone that
flew from my mattock. I couldn't help it, you know."
"Couldn't help it! A fine story! What do you go breaking the rock
for--the very rock upon which the city stands?"
"Look at your friend's forehead," said Curdie. "See what a lump he has
got on it with falling over that same stone."
"What's that to my window?" cried the barber. "His forehead can mend
itself; my poor window can't."
"But he's the king's baker," said Curdie, more and more surprised at the
man's anger.
"What's that to me? This is a free city. Every man here takes care of
himself, and the king takes care of us all. I'll have the price of my
window out of you, or the exchequer shall pay for it."
Something caught Curdie's eye. He stooped, picked up a piece of the
stone he had just broken, and put it in his pocket.
"I suppose you are going to break another of my windows with that
stone!" said the barber.
"Oh no," said Curdie. "I didn't mean to break your window, and I
certainly won't break another."
"Give me that stone," said the barber.
Curdie gave it to him, and the barber threw it over the city wall.
"I thought you wanted the stone," said Curdie.
"No, you fool!" answered the barber. "What should I want with a stone?"
Curdie stooped and picked up another.
"Give me that stone," said the barber.
"No," answered Curdie. "You have just told me you don't want a stone,
and I do."
The barber took Curdie by the collar.
"Come, now! you pay me for that window."
"How much?" asked Curdie.
The barber said, "A crown." But the baker, annoyed at the heartlessness
of the barber, in thinking more of his broken window than the bump on
his friend's forehead, interfered.
"No, no," he said to Curdie; "don't you pay any such sum. A little pane
like that cost only a quarter."
"Well, to be certain," said Curdie, "I'll give him a half." For he
doubted the baker as well as the barber. "Perhaps one day, if he finds
he has asked too much, he will bring me the difference."
"Ha! ha!" laughed the barber. "A fool and his money are soon parted."
But as he took the coin from Curdie's hand he grasped it in affected
reconciliation and real satisfaction. In Curdie's, his was the cold
smooth leathery palm of a monkey. He looked up, almost expecting to see
him pop the money in his cheek; but he had not yet got so far as that,
though he was well on the road to it: then he would have no other
pocket.
"I'm glad that stone is gone, anyhow," said the baker. "It was the bane
of my life. I had no idea how easy it was to remove it. Give me your
pickaxe, young miner, and I will show you how a baker can make the
stones fly."
He caught the tool out of Curdie's hand, and flew at one of the
foundation stones of the gateway. But he jarred his arm terribly,
scarcely chipped the stone, dropped the mattock with a cry of pain, and
ran into his own shop. Curdie picked up his implement, and looking after
the baker, saw bread in the window, and followed him in. But the baker,
ashamed of himself, and thinking he was coming to laugh at him, popped
out of the back door, and when Curdie entered, the baker's wife came
from the bakehouse to serve him. Curdie requested to know the price of a
certain good-sized loaf.
Now the baker's wife had been watching what had passed since first her
husband ran out of the shop, and she liked the look of Curdie. Also she
was more honest than her husband. Casting a glance to the back door, she
replied,--
"That is not the best bread. I will sell you a loaf of what we bake for
ourselves." And when she had spoken she laid a finger on her lips. "Take
care of yourself in this place, my son," she added. "They do not love
strangers. I was once a stranger here, and I know what I say." Then
fancying she heard her husband,--"That is a strange animal you have,"
she said, in a louder voice.
"Yes," answered Curdie. "She is no beauty, but she is very good, and we
love each other. Don't we, Lina?"
Lina looked up and whined. Curdie threw her the half of his loaf, which
she ate while her master and the baker's wife talked a little. Then the
baker's wife gave them some water, and Curdie having paid for his loaf,
he and Lina went up the street together.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE DOGS OF GWYNTYSTORM.
The steep street led them straight up to a large market-place, with
butchers' shops, about which were many dogs. The moment they caught
sight of Lina, one and all they came rushing down upon her, giving her
no chance of explaining herself. When Curdie saw the dogs coming he
heaved up his mattock over his shoulder, and was ready, if they would
have it so. Seeing him thus prepared to defend his follower, a great
ugly bull-dog flew at him. With the first blow Curdie struck him through
the brain, and the brute fell dead at his feet. But he could not at once
recover his weapon, which stuck in the skull of his foe, and a huge
mastiff, seeing him thus hampered, flew at him next. Now Lina, who had
shown herself so brave upon the road thither, had grown shy upon
entering the city, and kept always at Curdie's heel. But it was her
turn now. The moment she saw her master in danger she seemed to go mad
with rage. As the mastiff jumped at Curdie's throat, Lina flew at his,
seized him with her tremendous jaws, gave one roaring grind, and he lay
beside the bull-dog with his neck broken. They were the best dogs in the
market, after the judgment of the butchers of Gwyntystorm. Down came
their masters, knife in hand.
Curdie drew himself up fearlessly, mattock on shoulder, and awaited
their coming, while at his heel his awful attendant showed not only her
outside fringe of icicle-teeth, but a double row of right serviceable
fangs she wore inside her mouth, and her green eyes flashed yellow as
gold. The butchers not liking the look either of them or of the dogs at
their feet, drew back, and began to remonstrate in the manner of
outraged men.
"Stranger," said the first, "that bull-dog is mine."
"Take him, then," said Curdie, indignant.
"You've killed him!"
"Yes--else he would have killed me."
"That's no business of mine."
"No?"
"No."
"That makes it the more mine, then."
"This sort of thing won't do, you know," said the other butcher.
"That's true," said Curdie.
"That's my mastiff," said the butcher.
"And as he ought to be," said Curdie.
"Your brute shall be burnt alive for it," said the butcher.
"Not yet," answered Curdie. "We have done no wrong. We were walking
quietly up your street, when your dogs flew at us. If you don't teach
your dogs how to treat strangers, you must take the consequences."
"They treat them quite properly," said the butcher. "What right has any
one to bring an abomination like that into our city? The horror is
enough to make an idiot of every child in the place."
"We are both subjects of the king, and my poor animal can't help her
looks. How would you like to be served like that because you were ugly?
She's not a bit fonder of her looks than you are--only what can she do
to change them?"
"I'll do to change them," said the fellow.
Thereupon the butchers brandished their long knives and advanced,
keeping their eyes upon Lina.
"Don't be afraid, Lina," cried Curdie. "I'll kill one--you kill the
other."
Lina gave a howl that might have terrified an army, and crouched ready
to spring. The butchers turned and ran.
By this time a great crowd had gathered behind the butchers, and in it a
number of boys returning from school, who began to stone the strangers.
It was a way they had with man or beast they did not expect to make
anything by. One of the stones struck Lina; she caught it in her teeth
and crunched it that it fell in gravel from her mouth. Some of the
foremost of the crowd saw this, and it terrified them. They drew back;
the rest took fright from their retreat; the panic spread; and at last
the crowd scattered in all directions. They ran, and cried out, and said
the devil and his dam were come to Gwyntystorm. So Curdie and Lina were
left standing unmolested in the market-place. But the terror of them
spread throughout the city, and everybody began to shut and lock his
door, so that by the time the setting sun shone down the street, there
was not a shop left open, for fear of the devil and his horrible dam.
But all the upper windows within sight of them were crowded with heads
watching them where they stood lonely in the deserted market-place.
Curdie looked carefully all round, but could not see one open door. He
caught sight of the sign of an inn however, and laying down his mattock,
and telling Lina to take care of it, walked up to the door of it and
knocked. But the people in the house, instead of opening the door, threw
things at him from the windows. They would not listen to a word he
said, but sent him back to Lina with the blood running down his face.
When Lina saw that, she leaped up in a fury and was rushing at the
house, into which she would certainly have broken; but Curdie called
her, and made her lie down beside him while he bethought him what next
he should do.
"Lina," he said, "the people keep their gates open, but their houses and
their hearts shut."
As if she knew it was her presence that had brought this trouble upon
him, she rose, and went round and round him, purring like a tigress, and
rubbing herself against his legs.
Now there was one little thatched house that stood squeezed in between
two tall gables, and the sides of the two great houses shot out
projecting windows that nearly met across the roof of the little one, so
that it lay in the street like a doll's house. In this house lived a
poor old woman, with a grandchild. And because she never gossiped or
quarrelled, or chaffered in the market, but went without what she could
not afford, the people called her a witch, and would have done her many
an ill turn if they had not been afraid of her. Now while Curdie was
looking in another direction the door opened, and out came a little
dark-haired, black-eyed, gipsy-looking child, and toddled across the
market-place towards the outcasts. The moment they saw her coming, Lina
lay down flat on the road, and with her two huge fore-paws covered her
mouth, while Curdie went to meet her, holding out his arms. The little
one came straight to him, and held up her mouth to be kissed. Then she
took him by the hand, and drew him towards the house, and Curdie yielded
to the silent invitation. But when Lina rose to follow, the child shrunk
from her, frightened a little. Curdie took her up, and holding her on
one arm, patted Lina with the other hand. Then the child wanted also to
pat doggy, as she called her by a right bountiful stretch of courtesy,
and having once patted her, nothing would serve but Curdie must let her
have a ride on doggy. So he set her on Lina's back, holding her hand,
and she rode home in merry triumph, all unconscious of the hundreds of
eyes staring at her foolhardiness from the windows about the
market-place, or the murmur of deep disapproval that rose from as many
lips. At the door stood the grandmother to receive them. She caught the
child to her bosom with delight at her courage, welcomed Curdie, and
showed no dread of Lina. Many were the significant nods exchanged, and
many a one said to another that the devil and the witch were old
friends. But the woman was only a wise woman, who having seen how Curdie
and Lina behaved to each other, judged from that what sort they were,
and so made them welcome to her house. She was not like her
fellow-townspeople, for that they were strangers recommended them to
her.
The moment her door was shut, the other doors began to open, and soon
there appeared little groups about here and there a threshold, while a
few of the more courageous ventured out upon the square--all ready to
make for their houses again, however, upon the least sign of movement in
the little thatched one.
The baker and the barber had joined one of these groups, and were busily
wagging their tongues against Curdie and his horrible beast.
"He can't be honest," said the barber; "for he paid me double the worth
of the pane he broke in my window."
And then he told them how Curdie broke his window by breaking a stone in
the street with his hammer. There the baker struck in.
"Now that was the stone," said he, "over which I had fallen three times
within the last month: could it be by fair means he broke that to pieces
at the first blow? Just to make up my mind on that point I tried his own
hammer against a stone in the gate; it nearly broke both my arms, and
loosened half the teeth in my head!"
CHAPTER XV.
DERBA AND BARBARA.
Meantime the wanderers were hospitably entertained by the old woman and
her grandchild, and they were all very comfortable and happy together.
Little Barbara sat upon Curdie's knee, and he told her stories about the
mines and his adventures in them. But he never mentioned the king or the
princess, for all that story was hard to believe. And he told her about
his mother and his father, and how good they were. And Derba sat and
listened. At last little Barbara fell asleep in Curdie's arms, and her
grandmother carried her to bed.
It was a poor little house, and Derba gave up her own room to Curdie,
because he was honest and talked wisely. Curdie saw how it was, and
begged her to allow him to lie on the floor, but she would not hear of
it.
In the night he was waked by Lina pulling at him. As soon as he spoke
to her she ceased, and Curdie, listening, thought he heard some one
trying to get in. He rose, took his mattock, and went about the house,
listening and watching; but although he heard noises now at one place,
now at another, he could not think what they meant, for no one appeared.
Certainly, considering how she had frightened them all in the day, it
was not likely any one would attack Lina at night. By-and-by the noises
ceased, and Curdie went back to his bed, and slept undisturbed.
In the morning, however, Derba came to him in great agitation, and said
they had fastened up the door, so that she could not get out. Curdie
rose immediately and went with her: they found that not only the door,
but every window in the house was so secured on the outside that it was
impossible to open one of them without using great force. Poor Derba
looked anxiously in Curdie's face. He broke out laughing.
"They are much mistaken," he said, "if they fancy they could keep Lina
and a miner in any house in Gwyntystorm--even if they built up doors and
windows."
With that he shouldered his mattock. But Derba begged him not to make a
hole in her house just yet. She had plenty for breakfast, she said, and
before it was time for dinner they would know what the people meant by
it.
And indeed they did. For within an hour appeared one of the chief
magistrates of the city, accompanied by a score of soldiers with drawn
swords, and followed by a great multitude of the people, requiring the
miner and his brute to yield themselves, the one that he might be tried
for the disturbance he had occasioned and the injury he had committed,
the other that she might be roasted alive for her part in killing two
valuable and harmless animals belonging to worthy citizens. The summons
was preceded and followed by flourish of trumpet, and was read with
every formality by the city marshal himself.
The moment he ended, Lina ran into the little passage, and stood
opposite the door.
"I surrender," cried Curdie.
"Then tie up your brute, and give her here."
"No, no," cried Curdie through the door. "I surrender; but I'm not going
to do your hangman's work. If you want my dog, you must take her."
"Then we shall set the house on fire, and burn witch and all."
"It will go hard with us but we shall kill a few dozen of you first,"
cried Curdie. "We're not the least afraid of you."
With that Curdie turned to Derba, and said:--
"Don't be frightened. I have a strong feeling that all will be well.
Surely no trouble will come to you for being good to strangers."
"But the poor dog!" said Derba.
Now Curdie and Lina understood each other more than a little by this
time, and not only had he seen that she understood the proclamation, but
when she looked up at him after it was read, it was with such a grin,
and such a yellow flash, that he saw also she was determined to take
care of herself.
"The dog will probably give you reason to think a little more of her ere
long," he answered. "But now," he went on, "I fear I must hurt your
house a little. I have great confidence, however, that I shall be able
to make up to you for it one day."
"Never mind the house, if only you can get safe off," she answered. "I
don't think they will hurt this precious lamb," she added, clasping
little Barbara to her bosom. "For myself, it is all one; I am ready for
anything."
"It is but a little hole for Lina I want to make," said Curdie. "She can
creep through a much smaller one than you would think."
Again he took his mattock, and went to the back wall.
"They won't burn the house," he said to himself. "There is too good a
one on each side of it."
The tumult had kept increasing every moment, and the city marshal had
been shouting, but Curdie had not listened to him. When now they heard
the blows of his mattock, there went up a great cry, and the people
taunted the soldiers that they were afraid of a dog and his miner. The
soldiers therefore made a rush at the door, and cut its fastenings.
The moment they opened it, out leaped Lina, with a roar so unnaturally
horrible that the sword-arms of the soldiers dropped by their sides,
paralysed with the terror of that cry; the crowd fled in every
direction, shrieking and yelling with mortal dismay; and without even
knocking down with her tail, not to say biting a man of them with her
pulverizing jaws, Lina vanished--no one knew whither, for not one of the
crowd had had courage to look upon her.
The moment she was gone, Curdie advanced and gave himself up. The
soldiers were so filled with fear, shame, and chagrin, that they were
ready to kill him on the spot. But he stood quietly facing them, with
his mattock on his shoulder; and the magistrate wishing to examine him,
and the people to see him made an example of, the soldiers had to
content themselves with taking him. Partly for derision, partly to hurt
him, they laid his mattock against his back, and tied his arms to it.
They led him up a very steep street, and up another still, all the crowd
following. The king's palace-castle rose towering above them; but they
stopped before they reached it, at a low-browed door in a great, dull,
heavy-looking building.
The city marshal opened it with a key which hung at his girdle, and
ordered Curdie to enter. The place within was dark as night, and while
he was feeling his way with his feet, the marshal gave him a rough push.
He fell, and rolled once or twice over, unable to help himself because
his hands were tied behind him.
It was the hour of the magistrate's second and more important breakfast,
and until that was over he never found himself capable of attending to a
case with concentration sufficient to the distinguishing of the side
upon which his own advantage lay; and hence was this respite for Curdie,
with time to collect his thoughts. But indeed he had very few to
collect, for all he had to do, so far as he could see, was to wait for
what would come next. Neither had he much power to collect them, for he
was a good deal shaken.
In a few minutes he discovered, to his great relief, that, from the
projection of the pick-end of his mattock beyond his body, the fall had
loosened the ropes tied round it. He got one hand disengaged, and then
the other; and presently stood free, with his good mattock once more in
right serviceable relation to his arms and legs.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE MATTOCK.
While the magistrate reinvigorated his selfishness with a greedy
breakfast, Curdie found doing nothing in the dark rather wearisome work.
It was useless attempting to think what he should do next, seeing the
circumstances in which he was presently to find himself were altogether
unknown to him. So he began to think about his father and mother in
their little cottage home, high in the clear air of the open
mountain-side, and the thought, instead of making his dungeon gloomier
by the contrast, made a light in his soul that destroyed the power of
darkness and captivity. But he was at length startled from his waking
dream by a swell in the noise outside. All the time there had been a few
of the more idle of the inhabitants about the door, but they had been
rather quiet. Now, however, the sounds of feet and voices began to grow,
and grew so rapidly that it was plain a multitude was gathering. For
the people of Gwyntystorm always gave themselves an hour of pleasure
after their second breakfast, and what greater pleasure could they have
than to see a stranger abused by the officers of justice? The noise grew
till it was like the roaring of the sea, and that roaring went on a long
time, for the magistrate, being a great man, liked to know that he was
waited for: it added to the enjoyment of his breakfast, and, indeed,
enabled him to eat a little more after he had thought his powers
exhausted. But at length, in the waves of the human noises rose a bigger
wave, and by the running and shouting and outcry, Curdie learned that
the magistrate was approaching.
Presently came the sound of the great rusty key in the lock, which
yielded with groaning reluctance; the door was thrown back, the light
rushed in, and with it came the voice of the city marshal, calling upon
Curdie, by many legal epithets opprobrious, to come forth and be tried
for his life, inasmuch as he had raised a tumult in his majesty's city
of Gwyntystorm, troubled the hearts of the king's baker and barber, and
slain the faithful dogs of his majesty's well-beloved butchers.
He was still reading, and Curdie was still seated in the brown twilight
of the vault, not listening, but pondering with himself how this king
the city marshal talked of could be the same with the majesty he had
seen ride away on his grand white horse, with the Princess Irene on a
cushion before him, when a scream of agonized terror arose on the
farthest skirt of the crowd, and, swifter than flood or flame, the
horror spread shrieking. In a moment the air was filled with hideous
howling, cries of unspeakable dismay, and the multitudinous noise of
running feet. The next moment, in at the door of the vault bounded Lina,
her two green eyes flaming yellow as sunflowers, and seeming to light up
the dungeon. With one spring she threw herself at Curdie's feet, and
laid her head upon them panting. Then came a rush of two or three
soldiers darkening the doorway, but it was only to lay hold of the key,
pull the door to, and lock it; so that once more Curdie and Lina were
prisoners together.
