Project Gutenberg's The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
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Title: The Princess and the Goblin
Author: George MacDonald
Posting Date: September 27, 2008 [EBook #708]
Release Date: November, 1996
Language: English
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THE PRINCESS AND THE GOBLIN
by
GEORGE MACDONALD
CONTENTS
1. Why the Princess Has a Story About Her
2. The Princess Loses Herself
3. The Princess and--We Shall See Who
4. What the Nurse Thought of It
5. The Princess Lets Well Alone
6. The Little Miner
7. The Mines
8. The Goblins
9. The Hall of the Goblin Palace
10. The Princess's King-Papa
11. The Old Lady's Bedroom
12. A Short Chapter About Curdie
13. The Cobs' Creatures
14. That Night Week
15. Woven and then Spun
16. The Ring
17. Springtime
18. Curdie's Clue
19. Goblin Counsels
20. Irene's Clue
21. The Escape
22. The Old Lady and Curdie
23. Curdie and His Mother
24. Irene Behaves Like a Princess
25. Curdie Comes to Grief
26. The Goblin-Miners
27. The Goblins in the King's House
28. Curdie's Guide
29. Masonwork
30. The King and the Kiss
31. The Subterranean Waters
32. The Last Chapter
CHAPTER 1
Why the Princess Has a Story About Her
There was once a little princess whose father was king over a great
country full of mountains and valleys. His palace was built upon one
of the mountains, and was very grand and beautiful. The princess,
whose name was Irene, was born there, but she was sent soon after her
birth, because her mother was not very strong, to be brought up by
country people in a large house, half castle, half farmhouse, on the
side of another mountain, about half-way between its base and its peak.
The princess was a sweet little creature, and at the time my story
begins was about eight years old, I think, but she got older very fast.
Her face was fair and pretty, with eyes like two bits of night sky,
each with a star dissolved in the blue. Those eyes you would have
thought must have known they came from there, so often were they turned
up in that direction. The ceiling of her nursery was blue, with stars
in it, as like the sky as they could make it. But I doubt if ever she
saw the real sky with the stars in it, for a reason which I had better
mention at once.
These mountains were full of hollow places underneath; huge caverns,
and winding ways, some with water running through them, and some
shining with all colours of the rainbow when a light was taken in.
There would not have been much known about them, had there not been
mines there, great deep pits, with long galleries and passages running
off from them, which had been dug to get at the ore of which the
mountains were full. In the course of digging, the miners came upon
many of these natural caverns. A few of them had far-off openings out
on the side of a mountain, or into a ravine.
Now in these subterranean caverns lived a strange race of beings,
called by some gnomes, by some kobolds, by some goblins. There was a
legend current in the country that at one time they lived above ground,
and were very like other people. But for some reason or other,
concerning which there were different legendary theories, the king had
laid what they thought too severe taxes upon them, or had required
observances of them they did not like, or had begun to treat them with
more severity, in some way or other, and impose stricter laws; and the
consequence was that they had all disappeared from the face of the
country. According to the legend, however, instead of going to some
other country, they had all taken refuge in the subterranean caverns,
whence they never came out but at night, and then seldom showed
themselves in any numbers, and never to many people at once. It was
only in the least frequented and most difficult parts of the mountains
that they were said to gather even at night in the open air. Those who
had caught sight of any of them said that they had greatly altered in
the course of generations; and no wonder, seeing they lived away from
the sun, in cold and wet and dark places. They were now, not
ordinarily ugly, but either absolutely hideous, or ludicrously
grotesque both in face and form. There was no invention, they said, of
the most lawless imagination expressed by pen or pencil, that could
surpass the extravagance of their appearance. But I suspect those who
said so had mistaken some of their animal companions for the goblins
themselves--of which more by and by. The goblins themselves were not
so far removed from the human as such a description would imply. And
as they grew misshapen in body they had grown in knowledge and
cleverness, and now were able to do things no mortal could see the
possibility of. But as they grew in cunning, they grew in mischief,
and their great delight was in every way they could think of to annoy
the people who lived in the open-air storey above them. They had
enough of affection left for each other to preserve them from being
absolutely cruel for cruelty's sake to those that came in their way;
but still they so heartily cherished the ancestral grudge against those
who occupied their former possessions and especially against the
descendants of the king who had caused their expulsion, that they
sought every opportunity of tormenting them in ways that were as odd as
their inventors; and although dwarfed and misshapen, they had strength
equal to their cunning. In the process of time they had got a king and
a government of their own, whose chief business, beyond their own
simple affairs, was to devise trouble for their neighbours. It will
now be pretty evident why the little princess had never seen the sky at
night. They were much too afraid of the goblins to let her out of the
house then, even in company with ever so many attendants; and they had
good reason, as we shall see by and by.
CHAPTER 2
The Princess Loses Herself
I have said the Princess Irene was about eight years old when my story
begins. And this is how it begins.
One very wet day, when the mountain was covered with mist which was
constantly gathering itself together into raindrops, and pouring down
on the roofs of the great old house, whence it fell in a fringe of
water from the eaves all round about it, the princess could not of
course go out. She got very tired, so tired that even her toys could
no longer amuse her. You would wonder at that if I had time to
describe to you one half of the toys she had. But then, you wouldn't
have the toys themselves, and that makes all the difference: you can't
get tired of a thing before you have it. It was a picture, though,
worth seeing--the princess sitting in the nursery with the sky ceiling
over her head, at a great table covered with her toys. If the artist
would like to draw this, I should advise him not to meddle with the
toys. I am afraid of attempting to describe them, and I think he had
better not try to draw them. He had better not. He can do a thousand
things I can't, but I don't think he could draw those toys. No man
could better make the princess herself than he could, though--leaning
with her back bowed into the back of the chair, her head hanging down,
and her hands in her lap, very miserable as she would say herself, not
even knowing what she would like, except it were to go out and get
thoroughly wet, and catch a particularly nice cold, and have to go to
bed and take gruel. The next moment after you see her sitting there,
her nurse goes out of the room.
Even that is a change, and the princess wakes up a little, and looks
about her. Then she tumbles off her chair and runs out of the door,
not the same door the nurse went out of, but one which opened at the
foot of a curious old stair of worm-eaten oak, which looked as if never
anyone had set foot upon it. She had once before been up six steps,
and that was sufficient reason, in such a day, for trying to find out
what was at the top of it.
Up and up she ran--such a long way it seemed to her!--until she came to
the top of the third flight. There she found the landing was the end
of a long passage. Into this she ran. It was full of doors on each
side. There were so many that she did not care to open any, but ran on
to the end, where she turned into another passage, also full of doors.
When she had turned twice more, and still saw doors and only doors
about her, she began to get frightened. It was so silent! And all
those doors must hide rooms with nobody in them! That was dreadful.
Also the rain made a great trampling noise on the roof. She turned and
started at full speed, her little footsteps echoing through the sounds
of the rain--back for the stairs and her safe nursery. So she thought,
but she had lost herself long ago. It doesn't follow that she was
lost, because she had lost herself, though.
She ran for some distance, turned several times, and then began to be
afraid. Very soon she was sure that she had lost the way back. Rooms
everywhere, and no stair! Her little heart beat as fast as her little
feet ran, and a lump of tears was growing in her throat. But she was
too eager and perhaps too frightened to cry for some time. At last her
hope failed her. Nothing but passages and doors everywhere! She threw
herself on the floor, and burst into a wailing cry broken by sobs.
She did not cry long, however, for she was as brave as could be
expected of a princess of her age. After a good cry, she got up, and
brushed the dust from her frock. Oh, what old dust it was! Then she
wiped her eyes with her hands, for princesses don't always have their
handkerchiefs in their pockets, any more than some other little girls I
know of. Next, like a true princess, she resolved on going wisely to
work to find her way back: she would walk through the passages, and
look in every direction for the stair. This she did, but without
success. She went over the same ground again an again without knowing
it, for the passages and doors were all alike. At last, in a corner,
through a half-open door, she did see a stair. But alas! it went the
wrong way: instead of going down, it went up. Frightened as she was,
however, she could not help wishing to see where yet further the stair
could lead. It was very narrow, and so steep that she went on like a
four-legged creature on her hands and feet.
CHAPTER 3
The Princess and--We Shall See Who
When she came to the top, she found herself in a little square place,
with three doors, two opposite each other, and one opposite the top of
the stair. She stood for a moment, without an idea in her little head
what to do next. But as she stood, she began to hear a curious humming
sound. Could it be the rain? No. It was much more gentle, and even
monotonous than the sound of the rain, which now she scarcely heard.
The low sweet humming sound went on, sometimes stopping for a little
while and then beginning again. It was more like the hum of a very
happy bee that had found a rich well of honey in some globular flower,
than anything else I can think of at this moment. Where could it come
from? She laid her ear first to one of the doors to hearken if it was
there--then to another. When she laid her ear against the third door,
there could be no doubt where it came from: it must be from something
in that room. What could it be? She was rather afraid, but her
curiosity was stronger than her fear, and she opened the door very
gently and peeped in. What do you think she saw? A very old lady who
sat spinning.
Perhaps you will wonder how the princess could tell that the old lady
was an old lady, when I inform you that not only was she beautiful, but
her skin was smooth and white. I will tell you more. Her hair was
combed back from her forehead and face, and hung loose far down and all
over her back. That is not much like an old lady--is it? Ah! but it
was white almost as snow. And although her face was so smooth, her
eyes looked so wise that you could not have helped seeing she must be
old. The princess, though she could not have told you why, did think
her very old indeed--quite fifty, she said to herself. But she was
rather older than that, as you shall hear.
While the princess stared bewildered, with her head just inside the
door, the old lady lifted hers, and said, in a sweet, but old and
rather shaky voice, which mingled very pleasantly with the continued
hum of her wheel:
'Come in, my dear; come in. I am glad to see you.'
That the princess was a real princess you might see now quite plainly;
for she didn't hang on to the handle of the door, and stare without
moving, as I have known some do who ought to have been princesses but
were only rather vulgar little girls. She did as she was told, stepped
inside the door at once, and shut it gently behind her.
'Come to me, my dear,' said the old lady.
And again the princess did as she was told. She approached the old
lady--rather slowly, I confess--but did not stop until she stood by her
side, and looked up in her face with her blue eyes and the two melted
stars in them.
'Why, what have you been doing with your eyes, child?' asked the old
lady.
'Crying,' answered the princess.
'Why, child?'
'Because I couldn't find my way down again.'
'But you could find your way up.'
'Not at first--not for a long time.'
'But your face is streaked like the back of a zebra. Hadn't you a
handkerchief to wipe your eyes with?'
'No.'
'Then why didn't you come to me to wipe them for you?'
'Please, I didn't know you were here. I will next time.'
'There's a good child!' said the old lady.
Then she stopped her wheel, and rose, and, going out of the room,
returned with a little silver basin and a soft white towel, with which
she washed and wiped the bright little face. And the princess thought
her hands were so smooth and nice!
When she carried away the basin and towel, the little princess wondered
to see how straight and tall she was, for, although she was so old, she
didn't stoop a bit. She was dressed in black velvet with thick white
heavy-looking lace about it; and on the black dress her hair shone like
silver. There was hardly any more furniture in the room than there
might have been in that of the poorest old woman who made her bread by
her spinning. There was no carpet on the floor--no table
anywhere--nothing but the spinning-wheel and the chair beside it. When
she came back, she sat down and without a word began her spinning once
more, while Irene, who had never seen a spinning-wheel, stood by her
side and looked on. When the old lady had got her thread fairly going
again, she said to the princess, but without looking at her:
'Do you know my name, child?'
'No, I don't know it,' answered the princess.
'My name is Irene.'
'That's my name!' cried the princess.
'I know that. I let you have mine. I haven't got your name. You've
got mine.'
'How can that be?' asked the princess, bewildered. 'I've always had my
name.'
'Your papa, the king, asked me if I had any objection to your having
it; and, of course, I hadn't. I let you have it with pleasure.'
'It was very kind of you to give me your name--and such a pretty one,'
said the princess.
'Oh, not so very kind!' said the old lady. 'A name is one of those
things one can give away and keep all the same. I have a good many
such things. Wouldn't you like to know who I am, child?'
'Yes, that I should--very much.'
'I'm your great-great-grandmother,' said the lady.
'What's that?' asked the princess.
'I'm your father's mother's father's mother.'
'Oh, dear! I can't understand that,' said the princess.
'I dare say not. I didn't expect you would. But that's no reason why
I shouldn't say it.'
'Oh, no!' answered the princess.
'I will explain it all to you when you are older,' the lady went on.
'But you will be able to understand this much now: I came here to take
care of you.'
'Is it long since you came? Was it yesterday? Or was it today,
because it was so wet that I couldn't get out?'
'I've been here ever since you came yourself.'
'What a long time!' said the princess. 'I don't remember it at all.'
'No. I suppose not.'
'But I never saw you before.'
'No. But you shall see me again.'
'Do you live in this room always?'
'I don't sleep in it. I sleep on the opposite side of the landing. I
sit here most of the day.'
'I shouldn't like it. My nursery is much prettier. You must be a
queen too, if you are my great big grand-mother.'
'Yes, I am a queen.'
'Where is your crown, then?' 'In my bedroom.'
'I should like to see it.'
'You shall some day--not today.'
'I wonder why nursie never told me.'
'Nursie doesn't know. She never saw me.'
'But somebody knows that you are in the house?'
'No; nobody.'
'How do you get your dinner, then?'
'I keep poultry--of a sort.'
'Where do you keep them?'
'I will show you.'
'And who makes the chicken broth for you?'
'I never kill any of MY chickens.'
'Then I can't understand.'
'What did you have for breakfast this morning?' asked the lady.
'Oh! I had bread and milk, and an egg--I dare say you eat their eggs.'
'Yes, that's it. I eat their eggs.'
'Is that what makes your hair so white?'
'No, my dear. It's old age. I am very old.'
'I thought so. Are you fifty?'
'Yes--more than that.'
'Are you a hundred?'
'Yes--more than that. I am too old for you to guess. Come and see my
chickens.'
Again she stopped her spinning. She rose, took the princess by the
hand, led her out of the room, and opened the door opposite the stair.
The princess expected to see a lot of hens and chickens, but instead of
that, she saw the blue sky first, and then the roofs of the house, with
a multitude of the loveliest pigeons, mostly white, but of all colours,
walking about, making bows to each other, and talking a language she
could not understand. She clapped her hands with delight, and up rose
such a flapping of wings that she in her turn was startled.
'You've frightened my poultry,' said the old lady, smiling.
'And they've frightened me,' said the princess, smiling too. 'But what
very nice poultry! Are the eggs nice?'
'Yes, very nice.' 'What a small egg-spoon you must have! Wouldn't it
be better to keep hens, and get bigger eggs?'
'How should I feed them, though?'
'I see,' said the princess. 'The pigeons feed themselves. They've got
wings.'
'Just so. If they couldn't fly, I couldn't eat their eggs.'
'But how do you get at the eggs? Where are their nests?'
The lady took hold of a little loop of string in the wall at the side
of the door and, lifting a shutter, showed a great many pigeon-holes
with nests, some with young ones and some with eggs in them. The birds
came in at the other side, and she took out the eggs on this side. She
closed it again quickly, lest the young ones should be frightened.
'Oh, what a nice way!' cried the princess. 'Will you give me an egg to
eat? I'm rather hungry.'
'I will some day, but now you must go back, or nursie will be miserable
about you. I dare say she's looking for you everywhere.'
'Except here,' answered the princess. 'Oh, how surprised she will be
when I tell her about my great big grand-grand-mother!'
'Yes, that she will!' said the old lady with a curious smile. 'Mind you
tell her all about it exactly.'
'That I will. Please will you take me back to her?'
'I can't go all the way, but I will take you to the top of the stair,
and then you must run down quite fast into your own room.'
The little princess put her hand in the old lady's, who, looking this
way and that, brought her to the top of the first stair, and thence to
the bottom of the second, and did not leave her till she saw her
half-way down the third. When she heard the cry of her nurse's
pleasure at finding her, she turned and walked up the stairs again,
very fast indeed for such a very great grandmother, and sat down to her
spinning with another strange smile on her sweet old face.
About this spinning of hers I will tell you more another time.
Guess what she was spinning.
CHAPTER 4
What the Nurse Thought of It
'Why, where can you have been, princess?' asked the nurse, taking her
in her arms. 'It's very unkind of you to hide away so long. I began to
be afraid--' Here she checked herself.
'What were you afraid of, nursie?' asked the princess.
'Never mind,' she answered. 'Perhaps I will tell you another day. Now
tell me where you have been.'
'I've been up a long way to see my very great, huge, old grandmother,'
said the princess.
'What do you mean by that?' asked the nurse, who thought she was making
fun.
'I mean that I've been a long way up and up to see My GREAT
grandmother. Ah, nursie, you don't know what a beautiful mother of
grandmothers I've got upstairs. She is such an old lady, with such
lovely white hair--as white as my silver cup. Now, when I think of it,
I think her hair must be silver.'
'What nonsense you are talking, princess!' said the nurse.
'I'm not talking nonsense,' returned Irene, rather offended. 'I will
tell you all about her. She's much taller than you, and much prettier.'
'Oh, I dare say!' remarked the nurse.
'And she lives upon pigeons' eggs.'
'Most likely,' said the nurse.
'And she sits in an empty room, spin-spinning all day long.'
'Not a doubt of it,' said the nurse.
'And she keeps her crown in her bedroom.'
'Of course--quite the proper place to keep her crown in. She wears it
in bed, I'll be bound.'
'She didn't say that. And I don't think she does. That wouldn't be
comfortable--would it? I don't think my papa wears his crown for a
night-cap. Does he, nursie?'
'I never asked him. I dare say he does.'
'And she's been there ever since I came here--ever so many years.'
'Anybody could have told you that,' said the nurse, who did not believe
a word Irene was saying.
'Why didn't you tell me, then?'
'There was no necessity. You could make it all up for yourself.'
'You don't believe me, then!' exclaimed the princess, astonished and
angry, as she well might be.
'Did you expect me to believe you, princess?' asked the nurse coldly.
'I know princesses are in the habit of telling make-believes, but you
are the first I ever heard of who expected to have them believed,' she
added, seeing that the child was strangely in earnest.
The princess burst into tears.
'Well, I must say,' remarked the nurse, now thoroughly vexed with her
for crying, 'it is not at all becoming in a princess to tell stories
and expect to be believed just because she is a princess.'
'But it's quite true, I tell you.'
'You've dreamt it, then, child.'
'No, I didn't dream it. I went upstairs, and I lost myself, and if I
hadn't found the beautiful lady, I should never have found myself.'
'Oh, I dare say!'
'Well, you just come up with me, and see if I'm not telling the truth.'
'Indeed I have other work to do. It's your dinnertime, and I won't
have any more such nonsense.'
The princess wiped her eyes, and her face grew so hot that they were
soon quite dry. She sat down to her dinner, but ate next to nothing.
Not to be believed does not at all agree with princesses: for a real
princess cannot tell a lie. So all the afternoon she did not speak a
word. Only when the nurse spoke to her, she answered her, for a real
princess is never rude--even when she does well to be offended.
Of course the nurse was not comfortable in her mind--not that she
suspected the least truth in Irene's story, but that she loved her
dearly, and was vexed with herself for having been cross to her. She
thought her crossness was the cause of the princess's unhappiness, and
had no idea that she was really and deeply hurt at not being believed.
But, as it became more and more plain during the evening in her every
motion and look, that, although she tried to amuse herself with her
toys, her heart was too vexed and troubled to enjoy them, her nurse's
discomfort grew and grew. When bedtime came, she undressed and laid
her down, but the child, instead of holding up her little mouth to be
kissed, turned away from her and lay still. Then nursie's heart gave
way altogether, and she began to cry. At the sound of her first sob
the princess turned again, and held her face to kiss her as usual. But
the nurse had her handkerchief to her eyes, and did not see the
movement.
'Nursie,' said the princess, 'why won't you believe me?'
'Because I can't believe you,' said the nurse, getting angry again.
'Ah! then, you can't help it,' said Irene, 'and I will not be vexed
with you any more. I will give you a kiss and go to sleep.'
'You little angel!' cried the nurse, and caught her out of bed, and
walked about the room with her in her arms, kissing and hugging her.
'You will let me take you to see my dear old great big grandmother,
won't you?' said the princess, as she laid her down again.
'And you won't say I'm ugly, any more--will you, princess?' 'Nursie, I
never said you were ugly. What can you mean?'
'Well, if you didn't say it, you meant it.'
'Indeed, I never did.'
'You said I wasn't so pretty as that--'
'As my beautiful grandmother--yes, I did say that; and I say it again,
for it's quite true.'
'Then I do think you are unkind!' said the nurse, and put her
handkerchief to her eyes again.
'Nursie, dear, everybody can't be as beautiful as every other body, you
know. You are very nice-looking, but if you had been as beautiful as
my grandmother--'
'Bother your grandmother!' said the nurse.
'Nurse, that's very rude. You are not fit to be spoken to till you can
behave better.'
The princess turned away once more, and again the nurse was ashamed of
herself.
'I'm sure I beg your pardon, princess,' she said, though still in an
offended tone. But the princess let the tone pass, and heeded only the
words.