For a few moments Lina lay panting hard: it is breathless work leaping
and roaring both at once, and that in a way to scatter thousands of
people. Then she jumped up, and began snuffing about all over the place;
and Curdie saw what he had never seen before--two faint spots of light
cast from her eyes upon the ground, one on each side of her snuffing
nose. He got out his tinder-box--a miner is never without one--and
lighted a precious bit of candle he carried in a division of it--just
for a moment, for he must not waste it.
The light revealed a vault without any window or other opening than the
door. It was very old and much neglected. The mortar had vanished from
between the stones, and it was half filled with a heap of all sorts of
rubbish, beaten down in the middle, but looser at the sides; it sloped
from the door to the foot of the opposite wall: evidently for a long
time the vault had been left open, and every sort of refuse thrown into
it. A single minute served for the survey, so little was there to note.
Meantime, down in the angle between the back wall and the base of the
heap Lina was scratching furiously with all the eighteen great strong
claws of her mighty feet.
"Ah, ha!" said Curdie to himself, catching sight of her, "if only they
will leave us long enough to ourselves!"
With that he ran to the door, to see if there was any fastening on the
inside. There was none: in all its long history it never had had one.
But a few blows of the right sort, now from the one, now from the other
end of his mattock, were as good as any bolt, for they so ruined the
lock that no key could ever turn in it again. Those who heard them
fancied he was trying to get out, and laughed spitefully. As soon as he
had done, he extinguished his candle, and went down to Lina.
She had reached the hard rock which formed the floor of the dungeon, and
was now clearing away the earth a little wider. Presently she looked up
in his face and whined, as much as to say, "My paws are not hard enough
to get any further."
"Then get out of my way, Lina," said Curdie, "and mind you keep your
eyes shining, for fear I should hit you."
So saying, he heaved his mattock, and assailed with the hammer end of it
the spot she had cleared.
The rock was very hard, but when it did break it broke in good-sized
pieces. Now with hammer, now with pick, he worked till he was weary,
then rested, and then set to again. He could not tell how the day went,
as he had no light but the lamping of Lina's eyes. The darkness hampered
him greatly, for he would not let Lina come close enough to give him all
the light she could, lest he should strike her. So he had, every now and
then, to feel with his hands to know how he was getting on, and to
discover in what direction to strike: the exact spot was a mere
imagination.
He was getting very tired and hungry, and beginning to lose heart a
little, when out of the ground, as if he had struck a spring of it,
burst a dull, gleamy, lead-coloured light, and the next moment he heard
a hollow splash and echo. A piece of rock had fallen out of the floor,
and dropped into water beneath. Already Lina, who had been lying a few
yards off all the time he worked, was on her feet and peering through
the hole. Curdie got down on his hands and knees, and looked. They were
over what seemed a natural cave in the rock, to which apparently the
river had access, for, at a great distance below, a faint light was
gleaming upon water. If they could but reach it, they might get out; but
even if it was deep enough, the height was very dangerous. The first
thing, whatever might follow, was to make the hole larger. It was
comparatively easy to break away the sides of it, and in the course of
another hour he had it large enough to get through.
And now he must reconnoitre. He took the rope they had tied him
with--for Curdie's hindrances were always his furtherance--and fastened
one end of it by a slip-knot round the handle of his pickaxe, then
dropped the other end through, and laid the pickaxe so that, when he was
through himself, and hanging on to the edge, he could place it across
the hole to support him on the rope. This done, he took the rope in his
hands, and, beginning to descend, found himself in a narrow cleft
widening into a cave. His rope was not very long, and would not do much
to lessen the force of his fall--he thought with himself--if he should
have to drop into the water; but he was not more than a couple of yards
below the dungeon when he spied an opening on the opposite side of the
cleft: it might be but a shallow hole, or it might lead them out. He
dropped himself a little below its level, gave the rope a swing by
pushing his feet against the side of the cleft, and so penduled himself
into it. Then he laid a stone on the end of the rope that it should not
forsake him, called to Lina, whose yellow eyes were gleaming over the
mattock-grating above, to watch there till he returned, and went
cautiously in.
It proved a passage, level for some distance, then sloping gently up. He
advanced carefully, feeling his way as he went. At length he was stopped
by a door--a small door, studded with iron. But the wood was in places
so much decayed that some of the bolts had dropped out, and he felt sure
of being able to open it. He returned, therefore, to fetch Lina and his
mattock. Arrived at the cleft, his strong miner arms bore him swiftly up
along the rope and through the hole into the dungeon. There he undid the
rope from his mattock, and making Lina take the end of it in her teeth,
and get through the hole, he lowered her--it was all he could do, she
was so heavy. When she came opposite the passage, with a slight push of
her tail she shot herself into it, and let go the rope, which Curdie
drew up. Then he lighted his candle and searching in the rubbish found a
bit of iron to take the place of his pickaxe across the hole. Then he
searched again in the rubbish, and found half an old shutter. This he
propped up leaning a little over the hole, with a bit of stick, and
heaped against the back of it a quantity of the loosened earth. Next he
tied his mattock to the end of the rope, dropped it, and let it hang.
Last, he got through the hole himself, and pulled away the propping
stick, so that the shutter fell over the hole with a quantity of earth
on the top of it. A few motions of hand over hand, and he swung himself
and his mattock into the passage beside Lina. There he secured the end
of the rope, and they went on together to the door.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WINE-CELLAR.
He lighted his candle and examined it. Decayed and broken as it was, it
was strongly secured in its place by hinges on the one side, and either
lock or bolt, he could not tell which, on the other. A brief use of his
pocket-knife was enough to make room for his hand and arm to get
through, and then he found a great iron bolt--but so rusty that he could
not move it. Lina whimpered. He took his knife again, made the hole
bigger, and stood back. In she shot her small head and long neck, seized
the bolt with her teeth, and dragged it grating and complaining back. A
push then opened the door. It was at the foot of a short flight of
steps. They ascended, and at the top Curdie found himself in a space
which, from the echo to his stamp, appeared of some size, though of what
sort he could not at first tell, for his hands, feeling about, came upon
nothing. Presently, however, they fell on a great thing: it was a
wine-cask.
[Illustration: "_Curdie was just setting out to explore the place when
he heard steps coming down a stair._"]
He was just setting out to explore the place by a thorough palpation,
when he heard steps coming down a stair. He stood still, not knowing
whether the door would open an inch from his nose or twenty yards behind
his back. It did neither. He heard the key turn in the lock, and a
stream of light shot in, ruining the darkness, about fifteen yards away
on his right.
A man carrying a candle in one hand and a large silver flagon in the
other, entered, and came towards him. The light revealed a row of huge
wine-casks, that stretched away into the darkness of the other end of
the long vault. Curdie retreated into the recess of the stair, and
peeping round the corner of it, watched him, thinking what he could do
to prevent him from locking them in. He came on and on, until Curdie
feared he would pass the recess and see them. He was just preparing to
rush out, and master him before he should give alarm, not in the least
knowing what he should do next, when, to his relief, the man stopped at
the third cask from where he stood. He set down his light on the top of
it, removed what seemed a large vent-peg, and poured into the cask a
quantity of something from the flagon. Then he turned to the next cask,
drew some wine, rinsed the flagon, threw the wine away, drew and rinsed
and threw away again, then drew and drank, draining to the bottom. Last
of all, he filled the flagon from the cask he had first visited,
replaced then the vent-peg, took up his candle, and turned towards the
door.
"There is something wrong here!" thought Curdie.
"Speak to him, Lina," he whispered.
The sudden howl she gave made Curdie himself start and tremble for a
moment. As to the man, he answered Lina's with another horrible howl,
forced from him by the convulsive shudder of every muscle of his body,
then reeled gasping to and fro, and dropped his candle. But just as
Curdie expected to see him fall dead he recovered himself, and flew to
the door, through which he darted, leaving it open behind him. The
moment he ran, Curdie stepped out, picked up the candle still alight,
sped after him to the door, drew out the key, and then returned to the
stair and waited. In a few minutes he heard the sound of many feet and
voices. Instantly he turned the tap of the cask from which the man had
been drinking, set the candle beside it on the floor, went down the
steps and out of the little door, followed by Lina, and closed it behind
them.
Through the hole in it he could see a little, and hear all. He could see
how the light of many candles filled the place, and could hear how some
two dozen feet ran hither and thither through the echoing cellar; he
could hear the clash of iron, probably spits and pokers, now and then;
and at last heard how, finding nothing remarkable except the best wine
running to waste, they all turned on the butler, and accused him of
having fooled them with a drunken dream. He did his best to defend
himself, appealing to the evidence of their own senses that he was as
sober as they were. They replied that a fright was no less a fright that
the cause was imaginary, and a dream no less a dream that the fright had
waked him from it. When he discovered, and triumphantly adduced as
corroboration, that the key was gone from the door, they said it merely
showed how drunk he had been--either that or how frightened, for he had
certainly dropped it. In vain he protested that he had never taken it
out of the lock--that he never did when he went in, and certainly had
not this time stopped to do so when he came out; they asked him why he
had to go to the cellar at such a time of the day, and said it was
because he had already drunk all the wine that was left from dinner. He
said if he had dropped the key, the key was to be found, and they must
help him to find it. They told him they wouldn't move a peg for him. He
declared, with much language, he would have them all turned out of the
king's service. They said they would swear he was drunk. And so positive
were they about it, that at last the butler himself began to think
whether it was possible they could be in the right. For he knew that
sometimes when he had been drunk he fancied things had taken place
which he found afterwards could not have happened. Certain of his
fellow-servants, however, had all the time a doubt whether the cellar
goblin had not appeared to him, or at least roared at him, to protect
the wine. In any case nobody wanted to find the key for him; nothing
could please them better than that the door of the wine-cellar should
never more be locked. By degrees the hubbub died away, and they
departed, not even pulling to the door, for there was neither handle nor
latch to it.
As soon as they were gone, Curdie returned, knowing now that they were
in the wine-cellar of the palace, as, indeed, he had suspected. Finding
a pool of wine in a hollow of the floor, Lina lapped it up eagerly: she
had had no breakfast, and was now very thirsty as well as hungry. Her
master was in a similar plight, for he had but just begun to eat when
the magistrate arrived with the soldiers. If only they were all in bed,
he thought, that he might find his way to the larder! For he said to
himself that, as he was sent there by the young princess's
great-great-grandmother to serve her or her father in some way, surely
he must have a right to his food in the palace, without which he could
do nothing. He would go at once and reconnoitre.
So he crept up the stair that led from the cellar. At the top was a
door, opening on a long passage, dimly lighted by a lamp. He told Lina
to lie down upon the stair while he went on. At the end of the passage
he found a door ajar, and, peeping through, saw right into a great stone
hall, where a huge fire was blazing, and through which men in the king's
livery were constantly coming and going. Some also in the same livery
were lounging about the fire. He noted that their colours were the same
with those he himself, as king's miner, wore; but from what he had seen
and heard of the habits of the place, he could not hope they would treat
him the better for that.
The one interesting thing at the moment, however, was the plentiful
supper with which the table was spread. It was something at least to
stand in sight of food, and he was unwilling to turn his back on the
prospect so long as a share in it was not absolutely hopeless. Peeping
thus, he soon made up his mind that if at any moment the hall should be
empty, he would at that moment rush in and attempt to carry off a dish.
That he might lose no time by indecision, he selected a large pie upon
which to pounce instantaneously. But after he had watched for some
minutes, it did not seem at all likely the chance would arrive before
supper-time, and he was just about to turn away and rejoin Lina, when he
saw that there was not a person in the place. Curdie never made up his
mind and then hesitated. He darted in, seized the pie, and bore it,
swiftly and noiselessly, to the cellar stair.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE KING'S KITCHEN.
Back to the cellar Curdie and Lina sped with their booty, where, seated
on the steps, Curdie lighted his bit of candle for a moment. A very
little bit it was now, but they did not waste much of it in examination
of the pie; that they effected by a more summary process. Curdie thought
it the nicest food he had ever tasted, and between them they soon ate it
up. Then Curdie would have thrown the dish along with the bones into the
water, that there might be no traces of them; but he thought of his
mother, and hid it instead; and the very next minute they wanted it to
draw some wine into. He was careful it should be from the cask of which
he had seen the butler drink. Then they sat down again upon the steps,
and waited until the house should be quiet. For he was there to do
something, and if it did not come to him in the cellar, he must go to
meet it in other places. Therefore, lest he should fall asleep, he set
the end of the helve of his mattock on the ground, and seated himself on
the cross part, leaning against the wall, so that as long as he kept
awake he should rest, but the moment he began to fall asleep he must
fall awake instead. He quite expected some of the servants would visit
the cellar again that night, but whether it was that they were afraid of
each other, or believed more of the butler's story than they had chosen
to allow, not one of them appeared.
When at length he thought he might venture, he shouldered his mattock
and crept up the stair. The lamp was out in the passage, but he could
not miss his way to the servants' hall. Trusting to Lina's quickness in
concealing herself, he took her with him.
When they reached the hall they found it quiet and nearly dark. The last
of the great fire was glowing red, but giving little light. Curdie stood
and warmed himself for a few moments: miner as he was, he had found the
cellar cold to sit in doing nothing; and standing thus he thought of
looking if there were any bits of candle about. There were many
candlesticks on the supper-table, but to his disappointment and
indignation their candles seemed to have been all left to burn out, and
some of them, indeed, he found still hot in the neck.
Presently, one after another, he came upon seven men fast asleep, most
of them upon tables, one in a chair, and one on the floor. They seemed,
from their shape and colour, to have eaten and drunk so much that they
might be burned alive without waking. He grasped the hand of each in
succession, and found two ox-hoofs, three pig-hoofs, one concerning
which he could not be sure whether it was the hoof of a donkey or a
pony, and one dog's paw. "A nice set of people to be about a king!"
thought Curdie to himself, and turned again to his candle hunt. He did
at last find two or three little pieces, and stowed them away in his
pockets.
They now left the hall by another door, and entered a short passage,
which led them to the huge kitchen, vaulted, and black with smoke. There
too the fire was still burning, so that he was able to see a little of
the state of things in this quarter also. The place was dirty and
disorderly. In a recess, on a heap of brushwood, lay a kitchenmaid, with
a table-cover around her, and a skillet in her hand: evidently she too
had been drinking. In another corner lay a page, and Curdie noted how
like his dress was to his own. In the cinders before the hearth were
huddled three dogs and five cats, all fast asleep, while the rats were
running about the floor. Curdie's heart ached to think of the lovely
child-princess living over such a sty. The mine was a paradise to a
palace with such servants in it.
Leaving the kitchen, he got into the region of the sculleries. There
horrible smells were wandering about, like evil spirits that come forth
with the darkness. He lighted a candle--but only to see ugly sights.
Everywhere was filth and disorder. Mangy turn-spit dogs were lying
about, and gray rats were gnawing at refuse in the sinks. It was like a
hideous dream. He felt as if he should never get out of it, and longed
for one glimpse of his mother's poor little kitchen, so clean and bright
and airy. Turning from it at last in miserable disgust, he almost ran
back through the kitchen, re-entered the hall, and crossed it to another
door.
It opened upon a wider passage, leading to an arch in a stately
corridor, all its length lighted by lamps in niches. At the end of it
was a large and beautiful hall, with great pillars. There sat three men
in the royal livery, fast asleep, each in a great arm-chair, with his
feet on a huge footstool. They looked like fools dreaming themselves
kings; and Lina looked as if she longed to throttle them. At one side of
the hall was the grand staircase, and they went up.
Everything that now met Curdie's eyes was rich--not glorious like the
splendours of the mountain cavern, but rich and soft--except where, now
and then, some rough old rib of the ancient fortress came through, hard
and discoloured. Now some dark bare arch of stone, now some rugged and
blackened pillar, now some huge beam, brown with the smoke and dust of
centuries, looked like a thistle in the midst of daisies, or a rock in a
smooth lawn.
They wandered about a good while, again and again finding themselves
where they had been before. Gradually, however, Curdie was gaining some
idea of the place. By-and-by Lina began to look frightened, and as they
went on Curdie saw that she looked more and more frightened. Now, by
this time he had come to understand that what made her look frightened
was always the fear of frightening, and he therefore concluded they must
be drawing nigh to somebody. At last, in a gorgeously-painted gallery,
he saw a curtain of crimson, and on the curtain a royal crown wrought in
silks and stones. He felt sure this must be the king's chamber, and it
was here he was wanted; or, if it was not the place he was bound for,
something would meet him and turn him aside; for he had come to think
that so long as a man wants to do right he may go where he can: when he
can go no further, then it is not the way. "Only," said his father, in
assenting to the theory, "he must really want to do right, and not
merely fancy he does. He must want it with his heart and will, and not
with his rag of a tongue."
So he gently lifted the corner of the curtain, and there behind it was a
half-open door. He entered, and the moment he was in, Lina stretched
herself along the threshold between the curtain and the door.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE KING'S CHAMBER.
He found himself in a large room, dimly lighted by a silver lamp that
hung from the ceiling. Far at the other end was a great bed, surrounded
with dark heavy curtains. He went softly towards it, his heart beating
fast. It was a dreadful thing to be alone in the king's chamber at the
dead of night. To gain courage he had to remind himself of the beautiful
princess who had sent him. But when he was about halfway to the bed, a
figure appeared from the farther side of it, and came towards him, with
a hand raised warningly. He stood still. The light was dim, and he could
distinguish little more than the outline of a young girl. But though the
form he saw was much taller than the princess he remembered, he never
doubted it was she. For one thing, he knew that most girls would have
been frightened to see him there in the dead of the night, but like a
true princess, and the princess he used to know, she walked straight on
to meet him. As she came she lowered the hand she had lifted, and laid
the forefinger of it upon her lips. Nearer and nearer, quite near,
close up to him she came, then stopped, and stood a moment looking at
him.
"You are Curdie," she said.
"And you are the Princess Irene," he returned.
"Then we know each other still," she said, with a sad smile of pleasure.
"You will help me."
"That I will," answered Curdie. He did not say, "If I can;" for he knew
that what he was sent to do, that he could do. "May I kiss your hand,
little princess?"
She was only between nine and ten, though indeed she looked several
years older, and her eyes almost those of a grown woman, for she had had
terrible trouble of late.
She held out her hand.
"I am not the _little_ princess any more. I have grown up since I saw
you last, Mr. Miner."
The smile which accompanied the words had in it a strange mixture of
playfulness and sadness.
"So I see, Miss Princess," returned Curdie; "and therefore, being more
of a princess, you are the more my princess. Here I am, sent by your
great-great-grandmother, to be your servant.--May I ask why you are up
so late, princess?"
"Because my father wakes _so_ frightened, and I don't know what he
_would_ do if he didn't find me by his bedside. There! he's waking now."
She darted off to the side of the bed she had come from. Curdie stood
where he was.
A voice altogether unlike what he remembered of the mighty, noble king
on his white horse came from the bed, thin, feeble, hollow, and husky,
and in tone like that of a petulant child:--
"I will not, I will not. I am a king, and I _will_ be a king. I hate you
and despise you, and you shall not torture me!"
"Never mind them, father dear," said the princess. "I am here, and they
shan't touch you. They dare not, you know, so long as you defy them."
"They want my crown, darling; and I can't give them my crown, can I? for
what is a king without his crown?"
"They shall never have your crown, my king," said Irene. "Here it
is--all safe, you see. I am watching it for you."
Curdie drew near the bed on the other side. There lay the grand old
king--he looked grand still, and twenty years older. His body was
pillowed high; his beard descended long and white over the crimson
coverlid; and his crown, its diamonds and emeralds gleaming in the
twilight of the curtains, lay in front of him, his long, thin old hands
folded round the rigol, and the ends of his beard straying among the
lovely stones. His face was like that of a man who had died fighting
nobly; but one thing made it dreadful: his eyes, while they moved about
as if searching in this direction and in that, looked more dead than his
face. He saw neither his daughter nor his crown: it was the voice of the
one and the touch of the other that comforted him. He kept murmuring
what seemed words, but was unintelligible to Curdie, although, to judge
from the look of Irene's face, she learned and concluded from it.
By degrees his voice sank away and the murmuring ceased, although still
his lips moved. Thus lay the old king on his bed, slumbering with his
crown between his hands; on one side of him stood a lovely little
maiden, with blue eyes, and brown hair going a little back from her
temples, as if blown by a wind that no one felt but herself; and on the
other a stalwart young miner, with his mattock over his shoulder.
Stranger sight still was Lina lying along the threshold--only nobody saw
her just then.
A moment more and the king's lips ceased to move. His breathing had
grown regular and quiet. The princess gave a sigh of relief, and came
round to Curdie.
"We can talk a little now," she said, leading him towards the middle of
the room. "My father will sleep now till the doctor wakes him to give
him his medicine. It is not really medicine, though, but wine. Nothing
but that, the doctor says, could have kept him so long alive. He always
comes in the middle of the night to give it him with his own hands. But
it makes me cry to see him waked up when so nicely asleep."
"What sort of man is your doctor?" asked Curdie.
"Oh, such a dear, good, kind gentleman!" replied the princess. "He
speaks so softly, and is so sorry for his dear king! He will be here
presently, and you shall see for yourself. You will like him very much."
"Has your king-father been long ill?" asked Curdie.
"A whole year now," she replied. "Did you not know? That's how your
mother never got the red petticoat my father promised her. The lord
chancellor told me that not only Gwyntystorm but the whole land was
mourning over the illness of the good man."
Now Curdie himself had not heard a word of his majesty's illness, and
had no ground for believing that a single soul in any place he had
visited on his journey had heard of it. Moreover, although mention had
been made of his majesty again and again in his hearing since he came to
Gwyntystorm, never once had he heard an allusion to the state of his
health. And now it dawned upon him also that he had never heard the
least expression of love to him. But just for the time he thought it
better to say nothing on either point.
"Does the king wander like this every night?" he asked.
"Every night," answered Irene, shaking her head mournfully. "That is why
I never go to bed at night. He is better during the day--a little, and
then I sleep--in the dressing-room there, to be with him in a moment if
he should call me. It is _so_ sad he should have only me and not my
mamma! A princess is nothing to a queen!"
"I wish he would like me," said Curdie, "for then I might watch by him
at night, and let you go to bed, princess."
"Don't you know then?" returned Irene, in wonder. "How was it you
came?--Ah! you said my grandmother sent you. But I thought you knew that
he wanted you."
And again she opened wide her blue stars.
"Not I," said Curdie, also bewildered, but very glad.
"He used to be constantly saying--he was not so ill then as he is
now--that he wished he had you about him."
"And I never to know it!" said Curdie, with displeasure.
"The master of the horse told papa's own secretary that he had written
to the miner-general to find you and send you up; but the miner-general
wrote back to the master of the horse, and he told the secretary, and
the secretary told my father, that they had searched every mine in the
kingdom and could hear nothing of you. My father gave a great sigh, and
said he feared the goblins had got you after all, and your father and
mother were dead of grief. And he has never mentioned you since, except
when wandering. I cried very much. But one of my grandmother's pigeons
with its white wing flashed a message to me through the window one day,
and then I knew that my Curdie wasn't eaten by the goblins, for my
grandmother wouldn't have taken care of him one time to let him be eaten
the next. Where were you, Curdie, that they couldn't find you?"
"We will talk about that another time, when we are not expecting the
doctor," said Curdie.
As he spoke, his eyes fell upon something shining on the table under the
lamp. His heart gave a great throb, and he went nearer.--Yes, there
could be no doubt;--it was the same flagon that the butler had filled in
the wine-cellar.
"It looks worse and worse!" he said to himself, and went back to Irene,
where she stood half dreaming.
"When will the doctor be here?" he asked once more--this time hurriedly.
The question was answered--not by the princess, but by something which
that instant tumbled heavily into the room. Curdie flew towards it in
vague terror about Lina.
On the floor lay a little round man, puffing and blowing, and uttering
incoherent language. Curdie thought of his mattock, and ran and laid it
aside.
"Oh, dear Dr. Kelman!" cried the princess, running up and taking hold of
his arm; "I am _so_ sorry!" She pulled and pulled, but might almost as
well have tried to set up a cannon-ball. "I hope you have not hurt
yourself?"
"Not at all, not at all," said the doctor, trying to smile and to rise
both at once, but finding it impossible to do either.
"If he slept on the floor he would be late for breakfast," said Curdie
to himself, and held out his hand to help him.
But when he took hold of it, Curdie very nearly let him fall again, for
what he held was not even a foot: it was the belly of a creeping thing.
He managed, however, to hold both his peace and his grasp, and pulled
the doctor roughly on his legs--such as they were.
"Your royal highness has rather a thick mat at the door," said the
doctor, patting his palms together. "I hope my awkwardness may not have
startled his majesty."
While he talked Curdie went to the door: Lina was not there.
The doctor approached the bed.
"And how has my beloved king slept to-night?" he asked.
"No better," answered Irene, with a mournful shake of her head.
"Ah, that is very well!" returned the doctor, his fall seeming to have
muddled either his words or his meaning. "We must give him his wine, and
then he will be better still."
Curdie darted at the flagon, and lifted it high, as if he had expected
to find it full, but had found it empty.
"That stupid butler! I heard them say he was drunk!" he cried in a loud
whisper, and was gliding from the room.
"Come here with that flagon, you! page!" cried the doctor.
Curdie came a few steps towards him with the flagon dangling from his
hand, heedless of the gushes that fell noiseless on the thick carpet.
"Are you aware, young man," said the doctor, "that it is not every wine
can do his majesty the benefit I intend he should derive from my
prescription?"
"Quite aware, sir," answered Curdie. "The wine for his majesty's use is
in the third cask from the corner."
"Fly, then," said the doctor, looking satisfied.
Curdie stopped outside the curtain and blew an audible breath--no more:
up came Lina noiseless as a shadow. He showed her the flagon.
"The cellar, Lina: go," he said.
She galloped away on her soft feet, and Curdie had indeed to fly to keep
up with her. Not once did she make even a dubious turn. From the king's
gorgeous chamber to the cold cellar they shot. Curdie dashed the wine
down the back stair, rinsed the flagon out as he had seen the butler do,
filled it from the cask of which he had seen the butler drink, and
hastened with it up again to the king's room.
The little doctor took it, poured out a full glass, smelt, but did not
taste it, and set it down. Then he leaned over the bed, shouted in the
king's ear, blew upon his eyes, and pinched his arm: Curdie thought he
saw him run something bright into it. At last the king half woke. The
doctor seized the glass, raised his head, poured the wine down his
throat, and let his head fall back on the pillow again. Tenderly wiping
his beard, and bidding the princess good-night in paternal tones, he
then took his leave. Curdie would gladly have driven his pick into his
head, but that was not in his commission, and he let him go.
The little round man looked very carefully to his feet as he crossed the
threshold.
"That attentive fellow of a page has removed the mat," he said to
himself, as he walked along the corridor. "I must remember him."
CHAPTER XX.
COUNTER-PLOTTING.
Curdie was already sufficiently enlightened as to how things were going,
to see that he must have the princess of one mind with him, and they
must work together. It was clear that amongst those about the king there
was a plot against him: for one thing, they had agreed in a lie
concerning himself; and it was plain also that the doctor was working
out a design against the health and reason of his majesty, rendering the
question of his life a matter of little moment. It was in itself
sufficient to justify the worst fears, that the people outside the
palace were ignorant of his majesty's condition: he believed those
inside it also--the butler excepted--were ignorant of it as well.
Doubtless his majesty's councillors desired to alienate the hearts of
his subjects from their sovereign. Curdie's idea was that they intended
to kill the king, marry the princess to one of themselves, and found a
new dynasty; but whatever their purpose, there was treason in the palace
of the worst sort: they were making and keeping the king incapable, in
order to effect that purpose. The first thing to be seen to therefore
was, that his majesty should neither eat morsel nor drink drop of
anything prepared for him in the palace. Could this have been managed
without the princess, Curdie would have preferred leaving her in
ignorance of the horrors from which he sought to deliver her. He feared
also the danger of her knowledge betraying itself to the evil eyes about
her; but it must be risked--and she had always been a wise child.
Another thing was clear to him--that with such traitors no terms of
honour were either binding or possible, and that, short of lying, he
might use any means to foil them. And he could not doubt that the old
princess had sent him expressly to frustrate their plans.
While he stood thinking thus with himself, the princess was earnestly
watching the king, with looks of childish love and womanly tenderness
that went to Curdie's heart. Now and then with a great fan of peacock
feathers she would fan him very softly; now and then, seeing a cloud
begin to gather upon the sky of his sleeping face, she would climb upon
the bed, and bending to his ear whisper into it, then draw back and
watch again--generally to see the cloud disperse. In his deepest
slumber, the soul of the king lay open to the voice of his child, and
that voice had power either to change the aspect of his visions, or,
which was better still, to breathe hope into his heart, and courage to
endure them.
Curdie came near, and softly called her.
"I can't leave papa just yet," she returned, in a low voice.
"I will wait," said Curdie; "but I want very much to say something."
In a few minutes she came to him where he stood under the lamp.
"Well, Curdie, what is it?" she said.
"Princess," he replied, "I want to tell you that I have found why your
grandmother sent me."
"Come this way, then," she answered, "where I can see the face of my
king."
Curdie placed a chair for her in the spot she chose, where she would be
near enough to mark any slightest change on her father's countenance,
yet where their low-voiced talk would not disturb him. There he sat down
beside her and told her all the story--how her grandmother had sent her
good pigeon for him, and how she had instructed him, and sent him there
without telling him what he had to do. Then he told her what he had
discovered of the state of things generally in Gwyntystorm, and
specially what he had heard and seen in the palace that night.
"Things are in a bad state enough," he said in conclusion;--"lying and
selfishness and inhospitality and dishonesty everywhere; and to crown
all, they speak with disrespect of the good king, and not a man of them
knows he is ill."
"You frighten me dreadfully," said Irene, trembling.
"You must be brave for your king's sake," said Curdie.
"Indeed I will," she replied, and turned a long loving look upon the
beautiful face of her father. "But what _is_ to be done? And how _am_ I
to believe such horrible things of Dr. Kelman?"
"My dear princess," replied Curdie, "you know nothing of him but his
face and his tongue, and they are both false. Either you must beware of
him, or you must doubt your grandmother and me; for I tell you, by the
gift she gave me of testing hands, that this man is a snake. That round
body he shows is but the case of a serpent. Perhaps the creature lies
there, as in its nest, coiled round and round inside."
"Horrible!" said Irene.
"Horrible indeed; but we must not try to get rid of horrible things by
refusing to look at them, and saying they are not there. Is not your
beautiful father sleeping better since he had the wine?"
"Yes."
"Does he always sleep better after having it?"
She reflected an instant.
"No; always worse--till to-night," she answered.
"Then remember that was the wine I got him--not what the butler drew.
Nothing that passes through any hand in the house except yours or mine
must henceforth, till he is well, reach his majesty's lips."
"But how, dear Curdie?" said the princess, almost crying.
"That we must contrive," answered Curdie. "I know how to take care of
the wine; but for his food--now we must think."
"He takes hardly any," said the princess, with a pathetic shake of her
little head which Curdie had almost learned to look for.
"The more need," he replied, "there should be no poison in it." Irene
shuddered. "As soon as he has honest food he will begin to grow better.
And you must be just as careful with yourself, princess," Curdie went
on, "for you don't know when they may begin to poison you too."
"There's no fear of me; don't talk about me," said Irene. "The good
food!--how are we to get it, Curdie? That is the whole question."
"I am thinking hard," answered Curdie. "The good food? Let me see--let
me see!--Such servants as I saw below are sure to have the best of
everything for themselves: I will go and see what I can find on their
supper-table."
"The chancellor sleeps in the house, and he and the master of the king's
horse always have their supper together in a room off the great hall, to
the right as you go down the stair," said Irene. "I would go with you,
but I dare not leave my father. Alas! he scarcely ever takes more than a
mouthful. I can't think how he lives! And the very thing he would like,
and often asks for--a bit of bread--I can hardly ever get for him: Dr.
Kelman has forbidden it, and says it is nothing less than poison to
him."
"Bread at least he _shall_ have," said Curdie; "and that, with the
honest wine, will do as well as anything, I do believe. I will go at
once and look for some. But I want you to see Lina first, and know her,
lest, coming upon her by accident at any time, you should be
frightened."
"I should like much to see her," said the princess.
Warning her not to be startled by her ugliness, he went to the door and
called her.
She entered, creeping with downcast head, and dragging her tail over the
floor behind her. Curdie watched the princess as the frightful creature
came nearer and nearer. One shudder went from head to foot of her, and
next instant she stepped to meet her. Lina dropped flat on the floor,
and covered her face with her two big paws. It went to the heart of the
princess: in a moment she was on her knees beside her, stroking her ugly
head, and patting her all over.
"Good dog! Dear ugly dog!" she said.
Lina whimpered.
"I believe," said Curdie, "from what your grandmother told me, that Lina
is a woman, and that she was naughty, but is now growing good."
Lina had lifted her head while Irene was caressing her; now she dropped
it again between her paws; but the princess took it in her hands, and
kissed the forehead betwixt the gold-green eyes.
"Shall I take her with me or leave her?" asked Curdie.
"Leave her, poor dear," said Irene, and Curdie, knowing the way now,
went without her.
He took his way first to the room the princess had spoken of, and there
also were the remains of supper; but neither there nor in the kitchen
could he find a scrap of plain wholesome-looking bread. So he returned
and told her that as soon as it was light he would go into the city for
some, and asked her for a handkerchief to tie it in. If he could not
bring it himself, he would send it by Lina, who could keep out of sight
better than he, and as soon as all was quiet at night he would come to
her again. He also asked her to tell the king that he was in the house.
His hope lay in the fact that bakers everywhere go to work early. But it
was yet much too early. So he persuaded the princess to lie down,
promising to call her if the king should stir.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE LOAF.
His majesty slept very quietly. The dawn had grown almost day, and still
Curdie lingered, unwilling to disturb the princess.
At last, however, he called her, and she was in the room in a moment.
She had slept, she said, and felt quite fresh. Delighted to find her
father still asleep, and so peacefully, she pushed her chair close to
the bed, and sat down with her hands in her lap.
Curdie got his mattock from where he had hidden it behind a great
mirror, and went to the cellar, followed by Lina. They took some
breakfast with them as they passed through the hall, and as soon as they
had eaten it went out the back way.
At the mouth of the passage Curdie seized the rope, drew himself up,
pushed away the shutter, and entered the dungeon. Then he swung the end
of the rope to Lina, and she caught it in her teeth. When her master
said, "Now, Lina!" she gave a great spring, and he ran away with the end
of the rope as fast as ever he could. And such a spring had she made,
that by the time he had to bear her weight she was within a few feet of
the hole. The instant she got a paw through, she was all through.
Apparently their enemies were waiting till hunger should have cowed
them, for there was no sign of any attempt having been made to open the
door. A blow or two of Curdie's mattock drove the shattered lock clean
from it, and telling Lina to wait there till he came back, and let no
one in, he walked out into the silent street, and drew the door to
behind him. He could hardly believe it was not yet a whole day since he
had been thrown in there with his hands tied at his back.
Down the town he went, walking in the middle of the street, that, if any
one saw him, he might see he was not afraid, and hesitate to rouse an
attack on him. As to the dogs, ever since the death of their two
companions, a shadow that looked like a mattock was enough to make them
scamper. As soon as he reached the archway of the city gate he turned to
reconnoitre the baker's shop, and perceiving no sign of movement, waited
there watching for the first.
After about an hour, the door opened, and the baker's man appeared with
a pail in his hand. He went to a pump that stood in the street, and
having filled his pail returned with it into the shop. Curdie stole
after him, found the door on the latch, opened it very gently, peeped
in, saw nobody, and entered. Remembering perfectly from what shelf the
baker's wife had taken the loaf she said was the best, and seeing just
one upon it, he seized it, laid the price of it on the counter, and sped
softly out, and up the street. Once more in the dungeon beside Lina, his
first thought was to fasten up the door again, which would have been
easy, so many iron fragments of all sorts and sizes lay about; but he
bethought himself that if he left it as it was, and they came to find
him, they would conclude at once that they had made their escape by it,
and would look no farther so as to discover the hole. He therefore
merely pushed the door close and left it. Then once more carefully
arranging the earth behind the shutter, so that it should again fall
with it, he returned to the cellar.
And now he had to convey the loaf to the princess. If he could venture
to take it himself, well; if not, he would send Lina. He crept to the
door of the servants' hall, and found the sleepers beginning to stir.
One said it was time to go to bed; another, that he would go to the
cellar instead, and have a mug of wine to waken him up; while a third
challenged a fourth to give him his revenge at some game or other.