'You won't say it again, I am sure,' she answered, once more turning
towards her nurse. 'I was only going to say that if you had been twice
as nice-looking as you are, some king or other would have married you,
and then what would have become of me?'
'You are an angel!' repeated the nurse, again embracing her. 'Now,'
insisted Irene, 'you will come and see my grandmother--won't you?'
'I will go with you anywhere you like, my cherub,' she answered; and in
two minutes the weary little princess was fast asleep.
CHAPTER 5
The Princess Lets Well Alone
When she woke the next morning, the first thing she heard was the rain
still falling. Indeed, this day was so like the last that it would
have been difficult to tell where was the use of It. The first thing
she thought of, however, was not the rain, but the lady in the tower;
and the first question that occupied her thoughts was whether she
should not ask the nurse to fulfil her promise this very morning, and
go with her to find her grandmother as soon as she had had her
breakfast. But she came to the conclusion that perhaps the lady would
not be pleased if she took anyone to see her without first asking
leave; especially as it was pretty evident, seeing she lived on
pigeons' eggs, and cooked them herself, that she did not want the
household to know she was there. So the princess resolved to take the
first opportunity of running up alone and asking whether she might
bring her nurse. She believed the fact that she could not otherwise
convince her she was telling the truth would have much weight with her
grandmother.
The princess and her nurse were the best of friends all dressing-time,
and the princess in consequence ate an enormous little breakfast.
'I wonder, Lootie'--that was her pet name for her nurse--'what pigeons'
eggs taste like?' she said, as she was eating her egg--not quite a
common one, for they always picked out the pinky ones for her.
'We'll get you a pigeon's egg, and you shall judge for yourself,' said
the nurse.
'Oh, no, no!' returned Irene, suddenly reflecting they might disturb
the old lady in getting it, and that even if they did not, she would
have one less in consequence.
'What a strange creature you are,' said the nurse--'first to want a
thing and then to refuse it!'
But she did not say it crossly, and the princess never minded any
remarks that were not unfriendly.
'Well, you see, Lootie, there are reasons,' she returned, and said no
more, for she did not want to bring up the subject of their former
strife, lest her nurse should offer to go before she had had her
grandmother's permission to bring her. Of course she could refuse to
take her, but then she would believe her less than ever.
Now the nurse, as she said herself afterwards, could not be every
moment in the room; and as never before yesterday had the princess
given her the smallest reason for anxiety, it had not yet come into her
head to watch her more closely. So she soon gave her a chance, and,
the very first that offered, Irene was off and up the stairs again.
This day's adventure, however, did not turn out like yesterday's,
although it began like it; and indeed to-day is very seldom like
yesterday, if people would note the differences--even when it rains.
The princess ran through passage after passage, and could not find the
stair of the tower. My own suspicion is that she had not gone up high
enough, and was searching on the second instead of the third floor.
When she turned to go back, she failed equally in her search after the
stair. She was lost once more.
Something made it even worse to bear this time, and it was no wonder
that she cried again. Suddenly it occurred to her that it was after
having cried before that she had found her grandmother's stair. She
got up at once, wiped her eyes, and started upon a fresh quest.
This time, although she did not find what she hoped, she found what was
next best: she did not come on a stair that went up, but she came upon
one that went down. It was evidently not the stair she had come up,
yet it was a good deal better than none; so down she went, and was
singing merrily before she reached the bottom. There, to her surprise,
she found herself in the kitchen. Although she was not allowed to go
there alone, her nurse had often taken her, and she was a great
favourite with the servants. So there was a general rush at her the
moment she appeared, for every one wanted to have her; and the report
of where she was soon reached the nurse's ears. She came at once to
fetch her; but she never suspected how she had got there, and the
princess kept her own counsel.
Her failure to find the old lady not only disappointed her, but made
her very thoughtful. Sometimes she came almost to the nurse's opinion
that she had dreamed all about her; but that fancy never lasted very
long. She wondered much whether she should ever see her again, and
thought it very sad not to have been able to find her when she
particularly wanted her. She resolved to say nothing more to her nurse
on the subject, seeing it was so little in her power to prove her words.
CHAPTER 6
The Little Miner
The next day the great cloud still hung over the mountain, and the rain
poured like water from a full sponge. The princess was very fond of
being out of doors, and she nearly cried when she saw that the weather
was no better. But the mist was not of such a dark dingy grey; there
was light in it; and as the hours went on it grew brighter and
brighter, until it was almost too brilliant to look at; and late in the
afternoon the sun broke out so gloriously that Irene clapped her hands,
crying:
'See, see, Lootie! The sun has had his face washed. Look how bright
he is! Do get my hat, and let us go out for a walk. Oh, dear! oh,
dear! how happy I am!'
Lootie was very glad to please the princess. She got her hat and
cloak, and they set out together for a walk up the mountain; for the
road was so hard and steep that the water could not rest upon it, and
it was always dry enough for walking a few minutes after the rain
ceased. The clouds were rolling away in broken pieces, like great,
overwoolly sheep, whose wool the sun had bleached till it was almost
too white for the eyes to bear. Between them the sky shone with a
deeper and purer blue, because of the rain. The trees on the roadside
were hung all over with drops, which sparkled in the sun like jewels.
The only things that were no brighter for the rain were the brooks that
ran down the mountain; they had changed from the clearness of crystal
to a muddy brown; but what they lost in colour they gained in sound--or
at least in noise, for a brook when it is swollen is not so musical as
before. But Irene was in raptures with the great brown streams
tumbling down everywhere; and Lootie shared in her delight, for she too
had been confined to the house for three days.
At length she observed that the sun was getting low, and said it was
time to be going back. She made the remark again and again, but, every
time, the princess begged her to go on just a little farther and a
little farther; reminding her that it was much easier to go downhill,
and saying that when they did turn they would be at home in a moment.
So on and on they did go, now to look at a group of ferns over whose
tops a stream was pouring in a watery arch, now to pick a shining stone
from a rock by the wayside, now to watch the flight of some bird.
Suddenly the shadow of a great mountain peak came up from behind, and
shot in front of them. When the nurse saw it, she started and shook,
and catching hold of the princess's hand turned and began to run down
the hill.
'What's all the haste, nursie?' asked Irene, running alongside of her.
'We must not be out a moment longer.'
'But we can't help being out a good many moments longer.'
It was too true. The nurse almost cried. They were much too far from
home. It was against express orders to be out with the princess one
moment after the sun was down; and they were nearly a mile up the
mountain! If His Majesty, Irene's papa, were to hear of it, Lootie
would certainly be dismissed; and to leave the princess would break her
heart. It was no wonder she ran. But Irene was not in the least
frightened, not knowing anything to be frightened at. She kept on
chattering as well as she could, but it was not easy.
'Lootie! Lootie! why do you run so fast? It shakes my teeth when I
talk.'
'Then don't talk,' said Lootie.
'But the princess went on talking. She was always saying: 'Look, look,
Lootie!' but Lootie paid no more heed to anything she said, only ran on.
'Look, look, Lootie! Don't you see that funny man peeping over the
rock?'
Lootie only ran the faster. They had to pass the rock, and when they
came nearer, the princess saw it was only a lump of the rock itself
that she had taken for a man.
'Look, look, Lootie! There's such a curious creature at the foot of
that old tree. Look at it, Lootie! It's making faces at us, I do
think.'
Lootie gave a stifled cry, and ran faster still--so fast that Irene's
little legs could not keep up with her, and she fell with a crash. It
was a hard downhill road, and she had been running very fast--so it was
no wonder she began to cry. This put the nurse nearly beside herself;
but all she could do was to run on, the moment she got the princess on
her feet again.
'Who's that laughing at me?' said the princess, trying to keep in her
sobs, and running too fast for her grazed knees.
'Nobody, child,' said the nurse, almost angrily.
But that instant there came a burst of coarse tittering from somewhere
near, and a hoarse indistinct voice that seemed to say: 'Lies! lies!
lies!'
'Oh!' cried the nurse with a sigh that was almost a scream, and ran on
faster than ever.
'Nursie! Lootie! I can't run any more. Do let us walk a bit.'
'What am I to do?' said the nurse. 'Here, I will carry you.'
She caught her up; but found her much too heavy to run with, and had to
set her down again. Then she looked wildly about her, gave a great
cry, and said:
'We've taken the wrong turning somewhere, and I don't know where we
are. We are lost, lost!'
The terror she was in had quite bewildered her. It was true enough
they had lost the way. They had been running down into a little valley
in which there was no house to be seen.
Now Irene did not know what good reason there was for her nurse's
terror, for the servants had all strict orders never to mention the
goblins to her, but it was very discomposing to see her nurse in such a
fright. Before, however, she had time to grow thoroughly alarmed like
her, she heard the sound of whistling, and that revived her. Presently
she saw a boy coming up the road from the valley to meet them. He was
the whistler; but before they met his whistling changed to singing.
And this is something like what he sang:
'Ring! dod! bang!
Go the hammers' clang!
Hit and turn and bore!
Whizz and puff and roar!
Thus we rive the rocks,
Force the goblin locks.--
See the shining ore!
One, two, three--
Bright as gold can be!
Four, five, six--
Shovels, mattocks, picks!
Seven, eight, nine--
Light your lamp at mine.
Ten, eleven, twelve--
Loosely hold the helve.
We're the merry miner-boys,
Make the goblins hold their noise.'
'I wish YOU would hold your noise,' said the nurse rudely, for the very
word GOBLIN at such a time and in such a place made her tremble. It
would bring the goblins upon them to a certainty, she thought, to defy
them in that way. But whether the boy heard her or not, he did not
stop his singing.
'Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--
This is worth the siftin';
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--
There's the match, and lay't in.
Nineteen, twenty--
Goblins in a plenty.'
'Do be quiet,' cried the nurse, in a whispered shriek. But the boy,
who was now close at hand, still went on.
'Hush! scush! scurry!
There you go in a hurry!
Gobble! gobble! goblin!
There you go a wobblin';
Hobble, hobble, hobblin'--
Cobble! cobble! cobblin'!
Hob-bob-goblin!--
Huuuuuh!'
'There!' said the boy, as he stood still opposite them. 'There!
that'll do for them. They can't bear singing, and they can't stand
that song. They can't sing themselves, for they have no more voice
than a crow; and they don't like other people to sing.'
The boy was dressed in a miner's dress, with a curious cap on his head.
He was a very nice-looking boy, with eyes as dark as the mines in which
he worked and as sparkling as the crystals in their rocks. He was
about twelve years old. His face was almost too pale for beauty, which
came of his being so little in the open air and the sunlight--for even
vegetables grown in the dark are white; but he looked happy, merry
indeed--perhaps at the thought of having routed the goblins; and his
bearing as he stood before them had nothing clownish or rude about it.
'I saw them,' he went on, 'as I came up; and I'm very glad I did. I
knew they were after somebody, but I couldn't see who it was. They
won't touch you so long as I'm with you.'
'Why, who are you?' asked the nurse, offended at the freedom with which
he spoke to them.
'I'm Peter's son.'
'Who's Peter?'
'Peter the miner.'
'I don't know him.' 'I'm his son, though.'
'And why should the goblins mind you, pray?'
'Because I don't mind them. I'm used to them.'
'What difference does that make?'
'If you're not afraid of them, they're afraid of you. I'm not afraid
of them. That's all. But it's all that's wanted--up here, that is.
It's a different thing down there. They won't always mind that song
even, down there. And if anyone sings it, they stand grinning at him
awfully; and if he gets frightened, and misses a word, or says a wrong
one, they--oh! don't they give it him!'
'What do they do to him?' asked Irene, with a trembling voice.
'Don't go frightening the princess,' said the nurse.
'The princess!' repeated the little miner, taking off his curious cap.
'I beg your pardon; but you oughtn't to be out so late. Everybody knows
that's against the law.'
'Yes, indeed it is!' said the nurse, beginning to cry again. 'And I
shall have to suffer for it.'
'What does that matter?' said the boy. 'It must be your fault. It is
the princess who will suffer for it. I hope they didn't hear you call
her the princess. If they did, they're sure to know her again: they're
awfully sharp.'
'Lootie! Lootie!' cried the princess. 'Take me home.'
'Don't go on like that,' said the nurse to the boy, almost fiercely.
'How could I help it? I lost my way.'
'You shouldn't have been out so late. You wouldn't have lost your way
if you hadn't been frightened,' said the boy. 'Come along. I'll soon
set you right again. Shall I carry your little Highness?'
'Impertinence!' murmured the nurse, but she did not say it aloud, for
she thought if she made him angry he might take his revenge by telling
someone belonging to the house, and then it would be sure to come to
the king's ears. 'No, thank you,' said Irene. 'I can walk very well,
though I can't run so fast as nursie. If you will give me one hand,
Lootie will give me another, and then I shall get on famously.'
They soon had her between them, holding a hand of each.
'Now let's run,' said the nurse.
'No, no!' said the little miner. 'That's the worst thing you can do.
If you hadn't run before, you would not have lost your way. And if you
run now, they will be after you in a moment.'
'I don't want to run,' said Irene.
'You don't think of me,' said the nurse.
'Yes, I do, Lootie. The boy says they won't touch us if we don't run.'
'Yes, but if they know at the house that I've kept you out so late I
shall be turned away, and that would break my heart.'
'Turned away, Lootie! Who would turn you away?'
'Your papa, child.'
'But I'll tell him it was all my fault. And you know it was, Lootie.'
'He won't mind that. I'm sure he won't.'
'Then I'll cry, and go down on my knees to him, and beg him not to take
away my own dear Lootie.'
The nurse was comforted at hearing this, and said no more. They went
on, walking pretty fast, but taking care not to run a step.
'I want to talk to you,' said Irene to the little miner; 'but it's so
awkward! I don't know your name.'
'My name's Curdie, little princess.'
'What a funny name! Curdie! What more?'
'Curdie Peterson. What's your name, please?'
'Irene.'
'What more?'
'I don't know what more. What more is my name, Lootie?'
'Princesses haven't got more than one name. They don't want it.'
'Oh, then, Curdie, you must call me just Irene and no more.'
'No, indeed,' said the nurse indignantly. 'He shall do no such thing.'
'What shall he call me, then, Lootie?'
'Your Royal Highness.' 'My Royal Highness! What's that? No, no,
Lootie. I won't be called names. I don't like them. You told me once
yourself it's only rude children that call names; and I'm sure Curdie
wouldn't be rude. Curdie, my name's Irene.'
'Well, Irene,' said Curdie, with a glance at the nurse which showed he
enjoyed teasing her; 'it is very kind of you to let me call you
anything. I like your name very much.'
He expected the nurse to interfere again; but he soon saw that she was
too frightened to speak. She was staring at something a few yards
before them in the middle of the path, where it narrowed between rocks
so that only one could pass at a time.
'It is very much kinder of you to go out of your way to take us home,'
said Irene.
'I'm not going out of my way yet,' said Curdie. 'It's on the other
side of those rocks the path turns off to my father's.'
'You wouldn't think of leaving us till we're safe home, I'm sure,'
gasped the nurse.
'Of course not,' said Curdie.
'You dear, good, kind Curdie! I'll give you a kiss when we get home,'
said the princess.
The nurse gave her a great pull by the hand she held. But at that
instant the something in the middle of the way, which had looked like a
great lump of earth brought down by the rain, began to move. One after
another it shot out four long things, like two arms and two legs, but
it was now too dark to tell what they were. The nurse began to tremble
from head to foot. Irene clasped Curdie's hand yet faster, and Curdie
began to sing again:
'One, two--
Hit and hew!
Three, four--
Blast and bore!
Five, six--
There's a fix!
Seven, eight--
Hold it straight!
Nine, ten--
Hit again!
Hurry! scurry!
Bother! smother!
There's a toad
In the road!
Smash it!
Squash it!
Fry it!
Dry it!
You're another!
Up and off!
There's enough!--
Huuuuuh!'
As he uttered the last words, Curdie let go his hold of his companion,
and rushed at the thing in the road as if he would trample it under his
feet. It gave a great spring, and ran straight up one of the rocks
like a huge spider. Curdie turned back laughing, and took Irene's hand
again. She grasped his very tight, but said nothing till they had
passed the rocks. A few yards more and she found herself on a part of
the road she knew, and was able to speak again.
'Do you know, Curdie, I don't quite like your song: it sounds to me
rather rude,' she said.
'Well, perhaps it is,' answered Curdie. 'I never thought of that; it's
a way we have. We do it because they don't like it.'
'Who don't like it?'
'The cobs, as we call them.'
'Don't!' said the nurse.
'Why not?' said Curdie.
'I beg you won't. Please don't.'
'Oh! if you ask me that way, of course, I won't; though I don't a bit
know why. Look! there are the lights of your great house down below.
You'll be at home in five minutes now.'
Nothing more happened. They reached home in safety. Nobody had missed
them, or even known they had gone out; and they arrived at the door
belonging to their part of the house without anyone seeing them. The
nurse was rushing in with a hurried and not over-gracious good night to
Curdie; but the princess pulled her hand from hers, and was just
throwing her arms round Curdie's neck, when she caught her again and
dragged her away.
'Lootie! Lootie! I promised a kiss,' cried Irene.
'A princess mustn't give kisses. It's not at all proper,' said Lootie.
'But I promised,' said the princess.
'There's no occasion; he's only a miner-boy.'
'He's a good boy, and a brave boy, and he has been very kind to us.
Lootie! Lootie! I promised.'
'Then you shouldn't have promised.'
'Lootie, I promised him a kiss.'
'Your Royal Highness,' said Lootie, suddenly grown very respectful,
'must come in directly.'
'Nurse, a princess must not break her word,' said Irene, drawing
herself up and standing stock-still.
Lootie did not know which the king might count the worst--to let the
princess be out after sunset, or to let her kiss a miner-boy. She did
not know that, being a gentleman, as many kings have been, he would
have counted neither of them the worse. However much he might have
disliked his daughter to kiss the miner-boy, he would not have had her
break her word for all the goblins in creation. But, as I say, the
nurse was not lady enough to understand this, and so she was in a great
difficulty, for, if she insisted, someone might hear the princess cry
and run to see, and then all would come out. But here Curdie came
again to the rescue.
'Never mind, Princess Irene,' he said. 'You mustn't kiss me tonight.
But you shan't break your word. I will come another time. You may be
sure I will.'
'Oh, thank you, Curdie!' said the princess, and stopped crying.
'Good night, Irene; good night, Lootie,' said Curdie, and turned and
was out of sight in a moment.
'I should like to see him!' muttered the nurse, as she carried the
princess to the nursery.
'You will see him,' said Irene. 'You may be sure Curdie will keep his
word. He's sure to come again.'
'I should like to see him!' repeated the nurse, and said no more. She
did not want to open a new cause of strife with the princess by saying
more plainly what she meant. Glad enough that she had succeeded both
in getting home unseen, and in keeping the princess from kissing the
miner's boy, she resolved to watch her far better in future. Her
carelessness had already doubled the danger she was in. Formerly the
goblins were her only fear; now she had to protect her charge from
Curdie as well.
CHAPTER 7
The Mines
Curdie went home whistling. He resolved to say nothing about the
princess for fear of getting the nurse into trouble, for while he
enjoyed teasing her because of her absurdity, he was careful not to do
her any harm. He saw no more of the goblins, and was soon fast asleep
in his bed.
He woke in the middle of the night, and thought he heard curious noises
outside. He sat up and listened; then got up, and, opening the door
very quietly, went out. When he peeped round the corner, he saw, under
his own window, a group of stumpy creatures, whom he at once recognized
by their shape. Hardly, however, had he begun his 'One, two, three!'
when they broke asunder, scurried away, and were out of sight. He
returned laughing, got into bed again, and was fast asleep in a moment.
Reflecting a little over the matter in the morning, he came to the
conclusion that, as nothing of the kind had ever happened before, they
must be annoyed with him for interfering to protect the princess. By
the time he was dressed, however, he was thinking of something quite
different, for he did not value the enmity of the goblins in the least.
As soon as they had had breakfast, he set off with his father for the
mine.
They entered the hill by a natural opening under a huge rock, where a
little stream rushed out. They followed its course for a few yards,
when the passage took a turn, and sloped steeply into the heart of the
hill. With many angles and windings and branchings-off, and sometimes
with steps where it came upon a natural gulf, it led them deep into the
hill before they arrived at the place where they were at present
digging out the precious ore. This was of various kinds, for the
mountain was very rich in the better sorts of metals. With flint and
steel, and tinder-box, they lighted their lamps, then fixed them on
their heads, and were soon hard at work with their pickaxes and shovels
and hammers. Father and son were at work near each other, but not in
the same gang--the passages out of which the ore was dug, they called
gangs--for when the lode, or vein of ore, was small, one miner would
have to dig away alone in a passage no bigger than gave him just room
to work--sometimes in uncomfortable cramped positions. If they stopped
for a moment they could hear everywhere around them, some nearer, some
farther off, the sounds of their companions burrowing away in all
directions in the inside of the great mountain--some boring holes in
the rock in order to blow it up with gunpowder, others shovelling the
broken ore into baskets to be carried to the mouth of the mine, others
hitting away with their pickaxes. Sometimes, if the miner was in a very
lonely part, he would hear only a tap-tapping, no louder than that of a
woodpecker, for the sound would come from a great distance off through
the solid mountain rock.