"Oh, hang your losses!" answered his companion; "you'll soon pick up
twice as much about the house, if you but keep your eyes open."
Perceiving there would be risk in attempting to pass through, and
reflecting that the porters in the great hall would probably be awake
also, Curdie went back to the cellar, took Irene's handkerchief with the
loaf in it, tied it round Lina's neck, and told her to take it to the
princess.
Using every shadow and every shelter, Lina slid through the servants
like a shapeless terror through a guilty mind, and so, by corridor and
great hall, up the stair to the king's chamber.
Irene trembled a little when she saw her glide soundless in across the
silent dusk of the morning, that filtered through the heavy drapery of
the windows, but she recovered herself at once when she saw the bundle
about her neck, for it both assured her of Curdie's safety, and gave her
hope of her father's. She untied it with joy, and Lina stole away,
silent as she had come. Her joy was the greater that the king had woke
up a little while before, and expressed a desire for food--not that he
felt exactly hungry, he said, and yet he wanted something. If only he
might have a piece of nice fresh bread! Irene had no knife, but with
eager hands she broke a great piece from the loaf, and poured out a full
glass of wine. The king ate and drank, enjoyed the bread and the wine
much, and instantly fell asleep again.
It was hours before the lazy people brought their breakfast. When it
came, Irene crumbled a little about, threw some into the fire-place, and
managed to make the tray look just as usual.
In the meantime, down below in the cellar, Curdie was lying in the
hollow between the upper sides of two of the great casks, the warmest
place he could find. Lina was watching. She lay at his feet, across the
two casks, and did her best so to arrange her huge tail that it should
be a warm coverlid for her master.
By-and-by Dr. Kelman called to see his patient; and now that Irene's
eyes were opened, she saw clearly enough that he was both annoyed and
puzzled at finding his majesty rather better. He pretended however to
congratulate him, saying he believed he was quite fit to see the lord
chamberlain: he wanted his signature to something important; only he
must not strain his mind to understand it, whatever it might be: if his
majesty did, he would not be answerable for the consequences. The king
said he would see the lord chamberlain, and the doctor went. Then Irene
gave him more bread and wine, and the king ate and drank, and smiled a
feeble smile, the first real one she had seen for many a day. He said he
felt much better, and would soon be able to take matters into his own
hands again. He had a strange miserable feeling, he said, that things
were going terribly wrong, although he could not tell how. Then the
princess told him that Curdie was come, and that at night, when all was
quiet, for nobody in the palace must know, he would pay his majesty a
visit. Her great-great-grandmother had sent him, she said. The king
looked strangely upon her, but, the strange look passed into a smile
clearer than the first, and Irene's heart throbbed with delight.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN.
At noon the lord chamberlain appeared. With a long, low bow, and paper
in hand, he stepped softly into the room. Greeting his majesty with
every appearance of the profoundest respect, and congratulating him on
the evident progress he had made, he declared himself sorry to trouble
him, but there were certain papers, he said, which required his
signature--and therewith drew nearer to the king, who lay looking at him
doubtfully. He was a lean, long, yellow man, with a small head, bald
over the top, and tufted at the back and about the ears. He had a very
thin, prominent, hooked nose, and a quantity of loose skin under his
chin and about the throat, which came craning up out of his neckcloth.
His eyes were very small, sharp, and glittering, and looked black as
jet. He had hardly enough of a mouth to make a smile with. His left hand
held the paper, and the long, skinny fingers of his right a pen just
dipped in ink.
But the king, who for weeks had scarcely known what he did, was to-day
so much himself as to be aware that he was not quite himself; and the
moment he saw the paper, he resolved that he would not sign without
understanding and approving of it. He requested the lord chamberlain
therefore to read it. His lordship commenced at once but the
difficulties he seemed to encounter, and the fits of stammering that
seized him, roused the king's suspicion tenfold. He called the princess.
"I trouble his lordship too much," he said to her: "you can read print
well, my child--let me hear how you can read writing. Take that paper
from his lordship's hand, and read it to me from beginning to end, while
my lord drinks a glass of my favourite wine, and watches for your
blunders."
"Pardon me, your majesty," said the lord chamberlain, with as much of a
smile as he was able to extemporize, "but it were a thousand pities to
put the attainments of her royal highness to a test altogether too
severe. Your majesty can scarcely with justice expect the very organs of
her speech to prove capable of compassing words so long, and to her so
unintelligible."
"I think much of my little princess and her capabilities," returned the
king, more and more aroused. "Pray, my lord, permit her to try."
"Consider, your majesty: the thing would be altogether without
precedent. It would be to make sport of statecraft," said the lord
chamberlain.
"Perhaps you are right, my lord," answered the king with more meaning
than he intended should be manifest while to his growing joy he felt new
life and power throbbing in heart and brain. "So this morning we shall
read no farther. I am indeed ill able for business of such weight."
"Will your majesty please sign your royal name here?" said the lord
chamberlain, preferring the request as a matter of course, and
approaching with the feather end of the pen pointed to a spot where was
a great red seal.
"Not to-day, my lord," replied the king.
"It is of the greatest importance, your majesty," softly insisted the
other.
"I descried no such importance in it," said the king.
"Your majesty heard but a part."
"And I can hear no more to-day."
"I trust your majesty has ground enough, in a case of necessity like the
present, to sign upon the representation of his loyal subject and
chamberlain?--Or shall I call the lord chancellor?" he added, rising.
"There is no need. I have the very highest opinion of your judgment, my
lord," answered the king; "--that is, with respect to means: we _might_
differ as to ends."
The lord chamberlain made yet further attempts at persuasion; but they
grew feebler and feebler, and he was at last compelled to retire without
having gained his object. And well might his annoyance be keen! For that
paper was the king's will, drawn up by the attorney-general; nor until
they had the king's signature to it was there much use in venturing
farther. But his worst sense of discomfiture arose from finding the king
with so much capacity left, for the doctor had pledged himself so to
weaken his brain that he should be as a child in their hands, incapable
of refusing anything requested of him: his lordship began to doubt the
doctor's fidelity to the conspiracy.
The princess was in high delight. She had not for weeks heard so many
words, not to say words of such strength and reason, from her father's
lips: day by day he had been growing weaker and more lethargic. He was
so much exhausted however after this effort, that he asked for another
piece of bread and more wine, and fell fast asleep the moment he had
taken them.
The lord chamberlain sent in a rage for Dr. Kelman. He came, and while
professing himself unable to understand the symptoms described by his
lordship, yet pledged himself again that on the morrow the king should
do whatever was required of him.
The day went on. When his majesty was awake, the princess read to
him--one story-book after another; and whatever she read, the king
listened as if he had never heard anything so good before, making out in
it the wisest meanings. Every now and then he asked for a piece of bread
and a little wine, and every time he ate and drank he slept, and every
time he woke he seemed better than the last time. The princess bearing
her part, the loaf was eaten up and the flagon emptied before night. The
butler took the flagon away, and brought it back filled to the brim, but
both were thirsty as well as hungry when Curdie came again.
Meantime he and Lina, watching and waking alternately, had plenty of
sleep. In the afternoon, peeping from the recess, they saw several of
the servants enter hurriedly, one after the other, draw wine, drink it,
and steal out; but their business was to take care of the king, not of
his cellar, and they let them drink. Also, when the butler came to fill
the flagon, they restrained themselves, for the villain's fate was not
yet ready for him. He looked terribly frightened, and had brought with
him a large candle and a small terrier--which latter indeed threatened
to be troublesome, for he went roving and sniffing about until he came
to the recess where they were. But as soon as he showed himself, Lina
opened her jaws so wide, and glared at him so horribly, that, without
even uttering a whimper, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran to
his master. He was drawing the wicked wine at the moment, and did not
see him, else he would doubtless have run too.
When supper-time approached, Curdie took his place at the door into the
servants' hall; but after a long hour's vain watch, he began to fear he
should get nothing: there was so much idling about, as well as coming
and going. It was hard to bear--chiefly from the attractions of a
splendid loaf, just fresh out of the oven, which he longed to secure for
the king and princess. At length his chance did arrive: he pounced upon
the loaf and carried it away, and soon after got hold of a pie.
This time, however, both loaf and pie were missed. The cook was called.
He declared he had provided both. One of themselves, he said, must have
carried them away for some friend outside the palace. Then a housemaid,
who had not long been one of them, said she had seen some one like a
page running in the direction of the cellar with something in his hands.
Instantly all turned upon the pages, accusing them, one after another.
All denied, but nobody believed one of them: where there is no truth
there can be no faith.
To the cellar they all set out to look for the missing pie and loaf.
Lina heard them coming, as well she might, for they were talking and
quarrelling loud, and gave her master warning. They snatched up
everything, and got all signs of their presence out at the back door
before the servants entered. When they found nothing, they all turned on
the chambermaid, and accused her, not only of lying against the pages,
but of having taken the things herself. Their language and behaviour so
disgusted Curdie, who could hear a great part of what passed, and he saw
the danger of discovery now so much increased, that he began to devise
how best at once to rid the palace of the whole pack of them. That
however, would be small gain so long as the treacherous officers of
state continued in it. They must be first dealt with. A thought came to
him, and the longer he looked at it the better he liked it.
As soon as the servants were gone, quarrelling and accusing all the way,
they returned and finished their supper. Then Curdie, who had long been
satisfied that Lina understood almost every word he said, communicated
his plan to her, and knew by the wagging of her tail and the flashing of
her eyes that she comprehended it. Until they had the king safe through
the worst part of the night, however, nothing could be done.
They had now merely to go on waiting where they were till the household
should be asleep. This waiting and waiting was much the hardest thing
Curdie had to do in the whole affair. He took his mattock, and going
again into the long passage, lighted a candle-end, and proceeded to
examine the rock on all sides. But this was not merely to pass the
time: he had a reason for it. When he broke the stone in the street,
over which the baker fell, its appearance led him to pocket a fragment
for further examination; and since then he had satisfied himself that it
was the kind of stone in which gold is found, and that the yellow
particles in it were pure metal. If such stone existed here in any
plenty, he could soon make the king rich, and independent of his
ill-conditioned subjects. He was therefore now bent on an examination of
the rock; nor had he been at it long before he was persuaded that there
were large quantities of gold in the half-crystalline white stone, with
its veins of opaque white and of green, of which the rock, so far as he
had been able to inspect it, seemed almost entirely to consist. Every
piece he broke was spotted with particles and little lumps of a lovely
greenish yellow--and that was gold. Hitherto he had worked only in
silver, but he had read, and heard talk, and knew therefore about gold.
As soon as he had got the king free of rogues and villains, he would
have all the best and most honest miners, with his father at the head of
them, to work this rock for the king.
It was a great delight to him to use his mattock once more. The time
went quickly, and when he left the passage to go to the king's chamber,
he had already a good heap of fragments behind the broken door.
CHAPTER XXIII.
DR. KELMAN.
As soon as he had reason to hope the way was clear, Curdie ventured
softly into the hall, with Lina behind him. There was no one asleep on
the bench or floor, but by the fading fire sat a girl weeping. It was
the same who had seen him carrying off the food, and had been so hardly
used for saying so. She opened her eyes when he appeared, but did not
seem frightened at him.
"I know why you weep," said Curdie; "and I am sorry for you."
"It _is_ hard not to be believed just _because_ one speaks the truth,"
said the girl, "but that seems reason enough with some people. My mother
taught me to speak the truth, and took such pains with me that I should
find it hard to tell a lie, though I could invent many a story these
servants would believe at once; for the truth is a strange thing here,
and they don't know it when they see it. Show it them, and they all
stare as if it were a wicked lie, and that with the lie yet warm that
has just left their own mouths!--You are a stranger," she said, and
burst out weeping afresh, "but the stranger you are to such a place and
such people the better!"
"I am the person," said Curdie, "whom you saw carrying the things from
the supper-table." He showed her the loaf. "If you can trust, as well as
speak the truth, I will trust you.--Can you trust me?"
She looked at him steadily for a moment.
"I can," she answered.
"One thing more," said Curdie: "have you courage as well as faith?"
"I think so."
"Look my dog in the face and don't cry out.--Come here, Lina."
Lina obeyed. The girl looked at her, and laid her hand on her head.
"Now I know you are a true woman," said Curdie. "--I am come to set
things right in this house. Not one of the servants knows I am here.
Will you tell them to-morrow morning, that, if they do not alter their
ways, and give over drinking, and lying, and stealing, and unkindness,
they shall every one of them be driven from the palace?"
"They will not believe me."
"Most likely; but will you give them the chance?"
"I will."
"Then I will be your friend. Wait here till I come again."
She looked him once more in the face, and sat down.
When he reached the royal chamber, he found his majesty awake, and very
anxiously expecting him. He received him with the utmost kindness, and
at once as it were put himself in his hands by telling him all he knew
concerning the state he was in. His voice was feeble, but his eye was
clear, and although now and then his words and thoughts seemed to
wander, Curdie could not be certain that the cause of their not being
intelligible to him did not lie in himself. The king told him that for
some years, ever since his queen's death, he had been losing heart over
the wickedness of his people. He had tried hard to make them good, but
they got worse and worse. Evil teachers, unknown to him, had crept into
the schools; there was a general decay of truth and right principle at
least in the city; and as that set the example to the nation, it must
spread. The main cause of his illness was the despondency with which the
degeneration of his people affected him. He could not sleep, and had
terrible dreams; while, to his unspeakable shame and distress, he
doubted almost everybody. He had striven against his suspicion, but in
vain, and his heart was sore, for his courtiers and councillors were
really kind; only he could not think why none of their ladies came near
his princess. The whole country was discontented, he heard, and there
were signs of gathering storm outside as well as inside his borders. The
master of the horse gave him sad news of the insubordination of the
army; and his great white horse was dead, they told him; and his sword
had lost its temper: it bent double the last time he tried it!--only
perhaps that was in a dream; and they could not find his shield; and one
of his spurs had lost the rowel. Thus the poor king went wandering in a
maze of sorrows, some of which were purely imaginary, while others were
truer than he understood. He told how thieves came at night and tried to
take his crown, so that he never dared let it out of his hands even when
he slept; and how, every night, an evil demon in the shape of his
physician came and poured poison down his throat. He knew it to be
poison, he said, somehow, although it tasted like wine.
Here he stopped, faint with the unusual exertion of talking. Curdie
seized the flagon, and ran to the wine-cellar.
In the servants' hall the girl still sat by the fire, waiting for him.
As he returned he told her to follow him, and left her at the chamber
door till he should rejoin her.
[Illustration: _Curdie brings wine to the king._]
When the king had had a little wine, he informed him that he had already
discovered certain of his majesty's enemies, and one of the worst of
them was the doctor, for it was no other demon than the doctor himself
who had been coming every night, and giving him a slow poison.
"So!" said the king. "Then I have not been suspicious enough, for I
thought it was but a dream! Is it possible Kelman can be such a wretch?
Who then am I to trust?"
"Not one in the house, except the princess and myself," said Curdie.
"I will not go to sleep," said the king.
"That would be as bad as taking the poison," said Curdie. "No, no, sire;
you must show your confidence by leaving all the watching to me, and
doing all the sleeping your majesty can."
The king smiled a contented smile, turned on his side, and was presently
fast asleep. Then Curdie persuaded the princess also to go to sleep, and
telling Lina to watch, went to the housemaid. He asked her if she could
inform him which of the council slept in the palace, and show him their
rooms. She knew every one of them, she said, and took him the round of
all their doors, telling him which slept in each room. He then dismissed
her, and returning to the king's chamber, seated himself behind a
curtain at the head of the bed, on the side farthest from the king. He
told Lina to get under the bed, and make no noise.
About one o'clock the doctor came stealing in. He looked round for the
princess, and seeing no one, smiled with satisfaction as he approached
the wine where it stood under the lamp. Having partly filled a glass, he
took from his pocket a small phial, and filled up the glass from it. The
light fell upon his face from above, and Curdie saw the snake in it
plainly visible. He had never beheld such an evil countenance: the man
hated the king, and delighted in doing him wrong.
With the glass in his hand, he drew near the bed, set it down, and began
his usual rude rousing of his majesty. Not at once succeeding, he took a
lancet from his pocket, and was parting its cover with an involuntary
hiss of hate between his closed teeth, when Curdie stooped and whispered
to Lina, "Take him by the leg, Lina." She darted noiselessly upon him.
With a face of horrible consternation, he gave his leg one tug to free
it; the next instant Curdie heard the one scrunch with which she crushed
the bone like a stick of celery. He tumbled on the floor with a yell.
"Drag him out, Lina," said Curdie.
Lina took him by the collar, and dragged him out. Her master followed to
direct her, and they left him lying across the lord chamberlain's
door, where he gave another horrible yell, and fainted.
[Illustration: "_Lina darted noiselessly upon him._"]
The king had waked at his first cry, and by the time Curdie re-entered
he had got at his sword where it hung from the centre of the tester, had
drawn it, and was trying to get out of bed. But when Curdie told him all
was well, he lay down again as quietly as a child comforted by his
mother from a troubled dream. Curdie went to the door to watch.
The doctor's yells had roused many, but not one had yet ventured to
appear. Bells were rung violently, but none were answered; and in a
minute or two Curdie had what he was watching for. The door of the lord
chamberlain's room opened, and, pale with hideous terror, his lordship
peeped out. Seeing no one, he advanced to step into the corridor, and
tumbled over the doctor. Curdie ran up, and held out his hand. He
received in it the claw of a bird of prey--vulture or eagle, he could
not tell which.
His lordship, as soon as he was on his legs, taking him for one of the
pages, abused him heartily for not coming sooner, and threatened him
with dismissal from the king's service for cowardice and neglect. He
began indeed what bade fair to be a sermon on the duties of a page, but
catching sight of the man who lay at his door, and seeing it was the
doctor, he fell out upon Curdie afresh for standing there doing
nothing, and ordered him to fetch immediate assistance. Curdie left him,
but slipped into the king's chamber, closed and locked the door, and
left the rascals to look after each other. Ere long he heard hurrying
footsteps, and for a few minutes there was a great muffled tumult of
scuffling feet, low voices, and deep groanings; then all was still
again.
Irene slept through the whole--so confidently did she rest, knowing
Curdie was in her father's room watching over him.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE PROPHECY.
Curdie sat and watched every motion of the sleeping king. All the night,
to his ear, the palace lay as quiet as a nursery of healthful children.
At sunrise he called the princess.
"How has his Majesty slept?" were her first words as she entered the
room.
"Quite quietly," answered Curdie; "that is, since the doctor was got rid
of."
"How did you manage that?" inquired Irene; and Curdie had to tell all
about it.