The work was hard at best, for it is very warm underground; but it was
not particularly unpleasant, and some of the miners, when they wanted
to earn a little more money for a particular purpose, would stop behind
the rest and work all night. But you could not tell night from day
down there, except from feeling tired and sleepy; for no light of the
sun ever came into those gloomy regions. Some who had thus remained
behind during the night, although certain there were none of their
companions at work, would declare the next morning that they heard,
every time they halted for a moment to take breath, a tap-tapping all
about them, as if the mountain were then more full of miners than ever
it was during the day; and some in consequence would never stay
overnight, for all knew those were the sounds of the goblins. They
worked only at night, for the miners' night was the goblins' day.
Indeed, the greater number of the miners were afraid of the goblins;
for there were strange stories well known amongst them of the treatment
some had received whom the goblins had surprised at their work during
the night. The more courageous of them, however, amongst them Peter
Peterson and Curdie, who in this took after his father, had stayed in
the mine all night again and again, and although they had several times
encountered a few stray goblins, had never yet failed in driving them
away. As I have indicated already, the chief defence against them was
verse, for they hated verse of every kind, and some kinds they could
not endure at all. I suspect they could not make any themselves, and
that was why they disliked it so much. At all events, those who were
most afraid of them were those who could neither make verses themselves
nor remember the verses that other people made for them; while those
who were never afraid were those who could make verses for themselves;
for although there were certain old rhymes which were very effectual,
yet it was well known that a new rhyme, if of the right sort, was even
more distasteful to them, and therefore more effectual in putting them
to flight.
Perhaps my readers may be wondering what the goblins could be about,
working all night long, seeing they never carried up the ore and sold
it; but when I have informed them concerning what Curdie learned the
very next night, they will be able to understand.
For Curdie had determined, if his father would permit him, to remain
there alone this night--and that for two reasons: first, he wanted to
get extra wages that he might buy a very warm red petticoat for his
mother, who had begun to complain of the cold of the mountain air
sooner than usual this autumn; and second, he had just a faint hope of
finding out what the goblins were about under his window the night
before.
When he told his father, he made no objection, for he had great
confidence in his boy's courage and resources.
'I'm sorry I can't stay with you,' said Peter; 'but I want to go and
pay the parson a visit this evening, and besides I've had a bit of a
headache all day.'
'I'm sorry for that, father,' said Curdie.
'Oh, it's not much. You'll be sure to take care of yourself, won't
you?'
'Yes, father; I will. I'll keep a sharp look-out, I promise you.'
Curdie was the only one who remained in the mine. About six o'clock
the rest went away, everyone bidding him good night, and telling him to
take care of himself; for he was a great favourite with them all.
'Don't forget your rhymes,' said one.
'No, no,'answered Curdie.
'It's no matter if he does,' said another, 'for he'll only have to make
a new one.'
'Yes: but he mightn't be able to make it fast enough,' said another;
'and while it was cooking in his head, they might take a mean advantage
and set upon him.'
'I'll do my best,' said Curdie. 'I'm not afraid.' 'We all know that,'
they returned, and left him.
CHAPTER 8
The Goblins
For some time Curdie worked away briskly, throwing all the ore he had
disengaged on one side behind him, to be ready for carrying out in the
morning. He heard a good deal of goblin-tapping, but it all sounded
far away in the hill, and he paid it little heed. Towards midnight he
began to feel rather hungry; so he dropped his pickaxe, got out a lump
of bread which in the morning he had laid in a damp hole in the rock,
sat down on a heap of ore, and ate his supper. Then he leaned back for
five minutes' rest before beginning his work again, and laid his head
against the rock. He had not kept the position for one minute before
he heard something which made him sharpen his ears. It sounded like a
voice inside the rock. After a while he heard it again. It was a
goblin voice--there could be no doubt about that--and this time he
could make out the words.
'Hadn't we better be moving?'it said.
A rougher and deeper voice replied:
'There's no hurry. That wretched little mole won't be through tonight,
if he work ever so hard. He's not by any means at the thinnest place.'
'But you still think the lode does come through into our house?' said
the first voice.
'Yes, but a good bit farther on than he has got to yet. If he had
struck a stroke more to the side just here,' said the goblin, tapping
the very stone, as it seemed to Curdie, against which his head lay, 'he
would have been through; but he's a couple of yards past it now, and if
he follow the lode it will be a week before it leads him in. You see
it back there--a long way. Still, perhaps, in case of accident it
would be as well to be getting out of this. Helfer, you'll take the
great chest. That's your business, you know.'
'Yes, dad,' said a third voice. 'But you must help me to get it on my
back. It's awfully heavy, you know.'
'Well, it isn't just a bag of smoke, I admit. But you're as strong as
a mountain, Helfer.'
'You say so, dad. I think myself I'm all right. But I could carry ten
times as much if it wasn't for my feet.'
'That is your weak point, I confess, my boy.' 'Ain't it yours too,
father?'
'Well, to be honest, it's a goblin weakness. Why they come so soft, I
declare I haven't an idea.'
'Specially when your head's so hard, you know, father.'
'Yes my boy. The goblin's glory is his head. To think how the fellows
up above there have to put on helmets and things when they go fighting!
Ha! ha!'
'But why don't we wear shoes like them, father? I should like
it--especially when I've got a chest like that on my head.'
'Well, you see, it's not the fashion. The king never wears shoes.'
'The queen does.'
'Yes; but that's for distinction. The first queen, you see--I mean the
king's first wife--wore shoes, of course, because she came from
upstairs; and so, when she died, the next queen would not be inferior
to her as she called it, and would wear shoes too. It was all pride.
She is the hardest in forbidding them to the rest of the women.'
'I'm sure I wouldn't wear them--no, not for--that I wouldn't!' said the
first voice, which was evidently that of the mother of the family. 'I
can't think why either of them should.'
'Didn't I tell you the first was from upstairs?' said the other. 'That
was the only silly thing I ever knew His Majesty guilty of. Why should
he marry an outlandish woman like that-one of our natural enemies too?'
'I suppose he fell in love with her.' 'Pooh! pooh! He's just as happy
now with one of his own people.'
'Did she die very soon? They didn't tease her to death, did they?'
'Oh, dear, no! The king worshipped her very footmarks.'
'What made her die, then? Didn't the air agree with her?'
'She died when the young prince was born.'
'How silly of her! We never do that. It must have been because she
wore shoes.'
'I don't know that.'
'Why do they wear shoes up there?'
'Ah, now that's a sensible question, and I will answer it. But in
order to do so, I must first tell you a secret. I once saw the queen's
feet.'
'Without her shoes?'
'Yes--without her shoes.'
'No! Did you? How was it?'
'Never you mind how it was. She didn't know I saw them. And what do
you think!--they had toes!'
'Toes! What's that?'
'You may well ask! I should never have known if I had not seen the
queen's feet. Just imagine! the ends of her feet were split up into
five or six thin pieces!'
'Oh, horrid! How could the king have fallen in love with her?'
'You forget that she wore shoes. That is just why she wore them. That
is why all the men, and women too, upstairs wear shoes. They can't
bear the sight of their own feet without them.'
'Ah! now I understand. If ever you wish for shoes again, Helfer, I'll
hit your feet--I will.'
'No, no, mother; pray don't.'
'Then don't you.'
'But with such a big box on my head--'
A horrid scream followed, which Curdie interpreted as in reply to a
blow from his mother upon the feet of her eldest goblin.
'Well, I never knew so much before!' remarked a fourth voice.
'Your knowledge is not universal quite yet,' said the father. 'You
were only fifty last month. Mind you see to the bed and bedding. As
soon as we've finished our supper, we'll be up and going. Ha! ha! ha!'
'What are you laughing at, husband?'
'I'm laughing to think what a mess the miners will find themselves
in--somewhere before this day ten years.'
'Why, what do you mean?'
'Oh, nothing.'
'Oh, yes, you do mean something. You always do mean something.'
'It's more than you do, then, wife.' 'That may be; but it's not more
than I find out, you know.'
'Ha! ha! You're a sharp one. What a mother you've got, Helfer!'
'Yes, father.'
'Well, I suppose I must tell you. They're all at the palace consulting
about it tonight; and as soon as we've got away from this thin place
I'm going there to hear what night they fix upon. I should like to see
that young ruffian there on the other side, struggling in the agonies
of--'
He dropped his voice so low that Curdie could hear only a growl. The
growl went on in the low bass for a good while, as inarticulate as if
the goblin's tongue had been a sausage; and it was not until his wife
spoke again that it rose to its former pitch.
'But what shall we do when you are at the palace?' she asked.
'I will see you safe in the new house I've been digging for you for the
last two months. Podge, you mind the table and chairs. I commit them
to your care. The table has seven legs--each chair three. I shall
require them all at your hands.'
After this arose a confused conversation about the various household
goods and their transport; and Curdie heard nothing more that was of
any importance.
He now knew at least one of the reasons for the constant sound of the
goblin hammers and pickaxes at night. They were making new houses for
themselves, to which they might retreat when the miners should threaten
to break into their dwellings. But he had learned two things of far
greater importance. The first was, that some grievous calamity was
preparing, and almost ready to fall upon the heads of the miners; the
second was--the one weak point of a goblin's body; he had not known
that their feet were so tender as he had now reason to suspect. He had
heard it said that they had no toes: he had never had opportunity of
inspecting them closely enough, in the dusk in which they always
appeared, to satisfy himself whether it was a correct report. Indeed,
he had not been able even to satisfy himself as to whether they had no
fingers, although that also was commonly said to be the fact. One of
the miners, indeed, who had had more schooling than the rest, was wont
to argue that such must have been the primordial condition of humanity,
and that education and handicraft had developed both toes and
fingers--with which proposition Curdie had once heard his father
sarcastically agree, alleging in support of it the probability that
babies' gloves were a traditional remnant of the old state of things;
while the stockings of all ages, no regard being paid in them to the
toes, pointed in the same direction. But what was of importance was
the fact concerning the softness of the goblin feet, which he foresaw
might be useful to all miners. What he had to do in the meantime,
however, was to discover, if possible, the special evil design the
goblins had now in their heads.
Although he knew all the gangs and all the natural galleries with which
they communicated in the mined part of the mountain, he had not the
least idea where the palace of the king of the gnomes was; otherwise he
would have set out at once on the enterprise of discovering what the
said design was. He judged, and rightly, that it must lie in a farther
part of the mountain, between which and the mine there was as yet no
communication. There must be one nearly completed, however; for it
could be but a thin partition which now separated them. If only he
could get through in time to follow the goblins as they retreated! A
few blows would doubtless be sufficient--just where his ear now lay;
but if he attempted to strike there with his pickaxe, he would only
hasten the departure of the family, put them on their guard, and
perhaps lose their involuntary guidance. He therefore began to feel
the wall With his hands, and soon found that some of the stones were
loose enough to be drawn out with little noise.
Laying hold of a large one with both his hands, he drew it gently out,
and let it down softly.
'What was that noise?' said the goblin father.
Curdie blew out his light, lest it should shine through.
'It must be that one miner that stayed behind the rest,' said the
mother.
'No; he's been gone a good while. I haven't heard a blow for an hour.
Besides, it wasn't like that.'
'Then I suppose it must have been a stone carried down the brook
inside.'
'Perhaps. It will have more room by and by.'
Curdie kept quite still. After a little while, hearing nothing but the
sounds of their preparations for departure, mingled with an occasional
word of direction, and anxious to know whether the removal of the stone
had made an opening into the goblins' house, he put in his hand to
feel. It went in a good way, and then came in contact with something
soft. He had but a moment to feel it over, it was so quickly
withdrawn: it was one of the toeless goblin feet. The owner of it gave
a cry of fright.
'What's the matter, Helfer?' asked his mother.
'A beast came out of the wall and licked my foot.'
'Nonsense! There are no wild beasts in our country,' said his father.
'But it was, father. I felt it.'
'Nonsense, I say. Will you malign your native realms and reduce them
to a level with the country upstairs? That is swarming with wild
beasts of every description.'
'But I did feel it, father.'
'I tell you to hold your tongue. You are no patriot.'
Curdie suppressed his laughter, and lay still as a mouse--but no
stiller, for every moment he kept nibbling away with his fingers at the
edges of the hole. He was slowly making it bigger, for here the rock
had been very much shattered with the blasting.
There seemed to be a good many in the family, to judge from the mass of
confused talk which now and then came through the hole; but when all
were speaking together, and just as if they had bottle-brushes--each at
least one--in their throats, it was not easy to make out much that was
said. At length he heard once more what the father goblin was saying.
'Now, then,' he said, 'get your bundles on your backs. Here, Helfer,
I'll help you up with your chest.'
'I wish it was my chest, father.'
'Your turn will come in good time enough! Make haste. I must go to
the meeting at the palace tonight. When that's over, we can come back
and clear out the last of the things before our enemies return in the
morning. Now light your torches, and come along. What a distinction it
is, to provide our own light, instead of being dependent on a thing
hung up in the air--a most disagreeable contrivance--intended no doubt
to blind us when we venture out under its baleful influence! Quite
glaring and vulgar, I call it, though no doubt useful to poor creatures
who haven't the wit to make light for themselves.'
Curdie could hardly keep himself from calling through to know whether
they made the fire to light their torches by. But a moment's
reflection showed him that they would have said they did, inasmuch as
they struck two stones together, and the fire came.
CHAPTER 9
The Hall of the Goblin Palace
A sound of many soft feet followed, but soon ceased. Then Curdie flew
at the hole like a tiger, and tore and pulled. The sides gave way, and
it was soon large enough for him to crawl through. He would not betray
himself by rekindling his lamp, but the torches of the retreating
company, which he found departing in a straight line up a long avenue
from the door of their cave, threw back light enough to afford him a
glance round the deserted home of the goblins. To his surprise, he
could discover nothing to distinguish it from an ordinary natural cave
in the rock, upon many of which he had come with the rest of the miners
in the progress of their excavations. The goblins had talked of coming
back for the rest of their household gear: he saw nothing that would
have made him suspect a family had taken shelter there for a single
night. The floor was rough and stony; the walls full of projecting
corners; the roof in one place twenty feet high, in another endangering
his forehead; while on one side a stream, no thicker than a needle, it
is true, but still sufficient to spread a wide dampness over the wall,
flowed down the face of the rock. But the troop in front of him was
toiling under heavy burdens. He could distinguish Helfer now and then,
in the flickering light and shade, with his heavy chest on his bending
shoulders; while the second brother was almost buried in what looked
like a great feather bed. 'Where do they get the feathers?' thought
Curdie; but in a moment the troop disappeared at a turn of the way, and
it was now both safe and necessary for Curdie to follow them, lest they
should be round the next turning before he saw them again, for so he
might lose them altogether. He darted after them like a greyhound.
When he reached the corner and looked cautiously round, he saw them
again at some distance down another long passage. None of the
galleries he saw that night bore signs of the work of man--or of goblin
either. Stalactites, far older than the mines, hung from their roofs;
and their floors were rough with boulders and large round stones,
showing that there water must have once run. He waited again at this
corner till they had disappeared round the next, and so followed them a
long way through one passage after another. The passages grew more and
more lofty, and were more and more covered in the roof with shining
stalactites.
It was a strange enough procession which he followed. But the
strangest part of it was the household animals which crowded amongst
the feet of the goblins. It was true they had no wild animals down
there--at least they did not know of any; but they had a wonderful
number of tame ones. I must, however, reserve any contributions
towards the natural history of these for a later position in my story.
At length, turning a corner too abruptly, he had almost rushed into the
middle of the goblin family; for there they had already set down all
their burdens on the floor of a cave considerably larger than that
which they had left. They were as yet too breathless to speak, else he
would have had warning of their arrest. He started back, however,
before anyone saw him, and retreating a good way, stood watching till
the father should come out to go to the palace.
Before very long, both he and his son Helfer appeared and kept on in
the same direction as before, while Curdie followed them again with
renewed precaution. For a long time he heard no sound except something
like the rush of a river inside the rock; but at length what seemed the
far-off noise of a great shouting reached his ears, which, however,
presently ceased. After advancing a good way farther, he thought he
heard a single voice. It sounded clearer and clearer as he went on,
until at last he could almost distinguish the words. In a moment or
two, keeping after the goblins round another corner, he once more
started back--this time in amazement.
He was at the entrance of a magnificent cavern, of an oval shape, once
probably a huge natural reservoir of water, now the great palace hall
of the goblins. It rose to a tremendous height, but the roof was
composed of such shining materials, and the multitude of torches
carried by the goblins who crowded the floor lighted up the place so
brilliantly, that Curdie could see to the top quite well. But he had
no idea how immense the place was until his eyes had got accustomed to
it, which was not for a good many minutes. The rough projections on the
walls, and the shadows thrown upwards from them by the torches, made
the sides of the chamber look as if they were crowded with statues upon
brackets and pedestals, reaching in irregular tiers from floor to roof.
The walls themselves were, in many parts, of gloriously shining
substances, some of them gorgeously coloured besides, which powerfully
contrasted with the shadows. Curdie could not help wondering whether
his rhymes would be of any use against such a multitude of goblins as
filled the floor of the hall, and indeed felt considerably tempted to
begin his shout of 'One, two, three!', but as there was no reason for
routing them and much for endeavouring to discover their designs, he
kept himself perfectly quiet, and peering round the edge of the
doorway, listened with both his sharp ears.
At the other end of the hall, high above the heads of the multitude,
was a terrace-like ledge of considerable height, caused by the receding
of the upper part of the cavern-wall. Upon this sat the king and his
court: the king on a throne hollowed out of a huge block of green
copper ore, and his court upon lower seats around it. The king had
been making them a speech, and the applause which followed it was what
Curdie had heard. One of the court was now addressing the multitude.
What he heard him say was to the following effect: 'Hence it appears
that two plans have been for some time together working in the strong
head of His Majesty for the deliverance of his people. Regardless of
the fact that we were the first possessors of the regions they now
inhabit; regardless equally of the fact that we abandoned that region
from the loftiest motives; regardless also of the self-evident fact
that we excel them so far in mental ability as they excel us in
stature, they look upon us as a degraded race and make a mockery of all
our finer feelings. But, the time has almost arrived when--thanks to
His Majesty's inventive genius--it will be in our power to take a
thorough revenge upon them once for all, in respect of their unfriendly
behaviour.'
'May it please Your Majesty--' cried a voice close by the door, which
Curdie recognized as that of the goblin he had followed.
'Who is he that interrupts the Chancellor?' cried another from near the
throne.
'Glump,' answered several voices.
'He is our trusty subject,' said the king himself, in a slow and
stately voice: 'let him come forward and speak.'
A lane was parted through the crowd, and Glump, having ascended the
platform and bowed to the king, spoke as follows:
'Sire, I would have held my peace, had I not known that I only knew how
near was the moment, to which the Chancellor had just referred.
In all probability, before another day is past, the enemy will have
broken through into my house--the partition between being even now not
more than a foot in thickness.'
'Not quite so much,' thought Curdie to himself.
'This very evening I have had to remove my household effects; therefore
the sooner we are ready to carry out the plan, for the execution of
which His Majesty has been making such magnificent preparations, the
better. I may just add, that within the last few days I have perceived
a small outbreak in my dining-room, which, combined with observations
upon the course of the river escaping where the evil men enter, has
convinced me that close to the spot must be a deep gulf in its channel.
This discovery will, I trust, add considerably to the otherwise immense
forces at His Majesty's disposal.'
He ceased, and the king graciously acknowledged his speech with a bend
of his head; whereupon Glump, after a bow to His Majesty, slid down
amongst the rest of the undistinguished multitude. Then the Chancellor
rose and resumed.
'The information which the worthy Glump has given us,' he said, 'might
have been of considerable import at the present moment, but for that
other design already referred to, which naturally takes precedence.
His Majesty, unwilling to proceed to extremities, and well aware that
such measures sooner or later result in violent reactions, has
excogitated a more fundamental and comprehensive measure, of which I
need say no more. Should His Majesty be successful--as who dares to
doubt?--then a peace, all to the advantage of the goblin kingdom, will
be established for a generation at least, rendered absolutely secure by
the pledge which His Royal Highness the prince will have and hold for
the good behaviour of her relatives. Should His Majesty fail--which
who shall dare even to imagine in his most secret thoughts?--then will
be the time for carrying out with rigour the design to which Glump
referred, and for which our preparations are even now all but
completed. The failure of the former will render the latter
imperative.'
Curdie, perceiving that the assembly was drawing to a close and that
there was little chance of either plan being more fully discovered, now
thought it prudent to make his escape before the goblins began to
disperse, and slipped quietly away.
There was not much danger of meeting any goblins, for all the men at
least were left behind him in the palace; but there was considerable
danger of his taking a wrong turning, for he had now no light, and had
therefore to depend upon his memory and his hands. After he had left
behind him the glow that issued from the door of Glump's new abode, he
was utterly without guide, so far as his eyes were concerned.
He was most anxious to get back through the hole before the goblins
should return to fetch the remains of their furniture. It was not that
he was in the least afraid of them, but, as it was of the utmost
importance that he should thoroughly discover what the plans they were
cherishing were, he must not occasion the slightest suspicion that they
were watched by a miner.