"How terrible!" she said. "Did it not startle the king dreadfully?"
"It did rather. I found him getting out of bed, sword in hand."
"The brave old man!" cried the princess.
"Not so old!" said Curdie, "--as you will soon see. He went off again
in a minute or so; but for a little while he was restless, and once when
he lifted his hand it came down on the spikes of his crown, and he half
waked."
"But where _is_ the crown?" cried Irene, in sudden terror.
"I stroked his hands," answered Curdie, "and took the crown from them;
and ever since he has slept quietly, and again and again smiled in his
sleep."
"I have never seen him do that," said the princess. "But what have you
done with the crown, Curdie?"
"Look," said Curdie, moving away from the bedside.
Irene followed him--and there, in the middle of the floor, she saw a
strange sight. Lina lay at full length, fast asleep, her tail stretched
out straight behind her and her fore-legs before her: between the two
paws meeting in front of it, her nose just touching it behind, glowed
and flashed the crown, like a nest for the humming-birds of heaven.
Irene gazed, and looked up with a smile.
"But what if the thief were to come, and she not to wake?" she said.
"Shall I try her?" And as she spoke she stooped towards the crown.
"No, no, no!" cried Curdie, terrified. "She would frighten you out of
your wits. I would do it to show you, but she would wake your father.
You have no conception with what a roar she would spring at my throat.
But you shall see how lightly she wakes the moment I speak to
her.--Lina!"
She was on her feet the same instant, with her great tail sticking out
straight behind her, just as it had been lying.
"Good dog!" said the princess, and patted her head. Lina wagged her tail
solemnly, like the boom of an anchored sloop. Irene took the crown, and
laid it where the king would see it when he woke.
"Now, princess," said Curdie, "I must leave you for a few minutes. You
must bolt the door, please, and not open it to any one."
Away to the cellar he went with Lina, taking care, as they passed
through the servants' hall, to get her a good breakfast. In about one
minute she had eaten what he gave her, and looked up in his face: it was
not more she wanted, but work. So out of the cellar they went through
the passage, and Curdie into the dungeon, where he pulled up Lina,
opened the door, let her out, and shut it again behind her. As he
reached the door of the king's chamber, Lina was flying out of the gate
of Gwyntystorm as fast as her mighty legs could carry her.
* * * * *
"What's come to the wench?" growled the men-servants one to another,
when the chambermaid appeared among them the next morning. There was
something in her face which they could not understand, and did not
like.
"Are we all dirt?" they said. "What are you thinking about? Have you
seen yourself in the glass this morning, miss?"
She made no answer.
"Do you want to be treated as you deserve, or will you speak, you
hussy?" said the first woman-cook. "I would fain know what right _you_
have to put on a face like that!"
"You won't believe me," said the girl.
"Of course not. What is it?"
"I must tell you, whether you believe me or not," she said.
"Of course you must."
"It is this, then: if you do not repent of your bad ways, you are all
going to be punished--all turned out of the palace together."
"A mighty punishment!" said the butler. "A good riddance, say I, of the
trouble of keeping minxes like you in order! And why, pray, should we be
turned out? What have I to repent of now, your holiness?"
"That you know best yourself," said the girl.
"A pretty piece of insolence! How should _I_ know, forsooth, what a
menial like you has got against me! There _are_ people in this
house--oh! I'm not blind to their ways! but every one for himself, say
I!--Pray, Miss Judgment, who gave you such an impertinent message to his
majesty's household?"
"One who is come to set things right in the king's house."
"Right, indeed!" cried the butler; but that moment the thought came back
to him of the roar he had heard in the cellar, and he turned pale and
was silent.
The steward took it up next.
"And pray, pretty prophetess," he said, attempting to chuck her under
the chin, "what have _I_ got to repent of?"
"That you know best yourself," said the girl. "You have but to look into
your books or your heart."
"Can you tell _me_, then, what I have to repent of?" said the groom of
the chambers.
"That you know best yourself," said the girl once more. "The person who
told me to tell you said the servants of this house had to repent of
thieving, and lying, and unkindness, and drinking; and they will be made
to repent of them one way, if they don't do it of themselves another."
Then arose a great hubbub; for by this time all the servants in the
house were gathered about her, and all talked together, in towering
indignation.
"Thieving, indeed!" cried one. "A pretty word in a house where
everything is left lying about in a shameless way, tempting poor
innocent girls!--a house where nobody cares for anything, or has the
least respect to the value of property!"
"I suppose you envy me this brooch of mine," said another. "There was
just a half-sheet of note-paper about it, not a scrap more, in a drawer
that's always open in the writing-table in the study! What sort of a
place is that for a jewel? Can you call it stealing to take a thing from
such a place as that? Nobody cared a straw about it. It might as well
have been in the dust-hole! If it had been locked up--then, to be sure!"
"Drinking!" said the chief porter, with a husky laugh. "And who wouldn't
drink when he had a chance? Or who would repent it, except that the
drink was gone? Tell me that, Miss Innocence."
"Lying!" said a great, coarse footman. "I suppose you mean when I told
you yesterday you were a pretty girl when you didn't pout? Lying,
indeed! Tell us something worth repenting of! Lying is the way of
Gwyntystorm. You should have heard Jabez lying to the cook last night!
He wanted a sweetbread for his pup, and pretended it was for the
princess! Ha! ha! ha!"
"Unkindness! I wonder who's unkind! Going and listening to any stranger
against her fellow-servants, and then bringing back his wicked words to
trouble them!" said the oldest and worst of the housemaids. "--One of
ourselves, too!--Come, you hypocrite! this is all an invention of yours
and your young man's, to take your revenge of us because we found you
out in a lie last night. Tell true now:--wasn't it the same that stole
the loaf and the pie that sent you with the impudent message?"
As she said this, she stepped up to the housemaid and gave her, instead
of time to answer, a box on the ear that almost threw her down; and
whoever could get at her began to push and hustle and pinch and punch
her.
"You invite your fate," she said quietly.
They fell furiously upon her, drove her from the hall with kicks and
blows, hustled her along the passage, and threw her down the stair to
the wine-cellar, then locked the door at the top of it, and went back to
their breakfast.
In the meantime the king and the princess had had their bread and wine,
and the princess, with Curdie's help, had made the room as tidy as she
could--they were terribly neglected by the servants. And now Curdie set
himself to interest and amuse the king, and prevent him from thinking
too much, in order that he might the sooner think the better. Presently,
at his majesty's request, he began from the beginning, and told
everything he could recall of his life, about his father and mother and
their cottage on the mountain, of the inside of the mountain and the
work there, about the goblins and his adventures with them. When he came
to finding the princess and her nurse overtaken by the twilight on the
mountain, Irene took up her share of the tale, and told all about
herself to that point, and then Curdie took it up again; and so they
went on, each fitting in the part that the other did not know, thus
keeping the hoop of the story running straight; and the king listened
with wondering and delighted ears, astonished to find what he could so
ill comprehend, yet fitting so well together from the lips of two
narrators. At last, with the mission given him by the wonderful princess
and his consequent adventures, Curdie brought up the whole tale to the
present moment. Then a silence fell, and Irene and Curdie thought the
king was asleep. But he was far from it; he was thinking about many
things. After a long pause he said:--
"Now at last, my children, I am compelled to believe many things I could
not and do not yet understand--things I used to hear, and sometimes see,
as often as I visited my mother's home. Once, for instance, I heard my
mother say to her father--speaking of me--'He is a good, honest boy, but
he will be an old man before he understands;' and my grandfather
answered, 'Keep up your heart, child: my mother will look after him.' I
thought often of their words, and the many strange things besides I both
heard and saw in that house; but by degrees, because I could not
understand them, I gave up thinking of them. And indeed I had almost
forgotten them, when you, my child, talking that day about the Queen
Irene and her pigeons, and what you had seen in her garret, brought them
all back to my mind in a vague mass. But now they keep coming back to
me, one by one, every one for itself; and I shall just hold my peace,
and lie here quite still, and think about them all till I get well
again."
What he meant they could not quite understand, but they saw plainly that
already he was better.
"Put away my crown," he said. "I am tired of seeing it, and have no more
any fear of its safety."
They put it away together, withdrew from the bedside, and left him in
peace.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE AVENGERS.
There was nothing now to be dreaded from Dr. Kelman, but it made Curdie
anxious, as the evening drew near, to think that not a soul belonging to
the court had been to visit the king, or ask how he did, that day. He
feared, in some shape or other, a more determined assault. He had
provided himself a place in the room, to which he might retreat upon
approach, and whence he could watch; but not once had he had to betake
himself to it.
Towards night the king fell asleep. Curdie thought more and more
uneasily of the moment when he must again leave them for a little while.
Deeper and deeper fell the shadows. No one came to light the lamp. The
princess drew her chair close to Curdie: she would rather it were not so
dark, she said. She was afraid of something--she could not tell what;
nor could she give any reason for her fear but that all was so
dreadfully still. When it had been dark about an hour, Curdie thought
Lina might be returned; and reflected that the sooner he went the less
danger was there of any assault while he was away. There was more risk
of his own presence being discovered, no doubt, but things were now
drawing to a crisis, and it must be run. So, telling the princess to
lock all the doors of the bedchamber, and let no one in, he took his
mattock, and with here a run, and there a halt under cover, gained the
door at the head of the cellar-stair in safety. To his surprise he found
it locked, and the key was gone. There was no time for deliberation. He
felt where the lock was, and dealt it a tremendous blow with his
mattock. It needed but a second to dash the door open. Some one laid a
hand on his arm.
"Who is it?" said Curdie.
"I told you they wouldn't believe me, sir," said the housemaid. "I have
been here all day."
He took her hand, and said, "You are a good, brave girl. Now come with
me, lest your enemies imprison you again."
He took her to the cellar, locked the door, lighted a bit of candle,
gave her a little wine, told her to wait there till he came, and went
out the back way.
Swiftly he swung himself up into the dungeon. Lina had done her part.
The place was swarming with creatures--animal forms wilder and more
grotesque than ever ramped in nightmare dream. Close by the hole,
waiting his coming, her green eyes piercing the gulf below, Lina had but
just laid herself down when he appeared. All about the vault and up the
slope of the rubbish-heap lay and stood and squatted the forty-nine
whose friendship Lina had conquered in the wood. They all came crowding
about Curdie.
He must get them into the cellar as quickly as ever he could. But when
he looked at the size of some of them, he feared it would be a long
business to enlarge the hole sufficiently to let them through. At it he
rushed, hitting vigorously at its edge with his mattock. At the very
first blow came a splash from the water beneath, but ere he could heave
a third, a creature like a tapir, only that the grasping point of its
proboscis was hard as the steel of Curdie's hammer, pushed him gently
aside, making room for another creature, with a head like a great club,
which it began banging upon the floor with terrible force and noise.
After about a minute of this battery, the tapir came up again, shoved
Clubhead aside, and putting its own head into the hole began gnawing at
the sides of it with the finger of its nose, in such a fashion that the
fragments fell in a continuous gravelly shower into the water. In a few
minutes the opening was large enough for the biggest creature amongst
them to get through it.
Next came the difficulty of letting them down: some were quite light,
but the half of them were too heavy for the rope, not to say for his
arms. The creatures themselves seemed to be puzzling where or how they
were to go. One after another of them came up, looked down through the
hole, and drew back. Curdie thought if he let Lina down, perhaps that
would suggest something; possibly they did not see the opening on the
other side. He did so, and Lina stood lighting up the entrance of the
passage with her gleaming eyes. One by one the creatures looked down
again, and one by one they drew back, each standing aside to glance at
the next, as if to say, _Now you have a look_. At last it came to the
turn of the serpent with the long body, the four short legs behind, and
the little wings before. No sooner had he poked his head through than he
poked it farther through--and farther, and farther yet, until there was
little more than his legs left in the dungeon. By that time he had got
his head and neck well into the passage beside Lina. Then his legs gave
a great waddle and spring, and he tumbled himself, far as there was
betwixt them, heels over head into the passage.
"That is all very well for you, Mr. Legserpent!" thought Curdie to
himself; "but what is to be done with the rest?"
He had hardly time to think it however, before the creature's head
appeared again through the floor. He caught hold of the bar of iron to
which Curdie's rope was tied, and settling it securely across the
narrowest part of the irregular opening, held fast to it with his teeth.
It was plain to Curdie, from the universal hardness amongst them, that
they must all, at one time or another, have been creatures of the mines.
He saw at once what this one was after. He had planted his feet firmly
upon the floor of the passage, and stretched his long body up and across
the chasm to serve as a bridge for the rest. He mounted instantly upon
his neck, threw his arms round him as far as they would go, and slid
down in ease and safety, the bridge just bending a little as his weight
glided over it. But he thought some of the creatures would try his
teeth.
One by one the oddities followed, and slid down in safety. When they
seemed to be all landed, he counted them: there were but forty-eight. Up
the rope again he went, and found one which had been afraid to trust
himself to the bridge, and no wonder! for he had neither legs nor head
nor arms nor tail: he was just a round thing, about a foot in diameter,
with a nose and mouth and eyes on one side of the ball. He had made his
journey by rolling as swiftly as the fleetest of them could run. The
back of the legserpent not being flat, he could not quite trust himself
to roll straight and not drop into the gulf. Curdie took him in his
arms, and the moment he looked down through the hole, the bridge made
itself again, and he slid into the passage in safety, with Ballbody in
his bosom.
He ran first to the cellar, to warn the girl not to be frightened at the
avengers of wickedness. Then he called to Lina to bring in her friends.
One after another they came trooping in, till the cellar seemed full of
them. The housemaid regarded them without fear.
"Sir," she said, "there is one of the pages I don't take to be a bad
fellow."
"Then keep him near you," said Curdie. "And now can you show me a way to
the king's chamber not through the servants' hall?"
"There is a way through the chamber of the colonel of the guard," she
answered, "but he is ill, and in bed."
"Take me that way," said Curdie.
By many ups and downs and windings and turnings she brought him to a
dimly-lighted room, where lay an elderly man asleep. His arm was outside
the coverlid, and Curdie gave his hand a hurried grasp as he went by.
His heart beat for joy, for he had found a good, honest human hand.
"I suppose that is why he is ill," he said to himself.
It was now close upon supper-time, and when the girl stopped at the door
of the king's chamber, he told her to go and give the servants one
warning more.
"Say the messenger sent you," he said. "I will be with you very soon."
The king was still asleep. Curdie talked to the princess for a few
minutes, told her not to be frightened whatever noises she heard, only
to keep her door locked till he came, and left her.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VENGEANCE.
By the time the girl reached the servants' hall they were seated at
supper. A loud, confused exclamation arose when she entered. No one made
room for her; all stared with unfriendly eyes. A page, who entered the
next minute by another door, came to her side.
"Where do _you_ come from, hussy?" shouted the butler, and knocked his
fist on the table with a loud clang.
He had gone to fetch wine, had found the stair door broken open and the
cellar-door locked, and had turned and fled. Amongst his fellows,
however, he had now regained what courage could be called his.
"From the cellar," she replied. "The messenger broke open the door, and
sent me to you again."
"The messenger! Pooh! What messenger?"
"The same who sent me before to tell you to repent."
"What! will you go fooling it still? Haven't you had enough of it?"
cried the butler in a rage, and starting to his feet, drew near
threateningly.
"I must do as I am told," said the girl.
"Then why _don't_ you do as _I_ tell you, and hold your tongue?" said
the butler. "Who wants your preachments? If anybody here has anything to
repent of, isn't that enough--and more than enough for him--but you must
come bothering about, and stirring up, till not a drop of quiet will
settle inside him? You come along with me, young woman; we'll see if we
can't find a lock somewhere in the house that'll hold you in!"
"Hands off, Mr. Butler!" said the page, and stepped between.
"Oh, ho!" cried the butler, and pointed his fat finger at him. "That's
you, is it, my fine fellow? So it's you that's up to her tricks, is it?"
The youth did not answer, only stood with flashing eyes fixed on him,
until, growing angrier and angrier, but not daring a step nearer, he
burst out with rude but quavering authority,--
"Leave the house, both of you! Be off, or I'll have Mr. Steward to talk
to you. Threaten your masters, indeed! Out of the house with you, and
show us the way you tell us of!"
Two or three of the footmen got up and ranged themselves behind the
butler.
"Don't say _I_ threaten you, Mr. Butler," expostulated the girl from
behind the page. "The messenger said I was to tell you again, and give
you one chance more."
"Did the _messenger_ mention me in particular?" asked the butler,
looking the page unsteadily in the face.
"No, sir," answered the girl.
"I thought not! I should like to hear him!"
"Then hear him now," said Curdie, who that moment entered at the
opposite corner of the hall. "I speak of the butler in particular when I
say that I know more evil of him than of any of the rest. He will not
let either his own conscience or my messenger speak to him: I therefore
now speak myself. I proclaim him a villain, and a traitor to his majesty
the king.--But what better is any one of you who cares only for himself,
eats, drinks, takes good money, and gives vile service in return,
stealing and wasting the king's property, and making of the palace,
which ought to be an example of order and sobriety, a disgrace to the
country?"
For a moment all stood astonished into silence by this bold speech
from a stranger. True, they saw by his mattock over his shoulder
that he was nothing but a miner boy, yet for a moment the truth told
notwithstanding. Then a great roaring laugh burst from the biggest of
the footmen as he came shouldering his way through the crowd towards
Curdie.
"Yes, I'm right," he cried; "I thought as much! This _messenger_,
forsooth, is nothing but a gallows-bird--a fellow the city marshal was
going to hang, but unfortunately put it off till he should be starved
enough to save rope and be throttled with a pack-thread. He broke
prison, and here he is preaching!"
As he spoke, he stretched out his great hand to lay hold of him. Curdie
caught it in his left hand, and heaved his mattock with the other.
Finding, however, nothing worse than an ox-hoof, he restrained himself,
stepped back a pace or two, shifted his mattock to his left hand, and
struck him a little smart blow on the shoulder. His arm dropped by his
side, he gave a roar, and drew back.
His fellows came crowding upon Curdie. Some called to the dogs; others
swore; the women screamed; the footmen and pages got round him in a
half-circle, which he kept from closing by swinging his mattock, and
here and there threatening a blow.
"Whoever confesses to having done anything wrong in this house, however
small, however great, and means to do better, let him come to this
corner of the room," he cried.
None moved but the page, who went towards him skirting the wall. When
they caught sight of him, the crowd broke into a hiss of derision.
"There! see! Look at the sinner! He confesses! actually confesses! Come,
what is it you stole? The barefaced hypocrite! There's your sort to set
up for reproving other people! Where's the other now?"