He hurried on, feeling his way along the walls of rock. Had he not
been very courageous, he must have been very anxious, for he could not
but know that if he lost his way it would be the most difficult thing
in the world to find it again. Morning would bring no light into these
regions; and towards him least of all, who was known as a special
rhymester and persecutor, could goblins be expected to exercise
courtesy. Well might he wish that he had brought his lamp and
tinder-box with him, of which he had not thought when he crept so
eagerly after the goblins! He wished it all the more when, after a
while, he found his way blocked up, and could get no farther. It was
of no use to turn back, for he had not the least idea where he had
begun to go wrong. Mechanically, however, he kept feeling about the
walls that hemmed him in. His hand came upon a place where a tiny
stream of water was running down the face of the rock. 'What a stupid
I am!' he said to himself. 'I am actually at the end of my journey!
And there are the goblins coming back to fetch their things!' he added,
as the red glimmer of their torches appeared at the end of the long
avenue that led up to the cave. In a moment he had thrown himself on
the floor, and wriggled backwards through the hole. The floor on the
other side was several feet lower, which made it easier to get back.
It was all he could do to lift the largest stone he had taken out of
the hole, but he did manage to shove it in again. He sat down on the
ore-heap and thought.
He was pretty sure that the latter plan of the goblins was to inundate
the mine by breaking outlets for the water accumulated in the natural
reservoirs of the mountain, as well as running through portions of it.
While the part hollowed by the miners remained shut off from that
inhabited by the goblins, they had had no opportunity of injuring them
thus; but now that a passage was broken through, and the goblins' part
proved the higher in the mountain, it was clear to Curdie that the mine
could be destroyed in an hour. Water was always the chief danger to
which the miners were exposed. They met with a little choke-damp
sometimes, but never with the explosive firedamp so common in
coal-mines. Hence they were careful as soon as they saw any appearance
of water. As the result of his reflections while the goblins were busy
in their old home, it seemed to Curdie that it would be best to build
up the whole of this gang, filling it with stone, and clay or lie, so
that there should be no smallest channel for the water to get into.
There was not, however, any immediate danger, for the execution of the
goblins' plan was contingent upon the failure of that unknown design
which was to take precedence of it; and he was most anxious to keep the
door of communication open, that he might if possible discover what the
former plan was. At the same time they could not resume their
intermitted labours for the inundation without his finding it out; when
by putting all hands to the work, the one existing outlet might in a
single night be rendered impenetrable to any weight of water; for by
filling the gang entirely up, their embankment would be buttressed by
the sides of the mountain itself.
As soon as he found that the goblins had again retired, he lighted his
lamp, and proceeded to fill the hole he had made with such stones as he
could withdraw when he pleased. He then thought it better, as he might
have occasion to be up a good many nights after this, to go home and
have some sleep.
How pleasant the night air felt upon the outside of the mountain after
what he had gone through in the inside of it! He hurried up the hill
without meeting a single goblin on the way, and called and tapped at
the window until he woke his father, who soon rose and let him in. He
told him the whole story; and, just as he had expected, his father
thought it best to work that lode no farther, but at the same time to
pretend occasionally to be at work there still in order that the
goblins might have no suspicions. Both father and son then went to bed
and slept soundly until the morning.
CHAPTER 10
The Princess's King-Papa
The weather continued fine for weeks, and the little princess went out
every day. So long a period of fine weather had indeed never been
known upon that mountain. The only uncomfortable thing was that her
nurse was so nervous and particular about being in before the sun was
down that often she would take to her heels when nothing worse than a
fleecy cloud crossing the sun threw a shadow on the hillside; and many
an evening they were home a full hour before the sunlight had left the
weather-cock on the stables. If it had not been for such odd behaviour
Irene would by this time have almost forgotten the goblins. She never
forgot Curdie, but him she remembered for his own sake, and indeed
would have remembered him if only because a princess never forgets her
debts until they are paid.
One splendid sunshiny day, about an hour after noon, Irene, who was
playing on a lawn in the garden, heard the distant blast of a bugle.
She jumped up with a cry of joy, for she knew by that particular blast
that her father was on his way to see her. This part of the garden lay
on the slope of the hill and allowed a full view of the country below.
So she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked far away to catch the
first glimpse of shining armour. In a few moments a little troop came
glittering round the shoulder of a hill. Spears and helmets were
sparkling and gleaming, banners were flying, horses prancing, and again
came the bugle-blast which was to her like the voice of her father
calling across the distance: 'Irene, I'm coming.'
On and on they came until she could clearly distinguish the king. He
rode a white horse and was taller than any of the men with him. He wore
a narrow circle of gold set with jewels around his helmet, and as he
came still nearer Irene could discern the flashing of the stones in the
sun. It was a long time since he had been to see her, and her little
heart beat faster and faster as the shining troop approached, for she
loved her king-papa very dearly and was nowhere so happy as in his
arms. When they reached a certain point, after which she could see
them no more from the garden, she ran to the gate, and there stood till
up they came, clanging and stamping, with one more bright bugle-blast
which said: 'Irene, I am come.'
By this time the people of the house were all gathered at the gate, but
Irene stood alone in front of them. When the horsemen pulled up she
ran to the side of the white horse and held up her arms. The king
stopped and took her hands. In an instant she was on the saddle and
clasped in his great strong arms.
I wish I could describe the king so that you could see him in your
mind. He had gentle, blue eyes, but a nose that made him look like an
eagle. A long dark beard, streaked with silvery lines, flowed from his
mouth almost to his waist, and as Irene sat on the saddle and hid her
glad face upon his bosom it mingled with the golden hair which her
mother had given her, and the two together were like a cloud with
streaks of the sun woven through it. After he had held her to his
heart for a minute he spoke to his white horse, and the great beautiful
creature, which had been prancing so proudly a little while before,
walked as gently as a lady--for he knew he had a little lady on his
back--through the gate and up to the door of the house. Then the king
set her on the ground and, dismounting, took her hand and walked with
her into the great hall, which was hardly ever entered except when he
came to see his little princess. There he sat down, with two of his
counsellors who had accompanied him, to have some refreshment, and
Irene sat on his right hand and drank her milk out of a wooden bowl
curiously carved.
After the king had eaten and drunk he turned to the princess and said,
stroking her hair:
'Now, my child, what shall we do next?'
This was the question he almost always put to her first after their
meal together; and Irene had been waiting for it with some impatience,
for now, she thought, she should be able to settle a question which
constantly perplexed her.
'I should like you to take me to see my great old grandmother.'
The king looked grave And said:
'What does my little daughter mean?'
'I mean the Queen Irene that lives up in the tower--the very old lady,
you know, with the long hair of silver.'
The king only gazed at his little princess with a look which she could
not understand.
'She's got her crown in her bedroom,' she went on; 'but I've not been
in there yet. You know she's there, don't you?'
'No,' said the king, very quietly.
'Then it must all be a dream,' said Irene. 'I half thought it was; but
I couldn't be sure. Now I am sure of it. Besides, I couldn't find her
the next time I went up.'
At that moment a snow-white pigeon flew in at an open window and
settled upon Irene's head. She broke into a merry laugh, cowered a
little, and put up her hands to her head, saying:
'Dear dovey, don't peck me. You'll pull out my hair with your long
claws if you don't mind.'
The king stretched out his hand to take the pigeon, but it spread its
wings and flew again through the open window, when its Whiteness made
one flash in the sun and vanished. The king laid his hand on his
princess's head, held it back a little, gazed in her face, smiled half
a smile, and sighed half a sigh.
'Come, my child; we'll have a walk in the garden together,' he said.
'You won't come up and see my huge, great, beautiful grandmother, then,
king-papa?' said the princess.
'Not this time,' said the king very gently. 'She has not invited me,
you know, and great old ladies like her do not choose to be visited
without leave asked and given.'
The garden was a very lovely place. Being upon a Mountainside there
were parts in it where the rocks came through in great masses, and all
immediately about them remained quite wild. Tufts of heather grew upon
them, and other hardy mountain plants and flowers, while near them
would be lovely roses and lilies and all pleasant garden flowers. This
mingling of the wild mountain with the civilized garden was very
quaint, and it was impossible for any number of gardeners to make such
a garden look formal and stiff.
Against one of these rocks was a garden seat, shadowed from the
afternoon sun by the overhanging of the rock itself. There was a
little winding path up to the top of the rock, and on top another seat;
but they sat on the seat at its foot because the sun was hot; and there
they talked together of many things. At length the king said:
'You were out late one evening, Irene.'
'Yes, papa. It was my fault; and Lootie was very sorry.'
'I must talk to Lootie about it,' said the king.
'Don't speak loud to her, please, papa,' said Irene. 'She's been so
afraid of being late ever since! Indeed she has not been naughty. It
was only a mistake for once.'
'Once might be too often,' murmured the king to himself, as he stroked
his child's head.
I can't tell you how he had come to know. I am sure Curdie had not
told him. Someone about the palace must have seen them, after all.
He sat for a good while thinking. There was no sound to be heard
except that of a little stream which ran merrily out of an opening in
the rock by where they sat, and sped away down the hill through the
garden. Then he rose and, leaving Irene where she was, went into the
house and sent for Lootie, with whom he had a talk that made her cry.
When in the evening he rode away upon his great white horse, he left
six of his attendants behind him, with orders that three of them should
watch outside the house every night, walking round and round it from
sunset to sunrise. It was clear he was not quite comfortable about the
princess.
CHAPTER 11
The Old Lady's Bedroom
Nothing more happened worth telling for some time. The autumn came and
went by. There were no more flowers in the garden. The wind blew
strong, and howled among the rocks. The rain fell, and drenched the
few yellow and red leaves that could not get off the bare branches.
Again and again there would be a glorious morning followed by a pouring
afternoon, and sometimes, for a week together, there would be rain,
nothing but rain, all day, and then the most lovely cloudless night,
with the sky all out in full-blown stars--not one missing. But the
princess could not see much of them, for she went to bed early. The
winter drew on, and she found things growing dreary. When it was too
stormy to go out, and she had got tired of her toys, Lootie would take
her about the house, sometimes to the housekeeper's room, where the
housekeeper, who was a good, kind old woman, made much of
her--sometimes to the servants' hall or the kitchen, where she was not
princess merely, but absolute queen, and ran a great risk of being
spoiled. Sometimes she would run off herself to the room where the
men-at-arms whom the king had left sat, and they showed her their arms
and accoutrements and did what they could to amuse her. Still at times
she found it very dreary, and often and often wished that her huge
great grandmother had not been a dream.
One morning the nurse left her with the housekeeper for a while. To
amuse her she turned out the contents of an old cabinet upon the table.
The little princess found her treasures, queer ancient ornaments, and
many things the use of which she could not imagine, far more
interesting than her own toys, and sat playing with them for two hours
or more. But, at length, in handling a curious old-fashioned brooch,
she ran the pin of it into her thumb, and gave a little scream with the
sharpness of the pain, but would have thought little more of it had not
the pain increased and her thumb begun to swell. This alarmed the
housekeeper greatly. The nurse was fetched; the doctor was sent for;
her hand was poulticed, and long before her usual time she was put to
bed. The pain still continued, and although she fell asleep and
dreamed a good many dreams, there was the pain always in every dream.
At last it woke her UP.
The moon was shining brightly into the room. The poultice had fallen
off her hand and it was burning hot. She fancied if she could hold it
into the moonlight that would cool it. So she got out of bed, without
waking the nurse who lay at the other end of the room, and went to the
window. When she looked out she saw one of the men-at-arms walking in
the garden with the moonlight glancing on his armour. She was just
going to tap on the window and call him, for she wanted to tell him all
about it, when she bethought herself that that might wake Lootie, and
she would put her into her bed again. So she resolved to go to the
window of another room, and call him from there. It was so much nicer
to have somebody to talk to than to lie awake in bed with the burning
pain in her hand. She opened the door very gently and went through the
nursery, which did not look into the garden, to go to the other window.
But when she came to the foot of the old staircase there was the moon
shining down from some window high up, and making the worm-eaten oak
look very strange and delicate and lovely. In a moment she was putting
her little feet one after the other in the silvery path up the stair,
looking behind as she went, to see the shadow they made in the middle
of the silver. Some little girls would have been afraid to find
themselves thus alone in the middle of the night, but Irene was a
princess.
As she went slowly up the stair, not quite sure that she was not
dreaming, suddenly a great longing woke up in her heart to try once
more whether she could not find the old lady with the silvery hair. 'If
she is a dream,' she said to herself, 'then I am the likelier to find
her, if I am dreaming.'
So up and up she went, stair after stair, until she Came to the many
rooms--all just as she had seen them before. Through passage after
passage she softly sped, comforting herself that if she should lose her
way it would not matter much, because when she woke she would find
herself in her own bed with Lootie not far off. But, as if she had
known every step of the way, she walked straight to the door at the
foot of the narrow stair that led to the tower.
'What if I should realreality-really find my beautiful old grandmother
up there!' she said to herself as she crept up the steep steps.
When she reached the top she stood a moment listening in the dark, for
there was no moon there. Yes! it was! it was the hum of the
spinning-wheel! What a diligent grandmother to work both day and
night! She tapped gently at the door.
'Come in, Irene,'said the sweet voice.
The princess opened the door and entered. There was the moonlight
streaming in at the window, and in the middle of the moonlight sat the
old lady in her black dress with the white lace, and her silvery hair
mingling with the moonlight, so that you could not have told which was
which. 'Come in, Irene,' she said again. 'Can you tell me what I am
spinning?'
'She speaks,' thought Irene, 'just as if she had seen me five minutes
ago, or yesterday at the farthest. --No,' she answered; 'I don't know
what you are spinning. Please, I thought you were a dream. Why
couldn't I find you before, great-great-grandmother?'
'That you are hardly old enough to understand. But you would have
found me sooner if you hadn't come to think I was a dream. I will give
you one reason though why you couldn't find me. I didn't want you to
find me.'
'Why, please?'
'Because I did not want Lootie to know I was here.'
'But you told me to tell Lootie.'
'Yes. But I knew Lootie would not believe you. If she were to see me
sitting spinning here, she wouldn't believe me, either.'
'Why?'
'Because she couldn't. She would rub her eyes, and go away and say she
felt queer, and forget half of it and more, and then say it had been
all a dream.'
'Just like me,' said Irene, feeling very much ashamed of herself.
'Yes, a good deal like you, but not just like you; for you've come
again; and Lootie wouldn't have come again. She would have said, No,
no--she had had enough of such nonsense.'
'Is it naughty of Lootie, then?'
'It would be naughty of you. I've never done anything for Lootie.'
'And you did wash my face and hands for me,' said Irene, beginning to
cry.
The old lady smiled a sweet smile and said:
'I'm not vexed with you, my child--nor with Lootie either. But I don't
want you to say anything more to Lootie about me. If she should ask
you, you must just be silent. But I do not think she will ask you.'
All the time they talked the old lady kept on spinning.
'You haven't told me yet what I am spinning,' she said.
'Because I don't know. It's very pretty stuff.'
It was indeed very pretty stuff. There was a good bunch of it on the
distaff attached to the spinning-wheel, and in the moonlight it shone
like--what shall I say it was like? It was not white enough for
silver--yes, it was like silver, but shone grey rather than white, and
glittered only a little. And the thread the old lady drew out from it
was so fine that Irene could hardly see it. 'I am spinning this for
you, my child.'
'For me! What am I to do with it, please?'
'I will tell you by and by. But first I will tell you what it is. It
is spider-web--of a particular kind. My pigeons bring it me from over
the great sea. There is only one forest where the spiders live who
make this particular kind--the finest and strongest of any. I have
nearly finished my present job. What is on the rock now will be
enough. I have a week's work there yet, though,' she added, looking at
the bunch.
'Do you work all day and all night, too,
great-great-great-great-grandmother?' said the princess, thinking to be
very polite with so many greats.
'I am not quite so great as all that,' she answered, smiling almost
merrily. 'If you call me grandmother, that will do. No, I don't work
every night--only moonlit nights, and then no longer than the moon
shines upon my wheel. I shan't work much longer tonight.'
'And what will you do next, grandmother?' 'Go to bed. Would you like
to see my bedroom?'
'Yes, that I should.'
'Then I think I won't work any longer tonight. I shall be in good
time.'
The old lady rose, and left her wheel standing just as it was. You see
there was no good in putting it away, for where there was not any
furniture there was no danger of being untidy.
Then she took Irene by the hand, but it was her bad hand and Irene gave
a little cry of pain. 'My child!' said her grandmother, 'what is the
matter?'
Irene held her hand into the moonlight, that the old lady might see it,
and told her all about it, at which she looked grave. But she only
said: 'Give me your other hand'; and, having led her out upon the
little dark landing, opened the door on the opposite side of it. What
was Irene's surprise to see the loveliest room she had ever seen in her
life! It was large and lofty, and dome-shaped. From the centre hung a
lamp as round as a ball, shining as if with the brightest moonlight,
which made everything visible in the room, though not so clearly that
the princess could tell what many of the things were. A large oval bed
stood in the middle, with a coverlid of rose colour, and velvet
curtains all round it of a lovely pale blue. The walls were also
blue--spangled all over with what looked like stars of silver.
The old lady left her and, going to a strange-looking cabinet, opened
it and took out a curious silver casket. Then she sat down on a low
chair and, calling Irene, made her kneel before her while she looked at
her hand. Having examined it, she opened the casket, and took from it
a little ointment. The sweetest odour filled the room--like that of
roses and lilies--as she rubbed the ointment gently all over the hot
swollen hand. Her touch was so pleasant and cool that it seemed to
drive away the pain and heat wherever it came.
'Oh, grandmother! it is so nice!' said Irene. 'Thank you; thank you.'
Then the old lady went to a chest of drawers, and took out a large
handkerchief of gossamer-like cambric, which she tied round her hand.
'I don't think I can let you go away tonight,' she said. 'Would you
like to sleep with me?'
'Oh, yes, yes, dear grandmother,' said Irene, and would have clapped
her hands, forgetting that she could not.
'You won't be afraid, then, to go to bed with such an old woman?'
'No. You are so beautiful, grandmother.'
'But I am very old.'
'And I suppose I am very young. You won't mind sleeping with such a
very young woman, grandmother?'
'You sweet little pertness!' said the old lady, and drew her towards
her, and kissed her on the forehead and the cheek and the mouth. Then
she got a large silver basin, and having poured some water into it made
Irene sit on the chair, and washed her feet. This done, she was ready
for bed. And oh, what a delicious bed it was into which her
grandmother laid her! She hardly could have told she was lying upon
anything: she felt nothing but the softness.
The old lady having undressed herself lay down beside her.
'Why don't you put out your moon?' asked the princess.
'That never goes out, night or day,' she answered. 'In the darkest
night, if any of my pigeons are out on a message, they always see my
moon and know where to fly to.'
'But if somebody besides the pigeons were to see it--somebody about the
house, I mean--they would come to look what it was and find you.'
'The better for them, then,' said the old lady. 'But it does not
happen above five times in a hundred years that anyone does see it.
The greater part of those who do take it for a meteor, wink their eyes,
and forget it again. Besides, nobody could find the room except I
pleased. Besides, again--I will tell you a secret--if that light were
to go out you would fancy yourself lying in a bare garret, on a heap of
old straw, and would not see one of the pleasant things round about you
all the time.'
'I hope it will never go out,' said the princess.
'I hope not. But it is time we both went to sleep. Shall I take you
in my arms?'
The little princess nestled close up to the old lady, who took her in
both her arms and held her close to her bosom.
'Oh, dear! this is so nice!' said the princess. 'I didn't know
anything in the world could be so comfortable. I should like to lie
here for ever.'
'You may if you will,' said the old lady. 'But I must put you to one
trial-not a very hard one, I hope. This night week you must come back
to me. If you don't, I do not know when you may find me again, and you
will soon want me very much.'
'Oh! please, don't let me forget.'
'You shall not forget. The only question is whether you will believe I
am anywhere--whether you will believe I am anything but a dream. You
may be sure I will do all I can to help you to come. But it will rest
with yourself, after all. On the night of next Friday, you must come
to me. Mind now.'
'I will try,' said the princess.
'Then good night,' said the old lady, and kissed the forehead which lay
in her bosom.
In a moment more the little princess was dreaming in the midst of the
loveliest dreams--of summer seas and moonlight and mossy springs and
great murmuring trees, and beds of wild flowers with such odours as she
had never smelled before. But, after all, no dream could be more
lovely than what she had left behind when she fell asleep.
In the morning she found herself in her own bed. There was no
handkerchief or anything else on her hand, only a sweet odour lingered
about it. The swelling had all gone down; the prick of the brooch had
vanished--in fact, her hand was perfectly well.
CHAPTER 12
A Short Chapter About Curdie
Curdie spent many nights in the mine. His father and he had taken Mrs.
Peterson into the secret, for they knew mother could hold her tongue,
which was more than could be said of all the miners' wives.
But Curdie did not tell her that every night he spent in the mine, part
of it went in earning a new red petticoat for her.
Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are nice and
good more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and no
less. She made and kept a little heaven in that poor cottage on the
high hillside for her husband and son to go home to out of the low and
rather dreary earth in which they worked. I doubt if the princess was
very much happier even in the arms of her huge great-grandmother than
Peter and Curdie were in the arms of Mrs. Peterson. True, her hands
were hard and chapped and large, but it was with work for them; and
therefore, in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the more
beautiful. And if Curdie worked hard to get her a petticoat, she
worked hard every day to get him comforts which he would have missed
much more than she would a new petticoat even in winter. Not that she
and Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: that
would have spoiled everything.