But the maid had left the room, and they let the page pass, for he
looked dangerous to stop. Curdie had just put him betwixt him and the
wall, behind the door, when in rushed the butler with the huge kitchen
poker, the point of which he had blown red-hot in the fire, followed by
the cook with his longest spit. Through the crowd, which scattered right
and left before them, they came down upon Curdie. Uttering a shrill
whistle, he caught the poker a blow with his mattock, knocking the point
to the ground, while the page behind him started forward, and seizing
the point of the spit, held on to it with both hands, the cook kicking
him furiously.
Ere the butler could raise the poker again, or the cook recover the
spit, with a roar to terrify the dead, Lina dashed into the room, her
eyes flaming like candles. She went straight at the butler. He was down
in a moment, and she on the top of him, wagging her tail over him like a
lioness.
"Don't kill him, Lina," said Curdie.
"Oh, Mr. Miner!" cried the butler.
"Put your foot on his mouth, Lina," said Curdie. "The truth Fear tells
is not much better than her lies."
The rest of the creatures now came stalking, rolling, leaping, gliding,
hobbling into the room, and each as he came took the next place along
the wall, until, solemn and grotesque, all stood ranged, awaiting
orders.
And now some of the culprits were stealing to the doors nearest them.
Curdie whispered the two creatures next him. Off went Ballbody, rolling
and bounding through the crowd like a spent cannon shot, and when the
foremost reached the door to the corridor, there he lay at the foot of
it grinning; to the other door scuttled a scorpion, as big as a huge
crab. The rest stood so still that some began to think they were only
boys dressed up to look awful; they persuaded themselves they were only
another part of the housemaid and page's vengeful contrivance, and their
evil spirits began to rise again. Meantime Curdie had, with a second
sharp blow from the hammer of his mattock, disabled the cook, so that he
yielded the spit with a groan. He now turned to the avengers.
"Go at them," he said.
The whole nine-and-forty obeyed at once, each for himself, and after his
own fashion. A scene of confusion and terror followed. The crowd
scattered like a dance of flies. The creatures had been instructed not
to hurt much, but to hunt incessantly, until every one had rushed
from the house. The women shrieked, and ran hither and thither through
the hall, pursued each by her own horror, and snapped at by every other
in passing. If one threw herself down in hysterical despair, she was
instantly poked or clawed or nibbled up again. Though they were quite as
frightened at first, the men did not run so fast; and by-and-by some of
them, finding they were only glared at, and followed, and pushed, began
to summon up courage once more, and with courage came impudence. The
tapir had the big footman in charge: the fellow stood stock-still, and
let the beast come up to him, then put out his finger and playfully
patted his nose. The tapir gave the nose a little twist, and the finger
lay on the floor. Then indeed the footman ran, and did more than run,
but nobody heeded his cries. Gradually the avengers grew more severe,
and the terrors of the imagination were fast yielding to those of
sensuous experience, when a page, perceiving one of the doors no longer
guarded, sprang at it, and ran out. Another and another followed. Not a
beast went after, until, one by one, they were every one gone from the
hall, and the whole menie in the kitchen. There they were beginning to
congratulate themselves that all was over, when in came the creatures
trooping after them, and the second act of their terror and pain began.
They were flung about in all directions; their clothes were torn from
them; they were pinched and scratched any and everywhere; Ballbody kept
rolling up them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in
particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge
pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies, nipping
as he went; varied as numerous were their woes. Nor was it long before
the last of them had fled from the kitchen to the sculleries. But
thither also they were followed, and there again they were hunted about.
They were bespattered with the dirt of their own neglect; they were
soused in the stinking water that had boiled greens; they were smeared
with rancid dripping; their faces were rubbed in maggots: I dare not
tell all that was done to them. At last they got the door into a
back-yard open, and rushed out. Then first they knew that the wind was
howling and the rain falling in sheets. But there was no rest for them
even there. Thither also were they followed by the inexorable avengers,
and the only door here was a door out of the palace: out every soul of
them was driven, and left, some standing, some lying, some crawling, to
the farther buffeting of the waterspouts and whirlwinds ranging every
street of the city. The door was flung to behind them, and they heard it
locked and bolted and barred against them.
[Illustration: "_A scene of confusion and terror followed: the crowd
scattered like a dance of flies._"]
CHAPTER XXVII.
MORE VENGEANCE.
As soon as they were gone, Curdie brought the creatures back to the
servants' hall, and told them to eat up everything on the table. It
_was_ a sight to see them all standing round it--except such as had to
get upon it--eating and drinking, each after its fashion, without a
smile, or a word, or a glance of fellowship in the act. A very few
moments served to make everything eatable vanish, and then Curdie
requested them to clean the house, and the page who stood by to assist
them.
Every one set about it except Ballbody: he could do nothing at cleaning,
for the more he rolled, the more he spread the dirt. Curdie was curious
to know what he had been, and how he had come to be such as he was; but
he could only conjecture that he was a gluttonous alderman whom nature
had treated homeopathically.
And now there was such a cleaning and clearing out of neglected places,
such a burying and burning of refuse, such a rinsing of jugs, such a
swilling of sinks, and such a flushing of drains, as would have
delighted the eyes of all true housekeepers and lovers of cleanliness
generally.
Curdie meantime was with the king, telling him all he had done. They had
heard a little noise, but not much, for he had told the avengers to
repress outcry as much as possible; and they had seen to it that the
more any one cried out the more he had to cry out upon, while the
patient ones they scarcely hurt at all.
Having promised his majesty and her royal highness a good breakfast,
Curdie now went to finish the business. The courtiers must be dealt
with. A few who were the worst, and the leaders of the rest, must be
made examples of; the others should be driven from their beds to the
street.
He found the chiefs of the conspiracy holding a final consultation in
the smaller room off the hall. These were the lord chamberlain, the
attorney-general, the master of the horse, and the king's private
secretary: the lord chancellor and the rest, as foolish as faithless,
were but the tools of these.
The housemaid had shown him a little closet, opening from a passage
behind, where he could overhear all that passed in that room; and now
Curdie heard enough to understand that they had determined, in the dead
of that night, rather in the deepest dark before the morning, to bring a
certain company of soldiers into the palace, make away with the king,
secure the princess, announce the sudden death of his majesty, read as
his the will they had drawn up, and proceed to govern the country at
their ease, and with results: they would at once levy severer taxes, and
pick a quarrel with the most powerful of their neighbours. Everything
settled, they agreed to retire, and have a few hours' quiet sleep
first--all but the secretary, who was to sit up and call them at the
proper moment. Curdie stole away, allowed them half an hour to get to
bed, and then set about completing his purgation of the palace.
First he called Lina, and opened the door of the room where the
secretary sat. She crept in, and laid herself down against it. When the
secretary, rising to stretch his legs, caught sight of her eyes, he
stood frozen with terror. She made neither motion nor sound. Gathering
courage, and taking the thing for a spectral illusion, he made a step
forward. She showed her other teeth, with a growl neither more than
audible nor less than horrible. The secretary sank fainting into a
chair. He was not a brave man, and besides, his conscience had gone over
to the enemy, and was sitting against the door by Lina.
To the lord chamberlain's door next, Curdie conducted the legserpent,
and let him in.
Now his lordship had had a bedstead made for himself, sweetly fashioned
of rods of silver gilt: upon it the legserpent found him asleep, and
under it he crept. But out he came on the other side, and crept over it
next, and again under it, and so over it, under it, over it, five or six
times, every time leaving a coil of himself behind him, until he had
softly folded all his length about the lord chamberlain and his bed.
This done, he set up his head, looking down with curved neck right over
his lordship's, and began to hiss in his face. He woke in terror
unspeakable, and would have started up; but the moment he moved, the
legserpent drew his coils closer, and closer still, and drew and drew
until the quaking traitor heard the joints of his bedstead grinding and
gnarring. Presently he persuaded himself that it was only a horrid
nightmare, and began to struggle with all his strength to throw it off.
Thereupon the legserpent gave his hooked nose such a bite, that his
teeth met through it--but it was hardly thicker than the bowl of a
spoon; and then the vulture knew that he was in the grasp of his enemy
the snake, and yielded. As soon as he was quiet the legserpent began to
untwist and retwist, to uncoil and recoil himself, swinging and swaying,
knotting and relaxing himself with strangest curves and convolutions,
always, however, leaving at least one coil around his victim. At last he
undid himself entirely, and crept from the bed. Then first the lord
chamberlain discovered that his tormentor had bent and twisted the
bedstead, legs and canopy and all, so about him, that he was shut in a
silver cage out of which it was impossible for him to find a way. Once
more, thinking his enemy was gone, he began to shout for help. But the
instant he opened his mouth his keeper darted at him and bit him, and
after three or four such essays, with like result, he lay still.
The master of the horse Curdie gave in charge to the tapir. When the
soldier saw him enter--for he was not yet asleep--he sprang from his
bed, and flew at him with his sword. But the creature's hide was
invulnerable to his blows, and he pecked at his legs with his proboscis
until he jumped into bed again, groaning, and covered himself up; after
which the tapir contented himself with now and then paying a visit to
his toes.
For the attorney-general, Curdie led to his door a huge spider, about
two feet long in the body, which, having made an excellent supper, was
full of webbing. The attorney-general had not gone to bed, but sat in a
chair asleep before a great mirror. He had been trying the effect of a
diamond star which he had that morning taken from the jewel-room. When
he woke he fancied himself paralysed; every limb, every finger even, was
motionless: coils and coils of broad spider-ribbon bandaged his members
to his body, and all to the chair. In the glass he saw himself wound
about, under and over and around, with slavery infinite. On a footstool
a yard off sat the spider glaring at him.
Clubhead had mounted guard over the butler, where he lay tied hand and
foot under the third cask. From that cask he had seen the wine run into
a great bath, and therein he expected to be drowned. The doctor, with
his crushed leg, needed no one to guard him.
And now Curdie proceeded to the expulsion of the rest. Great men or
underlings, he treated them all alike. From room to room over the house
he went, and sleeping or waking took the man by the hand. Such was the
state to which a year of wicked rule had reduced the moral condition of
the court, that in it all he found but three with human hands. The
possessors of these he allowed to dress themselves and depart in peace.
When they perceived his mission, and how he was backed, they yielded
without dispute.
Then commenced a general hunt, to clear the house of the vermin. Out of
their beds in their night-clothing, out of their rooms, gorgeous
chambers or garret nooks, the creatures hunted them. Not one was allowed
to escape. Tumult and noise there was little, for the fear was too
deadly for outcry. Ferreting them out everywhere, following them
upstairs and downstairs, yielding no instant of repose except upon the
way out, the avengers persecuted the miscreants, until the last of them
was shivering outside the palace gates, with hardly sense enough left to
know where to turn.
When they set out to look for shelter, they found every inn full of the
servants expelled before them, and not one would yield his place to a
superior suddenly levelled with himself. Most houses refused to admit
them on the ground of the wickedness that must have drawn on them such a
punishment; and not a few would have been left in the streets all night,
had not Derba, roused by the vain entreaties at the doors on each side
of her cottage, opened hers, and given up everything to them. The lord
chancellor was only too glad to share a mattress with a stable-boy, and
steal his bare feet under his jacket.
In the morning Curdie appeared, and the outcasts were in terror,
thinking he had come after them again. But he took no notice of them:
his object was to request Derba to go to the palace: the king required
her services. She needed take no trouble about her cottage, he said; the
palace was henceforward her home: she was the king's chastelaine over
men and maidens of his household. And this very morning she must cook
his majesty a nice breakfast.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE PREACHER.
Various reports went undulating through the city as to the nature of
what had taken place in the palace. The people gathered, and stared at
the house, eyeing it as if it had sprung up in the night. But it looked
sedate enough, remaining closed and silent, like a house that was dead.
They saw no one come out or go in. Smoke rose from a chimney or two;
there was hardly another sign of life. It was not for some little time
generally understood that the highest officers of the crown as well as
the lowest menials of the palace had been dismissed in disgrace: for who
was to recognise a lord chancellor in his night-shirt? and what lord
chancellor would, so attired in the street, proclaim his rank and office
aloud? Before it was day most of the courtiers crept down to the river,
hired boats, and betook themselves to their homes or their friends in
the country. It was assumed in the city that the domestics had been
discharged upon a sudden discovery of general and unpardonable
peculation; for, almost everybody being guilty of it himself, petty
dishonesty was the crime most easily credited and least easily passed
over in Gwyntystorm.
Now that same day was Religion day, and not a few of the clergy, always
glad to seize on any passing event to give interest to the dull and
monotonic grind of their intellectual machines, made this remarkable one
the ground of discourse to their congregations. More especially than the
rest, the first priest of the great temple where was the royal pew,
judged himself, from his relation to the palace, called upon to "improve
the occasion,"--for they talked ever about improvement at Gwyntystorm,
all the time they were going downhill with a rush.
The book which had, of late years, come to be considered the most
sacred, was called The Book of Nations, and consisted of proverbs, and
history traced through custom: from it the first priest chose his text;
and his text was, _Honesty is the best Policy_. He was considered a very
eloquent man, but I can offer only a few of the larger bones of his
sermon. The main proof of the verity of their religion, he said, was,
that things always went well with those who professed it; and its first
fundamental principle, grounded in inborn invariable instinct, was,
that every One should take care of that One. This was the first duty of
Man. If every one would but obey this law, number one, then would every
one be perfectly cared for--one being always equal to one. But the
faculty of care was in excess of need, and all that overflowed, and
would otherwise run to waste, ought to be gently turned in the direction
of one's neighbour, seeing that this also wrought for the fulfilling of
the law, inasmuch as the reaction of excess so directed was upon the
director of the same, to the comfort, that is, and well-being of the
original self. To be just and friendly was to build the warmest and
safest of all nests, and to be kind and loving was to line it with the
softest of all furs and feathers, for the one precious, comfort-loving
self there to lie, revelling in downiest bliss. One of the laws
therefore most binding upon men because of its relation to the first and
greatest of all duties, was embodied in the Proverb he had just read;
and what stronger proof of its wisdom and truth could they desire than
the sudden and complete vengeance which had fallen upon those worse than
ordinary sinners who had offended against the king's majesty by
forgetting that _Honesty is the best Policy_?
At this point of the discourse the head of the legserpent rose from the
floor of the temple, towering above the pulpit, above the priest, then
curving downwards, with open mouth slowly descended upon him. Horror
froze the sermon-pump. He stared upwards aghast. The great teeth of the
animal closed upon a mouthful of the sacred vestments, and slowly he
lifted the preacher from the pulpit, like a handful of linen from a
wash-tub, and, on his four solemn stumps, bore him out of the temple,
dangling aloft from his jaws. At the back of it he dropped him into the
dust-hole amongst the remnants of a library whose age had destroyed its
value in the eyes of the chapter. They found him burrowing in it, a
lunatic henceforth--whose madness presented the peculiar feature, that
in its paroxysms he jabbered sense.
Bone-freezing horror pervaded Gwyntystorm. If their best and wisest were
treated with such contempt, what might not the rest of them look for?
Alas for their city! their grandly respectable city! their loftily
reasonable city! Where it was all to end, the Convenient alone could
tell!
But something must be done. Hastily assembling, the priests chose a new
first priest, and in full conclave unanimously declared and accepted,
that the king in his retirement had, through the practice of the
blackest magic, turned the palace into a nest of demons in the midst of
them. A grand exorcism was therefore indispensable.
In the meantime the fact came out that the greater part of the courtiers
had been dismissed as well as the servants, and this fact swelled the
hope of the Party of Decency, as they called themselves. Upon it they
proceeded to act, and strengthened themselves on all sides.
The action of the king's body-guard remained for a time uncertain. But
when at length its officers were satisfied that both the master of the
horse and their colonel were missing, they placed themselves under the
orders of the first priest.
Everyone dated the culmination of the evil from the visit of the miner
and his mongrel; and the butchers vowed, if they could but get hold of
them again, they would roast both of them alive. At once they formed
themselves into a regiment, and put their dogs in training for attack.
Incessant was the talk, innumerable were the suggestions, and great was
the deliberation. The general consent, however, was that as soon as the
priests should have expelled the demons, they would depose the king,
and, attired in all his regal insignia, shut him in a cage for public
show; then choose governors, with the lord chancellor at their head,
whose first duty should be to remit every possible tax; and the
magistrates, by the mouth of the city marshal, required all able-bodied
citizens, in order to do their part towards the carrying out of these
and a multitude of other reforms, to be ready to take arms at the first
summons.
Things needful were prepared as speedily as possible, and a mighty
ceremony, in the temple, in the market-place, and in front of the
palace, was performed for the expulsion of the demons. This over, the
leaders retired to arrange an attack upon the palace.
But that night events occurred which, proving the failure of their
first, induced the abandonment of their second intent. Certain of the
prowling order of the community, whose numbers had of late been steadily
on the increase, reported frightful things. Demons of indescribable
ugliness had been espied careering through the midnight streets and
courts. A citizen--some said in the very act of house-breaking, but no
one cared to look into trifles at such a crisis--had been seized from
behind, he could not see by what, and soused in the river. A well-known
receiver of stolen goods had had his shop broken open, and when he came
down in the morning had found everything in ruin on the pavement. The
wooden image of justice over the door of the city marshal had had the
arm that held the sword _bitten_ off. The gluttonous magistrate had been
pulled from his bed in the dark, by beings of which he could see nothing
but the flaming eyes, and treated to a bath of the turtle soup that had
been left simmering by the side of the kitchen fire. Having poured it
over him, they put him again into his bed, where he soon learned how a
mummy must feel in its cerements. Worst of all, in the market-place was
fixed up a paper, with the king's own signature, to the effect that
whoever henceforth should show inhospitality to strangers, and should be
convicted of the same, should be instantly expelled the city; while a
second, in the butchers' quarter, ordained that any dog which
henceforward should attack a stranger should be immediately destroyed.
It was plain, said the butchers, that the clergy were of no use; _they_
could not exorcise demons! That afternoon, catching sight of a poor old
fellow in rags and tatters, quietly walking up the street, they hounded
their dogs upon him, and had it not been that the door of Derba's
cottage was standing open, and was near enough for him to dart in and
shut it ere they reached him, he would have been torn in pieces.
And thus things went on for some days.
CHAPTER XXIX.
BARBARA.
In the meantime, with Derba to minister to his wants, with Curdie to
protect him, and Irene to nurse him, the king was getting rapidly
stronger. Good food was what he most wanted, and of that, at least of
certain kinds of it, there was plentiful store in the palace. Everywhere
since the cleansing of the lower regions of it, the air was clean and
sweet, and under the honest hands of the one housemaid the king's
chamber became a pleasure to his eyes. With such changes it was no
wonder if his heart grew lighter as well as his brain clearer.
But still evil dreams came and troubled him, the lingering result of the
wicked medicines the doctor had given him. Every night, sometimes twice
or thrice, he would wake up in terror, and it would be minutes ere he
could come to himself. The consequence was that he was always worse in
the morning, and had loss to make up during the day. This retarded his
recovery greatly. While he slept, Irene or Curdie, one or the other,
must still be always by his side.
One night, when it was Curdie's turn with the king, he heard a cry
somewhere in the house, and as there was no other child, concluded,
notwithstanding the distance of her grandmother's room, that it must be
Barbara. Fearing something might be wrong, and noting the king's sleep
more quiet than usual, he ran to see. He found the child in the middle
of the floor, weeping bitterly, and Derba slumbering peacefully in bed.
The instant she saw him the night-lost thing ceased her crying, smiled,
and stretched out her arms to him. Unwilling to wake the old woman, who
had been working hard all day, he took the child, and carried her with
him. She clung to him so, pressing her tear-wet radiant face against
his, that her little arms threatened to choke him. When he re-entered
the chamber, he found the king sitting up in bed, fighting the phantoms
of some hideous dream. Generally upon such occasions, although he saw
his watcher, he could not dissociate him from the dream, and went raving
on. But the moment his eyes fell upon little Barbara, whom he had never
seen before, his soul came into them with a rush, and a smile like the
dawn of an eternal day overspread his countenance: the dream was
nowhere, and the child was in his heart. He stretched out his arms to
her, the child stretched out hers to him, and in five minutes they were
both asleep, each in the other's embrace. From that night Barbara had a
crib in the king's chamber, and as often as he woke, Irene or Curdie,
whichever was watching, took the sleeping child and laid her in his
arms, upon which, invariably and instantly, the dream would vanish. A
great part of the day too she would be playing on or about the king's
bed; and it was a delight to the heart of the princess to see her
amusing herself with the crown, now sitting upon it, now rolling it
hither and thither about the room like a hoop. Her grandmother entering
once while she was pretending to make porridge in it, held up her hands
in horror-struck amazement; but the king would not allow her to
interfere, for the king was now Barbara's playmate, and his crown their
plaything.
The colonel of the guard also was growing better. Curdie went often to
see him. They were soon friends, for the best people understand each
other the easiest, and the grim old warrior loved the miner boy as if he
were at once his son and his angel. He was very anxious about his
regiment. He said the officers were mostly honest men, he believed, but
how they might be doing without him, or what they might resolve, in
ignorance of the real state of affairs, and exposed to every
misrepresentation, who could tell? Curdie proposed that he should send
for the major, offering to be the messenger. The colonel agreed, and
Curdie went--not without his mattock, because of the dogs.
But the officers had been told by the master of the horse that their
colonel was dead, and although they were amazed he should be buried
without the attendance of his regiment, they never doubted the
information. The handwriting itself of their colonel was insufficient,
counteracted by the fresh reports daily current, to destroy the lie. The
major regarded the letter as a trap for the next officer in command, and
sent his orderly to arrest the messenger. But Curdie had had the wisdom
not to wait for an answer.
The king's enemies said that he had first poisoned the good colonel of
the guard, and then murdered the master of the horse, and other faithful
councillors; and that his oldest and most attached domestics had but
escaped from the palace with their lives--nor all of them, for the
butler was missing. Mad or wicked, he was not only unfit to rule any
longer, but worse than unfit to have in his power and under his
influence the young princess, only hope of Gwyntystorm and the kingdom.
The moment the lord chancellor reached his house in the country and had
got himself clothed, he began to devise how yet to destroy his master;
and the very next morning set out for the neighbouring kingdom of
Borsagrass, to invite invasion, and offer a compact with its monarch.
CHAPTER XXX.
PETER.
At the cottage on the mountain everything for a time went on just as
before. It was indeed dull without Curdie, but as often as they looked
at the emerald it was gloriously green, and with nothing to fear or
regret, and everything to hope, they required little comforting. One
morning, however, at last, Peter, who had been consulting the gem,
rather now from habit than anxiety, as a farmer his barometer in
undoubtful weather, turned suddenly to his wife, the stone in his hand,
and held it up with a look of ghastly dismay.
"Why, that's never the emerald!" said Joan.
"It is," answered Peter; "but it were small blame to any one that took
it for a bit of bottle glass!"
For, all save one spot right in the centre, of intensest and most
brilliant green, it looked as if the colour had been burnt out of it.
"Run, run, Peter!" cried his wife. "Run and tell the old princess. It
may not be too late. The boy must be lying at death's door."
Without a word Peter caught up his mattock, darted from the cottage, and
was at the bottom of the hill in less time than he usually took to get
halfway.
The door of the king's house stood open; he rushed in and up the stair.
But after wandering about in vain for an hour, opening door after door,
and finding no way farther up, the heart of the old man had well-nigh
failed him. Empty rooms, empty rooms!--desertion and desolation
everywhere.
At last he did come upon the door to the tower-stair. Up he darted.
Arrived at the top, he found three doors, and, one after the other,
knocked at them all. But there was neither voice nor hearing. Urged by
his faith and his dread, slowly, hesitatingly, he opened one. It
revealed a bare garret-room, nothing in it but one chair and one
spinning-wheel. He closed it, and opened the next--to start back in
terror, for he saw nothing but a great gulf, a moonless night, full of
stars, and, for all the stars, dark, dark!--a fathomless abyss. He
opened the third door, and a rush like the tide of a living sea invaded
his ears. Multitudinous wings flapped and flashed in the sun, and, like
the ascending column from a volcano, white birds innumerable shot into
the air, darkening the day with the shadow of their cloud, and then,
with a sharp sweep, as if bent sideways by a sudden wind, flew
northward, swiftly away, and vanished. The place felt like a tomb. There
seemed no breath of life left in it. Despair laid hold upon him; he
rushed down thundering with heavy feet. Out upon him darted the
housekeeper like an ogress-spider, and after her came her men; but Peter
rushed past them, heedless and careless--for had not the princess mocked
him?--and sped along the road to Gwyntystorm. What help lay in a miner's
mattock, a man's arm, a father's heart, he would bear to his boy.
Joan sat up all night waiting his return, hoping and hoping. The
mountain was very still, and the sky was clear; but all night long the
miner sped northwards, and the heart of his wife was troubled.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SACRIFICE.
Things in the palace were in a strange condition: the king playing with
a child and dreaming wise dreams, waited upon by a little princess with
the heart of a queen, and a youth from the mines, who went nowhere, not
even into the king's chamber, without his mattock on his shoulder and a
horrible animal at his heels; in a room near by the colonel of his
guard, also in bed, without a soldier to obey him; in six other rooms,
far apart, six miscreants, each watched by a beast-gaoler; ministers to
them all, an old woman, a young woman, and a page; and in the
wine-cellar, forty-three animals, creatures more grotesque than ever
brain of man invented. None dared approach its gates, and seldom one
issued from them.
All the dwellers in the city were united in enmity to the palace. It
swarmed with evil spirits, they said, whereas the evil spirits were in
the city, unsuspected. One consequence of their presence was that, when
the rumour came that a great army was on the march against Gwyntystorm,
instead of rushing to their defences, to make new gates, free
portcullises and drawbridges, and bar the river, each and all flew first
to their treasures, burying them in their cellars and gardens, and
hiding them behind stones in their chimneys; and, next to rebellion,
signing an invitation to his majesty of Borsagrass to enter at their
open gates, destroy their king, and annex their country to his own.
The straits of isolation were soon found in the palace: its invalids
were requiring stronger food, and what was to be done? for if the
butchers sent meat to the palace, was it not likely enough to be
poisoned? Curdie said to Derba he would think of some plan before
morning.
But that same night, as soon as it was dark, Lina came to her master,
and let him understand she wanted to go out. He unlocked a little
private postern for her, left it so that she could push it open when she
returned, and told the crocodile to stretch himself across it inside.
Before midnight she came back with a young deer.
Early the next morning the legserpent crept out of the wine-cellar,
through the broken door behind, shot into the river, and soon appeared
in the kitchen with a splendid sturgeon. Every night Lina went out
hunting, and every morning Legserpent went out fishing, and both
invalids and household had plenty to eat. As to news, the page, in plain
clothes, would now and then venture out into the market-place, and
gather some.
One night he came back with the report that the army of the king of
Borsagrass had crossed the border. Two days after, he brought the news
that the enemy was now but twenty miles from Gwyntystorm.
The colonel of the guard rose, and began furbishing his armour--but gave
it over to the page, and staggered across to the barracks, which were in
the next street. The sentry took him for a ghost or worse, ran into the
guard-room, bolted the door, and stopped his ears. The poor colonel, who
was yet hardly able to stand, crawled back despairing.
For Curdie, he had already, as soon as the first rumour reached him,
resolved, if no other instructions came, and the king continued unable
to give orders, to call Lina and the creatures, and march to meet the
enemy. If he died, he died for the right, and there was a right end of
it. He had no preparations to make, except a good sleep.
He asked the king to let the housemaid take his place by his majesty
that night, and went and lay down on the floor of the corridor, no
farther off than a whisper would reach from the door of the chamber.
There, with an old mantle of the king's thrown over him, he was soon
fast asleep.
Somewhere about the middle of the night, he woke suddenly, started to
his feet, and rubbed his eyes. He could not tell what had waked him. But
could he be awake, or was he not dreaming? The curtain of the king's
door, a dull red ever before, was glowing a gorgeous, a radiant purple;
and the crown wrought upon it in silks and gems was flashing as if it
burned! What could it mean? Was the king's chamber on fire? He darted to
the door and lifted the curtain. Glorious terrible sight!
A long and broad marble table, that stood at one end of the room, had
been drawn into the middle of it, and thereon burned a great fire, of a
sort that Curdie knew--a fire of glowing, flaming roses, red and white.
In the midst of the roses lay the king, moaning, but motionless. Every
rose that fell from the table to the floor, some one, whom Curdie could
not plainly see for the brightness, lifted and laid burning upon the
king's face, until at length his face too was covered with the live
roses, and he lay all within the fire, moaning still, with now and then
a shuddering sob. And the shape that Curdie saw and could not see, wept
over the king as he lay in the fire, and often she hid her face in
handfuls of her shadowy hair, and from her hair the water of her
weeping dropped like sunset rain in the light of the roses. At last
she lifted a great armful of her hair, and shook it over the fire, and
the drops fell from it in showers, and they did not hiss in the flames,
but there arose instead as it were the sound of running brooks. And the
glow of the red fire died away, and the glow of the white fire grew
gray, and the light was gone, and on the table all was black--except the
face of the king, which shone from under the burnt roses like a diamond
in the ashes of a furnace.
[Illustration: "_In the midst of the roses lay the king, moaning, but
motionless._"]
Then Curdie, no longer dazzled, saw and knew the old princess. The room
was lighted with the splendour of her face, of her blue eyes, of her
sapphire crown. Her golden hair went streaming out from her through the
air till it went off in mist and light. She was large and strong as a
Titaness. She stooped over the table-altar, put her mighty arms under
the living sacrifice, lifted the king, as if he were but a little child,
to her bosom, walked with him up the floor, and laid him in his bed.
Then darkness fell.
The miner-boy turned silent away, and laid himself down again in the
corridor. An absolute joy filled his heart, his bosom, his head, his
whole body. All was safe; all was well. With the helve of his mattock
tight in his grasp, he sank into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE KING'S ARMY.
He woke like a giant refreshed with wine.
When he went into the king's chamber, the housemaid sat where he had
left her, and everything in the room was as it had been the night
before, save that a heavenly odour of roses filled the air of it. He
went up to the bed. The king opened his eyes, and the soul of perfect
health shone out of them. Nor was Curdie amazed in his delight.
"Is it not time to rise, Curdie?" said the king.
"It is, your majesty. To-day we must be doing," answered Curdie.
"What must we be doing to-day, Curdie?"
"Fighting, sire."
"Then fetch me my armour--that of plated steel, in the chest there. You
will find the underclothing with it."
As he spoke, he reached out his hand for his sword, which hung in the
bed before him, drew it, and examined the blade.
"A little rusty!" he said, "but the edge is there. We shall polish it
ourselves to-day--not on the wheel. Curdie, my son, I wake from a
troubled dream. A glorious torture has ended it, and I live. I know not
well how things are, but thou shalt explain them to me as I get on my
armour.--No, I need no bath. I am clean.--Call the colonel of the
guard."
In complete steel the old man stepped into the chamber. He knew it not,
but the old princess had passed through his room in the night.
"Why, Sir Bronzebeard!" said the king, "you are dressed before me! Thou
needest no valet, old man, when there is battle in the wind!"
"Battle, sire!" returned the colonel. "--Where then are our soldiers?"
"Why, there, and here," answered the king, pointing to the colonel
first, and then to himself. "Where else, man?--The enemy will be upon us
ere sunset, if we be not upon him ere noon. What other thing was in thy
brave brain when thou didst don thine armour, friend?"
"Your majesty's orders, sire," answered Sir Bronzebeard.
The king smiled and turned to Curdie.
"And what was in thine, Curdie--for thy first word was of battle?"
"See, your majesty," answered Curdie; "I have polished my mattock. If
your majesty had not taken the command, I would have met the enemy at
the head of my beasts, and died in comfort, or done better."
"Brave boy!" said the king. "He who takes his life in his hand is the
only soldier. Thou shalt head thy beasts to-day.--Sir Bronzebeard, wilt
thou die with me if need be?"
"Seven times, my king," said the colonel.
"Then shall we win this battle!" said the king. "--Curdie, go and bind
securely the six, that we lose not their guards.--Canst thou find us a
horse, think'st thou, Sir Bronzebeard? Alas! they told us our white
charger was dead."
"I will go and fright the varletry with my presence, and secure, I
trust, a horse for your majesty, and one for myself."
"And look you, brother!" said the king; "bring one for my miner boy too,
and a sober old charger for the princess, for she too must go to the
battle, and conquer with us."
"Pardon me, sire," said Curdie; "a miner can fight best on foot. I might
smite my horse dead under me with a missed blow. And besides, I must be
near my beasts."
"As you will," said the king. "--Three horses then, Sir Bronzebeard."
The colonel departed, doubting sorely in his heart how to accoutre and
lead from the barrack stables three horses, in the teeth of his revolted
regiment.
In the hall he met the housemaid.
"Can you lead a horse?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Are you willing to die for the king?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you do as you are bid?"
"I can keep on trying, sir."
"Come, then. Were I not a man I would be a woman such as thou."
When they entered the barrack-yard, the soldiers scattered like autumn
leaves before a blast of winter. They went into the stable
unchallenged--and lo! in a stall, before the colonel's eyes, stood the
king's white charger, with the royal saddle and bridle hung high beside
him!
"Traitorous thieves!" muttered the old man in his beard, and went along
the stalls, looking for his own black charger. Having found him, he
returned to saddle first the king's. But the maid had already the
saddle upon him, and so girt that the colonel could thrust no
finger-tip between girth and skin. He left her to finish what she had so
well begun, and went and graithed his own. He then chose for the
princess a great red horse, twenty years old, which he knew to possess
every equine virtue. This and his own he led to the palace, and the maid
led the king's.
The king and Curdie stood in the court, the king in full armour of
silvered steel, with a circlet of rubies and diamonds round his helmet.
He almost leaped for joy when he saw his great white charger come in,
gentle as a child to the hand of the housemaid. But when the horse saw
his master in his armour, he reared and bounded in jubilation, yet did
not break from the hand that held him. Then out came the princess
attired and ready, with a hunting-knife her father had given her by her
side. They brought her mother's saddle, splendent with gems and gold,
set it on the great red horse, and lifted her to it. But the saddle was
so big, and the horse so tall, that the child found no comfort in them.
"Please, king papa," she said, "can I not have my white pony?"
"I did not think of him, little one," said the king. "Where is he?"
"In the stable," answered the maid. "I found him half-starved, the only
horse within the gates, the day after the servants were driven out. He
has been well fed since."
"Go and fetch him," said the king.
As the maid appeared with the pony, from a side door came Lina and the
forty-nine, following Curdie.
"I will go with Curdie and the Uglies," cried the princess; and as soon
as she was mounted she got into the middle of the pack.
So out they set, the strangest force that ever went against an enemy.
The king in silver armour sat stately on his white steed, with the
stones flashing on his helmet; beside him the grim old colonel, armed in
steel, rode his black charger; behind the king, a little to the right,
Curdie walked afoot, his mattock shining in the sun; Lina followed at
his heel; behind her came the wonderful company of Uglies; in the midst
of them rode the gracious little Irene, dressed in blue, and mounted on
the prettiest of white ponies; behind the colonel, a little to the left,
walked the page, armed in a breastplate, headpiece, and trooper's sword
he had found in the palace, all much too big for him, and carrying a
huge brass trumpet which he did his best to blow; and the king smiled
and seemed pleased with his music, although it was but the grunt of a
brazen unrest. Alongside of the beasts walked Derba carrying
Barbara--their refuge the mountains, should the cause of the king be
lost; as soon as they were over the river they turned aside to ascend
the cliff, and there awaited the forging of the day's history. Then
first Curdie saw that the housemaid, whom they had all forgotten, was
following, mounted on the great red horse, and seated in the royal
saddle.
Many were the eyes unfriendly of women that had stared at them from door
and window as they passed through the city; and low laughter and mockery
and evil words from the lips of children had rippled about their ears;
but the men were all gone to welcome the enemy, the butchers the first,
the king's guard the last. And now on the heels of the king's army
rushed out the women and children also, to gather flowers and branches,
wherewith to welcome their conquerors.
About a mile down the river, Curdie, happening to look behind him, saw
the maid, whom he had supposed gone with Derba, still following on the
great red horse. The same moment the king, a few paces in front of him,
caught sight of the enemy's tents, pitched where, the cliffs receding,
the bank of the river widened to a little plain.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE BATTLE.
He commanded the page to blow his trumpet; and, in the strength of the
moment, the youth uttered a right war-like defiance.