When left alone in the mine Curdie always worked on for an hour or two
at first, following the lode which, according to Glump, would lead at
last into the deserted habitation. After that, he would set out on a
reconnoitring expedition. In order to manage this, or rather the
return from it, better than the first time, he had bought a huge ball
of fine string, having learned the trick from Hop-o'-my-Thumb, whose
history his mother had often told him. Not that Hop-o'-my-Thumb had
ever used a ball of string--I should be sorry to be supposed so far out
in my classics--but the principle was the same as that of the pebbles.
The end of this string he fastened to his pickaxe, which figured no bad
anchor, and then, with the ball in his hand, unrolling it as he went,
set out in the dark through the natural gangs of the goblins'
territory. The first night or two he came upon nothing worth
remembering; saw only a little of the home-life of the cobs in the
various caves they called houses; failed in coming upon anything to
cast light upon the foregoing design which kept the inundation for the
present in the background. But at length, I think on the third or
fourth night, he found, partly guided by the noise of their implements,
a company of evidently the best sappers and miners amongst them, hard
at work. What were they about? It could not well be the inundation,
seeing that had in the meantime been postponed to something else. Then
what was it? He lurked and watched, every now and then in the greatest
risk of being detected, but without success. He had again and again to
retreat in haste, a proceeding rendered the more difficult that he had
to gather up his string as he returned upon its course. It was not
that he was afraid of the goblins, but that he was afraid of their
finding out that they were watched, which might have prevented the
discovery at which he aimed. Sometimes his haste had to be such that,
when he reached home towards morning, his string, for lack of time to
wind it up as he 'dodged the cobs', would be in what seemed most
hopeless entanglement; but after a good sleep, though a short one, he
always found his mother had got it right again. There it was, wound in
a most respectable ball, ready for use the moment he should want it!
'I can't think how you do it, mother,' he would say.
'I follow the thread,' she would answer--'just as you do in the mine.'
She never had more to say about it; but the less clever she was with
her words, the more clever she was with her hands; and the less his
mother said, the more Curdie believed she had to say. But still he had
made no discovery as to what the goblin miners were about.
CHAPTER 13
The Cobs' Creatures
About this time the gentlemen whom the king had left behind him to
watch over the princess had each occasion to doubt the testimony of his
own eyes, for more than strange were the objects to which they would
bear witness. They were of one sort--creatures--but so grotesque and
misshapen as to be more like a child's drawings upon his slate than
anything natural. They saw them only at night, while on guard about
the house. The testimony of the man who first reported having seen one
of them was that, as he was walking slowly round the house, while yet
in the shadow, he caught sight of a creature standing on its hind legs
in the moonlight, with its forefeet upon a window-ledge, staring in at
the window. Its body might have been that of a dog or wolf, he
thought, but he declared on his honour that its head was twice the size
it ought to have been for the size of its body, and as round as a ball,
while the face, which it turned upon him as it fled, was more like one
carved by a boy upon the turnip inside which he is going to put a
candle than anything else he could think of. It rushed into the
garden. He sent an arrow after it, and thought he must have struck it;
for it gave an unearthly howl, and he could not find his arrow any more
than the beast, although he searched all about the place where it
vanished. They laughed at him until he was driven to hold his tongue,
and said he must have taken too long a pull at the ale-jug.
But before two nights were over he had one to side with him, for he,
too, had seen something strange, only quite different from that
reported by the other. The description the second man gave of the
creature he had seen was yet more grotesque and unlikely. They were
both laughed at by the rest; but night after night another came over to
their side, until at last there was only one left to laugh at all his
companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the
third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the
house, in such an agitation that they declared--for it was their turn
now--that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the
rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the
garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures,
to not one of which they could give a name, and not one of which was
like another, hideous and ludicrous at once, gambolling on the lawn in
the moonlight. The supernatural or rather subnatural ugliness of their
faces, the length of legs and necks in some, the apparent absence of
both or either in others, made the spectators, although in one consent
as to what they saw, yet doubtful, as I have said, of the evidence of
their own eyes--and ears as well; for the noises they made, although
not loud, were as uncouth and varied as their forms, and could be
described neither as grunts nor squeaks nor roars nor howls nor barks
nor yells nor screams nor croaks nor hisses nor mews nor shrieks, but
only as something like all of them mingled in one horrible dissonance.
Keeping in the shade, the watchers had a few moments to recover
themselves before the hideous assembly suspected their presence; but
all at once, as if by common consent, they scampered off in the
direction of a great rock, and vanished before the men had come to
themselves sufficiently to think of following them.
My readers will suspect what these were; but I will now give them full
information concerning them. They were, of course, household animals
belonging to the goblins, whose ancestors had taken their ancestors
many centuries before from the upper regions of light into the lower
regions of darkness. The original stocks of these horrible creatures
were very much the same as the animals now seen about farms and homes
in the country, with the exception of a few of them, which had been
wild creatures, such as foxes, and indeed wolves and small bears, which
the goblins, from their proclivity towards the animal creation, had
caught when cubs and tamed. But in the course of time all had
undergone even greater changes than had passed upon their owners. They
had altered--that is, their descendants had altered--into such
creatures as I have not attempted to describe except in the vaguest
manner--the various parts of their bodies assuming, in an apparently
arbitrary and self-willed manner, the most abnormal developments.
Indeed, so little did any distinct type predominate in some of the
bewildering results, that you could only have guessed at any known
animal as the original, and even then, what likeness remained would be
more one of general expression than of definable conformation. But
what increased the gruesomeness tenfold was that, from constant
domestic, or indeed rather family association with the goblins, their
countenances had grown in grotesque resemblance to the human.
No one understands animals who does not see that every one of them,
even amongst the fishes, it may be with a dimness and vagueness
infinitely remote, yet shadows the human: in the case of these the
human resemblance had greatly increased: while their owners had sunk
towards them, they had risen towards their owners. But the conditions
of subterranean life being equally unnatural for both, while the
goblins were worse, the creatures had not improved by the
approximation, and its result would have appeared far more ludicrous
than consoling to the warmest lover of animal nature. I shall now
explain how it was that just then these animals began to show
themselves about the king's country house.
The goblins, as Curdie had discovered, were mining on--at work both day
and night, in divisions, urging the scheme after which he lay in wait.
In the course of their tunnelling they had broken into the channel of a
small stream, but the break being in the top of it, no water had
escaped to interfere with their work. Some of the creatures, hovering
as they often did about their masters, had found the hole, and had,
with the curiosity which had grown to a passion from the restraints of
their unnatural circumstances, proceeded to explore the channel. The
stream was the same which ran out by the seat on which Irene and her
king-papa had sat as I have told, and the goblin creatures found it
jolly fun to get out for a romp on a smooth lawn such as they had never
seen in all their poor miserable lives. But although they had partaken
enough of the nature of their owners to delight in annoying and
alarming any of the people whom they met on the mountain, they were, of
course, incapable of designs of their own, or of intentionally
furthering those of their masters.
For several nights after the men-at-arms were at length of one mind as
to the fact of the visits of some horrible creatures, whether bodily or
spectral they could not yet say, they watched with special attention
that part of the garden where they had last seen them. Perhaps indeed
they gave in consequence too little attention to the house. But the
creatures were too cunning to be easily caught; nor were the watchers
quick-eyed enough to descry the head, or the keen eyes in it, which,
from the opening whence the stream issued, would watch them in turn,
ready, the moment they should leave the lawn, to report the place clear.
CHAPTER 14
That Night Week
During the whole of the week Irene had been thinking every other moment
of her promise to the old lady, although even now she could not feel
quite sure that she had not been dreaming. Could it really be that an
old lady lived up in the top of the house, with pigeons and a
spinning-wheel, and a lamp that never went out? She was, however, none
the less determined, on the coming Friday, to ascend the three stairs,
walk through the passages with the many doors, and try to find the
tower in which she had either seen or dreamed her grandmother.
Her nurse could not help wondering what had come to the child--she
would sit so thoughtfully silent, and even in the midst of a game with
her would so suddenly fall into a dreamy mood. But Irene took care to
betray nothing, whatever efforts Lootie might make to get at her
thoughts. And Lootie had to say to herself: 'What an odd child she
is!' and give it up.
At length the longed-for Friday arrived, and lest Lootie should be
moved to watch her, Irene endeavoured to keep herself as quiet as
possible. In the afternoon she asked for her doll's house, and went on
arranging and rearranging the various rooms and their inhabitants for a
whole hour. Then she gave a sigh and threw herself back in her chair.
One of the dolls would not sit, and another would not stand, and they
were all very tiresome. Indeed, there was one would not even lie down,
which was too bad. But it was now getting dark, and the darker it got
the more excited Irene became, and the more she felt it necessary to be
composed.
'I see you want your tea, princess,' said the nurse: 'I will go and get
it. The room feels close: I will open the window a little. The evening
is mild: it won't hurt you.'
'There's no fear of that, Lootie,' said Irene, wishing she had put off
going for the tea till it was darker, when she might have made her
attempt with every advantage.
I fancy Lootie was longer in returning than she had intended; for when
Irene, who had been lost in thought, looked up, she saw it was nearly
dark, and at the same moment caught sight of a pair of eyes, bright
with a green light, glowering at her through the open window. The next
instant something leaped into the room. It was like a cat, with legs
as long as a horse's, Irene said, but its body no bigger and its legs
no thicker than those of a cat. She was too frightened to cry out, but
not too frightened to jump from her chair and run from the room.
It is plain enough to every one of my readers what she ought to have
done--and indeed, Irene thought of it herself; but when she came to the
foot of the old stair, just outside the nursery door, she imagined the
creature running up those long ascents after her, and pursuing her
through the dark passages--which, after all, might lead to no tower!
That thought was too much. Her heart failed her, and, turning from the
stair, she rushed along to the hall, whence, finding the front door
open, she darted into the court pursued--at least she thought so--by
the creature. No one happening to see her, on she ran, unable to think
for fear, and ready to run anywhere to elude the awful creature with
the stilt-legs. Not daring to look behind her, she rushed straight out
of the gate and up the mountain. It was foolish indeed--thus to run
farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been
seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in his leisure;
but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we
are afraid of.
The princess was soon out of breath with running uphill; but she ran
on, for she fancied the horrible creature just behind her, forgetting
that, had it been after her such long legs as those must have overtaken
her long ago. At last she could run no longer, and fell, unable even
to scream, by the roadside, where she lay for some time half dead with
terror. But finding nothing lay hold of her, and her breath beginning
to come back, she ventured at length to get half up and peer anxiously
about her. It was now so dark she could see nothing. Not a single
star was out. She could not even tell in what direction the house lay,
and between her and home she fancied the dreadful creature lying ready
to pounce upon her. She saw now that she ought to have run up the
stairs at once. It was well she did not scream; for, although very few
of the goblins had come out for weeks, a stray idler or two might have
heard her. She sat down upon a stone, and nobody but one who had done
something wrong could have been more miserable. She had quite
forgotten her promise to visit her grandmother. A raindrop fell on her
face. She looked up, and for a moment her terror was lost in
astonishment. At first she thought the rising moon had left her place,
and drawn nigh to see what could be the matter with the little girl,
sitting alone, without hat or cloak, on the dark bare mountain; but she
soon saw she was mistaken, for there was no light on the ground at her
feet, and no shadow anywhere. But a great silver globe was hanging in
the air; and as she gazed at the lovely thing, her courage revived. If
she were but indoors again, she would fear nothing, not even the
terrible creature with the long legs! But how was she to find her way
back? What could that light be? Could it be--? No, it couldn't. But
what if it should be--yes--it must be--her great-great-grandmother's
lamp, which guided her pigeons home through the darkest night! She
jumped up: she had but to keep that light in view and she must find the
house. Her heart grew strong. Speedily, yet softly, she walked down
the hill, hoping to pass the watching creature unseen. Dark as it was,
there was little danger now of choosing the wrong road. And--which was
most strange--the light that filled her eyes from the lamp, instead of
blinding them for a moment to the object upon which they next fell,
enabled her for a moment to see it, despite the darkness. By looking
at the lamp and then dropping her eyes, she could see the road for a
yard or two in front of her, and this saved her from several falls, for
the road was very rough. But all at once, to her dismay, it vanished,
and the terror of the beast, which had left her the moment she began to
return, again laid hold of her heart. The same instant, however, she
caught the light of the windows, and knew exactly where she was. It
was too dark to run, but she made what haste she could, and reached the
gate in safety. She found the house door still open, ran through the
hall, and, without even looking into the nursery, bounded straight up
the stair, and the next, and the next; then turning to the right, ran
through the long avenue of silent rooms, and found her way at once to
the door at the foot of the tower stair.
When first the nurse missed her, she fancied she was playing her a
trick, and for some time took no trouble about her; but at last,
getting frightened, she had begun to search; and when the princess
entered, the whole household was hither and thither over the house,
hunting for her. A few seconds after she reached the stair of the
tower they had even begun to search the neglected rooms, in which they
would never have thought of looking had they not already searched every
other place they could think of in vain. But by this time she was
knocking at the old lady's door.
CHAPTER 15
Woven and Then Spun
'Come in, Irene,' said the silvery voice of her grandmother.
The princess opened the door and peeped in. But the room was quite
dark and there was no sound of the spinning-wheel. She grew frightened
once more, thinking that, although the room was there, the old lady
might be a dream after all. Every little girl knows how dreadful it is
to find a room empty where she thought somebody was; but Irene had to
fancy for a moment that the person she came to find was nowhere at all.
She remembered, however, that at night she spun only in the moonlight,
and concluded that must be why there was no sweet, bee-like humming:
the old lady might be somewhere in the darkness. Before she had time
to think another thought, she heard her voice again, saying as before:
'Come in, Irene.' From the sound, she understood at once that she was
not in the room beside her. Perhaps she was in her bedroom. She
turned across the passage, feeling her way to the other door. When her
hand fell on the lock, again the old lady spoke:
'Shut the other door behind you, Irene. I always close the door of my
workroom when I go to my chamber.'
Irene wondered to hear her voice so plainly through the door: having
shut the other, she opened it and went in. Oh, what a lovely haven to
reach from the darkness and fear through which she had come! The soft
light made her feel as if she were going into the heart of the milkiest
pearl; while the blue walls and their silver stars for a moment
perplexed her with the fancy that they were in reality the sky which
she had left outside a minute ago covered with rainclouds.
'I've lighted a fire for you, Irene: you're cold and wet,' said her
grandmother.
Then Irene looked again, and saw that what she had taken for a huge
bouquet of red roses on a low stand against the wall was in fact a fire
which burned in the shapes of the loveliest and reddest roses, glowing
gorgeously between the heads and wings of two cherubs of shining
silver. And when she came nearer, she found that the smell of roses
with which the room was filled came from the fire-roses on the hearth.
Her grandmother was dressed in the loveliest pale blue velvet, over
which her hair, no longer white, but of a rich golden colour, streamed
like a cataract, here falling in dull gathered heaps, there rushing
away in smooth shining falls. And ever as she looked, the hair seemed
pouring down from her head and vanishing in a golden mist ere it
reached the floor. It flowed from under the edge of a circle of
shining silver, set with alternated pearls and opals. On her dress was
no ornament whatever, neither was there a ring on her hand, or a
necklace or carcanet about her neck. But her slippers glimmered with
the light of the Milky Way, for they were covered with seed-pearls and
opals in one mass. Her face was that of a woman of three-and-twenty.
The princess was so bewildered with astonishment and admiration that
she could hardly thank her, and drew nigh with timidity, feeling dirty
and uncomfortable. The lady was seated on a low chair by the side of
the fire, with hands outstretched to take her, but the princess hung
back with a troubled smile.
'Why, what's the matter?' asked her grandmother. 'You haven't been
doing anything wrong--I know that by your face, though it is rather
miserable. What's the matter, my dear?'
And she still held out her arms.
'Dear grandmother,' said Irene, 'I'm not so sure that I haven't done
something wrong. I ought to have run up to you at once when the
long-legged cat came in at the window, instead of running out on the
mountain and making myself such a fright.'
'You were taken by surprise, my child, and you are not so likely to do
it again. It is when people do wrong things wilfully that they are the
more likely to do them again. Come.'
And still she held out her arms.
'But, grandmother, you're so beautiful and grand with your crown on;
and I am so dirty with mud and rain! I should quite spoil your
beautiful blue dress.'
With a merry little laugh the lady sprung from her chair, more lightly
far than Irene herself could, caught the child to her bosom, and,
kissing the tear-stained face over and over, sat down with her in her
lap.
'Oh, grandmother! You'll make yourself such a mess!' cried Irene,
clinging to her.
'You darling! do you think I care more for my dress than for my little
girl? Besides--look here.'
As she spoke she set her down, and Irene saw to her dismay that the
lovely dress was covered with the mud of her fall on the mountain road.
But the lady stooped to the fire, and taking from it, by the stalk in
her fingers, one of the burning roses, passed it once and again and a
third time over the front of her dress; and when Irene looked, not a
single stain was to be discovered.
'There!' said her grandmother, 'you won't mind coming to me now?'
But Irene again hung back, eying the flaming rose which the lady held
in her hand.
'You're not afraid of the rose--are you?' she said, about to throw it
on the hearth again.
'Oh! don't, please!' cried Irene. 'Won't you hold it to my frock and
my hands and my face? And I'm afraid my feet and my knees want it too.'
'No, answered her grandmother, smiling a little sadly, as she threw the
rose from her; 'it is too hot for you yet. It would set your frock in
a flame. Besides, I don't want to make you clean tonight.
I want your nurse and the rest of the people to see you as you are, for
you will have to tell them how you ran away for fear of the long-legged
cat. I should like to wash you, but they would not believe you then.
Do you see that bath behind you?'
The princess looked, and saw a large oval tub of silver, shining
brilliantly in the light of the wonderful lamp.
'Go and look into it,' said the lady.
Irene went, and came back very silent with her eyes shining.
'What did you see?' asked her grandmother.
'The sky, and the moon and the stars,' she answered. 'It looked as if
there was no bottom to it.'
The lady smiled a pleased satisfied smile, and was silent also for a
few moments. Then she said:
'Any time you want a bath, come to me. I know YOU have a bath every
morning, but sometimes you want one at night, too.'
'Thank you, grandmother; I will--I will indeed,' answered Irene, and
was again silent for some moments thinking. Then she said: 'How was
it, grandmother, that I saw your beautiful lamp--not the light of it
only--but the great round silvery lamp itself, hanging alone in the
great open air, high up? It was your lamp I saw--wasn't it?'
'Yes, my child--it was my lamp.'
'Then how was it? I don't see a window all round.'
'When I please I can make the lamp shine through the walls--shine so
strong that it melts them away from before the sight, and shows itself
as you saw it. But, as I told you, it is not everybody can see it.'
'How is it that I can, then? I'm sure I don't know.'
'It is a gift born with you. And one day I hope everybody will have
it.'
'But how do you make it shine through the walls?'
'Ah! that you would not understand if I were to try ever so much to
make you--not yet--not yet. But,' added the lady, rising, 'you must
sit in my chair while I get you the present I have been preparing for
you. I told you my spinning was for you. It is finished now, and I am
going to fetch it. I have been keeping it warm under one of my
brooding pigeons.'
Irene sat down in the low chair, and her grandmother left her, shutting
the door behind her. The child sat gazing, now at the rose fire, now
at the starry walls, now at the silver light; and a great quietness
grew in her heart. If all the long-legged cats in the world had come
rushing at her then she would not have been afraid of them for a
moment. How this was she could not tell--she only knew there was no
fear in her, and everything was so right and safe that it could not get
in.
She had been gazing at the lovely lamp for some minutes fixedly:
turning her eyes, she found the wall had vanished, for she was looking
out on the dark cloudy night. But though she heard the wind blowing,
none of it blew upon her. In a moment more the clouds themselves
parted, or rather vanished like the wall, and she looked straight into
the starry herds, flashing gloriously in the dark blue. It was but for
a moment. The clouds gathered again and shut out the stars; the wall
gathered again and shut out the clouds; and there stood the lady beside
her with the loveliest smile on her face, and a shimmering ball in her
hand, about the size of a pigeon's egg.
'There, Irene; there is my work for you!' she said, holding out the
ball to the princess.
She took it in her hand, and looked at it all over. It sparkled a
little, and shone here and there, but not much. It was of a sort of
grey-whiteness, something like spun glass.
'Is this all your spinning, grandmother?' she asked.
'All since you came to the house. There is more there than you think.'
'How pretty it is! What am I to do with it, please?'
'That I will now explain to you,' answered the lady, turning from her
and going to her cabinet. She came back with a small ring in her hand.
Then she took the ball from Irene's, and did something with the
ring--Irene could not tell what.
'Give me your hand,' she said. Irene held up her right hand.
'Yes, that is the hand I want,' said the lady, and put the ring on the
forefinger of it.
'What a beautiful ring!' said Irene. 'What is the stone called?'
'It is a fire-opal.' 'Please, am I to keep it?'
'Always.' 'Oh, thank you, grandmother! It's prettier than anything I
ever saw, except those--of all colours-in your--Please, is that your
crown?'
'Yes, it is my crown. The stone in your ring is of the same sort--only
not so good. It has only red, but mine have all colours, you see.'
'Yes, grandmother. I will take such care of it! But--' she added,
hesitating.
'But what?' asked her grandmother.
'What am I to say when Lootie asks me where I got it?'
'You will ask her where you got it,' answered the lady smiling.
'I don't see how I can do that.'
'You will, though.'
'Of course I will, if you say so. But, you know, I can't pretend not
to know.'
'Of course not. But don't trouble yourself about it. You will see
when the time comes.'
So saying, the lady turned, and threw the little ball into the rose
fire.
'Oh, grandmother!' exclaimed Irene; 'I thought you had spun it for me.'
'So I did, my child. And you've got it.'
'No; it's burnt in the fire!'
The lady put her hand in the fire, brought out the ball, glimmering as
before, and held it towards her. Irene stretched out her hand to take
it, but the lady turned and, going to her cabinet, opened a drawer, and
laid the ball in it.
'Have I done anything to vex you, grandmother?' said Irene pitifully.
'No, my darling. But you must understand that no one ever gives
anything to another properly and really without keeping it. That ball
is yours.'
'Oh! I'm not to take it with me! You are going to keep it for me!'
'You are to take it with you. I've fastened the end of it to the ring
on your finger.'
Irene looked at the ring.
'I can't see it there, grandmother,' she said.
'Feel--a little way from the ring--towards the cabinet,' said the lady.
'Oh! I do feel it!' exclaimed the princess. 'But I can't see it,' she
added, looking close to her outstretched hand.
'No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it.
Now you can fancy how much spinning that took, although it does seem
such a little ball.'
'But what use can I make of it, if it lies in your cabinet?'
'That is what I will explain to you. It would be of no use to you--it
wouldn't be yours at all if it did not lie in my cabinet. Now listen.
If ever you find yourself in any danger--such, for example, as you were
in this same evening--you must take off your ring and put it under the
pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your finger, the same that wore
the ring, upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you.'
'Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, grandmother, I know!'
'Yes. But, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed,
and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that
while you hold it, I hold it too.'
'It is very wonderful!' said Irene thoughtfully. Then suddenly
becoming aware, she jumped up, crying:
'Oh, grandmother! here have I been sitting all this time in your chair,
and you standing! I beg your pardon.'
The lady laid her hand on her shoulder, and said:
'Sit down again, Irene. Nothing pleases me better than to see anyone
sit in my chair. I am only too glad to stand so long as anyone will
sit in it.'
'How kind of you!' said the princess, and sat down again.
'It makes me happy,' said the lady.
'But,' said Irene, still puzzled, 'won't the thread get in somebody's
way and be broken, if the one end is fast to my ring, and the other
laid in your cabinet?'
'You will find all that arrange itself. I am afraid it is time for you
to go.'
'Mightn't I stay and sleep with you tonight, grandmother?' 'No, not
tonight. If I had meant you to stay tonight, I should have given you a
bath; but you know everybody in the house is miserable about you, and
it would be cruel to keep them so all night. You must go downstairs.'
'I'm so glad, grandmother, you didn't say "Go home," for this is my
home. Mayn't I call this my home?'
'You may, my child. And I trust you will always think it your home.
Now come. I must take you back without anyone seeing you.'
'Please, I want to ask you one question more,' said Irene. 'Is it
because you have your crown on that you look so young?'
'No, child,' answered her grandmother; 'it is because I felt so young
this evening that I put my crown on. And I thought you would like to
see your old grandmother in her best.'
'Why do you call yourself old? You're not old, grandmother.'
'I am very old indeed. It is so silly of people--I don't mean you, for
you are such a tiny, and couldn't know better--but it is so silly of
people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and
feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness!
It is so silly! Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that. The
right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear
eyes and strong painless limbs. I am older than you are able to think,
and--'
'And look at you, grandmother!' cried Irene, jumping up and flinging
her arms about her neck. 'I won't be so silly again, I promise you.
At least--I'm rather afraid to promise--but if I am, I promise to be
sorry for it--I do. I wish I were as old as you, grandmother. I don't
think you are ever afraid of anything.'
'Not for long, at least, my child. Perhaps by the time I am two
thousand years of age, I shall, indeed, never be afraid of anything.
But I confess I have sometimes been afraid about my children--sometimes
about you, Irene.'
'Oh, I'm so sorry, grandmother! Tonight, I suppose, you mean.'
'Yes--a little tonight; but a good deal when you had all but made up
your mind that I was a dream, and no real great-great-grandmother. You
must not suppose I am blaming you for that. I dare say you could not
help it.'
'I don't know, grandmother,' said the princess, beginning to cry. 'I
can't always do myself as I should like. And I don't always try. I'm
very sorry anyhow.'
The lady stooped, lifted her in her arms, and sat down with her in her
chair, holding her close to her bosom. In a few minutes the princess
had sobbed herself to sleep. How long she slept I do not know. When
she came to herself she was sitting in her own high chair at the
nursery table, with her doll's house before her.
CHAPTER 16
The Ring
The same moment her nurse came into the room, sobbing. When she saw
her sitting there she started back with a loud cry of amazement and
joy. Then running to her, she caught her in her arms and covered her
with kisses.
'My precious darling princess! where have you been? What has happened
to you? We've all been crying our eyes out, and searching the house
from top to bottom for you.'
'Not quite from the top,' thought Irene to herself; and she might have
added, 'not quite to the bottom', perhaps, if she had known all. But
the one she would not, and the other she could not say. 'Oh, Lootie!
I've had such a dreadful adventure!' she replied, and told her all
about the cat with the long legs, and how she ran out upon the
mountain, and came back again. But she said nothing of her grandmother
or her lamp.
'And there we've been searching for you all over the house for more
than an hour and a half!' exclaimed the nurse. 'But that's no matter,
now we've got you! Only, princess, I must say,' she added, her mood
changing, 'what you ought to have done was to call for your own Lootie
to come and help you, instead of running out of the house, and up the
mountain, in that wild, I must say, foolish fashion.'
'Well, Lootie,' said Irene quietly, 'perhaps if you had a big cat, all
legs, running at you, you might not exactly know what was the wisest
thing to do at the moment.'
'I wouldn't run up the mountain, anyhow,' returned Lootie.
'Not if you had time to think about it. But when those creatures came
at you that night on the mountain, you were so frightened yourself that
you lost your way home.'
This put a stop to Lootie's reproaches. She had been on the point of
saying that the long-legged cat must have been a twilight fancy of the
princess's, but the memory of the horrors of that night, and of the
talking-to which the king had given her in consequence, prevented her
from saying what after all she did not half believe--having a strong
suspicion that the cat was a goblin; for she knew nothing of the
difference between the goblins and their creatures: she counted them
all just goblins.
Without another word she went and got some fresh tea and bread and
butter for the princess. Before she returned, the whole household,
headed by the housekeeper, burst into the nursery to exult over their
darling. The gentlemen-at-arms followed, and were ready enough to
believe all she told them about the long-legged cat. Indeed, though
wise enough to say nothing about it, they remembered, with no little
horror, just such a creature amongst those they had surprised at their
gambols upon the princess's lawn.
In their own hearts they blamed themselves for not having kept better
watch. And their captain gave orders that from this night the front
door and all the windows on the ground floor should be locked
immediately the sun set, and opened after upon no pretence whatever.
The men-at-arms redoubled their vigilance, and for some time there was
no further cause of alarm.
When the princess woke the next morning, her nurse was bending over
her. 'How your ring does glow this morning, princess!--just like a
fiery rose!' she said.
'Does it, Lootie?' returned Irene. 'Who gave me the ring, Lootie? I
know I've had it a long time, but where did I get it? I don't
remember.'
'I think it must have been your mother gave it you, princess; but
really, for as long as you have worn it, I don't remember that ever I
heard,' answered her nurse.
'I will ask my king-papa the next time he comes,' said Irene.
CHAPTER 17
Springtime
The spring so dear to all creatures, young and old, came at last, and
before the first few days of it had gone, the king rode through its
budding valleys to see his little daughter. He had been in a distant
part of his dominions all the winter, for he was not in the habit of
stopping in one great city, or of visiting only his favourite country
houses, but he moved from place to place, that all his people might
know him. Wherever he journeyed, he kept a constant look-out for the
ablest and best men to put into office; and wherever he found himself
mistaken, and those he had appointed incapable or unjust, he removed
them at once. Hence you see it was his care of the people that kept
him from seeing his princess so often as he would have liked. You may
wonder why he did not take her about with him; but there were several
reasons against his doing so, and I suspect her great-great-grandmother
had had a principal hand in preventing it. Once more Irene heard the
bugle-blast, and once more she was at the gate to meet her father as he
rode up on his great white horse.
After they had been alone for a little while, she thought of what she
had resolved to ask him.
'Please, king-papa,' she said, 'Will you tell me where I got this
pretty ring? I can't remember.'
The king looked at it. A strange beautiful smile spread like sunshine
over his face, and an answering smile, but at the same time a
questioning one, spread like moonlight over Irene's. 'It was your
queen-mamma's once,' he said.
'And why isn't it hers now?' asked Irene.
'She does not want it now,' said the king, looking grave.
'Why doesn't she want it now?'
'Because she's gone where all those rings are made.'
'And when shall I see her?' asked the princess.
'Not for some time yet,' answered the king, and the tears came into his
eyes.
Irene did not remember her mother and did not know why her father
looked so, and why the tears came in his eyes; but she put her arms
round his neck and kissed him, and asked no more questions.
The king was much disturbed on hearing the report of the
gentlemen-at-arms concerning the creatures they had seen; and I presume
would have taken Irene with him that very day, but for what the
presence of the ring on her finger assured him of. About an hour
before he left, Irene saw him go up the old stair; and he did not come
down again till they were just ready to start; and she thought with
herself that he had been up to see the old lady. When he went away he
left other six gentlemen behind him, that there might be six of them
always on guard.
And now, in the lovely spring weather, Irene was out on the mountain
the greater part of the day. In the warmer hollows there were lovely
primroses, and not so many that she ever got tired of them. As often
as she saw a new one opening an eye of light in the blind earth, she
would clap her hands with gladness, and unlike some children I know,
instead of pulling it, would touch it as tenderly as if it had been a
new baby, and, having made its acquaintance, would leave it as happy as
she found it. She treated the plants on which they grew like birds'
nests; every fresh flower was like a new little bird to her. She would
pay visits to all the flower-nests she knew, remembering each by
itself. She would go down on her hands and knees beside one and say:
'Good morning! Are you all smelling very sweet this morning?
Good-bye!' and then she would go to another nest, and say the same. It
was a favourite amusement with her. There were many flowers up and
down, and she loved them all, but the primroses were her favourites.
'They're not too shy, and they're not a bit forward,' she would say to
Lootie.
There were goats too about, over the mountain, and when the little kids
came she was as pleased with them as with the flowers. The goats
belonged to the miners mostly-a few of them to Curdie's mother; but
there were a good many wild ones that seemed to belong to nobody.
These the goblins counted theirs, and it was upon them partly that they
lived. They set snares and dug pits for them; and did not scruple to
take what tame ones happened to be caught; but they did not try to
steal them in any other manner, because they were afraid of the dogs
the hill-people kept to watch them, for the knowing dogs always tried
to bite their feet. But the goblins had a kind of sheep of their
own--very queer creatures, which they drove out to feed at night, and
the other goblin creatures were wise enough to keep good watch over
them, for they knew they should have their bones by and by.
CHAPTER 18
Curdie's Clue
Curdie was as watchful as ever, but was almost getting tired of his ill
success. Every other night or so he followed the goblins about, as
they went on digging and boring, and getting as near them as he could,
watched them from behind stones and rocks; but as yet he seemed no
nearer finding out what they had in view. As at first, he always kept
hold of the end of his string, while his pickaxe, left just outside the
hole by which he entered the goblins' country from the mine, continued
to serve as an anchor and hold fast the other end. The goblins,
hearing no more noise in that quarter, had ceased to apprehend an
immediate invasion, and kept no watch.
One night, after dodging about and listening till he was nearly falling
asleep with weariness, he began to roll up his ball, for he had
resolved to go home to bed. It was not long, however, before he began
to feel bewildered. One after another he passed goblin houses, caves,
that is, occupied by goblin families, and at length was sure they were
many more than he had passed as he came. He had to use great caution
to pass unseen--they lay so close together. Could his string have led
him wrong? He still followed winding it, and still it led him into
more thickly populated quarters, until he became quite uneasy, and
indeed apprehensive; for although he was not afraid of the cobs, he was
afraid of not finding his way out. But what could he do? It was of no
use to sit down and wait for the morning--the morning made no
difference here. It was dark, and always dark; and if his string
failed him he was helpless. He might even arrive within a yard of the
mine and never know it. Seeing he could do nothing better he would at
least find where the end of his string was, and, if possible, how it
had come to play him such a trick. He knew by the size of the ball
that he was getting pretty near the last of it, when he began to feel a
tugging and pulling at it. What could it mean? Turning a sharp
corner, he thought he heard strange sounds. These grew, as he went on,
to a scuffling and growling and squeaking; and the noise increased,
until, turning a second sharp corner, he found himself in the midst of
it, and the same moment tumbled over a wallowing mass, which he knew
must be a knot of the cobs' creatures. Before he could recover his
feet, he had caught some great scratches on his face and several severe
bites on his legs and arms. But as he scrambled to get up, his hand
fell upon his pickaxe, and before the horrid beasts could do him any
serious harm, he was laying about with it right and left in the dark.
The hideous cries which followed gave him the satisfaction of knowing
that he had punished some of them pretty smartly for their rudeness,
and by their scampering and their retreating howls, he perceived that
he had routed them. He stood for a little, weighing his battle-axe in
his hand as if it had been the most precious lump of metal--but indeed
no lump of gold itself could have been so precious at the time as that
common tool--then untied the end of the string from it, put the ball in
his pocket, and still stood thinking. It was clear that the cobs'
creatures had found his axe, had between them carried it off, and had
so led him he knew not where. But for all his thinking he could not
tell what he ought to do, until suddenly he became aware of a glimmer
of light in the distance. Without a moment's hesitation he set out for
it, as fast as the unknown and rugged way would permit. Yet again
turning a corner, led by the dim light, he spied something quite new in
his experience of the underground regions--a small irregular shape of
something shining. Going up to it, he found it was a piece of mica, or
Muscovy glass, called sheep-silver in Scotland, and the light flickered
as if from a fire behind it. After trying in vain for some time to
discover an entrance to the place where it was burning, he came at
length to a small chamber in which an opening, high in the wall,
revealed a glow beyond. To this opening he managed to scramble up, and
then he saw a strange sight.
Below sat a little group of goblins around a fire, the smoke of which
vanished in the darkness far aloft. The sides of the cave were full of
shining minerals like those of the palace hall; and the company was
evidently of a superior order, for every one wore stones about head, or
arms, or waist, shining dull gorgeous colours in the light of the fire.
Nor had Curdie looked long before he recognized the king himself, and
found that he had made his way into the inner apartment of the royal
family. He had never had such a good chance of hearing something. He
crept through the hole as softly as he could, scrambled a good way down
the wall towards them without attracting attention, and then sat down
and listened. The king, evidently the queen, and probably the crown
prince and the Prime Minister were talking together. He was sure of
the queen by her shoes, for as she warmed her feet at the fire, he saw
them quite plainly.
'That will be fun!' said the one he took for the crown prince. It was
the first whole sentence he heard.
'I don't see why you should think it such a grand affair!' said his
stepmother, tossing her head backward.
'You must remember, my spouse,' interposed His Majesty, as if making
excuse for his son, 'he has got the same blood in him. His mother--'
'Don't talk to me of his mother! You positively encourage his
unnatural fancies. Whatever belongs to that mother ought to be cut out
of him.'
'You forget yourself, my dear!' said the king.
'I don't,' said the queen, 'nor you either. If you expect me to
approve of such coarse tastes, you will find yourself mistaken. I
don't wear shoes for nothing.'
'You must acknowledge, however,' the king said, with a little groan,
'that this at least is no whim of Harelip's, but a matter of State
policy. You are well aware that his gratification comes purely from
the pleasure of sacrificing himself to the public good.
Does it not, Harelip?'
'Yes, father; of course it does. Only it will be nice to make her cry.
I'll have the skin taken off between her toes, and tie them up till
they grow together. Then her feet will be like other people's, and
there will be no occasion for her to wear shoes.'
'Do you mean to insinuate I've got toes, you unnatural wretch?' cried
the queen; and she moved angrily towards Harelip. The councillor,
however, who was betwixt them, leaned forward so as to prevent her
touching him, but only as if to address the prince.
'Your Royal Highness,' he said, 'possibly requires to be reminded that
you have got three toes yourself--one on one foot, two on the other.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' shouted the queen triumphantly.
The councillor, encouraged by this mark of favour, went on.
'It seems to me, Your Royal Highness, it would greatly endear you to
your future people, proving to them that you are not the less one of
themselves that you had the misfortune to be born of a sun-mother, if
you were to command upon yourself the comparatively slight operation
which, in a more extended form, you so wisely meditate with regard to
your future princess.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed the queen louder than before, and the king and
the minister joined in the laugh. Harelip growled, and for a few
moments the others continued to express their enjoyment of his
discomfiture.
The queen was the only one Curdie could see with any distinctness. She
sat sideways to him, and the light of the fire shone full upon her
face. He could not consider her handsome. Her nose was certainly
broader at the end than its extreme length, and her eyes, instead of
being horizontal, were set up like two perpendicular eggs, one on the
broad, the other on the small end. Her mouth was no bigger than a
small buttonhole until she laughed, when it stretched from ear to
ear--only, to be sure, her ears were very nearly in the middle of her
cheeks.
Anxious to hear everything they might say, Curdie ventured to slide
down a smooth part of the rock just under him, to a projection below,
upon which he thought to rest. But whether he was not careful enough,
or the projection gave way, down he came with a rush on the floor of
the cavern, bringing with him a great rumbling shower of stones.
The goblins jumped from their seats in more anger than consternation,
for they had never yet seen anything to be afraid of in the palace.
But when they saw Curdie with his pick in his hand their rage was
mingled with fear, for they took him for the first of an invasion of
miners. The king notwithstanding drew himself up to his full height of
four feet, spread himself to his full breadth of three and a half, for
he was the handsomest and squarest of all the goblins, and strutting up
to Curdie, planted himself with outspread feet before him, and said
with dignity:
'Pray what right have you in my palace?'
'The right of necessity, Your Majesty,' answered Curdie. 'I lost my
way and did not know where I was wandering to.'
'How did you get in?'
'By a hole in the mountain.'
'But you are a miner! Look at your pickaxe!'
Curdie did look at it, answering:
'I came upon it lying on the ground a little way from here. I tumbled
over some wild beasts who were playing with it. Look, Your Majesty.'
And Curdie showed him how he was scratched and bitten.
The king was pleased to find him behave more politely than he had
expected from what his people had told him concerning the miners, for
he attributed it to the power of his own presence; but he did not
therefore feel friendly to the intruder.
'You will oblige me by walking out of my dominions at once,' he said,
well knowing what a mockery lay in the words.
'With pleasure, if Your Majesty will give me a guide,' said Curdie.
'I will give you a thousand,' said the king with a scoffing air of
magnificent liberality.
'One will be quite sufficient,' said Curdie.
But the king uttered a strange shout, half halloo, half roar, and in
rushed goblins till the cave was swarming. He said something to the
first of them which Curdie could not hear, and it was passed from one
to another till in a moment the farthest in the crowd had evidently
heard and understood it. They began to gather about him in a way he
did not relish, and he retreated towards the wall. They pressed upon
him.
'Stand back,' said Curdie, grasping his pickaxe tighter by his knee.
They only grinned and pressed closer. Curdie bethought himself and
began to rhyme.
'Ten, twenty, thirty--
You're all so very dirty!
Twenty, thirty, forty--
You're all so thick and snorty!
'Thirty, forty, fifty--
You're all so puff-and-snifty!
Forty, fifty, sixty--
Beast and man so mixty!
'Fifty, sixty, seventy--
Mixty, maxty, leaventy!
Sixty, seventy, eighty--
All your cheeks so slaty!
'Seventy, eighty, ninety,
All your hands so flinty!
Eighty, ninety, hundred,
Altogether dundred!'
The goblins fell back a little when he began, and made horrible
grimaces all through the rhyme, as if eating something so disagreeable
that it set their teeth on edge and gave them the creeps; but whether
it was that the rhyming words were most of them no words at all, for, a
new rhyme being considered the more efficacious, Curdie had made it on
the spur of the moment, or whether it was that the presence of the king
and queen gave them courage, I cannot tell; but the moment the rhyme
was over they crowded on him again, and out shot a hundred long arms,
with a multitude of thick nailless fingers at the ends of them, to lay
hold upon him. Then Curdie heaved up his axe. But being as gentle as
courageous and not wishing to kill any of them, he turned the end which
was square and blunt like a hammer, and with that came down a great
blow on the head of the goblin nearest him. Hard as the heads of all
goblins are, he thought he must feel that. And so he did, no doubt;
but he only gave a horrible cry, and sprung at Curdie's throat.