But the butchers and the guard, who had gone over armed to the enemy,
thinking that the king had come to make his peace also, and that it
might thereafter go hard with them, rushed at once to make short work
with him, and both secure and commend themselves. The butchers came on
first--for the guards had slackened their saddle-girths--brandishing
their knives, and talking to their dogs. Curdie and the page, with Lina
and her pack, bounded to meet them. Curdie struck down the foremost with
his mattock. The page, finding his sword too much for him, threw it away
and seized the butcher's knife, which as he rose he plunged into the
foremost dog. Lina rushed raging and gnashing amongst them. She would
not look at a dog so long as there was a butcher on his legs, and she
never stopped to kill a butcher, only with one grind of her jaws crushed
a leg of him. When they were all down, then indeed she flashed amongst
the dogs.
Meantime the king and the colonel had spurred towards the advancing
guard. The king clove the major through skull and collar-bone, and the
colonel stabbed the captain in the throat. Then a fierce combat
commenced--two against many. But the butchers and their dogs quickly
disposed of, up came Curdie and his beasts. The horses of the guard,
struck with terror, turned in spite of the spur, and fled in confusion.
Thereupon the forces of Borsagrass, which could see little of the
affair, but correctly imagined a small determined body in front of them,
hastened to the attack. No sooner did their first advancing wave appear
through the foam of the retreating one, than the king and the colonel
and the page, Curdie and the beasts, went charging upon them. Their
attack, especially the rush of the Uglies, threw the first line into
great confusion, but the second came up quickly; the beasts could not be
everywhere, there were thousands to one against them, and the king and
his three companions were in the greatest possible danger.
[Illustration: "_The king and the colonel and the page, Curdie and the
beasts, went charging upon them._"]
A dense cloud came over the sun, and sank rapidly towards the earth. The
cloud moved "all together," and yet the thousands of white flakes of
which it was made up moved each for itself in ceaseless and rapid
motion: those flakes were the wings of pigeons. Down swooped the birds
upon the invaders; right in the face of man and horse they flew with
swift-beating wings, blinding eyes and confounding brain. Horses reared
and plunged and wheeled. All was at once in confusion. The men made
frantic efforts to seize their tormentors, but not one could they touch;
and they outdoubled them in numbers. Between every wild clutch came a
peck of beak and a buffet of pinion in the face. Generally the bird
would, with sharp-clapping wings, dart its whole body, with the
swiftness of an arrow, against its singled mark, yet so as to glance
aloft the same instant, and descend skimming; much as the thin stone,
shot with horizontal cast of arm, having touched and torn the surface of
the lake, ascends to skim, touch, and tear again. So mingled the
feathered multitude in the grim game of war. It was a storm in which the
wind was birds, and the sea men. And ever as each bird arrived at the
rear of the enemy, it turned, ascended, and sped to the front to charge
again.
The moment the battle began, the princess's pony took fright, and turned
and fled. But the maid wheeled her horse across the road and stopped
him; and they waited together the result of the battle.
And as they waited, it seemed to the princess right strange that the
pigeons, every one as it came to the rear, and fetched a compass to
gather force for the re-attack, should make the head of her attendant on
the red horse the goal around which it turned; so that about them was an
unintermittent flapping and flashing of wings, and a curving, sweeping
torrent of the side-poised wheeling bodies of birds. Strange also it
seemed that the maid should be constantly waving her arm towards the
battle. And the time of the motion of her arm so fitted with the rushes
of birds, that it looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she
were casting living javelins by the thousand against the enemy. The
moment a pigeon had rounded her head, it went off straight as bolt from
bow, and with trebled velocity.
But of these strange things, others besides the princess had taken note.
From a rising ground whence they watched the battle in growing dismay,
the leaders of the enemy saw the maid and her motions, and, concluding
her an enchantress, whose were the airy legions humiliating them, set
spurs to their horses, made a circuit, outflanked the king, and came
down upon her. But suddenly by her side stood a stalwart old man in the
garb of a miner, who, as the general rode at her, sword in hand,
heaved his swift mattock, and brought it down with such force on the
forehead of his charger, that he fell to the ground like a log. His
rider shot over his head and lay stunned. Had not the great red horse
reared and wheeled, he would have fallen beneath that of the general.
[Illustration: "_It looked as if the birds obeyed her gesture, and she
were casting living javelins by the thousand against the enemy._"]
With lifted sabre, one of his attendant officers rode at the miner. But
a mass of pigeons darted in the faces of him and his horse, and the next
moment he lay beside his commander. The rest of them turned and fled,
pursued by the birds.
"Ah, friend Peter!" said the maid; "thou hast come as I told thee!
Welcome and thanks!"
By this time the battle was over. The rout was general. The enemy
stormed back upon their own camp, with the beasts roaring in the midst
of them, and the king and his army, now reinforced by one, pursuing. But
presently the king drew rein.
"Call off your hounds, Curdie, and let the pigeons do the rest," he
shouted, and turned to see what had become of the princess.
In full panic fled the invaders, sweeping down their tents, stumbling
over their baggage, trampling on their dead and wounded, ceaselessly
pursued and buffeted by the white-winged army of heaven. Homeward they
rushed the road they had come, straight for the borders, many dropping
from pure fatigue, and lying where they fell. And still the pigeons were
in their necks as they ran. At length to the eyes of the king and his
army nothing was visible save a dust-cloud below, and a bird-cloud
above.
Before night the bird-cloud came back, flying high over Gwyntystorm.
Sinking swiftly, it disappeared among the ancient roofs of the palace.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
JUDGMENT.
The king and his army returned, bringing with them one prisoner only,
the lord chancellor. Curdie had dragged him from under a fallen tent,
not by the hand of a man, but by the foot of a mule.
When they entered the city, it was still as the grave. The citizens had
fled home. "We must submit," they cried, "or the king and his demons
will destroy us." The king rode through the streets in silence,
ill-pleased with his people. But he stopped his horse in the midst of
the market-place, and called, in a voice loud and clear as the cry of a
silver trumpet, "Go and find your own. Bury your dead, and bring home
your wounded." Then he turned him gloomily to the palace.
Just as they reached the gates, Peter, who, as they went, had been
telling his tale to Curdie, ended it with the words,--
"And so there I was, in the nick of time to save the two princesses!"
"The _two_ princesses, father! The one on the great red horse was the
housemaid," said Curdie, and ran to open the gates for the king.
They found Derba returned before them, and already busy preparing them
food. The king put up his charger with his own hands, rubbed him down,
and fed him.
When they had washed, and eaten and drunk, he called the colonel, and
told Curdie and the page to bring out the traitors and the beasts, and
attend him to the market-place.
By this time the people were crowding back into the city, bearing their
dead and wounded. And there was lamentation in Gwyntystorm, for no one
could comfort himself, and no one had any to comfort him. The nation was
victorious, but the people were conquered.
The king stood in the centre of the market-place, upon the steps of the
ancient cross. He had laid aside his helmet and put on his crown, but he
stood all armed beside, with his sword in his hand. He called the people
to him, and, for all the terror of the beasts, they dared not disobey
him. Those even, who were carrying their wounded laid them down, and
drew near trembling.
Then the king said to Curdie and the page,--
"Set the evil men before me."
[Illustration: "_To the body of the animal they bound the lord
chamberlain, speechless with horror._"]
He looked upon them for a moment in mingled anger and pity, then turned
to the people and said,--
"Behold your trust! Ye slaves, behold your leaders! I would have freed
you, but ye would not be free. Now shall ye be ruled with a rod of iron,
that ye may learn what freedom is, and love it and seek it. These
wretches I will send where they shall mislead you no longer."
He made a sign to Curdie, who immediately brought up the leg serpent. To
the body of the animal they bound the lord chamberlain, speechless with
horror. The butler began to shriek and pray, but they bound him on the
back of Clubhead. One after another, upon the largest of the creatures
they bound the whole seven, each through the unveiling terror looking
the villain he was. Then said the king,--
"I thank you, my good beasts; and I hope to visit you ere long. Take
these evil men with you, and go to your place."
Like a whirlwind they were in the crowd, scattering it like dust. Like
hounds they rushed from the city, their burdens howling and raving.
What became of them I have never heard.
Then the king turned once more to the people and said, "Go to your
houses;" nor vouchsafed them another word. They crept home like chidden
hounds.
The king returned to the palace. He made the colonel a duke, and the
page a knight, and Peter he appointed general of all his mines. But to
Curdie he said,--
"You are my own boy, Curdie. My child cannot choose but love you, and
when you are both grown up--if you both will--you shall marry each
other, and be king and queen when I am gone. Till then be the king's
Curdie."
Irene held out her arms to Curdie. He raised her in his, and she kissed
him.
"And my Curdie too!" she said.
Thereafter the people called him Prince Conrad; but the king always
called him either just _Curdie_, or _My miner-boy_.
They sat down to supper, and Derba and the knight and the housemaid
waited, and Barbara sat on the king's left hand. The housemaid poured
out the wine; and as she poured out for Curdie red wine that foamed in
the cup, as if glad to see the light whence it had been banished so
long, she looked him in the eyes. And Curdie started, and sprang from
his seat, and dropped on his knees, and burst into tears. And the maid
said with a smile, such as none but one could smile,--
"Did I not tell you, Curdie, that it might be you would not know me when
next you saw me?"
Then she went from the room, and in a moment returned in royal purple,
with a crown of diamonds and rubies, from under which her hair went
flowing to the floor, all about her ruby-slippered feet. Her face was
radiant with joy, the joy overshadowed by a faint mist as of
unfulfilment. The king rose and kneeled on one knee before her. All
kneeled in like homage. Then the king would have yielded her his royal
chair. But she made them all sit down, and with her own hands placed at
the table seats for Derba and the page. Then in ruby crown and royal
purple she served them all.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE END
The king sent Curdie out into his dominions to search for men and women
that had human hands. And many such he found, honest and true, and
brought them to his master. So a new and upright government, a new and
upright court, was formed, and strength returned to the nation.
But the exchequer was almost empty, for the evil men had squandered
everything, and the king hated taxes unwillingly paid. Then came Curdie
and said to the king that the city stood upon gold. And the king sent
for men wise in the ways of the earth, and they built smelting furnaces,
and Peter brought miners, and they mined the gold, and smelted it, and
the king coined it into money, and therewith established things well in
the land.
The same day on which he found his boy, Peter set out to go home. When
he told the good news to Joan his wife, she rose from her chair and
said, "Let us go." And they left the cottage, and repaired to
Gwyntystorm. And on a mountain above the city they built themselves a
warm house for their old age, high in the clear air.
As Peter mined one day by himself, at the back of the king's
wine-cellar, he broke into a cavern all crusted with gems, and much
wealth flowed therefrom, and the king used it wisely.
Queen Irene--that was the right name of the old princess--was thereafter
seldom long absent from the palace. Once or twice when she was missing,
Barbara, who seemed to know of her sometimes when nobody else had a
notion whither she had gone, said she was with the dear old Uglies in
the wood. Curdie thought that perhaps her business might be with others
there as well. All the uppermost rooms in the palace were left to her
use, and when any one was in need of her help, up thither he must go.
But even when she was there, he did not always succeed in finding her.
She, however, always knew that such a one had been looking for her.
Curdie went to find her one day. As he ascended the last stair, to meet
him came the well-known scent of her roses; and when he opened her door,
lo! there was the same gorgeous room in which his touch had been
glorified by her fire! And there burned the fire--a huge heap of red
and white roses. Before the hearth stood the princess, an old
gray-haired woman, with Lina a little behind her, slowly wagging her
tail, and looking like a beast of prey that can hardly so long restrain
itself from springing as to be sure of its victim. The queen was casting
roses, more and more roses, upon the fire. At last she turned and said,
"Now, Lina!"--and Lina dashed burrowing into the fire. There went up a
black smoke and a dust, and Lina was never more seen in the palace.
Irene and Curdie were married. The old king died, and they were king and
queen. As long as they lived Gwyntystorm was a better city, and good
people grew in it. But they had no children, and when they died the
people chose a king. And the new king went mining and mining in the rock
under the city, and grew more and more eager after the gold, and paid
less and less heed to his people. Rapidly they sunk towards their old
wickedness. But still the king went on mining, and coining gold by the
pailful, until the people were worse even than in the old time. And so
greedy was the king after gold, that when at last the ore began to fail,
he caused the miners to reduce the pillars which Peter and they that
followed him had left standing to bear the city. And from the girth of
an oak of a thousand years, they chipped them down to that of a fir tree
of fifty.
One day at noon, when life was at its highest, the whole city fell with
a roaring crash. The cries of men and the shrieks of women went up with
its dust, and then there was a great silence.
Where the mighty rock once towered, crowded with homes and crowned with
a palace, now rushes and raves a stone-obstructed rapid of the river.
All around spreads a wilderness of wild deer, and the very name of
Gwyntystorm has ceased from the lips of men.
THE END.
_PUBLICATIONS OF J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO._
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Profusely Illustrated. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.00.
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Illustrations. 12mo. Extra cloth. $2.00.
ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES.
German Fairy Tales. By Hans Christian Andersen. With 14 Illustrations.
12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
GERMAN FAIRY TALES.
Translated by Charles A. Dana. 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
EASTERN FAIRY LEGENDS.
Current in Southern India. Collected by M. Frere. Illustrated. 12mo.
Extra cloth. $1.25.
FAMOUS FAIRY TALES.
Told in Words of One Syllable. Containing all the Old-Fashioned Nursery
Tales, such as Goody Two Shoes, Blue Beard, Hop-O'My-Thumb, etc., etc.
By Harriet B. Audubon. With elegant illuminated covers. 1 vol. 4to.
Extra cloth. $2.00.
SPANISH FAIRY TALES.
By Fernan Caballero. Translated by J. H. Ingram. Illustrated. 12mo.
Extra cloth. $1.25.
JUVENILE LIBRARIES.
=BAKER'S LIBRARY OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.=
Containing--Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon; The Rifle and
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3 vols. 12mo. Many Illustrations. Extra cloth. $3.75.
=BALLANTYNE'S LIBRARY OF STORY.=
Containing--The Red Eric; Deep Down: a Tale of the Cornish Mines; The
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a Tale of the Norse Sea Kings. 4 vols. Handsomely Illustrated. 12mo.
Extra cloth. $5.00.
=DALTON LIBRARY OF ADVENTURE.=
Containing--The Wolf Boy of China; The White Elephant, or The Hunters of
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Prince, or Adventures in the Wilds of Abyssinia. 4 vols. 16mo.
Illustrated. Extra cloth. $5.00.
=EDGEWORTH'S YOUNG FOLKS' LIBRARY.=
Containing--Parent's Assistant; Popular Tales; Moral Tales. Illustrated.
3 vols. 16mo. Extra cloth. $3.75.
=ENTERTAINING LIBRARY.=
Story and Instruction Combined. Containing--Our Own Birds, etc.; Life of
Audubon, the Naturalist; Grandpapa's Stories of Natural History; Romance
of Natural History; Wonders of the Great Deep. 5 vols. Illustrated.
12mo. Extra cloth. $6.25.
=KINGSTON LIBRARY OF ADVENTURE.=
Containing--Round the World; Salt Water; Peter the Whaler; Mark
Seaworth; The Midshipman, Marmaduke Merry; The Young Foresters. By W. H.
G. KINGSTON. Illustrated. 6 vols. 12mo. Extra cloth. $7.50.
=LIBRARY OF CELEBRATED BOOKS.=
Containing--The Arabian Nights; Robinson Crusoe; The Swiss Family
Robinson; The Vicar of Wakefield; Sandford and Merton. 5 vols. 12mo.
Extra cloth. $5.00.
POPULAR JUVENILES.
_RANALD BANNERMAN'S BOYHOOD._
By GEORGE MACDONALD. With numerous Illustrations. 12mo. Extra cloth.
$1.25.
_THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN._
By GEORGE MACDONALD, author of "The Princess and Curdie." With 30
Illustrations, 16mo. Cloth, gilt extra. $1.25.
_OUR YOUNG FOLKS IN AFRICA._
The Adventures of Four Young Americans in the Wilds of Africa. By JAMES
D. MCCABE, author of "Our Young Folks Abroad." Fully Illustrated. 4to.
Boards, $1.75. Extra cloth. $2.25.
_OUR YOUNG FOLKS ABROAD._
The Adventures of Four American Boys and Girls in a Journey Through
Europe to Constantinople. By JAMES D. MCCABE, author of "Our Young Folks
in Africa." Profusely Illustrated. 8vo. Extra cloth. $2.25. Illuminated
board covers. $1.75.
_FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON._
Or, Journey and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen. By JULES
VERNE. Illustrated. 12mo. Fine cloth. $1.25.
_IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS._
A Romantic Narrative of the Loss of Captain Grant, and of the Adventures
of his Children and Friends in his Discovery and Rescue. Being a Voyage
Round the World. By JULES VERNE. New Edition. Illustrated with 172
Engravings. 8vo. Extra cloth. $2.50.
_BIMBI._
Stories for Children. By "OUIDA." 12mo. Extra cloth. $1.25.
_THREE YEARS AT WOLVERTON._
A Story of a Boy's Life at Boarding-School. Illustrated. 12mo. Extra
cloth. $1.25.
JUVENILES BOUND IN ILLUMINATED BOARD COVERS.
=THE BOYS' AND GIRLS' TREASURY.=
A Collection of Pictures and Stories for Boys and Girls. Edited by UNCLE
HERBERT. Bound in half cloth, gilt back, elegant chromo side. $1.25.
Cloth, extra black and gold. $1.75.
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A Picture Book for Boys and Girls. Edited by UNCLE HERBERT. Elegantly
Illustrated. Half bound. $1.25. Cloth, gilt. $1.75.
=FEET AND WINGS=;
Or, Hours with Beasts and Birds with UNCLE HERBERT. 4to. Illuminated
boards. $1.25. Extra cloth. $2.00.
=THE PLAYMATE.=
A Picture and Story Book for Boys and Girls. Edited by UNCLE HERBERt.
Very fully Illustrated. Bound in half cloth, gilt back, elegant chromo
side. $1.25. Also in extra cloth, black and gold. $1.75.
=THE PRATTLER.=
A Story and Picture Book for Boys and Girls. Edited by UNCLE HERBERT.
Bound in half cloth, gilt back, and illuminated boards, $1.25. Full
cloth, extra. $1.75.
=THE YOUNGSTER.=
By COUSIN DAISY. With Illustrations. Small 4to. Illuminated board
covers. 75 cents.
=THE PICTURE ALPHABET.=
Containing Large Letters, with a Full-paged Picture to each Letter,
especially adapted to very young children. By COUSIN DAISY. Large 4to.
Boards, with elegant chromo sides. 75 cents.
="MY" BOOKS.=
Containing--My Primer; My Pet Book; My Own Book. Three books bound in
one volume. Edited by UNCLE HERBERT. Full cloth, black and gold. $1.50.
Boards. $1.25.
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