Curdie, however, drew back in time, and just at that critical moment
remembered the vulnerable part of the goblin body. He made a sudden
rush at the king and stamped with all his might on His Majesty's feet.
The king gave a most unkingly howl and almost fell into the fire.
Curdie then rushed into the crowd, stamping right and left. The
goblins drew back, howling on every side as he approached, but they
were so crowded that few of those he attacked could escape his tread;
and the shrieking and roaring that filled the cave would have appalled
Curdie but for the good hope it gave him. They were tumbling over each
other in heaps in their eagerness to rush from the cave, when a new
assailant suddenly faced him--the queen, with flaming eyes and expanded
nostrils, her hair standing half up from her head, rushed at him. She
trusted in her shoes: they were of granite--hollowed like French
sabots. Curdie would have endured much rather than hurt a woman, even
if she was a goblin; but here was an affair of life and death:
forgetting her shoes, he made a great stamp on one of her feet. But
she instantly returned it with very different effect, causing him
frightful pain, and almost disabling him. His only chance with her
would have been to attack the granite shoes with his pickaxe, but
before he could think of that she had caught him up in her arms and was
rushing with him across the cave. She dashed him into a hole in the
wall, with a force that almost stunned him. But although he could not
move, he was not too far gone to hear her great cry, and the rush of
multitudes of soft feet, followed by the sounds of something heaved up
against the rock; after which came a multitudinous patter of stones
falling near him. The last had not ceased when he grew very faint, for
his head had been badly cut, and at last insensible.
When he came to himself there was perfect silence about him, and utter
darkness, but for the merest glimmer in one tiny spot. He crawled to
it, and found that they had heaved a slab against the mouth of the
hole, past the edge of which a poor little gleam found its way from the
fire. He could not move it a hairbreadth, for they had piled a great
heap of stones against it. He crawled back to where he had been lying,
in the faint hope of finding his pickaxe, But after a vain search he
was at last compelled to acknowledge himself in an evil plight. He sat
down and tried to think, but soon fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER 19
Goblin Counsels
He must have slept a long time, for when he awoke he felt wonderfully
restored--indeed almost well--and very hungry. There were voices in
the outer cave.
Once more, then, it was night; for the goblins slept during the day and
went about their affairs during the night.
In the universal and constant darkness of their dwelling they had no
reason to prefer the one arrangement to the other; but from aversion to
the sun-people they chose to be busy when there was least chance of
their being met either by the miners below, when they were burrowing,
or by the people of the mountain above, when they were feeding their
sheep or catching their goats. And indeed it was only when the sun was
away that the outside of the mountain was sufficiently like their own
dismal regions to be endurable to their mole eyes, so thoroughly had
they become unaccustomed to any light beyond that of their own fires
and torches.
Curdie listened, and soon found that they were talking of himself.
'How long will it take?' asked Harelip.
'Not many days, I should think,' answered the king. 'They are poor
feeble creatures, those sun-people, and want to be always eating. We
can go a week at a time without food, and be all the better for it; but
I've been told they eat two or three times every day! Can you believe
it? They must be quite hollow inside--not at all like us, nine-tenths
of whose bulk is solid flesh and bone. Yes--I judge a week of
starvation will do for him.'
'If I may be allowed a word,' interposed the queen,--'and I think I
ought to have some voice in the matter--'
'The wretch is entirely at your disposal, my spouse,' interrupted the
king. 'He is your property. You caught him yourself. We should never
have done it.'
The queen laughed. She seemed in far better humour than the night
before.
'I was about to say,' she resumed, 'that it does seem a pity to waste
so much fresh meat.'
'What are you thinking of, my love?' said the king. 'The very notion
of starving him implies that we are not going to give him any meat,
either salt or fresh.'
'I'm not such a stupid as that comes to,' returned Her Majesty. 'What I
mean is that by the time he is starved there will hardly be a picking
upon his bones.'
The king gave a great laugh.
'Well, my spouse, you may have him when you like,' he said. 'I don't
fancy him for my part. I am pretty sure he is tough eating.'
'That would be to honour instead of punish his insolence,' returned the
queen. 'But why should our poor creatures be deprived of so much
nourishment? Our little dogs and cats and pigs and small bears would
enjoy him very much.'
'You are the best of housekeepers, my lovely queen!' said her husband.
'Let it be so by all means. Let us have our people in, and get him out
and kill him at once. He deserves it. The mischief he might have
brought upon us, now that he had penetrated so far as our most retired
citadel, is incalculable. Or rather let us tie him hand and foot, and
have the pleasure of seeing him torn to pieces by full torchlight in
the great hall.'
'Better and better!' cried the queen and the prince together, both of
them clapping their hands. And the prince made an ugly noise with his
hare-lip, just as if he had intended to be one at the feast.
'But,' added the queen, bethinking herself, 'he is so troublesome. For
poor creatures as they are, there is something about those sun-people
that is very troublesome. I cannot imagine how it is that with such
superior strength and skill and understanding as ours, we permit them
to exist at all. Why do we not destroy them entirely, and use their
cattle and grazing lands at our pleasure? Of course we don't want to
live in their horrid country! It is far too glaring for our quieter
and more refined tastes. But we might use it as a sort of outhouse,
you know. Even our creatures' eyes might get used to it, and if they
did grow blind that would be of no consequence, provided they grew fat
as well. But we might even keep their great cows and other creatures,
and then we should have a few more luxuries, such as cream and cheese,
which at present we only taste occasionally, when our brave men have
succeeded in carrying some off from their farms.'
'It is worth thinking of,' said the king; 'and I don't know why you
should be the first to suggest it, except that you have a positive
genius for conquest. But still, as you say, there is something very
troublesome about them; and it would be better, as I understand you to
suggest, that we should starve him for a day or two first, so that he
may be a little less frisky when we take him out.'
'Once there was a goblin
Living in a hole;
Busy he was cobblin'
A shoe without a sole.
'By came a birdie:
"Goblin, what do you do?"
"Cobble at a sturdie
Upper leather shoe."
'"What's the good o' that, Sir?"
Said the little bird.
"Why it's very Pat, Sir--
Plain without a word.
'"Where 'tis all a hole, Sir,
Never can be holes:
Why should their shoes have soles, Sir,
When they've got no souls?"'
'What's that horrible noise?' cried the queen, shuddering from
pot-metal head to granite shoes.
'I declare,' said the king with solemn indignation, 'it's the
sun-creature in the hole!'
'Stop that disgusting noise!' cried the crown prince valiantly, getting
up and standing in front of the heap of stones, with his face towards
Curdie's prison. 'Do now, or I'll break your head.'
'Break away,' shouted Curdie, and began singing again:
'Once there was a goblin,
Living in a hole--'
'I really cannot bear it,' said the queen. 'If I could only get at his
horrid toes with my slippers again!'
'I think we had better go to bed,' said the king.
'It's not time to go to bed,' said the queen.
'I would if I was you,' said Curdie.
'Impertinent wretch!' said the queen, with the utmost scorn in her
voice.
'An impossible if,' said His Majesty with dignity.
'Quite,' returned Curdie, and began singing again:
'Go to bed,
Goblin, do.
Help the queen
Take off her shoe.
'If you do,
It will disclose
A horrid set
Of sprouting toes.'
'What a lie!' roared the queen in a rage.
'By the way, that reminds me,' said the king, 'that for as long as we
have been married, I have never seen your feet, queen. I think you
might take off your shoes when you go to bed! They positively hurt me
sometimes.'
'I will do as I like,' retorted the queen sulkily.
'You ought to do as your own hubby wishes you,' said the king.
'I will not,' said the queen.
'Then I insist upon it,' said the king.
Apparently His Majesty approached the queen for the purpose of
following the advice given by Curdie, for the latter heard a scuffle,
and then a great roar from the king.
'Will you be quiet, then?' said the queen wickedly.
'Yes, yes, queen. I only meant to coax you.'
'Hands off!' cried the queen triumphantly. 'I'm going to bed. You may
come when you like. But as long as I am queen I will sleep in my
shoes. It is my royal privilege. Harelip, go to bed.'
'I'm going,' said Harelip sleepily.
'So am I,' said the king.
'Come along, then,' said the queen; 'and mind you are good, or I'll--'
'Oh, no, no, no!' screamed the king in the most supplicating of tones.
Curdie heard only a muttered reply in the distance; and then the cave
was quite still.
They had left the fire burning, and the light came through brighter
than before. Curdie thought it was time to try again if anything could
be done. But he found he could not get even a finger through the chink
between the slab and the rock. He gave a great rush with his shoulder
against the slab, but it yielded no more than if it had been part of
the rock. All he could do was to sit down and think again.
By and by he came to the resolution to pretend to be dying, in the hope
they might take him out before his strength was too much exhausted to
let him have a chance. Then, for the creatures, if he could but find
his axe again, he would have no fear of them; and if it were not for
the queen's horrid shoes, he would have no fear at all.
Meantime, until they should come again at night, there was nothing for
him to do but forge new rhymes, now his only weapons. He had no
intention of using them at present, of course; but it was well to have
a stock, for he might live to want them, and the manufacture of them
would help to while away the time.
CHAPTER 20
Irene's Clue
That same morning early, the princess woke in a terrible fright. There
was a hideous noise in her room--creatures snarling and hissing and
rocketing about as if they were fighting. The moment she came to
herself, she remembered something she had never thought of again--what
her grandmother told her to do when she was frightened. She
immediately took off her ring and put it under her pillow. As she did
so she fancied she felt a finger and thumb take it gently from under
her palm. 'It must be my grandmother!' she said to herself, and the
thought gave her such courage that she stopped to put on her dainty
little slippers before running from the room. While doing this she
caught sight of a long cloak of sky-blue, thrown over the back of a
chair by the bedside. She had never seen it before but it was
evidently waiting for her. She put it on, and then, feeling with the
forefinger of her right hand, soon found her grandmother's thread,
which she proceeded at once to follow, expecting it would lead her
straight up the old stair. When she reached the door she found it went
down and ran along the floor, so that she had almost to crawl in order
to keep a hold of it. Then, to her surprise, and somewhat to her
dismay, she found that instead of leading her towards the stair it
turned in quite the opposite direction. It led her through certain
narrow passages towards the kitchen, turning aside ere she reached it,
and guiding her to a door which communicated with a small back yard.
Some of the maids were already up, and this door was standing open.
Across the yard the thread still ran along the ground, until it brought
her to a door in the wall which opened upon the Mountainside. When she
had passed through, the thread rose to about half her height, and she
could hold it with ease as she walked. It led her straight up the
mountain.
The cause of her alarm was less frightful than she supposed. The
cook's great black cat, pursued by the housekeeper's terrier, had
bounced against her bedroom door, which had not been properly fastened,
and the two had burst into the room together and commenced a battle
royal. How the nurse came to sleep through it was a mystery, but I
suspect the old lady had something to do with it.
It was a clear warm morning. The wind blew deliciously over the
Mountainside. Here and there she saw a late primrose but she did not
stop to call upon them. The sky was mottled with small clouds.
The sun was not yet up, but some of their fluffy edges had caught his
light, and hung out orange and gold-coloured fringes upon the air. The
dew lay in round drops upon the leaves, and hung like tiny diamond
ear-rings from the blades of grass about her path.
'How lovely that bit of gossamer is!' thought the princess, looking at
a long undulating line that shone at some distance from her up the
hill. It was not the time for gossamers though; and Irene soon
discovered that it was her own thread she saw shining on before her in
the light of the morning. It was leading her she knew not whither; but
she had never in her life been out before sunrise, and everything was
so fresh and cool and lively and full of something coming, that she
felt too happy to be afraid of anything.
After leading her up a good distance, the thread turned to the left,
and down the path upon which she and Lootie had met Curdie. But she
never thought of that, for now in the morning light, with its far
outlook over the country, no path could have been more open and airy
and cheerful. She could see the road almost to the horizon, along
which she had so often watched her king-papa and his troop come
shining, with the bugle-blast cleaving the air before them; and it was
like a companion to her. Down and down the path went, then up, and
then down and then up again, getting rugged and more rugged as it went;
and still along the path went the silvery thread, and still along the
thread went Irene's little rosy-tipped forefinger. By and by she came
to a little stream that jabbered and prattled down the hill, and up the
side of the stream went both path and thread. And still the path grew
rougher and steeper, and the mountain grew wilder, till Irene began to
think she was going a very long way from home; and when she turned to
look back she saw that the level country had vanished and the rough
bare mountain had closed in about her. But still on went the thread,
and on went the princess. Everything around her was getting brighter
and brighter as the sun came nearer; till at length his first rays all
at once alighted on the top of a rock before her, like some golden
creature fresh from the sky. Then she saw that the little stream ran
out of a hole in that rock, that the path did not go past the rock, and
that the thread was leading her straight up to it. A shudder ran
through her from head to foot when she found that the thread was
actually taking her into the hole out of which the stream ran. It ran
out babbling joyously, but she had to go in.
She did not hesitate. Right into the hole she went, which was high
enough to let her walk without stooping. For a little way there was a
brown glimmer, but at the first turn it all but ceased, and before she
had gone many paces she was in total darkness. Then she began to be
frightened indeed. Every moment she kept feeling the thread backwards
and forwards, and as she went farther and farther into the darkness of
the great hollow mountain, she kept thinking more and more about her
grandmother, and all that she had said to her, and how kind she had
been, and how beautiful she was, and all about her lovely room, and the
fire of roses, and the great lamp that sent its light through stone
walls. And she became more and more sure that the thread could not
have gone there of itself, and that her grandmother must have sent it.
But it tried her dreadfully when the path went down very steep, and
especially When she came to places where she had to go down rough
stairs, and even sometimes a ladder. Through one narrow passage after
another, over lumps of rock and sand and clay, the thread guided her,
until she came to a small hole through which she had to creep. Finding
no change on the other side, 'Shall I ever get back?' she thought, over
and over again, wondering at herself that she was not ten times more
frightened, and often feeling as if she were only walking in the story
of a dream. Sometimes she heard the noise of water, a dull gurgling
inside the rock. By and by she heard the sounds of blows, which came
nearer and nearer; but again they grew duller, and almost died away.
In a hundred directions she turned, obedient to the guiding thread.
At last she spied a dull red shine, and came up to the mica window, and
thence away and round about, and right, into a cavern, where glowed the
red embers of a fire. Here the thread began to rise. It rose as high
as her head and higher still. What should she do if she lost her hold?
She was pulling it down: She might break it! She could see it far up,
glowing as red as her fire-opal in the light of the embers.
But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope
against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon
recovered the level of the thread only however to find, the next
moment, that it vanished through the heap of stones, and left her
standing on it, with her face to the solid rock. For one terrible
moment she felt as if her grandmother had forsaken her. The thread
which the spiders had spun far over the seas, which her grandmother had
sat in the moonlight and spun again for her, which she had tempered in
the rose-fire and tied to her opal ring, had left her--had gone where
she could no longer follow it--had brought her into a horrible cavern,
and there left her! She was forsaken indeed!
'When shall I wake?' she said to herself in an agony, but the same
moment knew that it was no dream. She threw herself upon the heap, and
began to cry. It was well she did not know what creatures, one of them
with stone shoes on her feet, were lying in the next cave. But neither
did she know who was on the other side of the slab.
At length the thought struck her that at least she could follow the
thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She rose
at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to feel it
backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led her hand up to
the heap of stones--backwards it seemed nowhere. Neither could she see
it as before in the light of the fire. She burst into a wailing cry,
and again threw herself down on the stones.
CHAPTER 21
The Escape
As the princess lay and sobbed she kept feeling the thread
mechanically, following it with her finger many times up to the stones
in which it disappeared. By and by she began, still mechanically, to
poke her finger in after it between the stones as far as she could.
All at once it came into her head that she might remove some of the
stones and see where the thread went next. Almost laughing at herself
for never having thought of this before, she jumped to her feet. Her
fear vanished; once more she was certain her grandmother's thread could
not have brought her there just to leave her there; and she began to
throw away the stones from the top as fast as she could, sometimes two
or three at a handful, sometimes taking both hands to lift one. After
clearing them away a little, she found that the thread turned and went
straight downwards. Hence, as the heap sloped a good deal, growing of
course wider towards its base, she had to throw away a multitude of
stones to follow the thread. But this was not all, for she soon found
that the thread, after going straight down for a little way, turned
first sideways in one direction, then sideways in another, and then
shot, at various angles, hither and thither inside the heap, so that
she began to be afraid that to clear the thread she must remove the
whole huge gathering. She was dismayed at the very idea, but, losing
no time, set to work with a will; and with aching back, and bleeding
fingers and hands, she worked on, sustained by the pleasure of seeing
the heap slowly diminish and begin to show itself on the opposite side
of the fire. Another thing which helped to keep up her courage was
that, as often as she uncovered a turn of the thread, instead of lying
loose upon the stone, it tightened up; this made her sure that her
grandmother was at the end of it somewhere.
She had got about half-way down when she started, and nearly fell with
fright. Close to her ears as it seemed, a voice broke out singing:
'Jabber, bother, smash!
You'll have it all in a crash.
Jabber, smash, bother!
You'll have the worst of the pother.
Smash, bother, jabber!--'
Here Curdie stopped, either because he could not find a rhyme to
'jabber', or because he remembered what he had forgotten when he woke
up at the sound of Irene's labours, that his plan was to make the
goblins think he was getting weak. But he had uttered enough to let
Irene know who he was.
'It's Curdie!' she cried joyfully.
'Hush! hush!' came Curdie's voice again from somewhere. 'Speak softly.'
'Why, you were singing loud!' said Irene.
'Yes. But they know I am here, and they don't know you are. Who are
you?'
'I'm Irene,' answered the princess. 'I know who you are quite well.
You're Curdie.'
'Why, how ever did you come here, Irene?'
'My great-great-grandmother sent me; and I think I've found out why.
You can't get out, I suppose?'
'No, I can't. What are you doing?'
'Clearing away a huge heap of stones.'
'There's a princess!' exclaimed Curdie, in a tone of delight, but still
speaking in little more than a whisper. 'I can't think how you got
here, though.'
'My grandmother sent me after her thread.'
'I don't know what you mean,' said Curdie; 'but so you're there, it
doesn't much matter.'
'Oh, yes, it does!' returned Irene. 'I should never have been here but
for her.'
'You can tell me all about it when we get out, then. There's no time
to lose now,'said Curdie.
And Irene went to work, as fresh as when she began.
'There's such a lot of stones!' she said. 'It will take me a long time
to get them all away.'
'How far on have you got?' asked Curdie.
'I've got about the half away, but the other half is ever so much
bigger.'
'I don't think you will have to move the lower half. Do you see a slab
laid up against the wall?'
Irene looked, and felt about with her hands, and soon perceived the
outlines of the slab.
'Yes,' she answered, 'I do.'
'Then, I think,' rejoined Curdie, 'when you have cleared the slab about
half-way down, or a bit more, I shall be able to push it over.'
'I must follow my thread,' returned Irene, 'whatever I do.'
'What do you mean?' exclaimed Curdie. 'You will see when you get out,'
answered the princess, and went on harder than ever.
But she was soon satisfied that what Curdie wanted done and what the
thread wanted done were one and the same thing. For she not only saw
that by following the turns of the thread she had been clearing the
face of the slab, but that, a little more than half-way down, the
thread went through the chink between the slab and the wall into the
place where Curdie was confined, so that she could not follow it any
farther until the slab was out of her way. As soon as she found this,
she said in a right joyous whisper:
'Now, Curdie, I think if you were to give a great push, the slab would
tumble over.'
'Stand quite clear of it, then,' said Curdie, 'and let me know when you
are ready.'
Irene got off the heap, and stood on one side of it. 'Now, Curdie!'
she cried.
Curdie gave a great rush with his shoulder against it. Out tumbled the
slab on the heap, and out crept Curdie over the top of it.
'You've saved my life, Irene!' he whispered.
'Oh, Curdie! I'm so glad! Let's get out of this horrid place as fast
as we can.'
'That's easier said than done,' returned he.
'Oh, no, it's quite easy,' said Irene. 'We have only to follow my
thread. I am sure that it's going to take us out now.'
She had already begun to follow it over the fallen slab into the hole,
while Curdie was searching the floor of the cavern for his pickaxe.
'Here it is!' he cried. 'No, it is not,' he added, in a disappointed
tone. 'What can it be, then? I declare it's a torch. That is jolly!
It's better almost than my pickaxe. Much better if it weren't for
those stone shoes!' he went on, as he lighted the torch by blowing the
last embers of the expiring fire.
When he looked up, with the lighted torch casting a glare into the
great darkness of the huge cavern, he caught sight of Irene
disappearing in the hole out of which he had himself just come.
'Where are you going there?' he cried. 'That's not the way out. That's
where I couldn't get out.'
'I know that,' whispered Irene. 'But this is the way my thread goes,
and I must follow it.'
'What nonsense the child talks!' said Curdie to himself. 'I must
follow her, though, and see that she comes to no harm. She will soon
find she can't get out that way, and then she will come with me.'
So he crept over the slab once more into the hole with his torch in his
hand. But when he looked about in it, he could see her nowhere. And
now he discovered that although the hole was narrow, it was much longer
than he had supposed; for in one direction the roof came down very low,
and the hole went off in a narrow passage, of which he could not see
the end. The princess must have crept in there. He got on his knees
and one hand, holding the torch with the other, and crept after her.
The hole twisted about, in some parts so low that he could hardly get
through, in others so high that he could not see the roof, but
everywhere it was narrow--far too narrow for a goblin to get through,
and so I presume they never thought that Curdie might. He was
beginning to feel very uncomfortable lest something should have
befallen the princess, when he heard her voice almost close to his ear,
whispering:
'Aren't you coming, Curdie?'
And when he turned the next corner there she stood waiting for him.
'I knew you couldn't go wrong in that narrow hole, but now you must
keep by me, for here is a great wide place,' she said.
'I can't understand it,' said Curdie, half to himself, half to Irene.
'Never mind,' she returned. 'Wait till we get out.'
Curdie, utterly astonished that she had already got so far, and by a
path he had known nothing of, thought it better to let her do as she
pleased. 'At all events,' he said again to himself, 'I know nothing
about the way, miner as I am; and she seems to think she does know
something about it, though how she should passes my comprehension. So
she's just as likely to find her way as I am, and as she insists on
taking the lead, I must follow. We can't be much worse off than we
are, anyhow.' Reasoning thus, he followed her a few steps, and came
out in another great cavern, across which Irene walked in a straight
line, as confidently as if she knew every step of the way. Curdie went
on after her, flashing his torch about, and trying to see something of
what lay around them. Suddenly he started back a pace as the light fell
upon something close by which Irene was passing. It was a platform of
rock raised a few feet from the floor and covered with sheepskins, upon
which lay two horrible figures asleep, at once recognized by Curdie as
the king and queen of the goblins. He lowered his torch instantly lest
the light should awake them. As he did so it flashed upon his pickaxe,
lying by the side of the queen, whose hand lay close by the handle of
it.
'Stop one moment,' he whispered. 'Hold my torch, and don't let the
light on their faces.'
Irene shuddered when she saw the frightful creatures, whom she had
passed without observing them, but she did as he requested, and turning
her back, held the torch low in front of her. Curdie drew his pickaxe
carefully away, and as he did so spied one of her feet, projecting from
under the skins. The great clumsy granite shoe, exposed thus to his
hand, was a temptation not to be resisted. He laid hold of it, and,
with cautious efforts, drew it off. The moment he succeeded, he saw to
his astonishment that what he had sung in ignorance, to annoy the
queen, was actually true: she had six horrible toes. Overjoyed at his
success, and seeing by the huge bump in the sheepskins where the other
foot was, he proceeded to lift them gently, for, if he could only
succeed in carrying away the other shoe as well, he would be no more
afraid of the goblins than of so many flies. But as he pulled at the
second shoe the queen gave a growl and sat up in bed. The same instant
the king awoke also and sat up beside her.
'Run, Irene!' cried Curdie, for though he was not now in the least
afraid for himself, he was for the princess.
Irene looked once round, saw the fearful creatures awake, and like the
wise princess she was, dashed the torch on the ground and extinguished
it, crying out:
'Here, Curdie, take my hand.'
He darted to her side, forgetting neither the queen's shoe nor his
pickaxe, and caught hold of her hand, as she sped fearlessly where her
thread guided her. They heard the queen give a great bellow; but they
had a good start, for it would be some time before they could get
torches lighted to pursue them. Just as they thought they saw a gleam
behind them, the thread brought them to a very narrow opening, through
which Irene crept easily, and Curdie with difficulty.
'Now,'said Curdie; 'I think we shall be safe.'
'Of course we shall,' returned Irene. 'Why do you think so?'asked
Curdie.
'Because my grandmother is taking care of us.'
'That's all nonsense,' said Curdie. 'I don't know what you mean.'
'Then if you don't know what I mean, what right have you to call it
nonsense?' asked the princess, a little offended.
'I beg your pardon, Irene,' said Curdie; 'I did not mean to vex you.'
'Of course not,' returned the princess. 'But why do you think we shall
be safe?'
'Because the king and queen are far too stout to get through that hole.'
'There might be ways round,' said the princess.
'To be sure there might: we are not out of it yet,' acknowledged Curdie.
'But what do you mean by the king and queen?' asked the princess. 'I
should never call such creatures as those a king and a queen.'
'Their own people do, though,' answered Curdie.
The princess asked more questions, and Curdie, as they walked leisurely
along, gave her a full account, not only of the character and habits of
the goblins, so far as he knew them, but of his own adventures with
them, beginning from the very night after that in which he had met her
and Lootie upon the mountain. When he had finished, he begged Irene to
tell him how it was that she had come to his rescue. So Irene too had
to tell a long story, which she did in rather a roundabout manner,
interrupted by many questions concerning things she had not explained.
But her tale, as he did not believe more than half of it, left
everything as unaccountable to him as before, and he was nearly as much
perplexed as to what he must think of the princess. He could not
believe that she was deliberately telling stories, and the only
conclusion he could come to was that Lootie had been playing the child
tricks, inventing no end of lies to frighten her for her own purposes.
'But how ever did Lootie come to let you go into the mountains
alone?'he asked.
'Lootie knows nothing about it. I left her fast asleep--at least I
think so. I hope my grandmother won't let her get into trouble, for it
wasn't her fault at all, as my grandmother very well knows.'
'But how did you find your way to me?' persisted Curdie.
'I told you already,' answered Irene; 'by keeping my finger upon my
grandmother's thread, as I am doing now.'
'You don't mean you've got the thread there?'
'Of course I do. I have told you so ten times already. I have
hardly--except when I was removing the stones--taken my finger off it.
There!' she added, guiding Curdie's hand to the thread, 'you feel it
yourself--don't you?'
'I feel nothing at all,' replied Curdie. 'Then what can be the matter
with your finger? I feel it perfectly. To be sure it is very thin,
and in the sunlight looks just like the thread of a spider, though
there are many of them twisted together to make it--but for all that I
can't think why you shouldn't feel it as well as I do.'
Curdie was too polite to say he did not believe there was any thread
there at all. What he did say was:
'Well, I can make nothing of it.'
'I can, though, and you must be glad of that, for it will do for both
of us.'
'We're not out yet,' said Curdie.
'We soon shall be,' returned Irene confidently. And now the thread
went downwards, and led Irene's hand to a hole in the floor of the
cavern, whence came a sound of running water which they had been
hearing for some time.
'It goes into the ground now, Curdie,' she said, stopping.
He had been listening to another sound, which his practised ear had
caught long ago, and which also had been growing louder. It was the
noise the goblin-miners made at their work, and they seemed to be at no
great distance now. Irene heard it the moment she stopped.
'What is that noise?' she asked. 'Do you know, Curdie?'
'Yes. It is the goblins digging and burrowing,' he answered.
'And you don't know what they do it for?'
'No; I haven't the least idea. Would you like to see them?' he asked,
wishing to have another try after their secret.
'If my thread took me there, I shouldn't much mind; but I don't want to
see them, and I can't leave my thread. It leads me down into the hole,
and we had better go at once.'
'Very well. Shall I go in first?' said Curdie.
'No; better not. You can't feel the thread,' she answered, stepping
down through a narrow break in the floor of the cavern. 'Oh!' she
cried, 'I am in the water. It is running strong--but it is not deep,
and there is just room to walk. Make haste, Curdie.'
He tried, but the hole was too small for him to get in.
'Go on a little bit he said, shouldering his pickaxe. In a few moments
he had cleared a larger opening and followed her. They went on, down
and down with the running water, Curdie getting more and more afraid it
was leading them to some terrible gulf in the heart of the mountain.
In one or two places he had to break away the rock to make room before
even Irene could get through--at least without hurting herself. But at
length they spied a glimmer of light, and in a minute more they were
almost blinded by the full sunlight, into which they emerged. It was
some little time before the princess could see well enough to discover
that they stood in her own garden, close by the seat on which she and
her king-papa had sat that afternoon. They had come out by the channel
of the little stream. She danced and clapped her hands with delight.
'Now, Curdie!' she cried, 'won't you believe what I told you about my
grandmother and her thread?'
For she had felt all the time that Curdie was not believing what she
told him.
'There!--don't you see it shining on before us?' she added.
'I don't see anything,' persisted Curdie.
'Then you must believe without seeing,' said the princess; 'for you
can't deny it has brought us out of the mountain.'
'I can't deny we are out of the mountain, and I should be very
ungrateful indeed to deny that you had brought me out of it.'
'I couldn't have done it but for the thread,' persisted Irene.
'That's the part I don't understand.'
'Well, come along, and Lootie will get you something to eat. I am sure
you must want it very much.'
'Indeed I do. But my father and mother will be so anxious about me, I
must make haste--first up the mountain to tell my mother, and then down
into the mine again to let my father know.'
'Very well, Curdie; but you can't get out without coming this way, and
I will take you through the house, for that is nearest.'
They met no one by the way, for, indeed, as before, the people were
here and there and everywhere searching for the princess. When they
got in Irene found that the thread, as she had half expected, went up
the old staircase, and a new thought struck her. She turned to Curdie
and said:
'My grandmother wants me. Do come up with me and see her. Then you
will know that I have been telling you the truth. Do come--to please
me, Curdie. I can't bear you should think what I say is not true.'
'I never doubted you believed what you said,' returned Curdie. 'I only
thought you had some fancy in your head that was not correct.' 'But do
come, dear Curdie.'
The little miner could not withstand this appeal, and though he felt
shy in what seemed to him a huge grand house, he yielded, and followed
her up the stair.
CHAPTER 22
The Old Lady and Curdie
Up the stair then they went, and the next and the next, and through the
long rows of empty rooms, and up the little tower stair, Irene growing
happier and happier as she ascended. There was no answer when she
knocked at length at the door of the workroom, nor could she hear any
sound of the spinning-wheel, and once more her heart sank within her,
but only for one moment, as she turned and knocked at the other door.
'Come in,' answered the sweet voice of her grandmother, and Irene
opened the door and entered, followed by Curdie.
'You darling!' cried the lady, who was seated by a fire of red roses
mingled with white. 'I've been waiting for you, and indeed getting a
little anxious about you, and beginning to think whether I had not
better go and fetch you myself.'
As she spoke she took the little princess in her arms and placed her
upon her lap. She was dressed in white now, and looking if possible
more lovely than ever.
'I've brought Curdie, grandmother. He wouldn't believe what I told him
and so I've brought him.'
'Yes--I see him. He is a good boy, Curdie, and a brave boy. Aren't you
glad you've got him out?'
'Yes, grandmother. But it wasn't very good of him not to believe me
when I was telling him the truth.'
'People must believe what they can, and those who believe more must not
be hard upon those who believe less. I doubt if you would have
believed it all yourself if you hadn't seen some of it.'
'Ah! yes, grandmother, I dare say. I'm sure you are right. But he'll
believe now.'
'I don't know that,' replied her grandmother.
'Won't you, Curdie?' said Irene, looking round at him as she asked the
question. He was standing in the middle of the floor, staring, and
looking strangely bewildered. This she thought came of his
astonishment at the beauty of the lady.
'Make a bow to my grandmother, Curdie,' she said.
'I don't see any grandmother,' answered Curdie rather gruffly.
'Don't see my grandmother, when I'm sitting in her lap?' exclaimed the
princess.
'No, I don't,' reiterated Curdie, in an offended tone.
'Don't you see the lovely fire of roses--white ones amongst them this
time?' asked Irene, almost as bewildered as he.
'No, I don't,' answered Curdie, almost sulkily.
'Nor the blue bed? Nor the rose-coloured counterpane?--Nor the
beautiful light, like the moon, hanging from the roof?'
'You're making game of me, Your Royal Highness; and after what we have
come through together this day, I don't think it is kind of you,' said
Curdie, feeling very much hurt.
'Then what do you see?' asked Irene, who perceived at once that for her
not to believe him was at least as bad as for him not to believe her.
'I see a big, bare, garret-room--like the one in mother's cottage, only
big enough to take the cottage itself in, and leave a good margin all
round,' answered Curdie.
'And what more do you see?'
'I see a tub, and a heap of musty straw, and a withered apple, and a
ray of sunlight coming through a hole in the middle of the roof and
shining on your head, and making all the place look a curious dusky
brown. I think you had better drop it, princess, and go down to the
nursery, like a good girl.'
'But don't you hear my grandmother talking to me?' asked Irene, almost
crying.
'No. I hear the cooing of a lot of pigeons. If you won't come down, I
will go without you. I think that will be better anyhow, for I'm sure
nobody who met us would believe a word we said to them. They would
think we made it all up. I don't expect anybody but my own father and
mother to believe me. They know I wouldn't tell a story.'
'And yet you won't believe me, Curdie?' expostulated the princess, now
fairly crying with vexation and sorrow at the gulf between her and
Curdie.
'No. I can't, and I can't help it,' said Curdie, turning to leave the
room.
'What SHALL I do, grandmother?' sobbed the princess, turning her face
round upon the lady's bosom, and shaking with suppressed sobs.
'You must give him time,' said her grandmother; 'and you must be
content not to be believed for a while. It is very hard to bear; but I
have had to bear it, and shall have to bear it many a time yet. I will
take care of what Curdie thinks of you in the end. You must let him go
now.'
'You're not coming, are you?' asked Curdie.
'No, Curdie; my grandmother says I must let you go. Turn to the right
when you get to the bottom of all the stairs, and that will take you to
the hall where the great door is.'
'Oh! I don't doubt I can find my way--without you, princess, or your
old grannie's thread either,' said Curdie quite rudely.
'Oh, Curdie! Curdie!'
'I wish I had gone home at once. I'm very much obliged to you, Irene,
for getting me out of that hole, but I wish you hadn't made a fool of
me afterwards.'
He said this as he opened the door, which he left open, and, without
another word, went down the stair. Irene listened with dismay to his
departing footsteps. Then turning again to the lady:
'What does it all mean, grandmother?' she sobbed, and burst into fresh
tears.
'It means, my love, that I did not mean to show myself. Curdie is not
yet able to believe some things. Seeing is not believing--it is only
seeing. You remember I told you that if Lootie were to see me, she
would rub her eyes, forget the half she saw, and call the other half
nonsense.'
'Yes; but I should have thought Curdie--'
'You are right. Curdie is much farther on than Lootie, and you will
see what will come of it. But in the meantime you must be content, I
say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be
understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much
more necessary.'
'What is that, grandmother?'
'To understand other people.'
'Yes, grandmother. I must be fair--for if I'm not fair to other
people, I'm not worth being understood myself. I see. So as Curdie
can't help it, I will not be vexed with him, but just wait.'
'There's my own dear child,' said her grandmother, and pressed her
close to her bosom.
'Why weren't you in your workroom when we came up, grandmother?' asked
Irene, after a few moments' silence.
'If I had been there, Curdie would have seen me well enough. But why
should I be there rather than in this beautiful room?'
'I thought you would be spinning.'
'I've nobody to spin for just at present. I never spin without knowing
for whom I am spinning.'
'That reminds me--there is one thing that puzzles me,' said the
princess: 'how are you to get the thread out of the mountain again?
Surely you won't have to make another for me? That would be such a
trouble!'
The lady set her down and rose and went to the fire. Putting in her
hand, she drew it out again and held up the shining ball between her
finger and thumb.
'I've got it now, you see,' she said, coming back to the princess, 'all
ready for you when you want it.'
Going to her cabinet, she laid it in the same drawer as before.
'And here is your ring,' she added, taking it from the little finger of
her left hand and putting it on the forefinger of Irene's right hand.
'Oh, thank you, grandmother! I feel so safe now!'
'You are very tired, my child,' the lady went on. 'Your hands are hurt
with the stones, and I have counted nine bruises on you. Just look
what you are like.'
And she held up to her a little mirror which she had brought from the
cabinet. The princess burst into a merry laugh at the sight. She was
so draggled with the stream and dirty with creeping through narrow
places, that if she had seen the reflection without knowing it was a
reflection, she would have taken herself for some gipsy child whose
face was washed and hair combed about once in a month. The lady laughed
too, and lifting her again upon her knee, took off her cloak and
night-gown. Then she carried her to the side of the room. Irene
wondered what she was going to do with her, but asked no
questions--only starting a little when she found that she was going to
lay her in the large silver bath; for as she looked into it, again she
saw no bottom, but the stars shining miles away, as it seemed, in a
great blue gulf. Her hands closed involuntarily on the beautiful arms
that held her, and that was all.
The lady pressed her once more to her bosom, saying:
'Do not be afraid, my child.'
'No, grandmother,' answered the princess, with a little gasp; and the
next instant she sank in the clear cool water.
When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but a strange lovely blue
over and beneath and all about her. The lady, and the beautiful room,
had vanished from her sight, and she seemed utterly alone. But instead
of being afraid, she felt more than happy--perfectly blissful. And
from somewhere came the voice of the lady, singing a strange sweet
song, of which she could distinguish every word; but of the sense she
had only a feeling--no understanding. Nor could she remember a single
line after it was gone. It vanished, like the poetry in a dream, as
fast as it came. In after years, however, she would sometimes fancy
that snatches of melody suddenly rising in her brain must be little
phrases and fragments of the air of that song; and the very fancy would
make her happier, and abler to do her duty.
How long she lay in the water she did not know. It seemed a long
time--not from weariness but from pleasure. But at last she felt the
beautiful hands lay hold of her, and through the gurgling water she was
lifted out into the lovely room. The lady carried her to the fire, and
sat down with her in her lap, and dried her tenderly with the softest
towel. It was so different from Lootie's drying. When the lady had
done, she stooped to the fire, and drew from it her night-gown, as
white as snow.
'How delicious!' exclaimed the princess. 'It smells of all the roses
in the world, I think.'
When she stood up on the floor she felt as if she had been made over
again. Every bruise and all weariness were gone, and her hands were
soft and whole as ever.
'Now I am going to put you to bed for a good sleep,' said her
grandmother.
'But what will Lootie be thinking? And what am I to say to her when
she asks me where I have been?'
'Don't trouble yourself about it. You will find it all come right,'
said her grandmother, and laid her into the blue bed, under the rosy
counterpane.
'There is just one thing more,' said Irene. 'I am a little anxious
about Curdie. As I brought him into the house, I ought to have seen
him safe on his way home.'
'I took care of all that,' answered the lady. 'I told you to let him
go, and therefore I was bound to look after him. Nobody saw him, and
he is now eating a good dinner in his mother's cottage far up in the
mountain.'
'Then I will go to sleep,' said Irene, and in a few minutes she was
fast asleep.
CHAPTER 23
Curdie and His Mother
Curdie went up the mountain neither whistling nor singing, for he was
vexed with Irene for taking him in, as he called it; and he was vexed
with himself for having spoken to her so angrily. His mother gave a
cry of joy when she saw him, and at once set about getting him
something to eat, asking him questions all the time, which he did not
answer so cheerfully as usual. When his meal was ready, she left him
to eat it, and hurried to the mine to let his father know he was safe.
When she came back, she found him fast asleep upon her bed; nor did he
wake until his father came home in the evening.
'Now, Curdie,' his mother said, as they sat at supper, 'tell us the
whole story from beginning to end, just as it all happened.'
Curdie obeyed, and told everything to the point where they came out
upon the lawn in the garden of the king's house.
'And what happened after that?' asked his mother. 'You haven't told us
all. You ought to be very happy at having got away from those demons,
and instead of that I never saw you so gloomy. There must be something
more. Besides, you do not speak of that lovely child as I should like
to hear you. She saved your life at the risk of her own, and yet
somehow you don't seem to think much of it.'
'She talked such nonsense' answered Curdie, 'and told me a pack of
things that weren't a bit true; and I can't get over it.'
'What were they?' asked his father. 'Your mother may be able to throw
some light upon them.'
Then Curdie made a clean breast of it, and told them everything.
They all sat silent for some time, pondering the strange tale. At last
Curdie's mother spoke.
'You confess, my boy,' she said, 'there is something about the whole
affair you do not understand?'
'Yes, of course, mother,' he answered. 'I cannot understand how a
child knowing nothing about the mountain, or even that I was shut up in
it, should come all that way alone, straight to where I was; and then,
after getting me out of the hole, lead me out of the mountain too,
where I should not have known a step of the way if it had been as light
as in the open air.'
'Then you have no right to say what she told you was not true. She did
take you out, and she must have had something to guide her: why not a
thread as well as a rope, or anything else? There is something you
cannot explain, and her explanation may be the right one.'
'It's no explanation at all, mother; and I can't believe it.'
'That may be only because you do not understand it. If you did, you
would probably find it was an explanation, and believe it thoroughly.
I don't blame you for not being able to believe it, but I do blame you
for fancying such a child would try to deceive you. Why should she?
Depend upon it, she told you all she knew. Until you had found a better
way of accounting for it all, you might at least have been more sparing
of your judgement.'
'That is what something inside me has been saying all the time,' said
Curdie, hanging down his head. 'But what do you make of the
grandmother? That is what I can't get over. To take me up to an old
garret, and try to persuade me against the sight of my own eyes that it
was a beautiful room, with blue walls and silver stars, and no end of
things in it, when there was nothing there but an old tub and a
withered apple and a heap of straw and a sunbeam! It was too bad! She
might have had some old woman there at least to pass for her precious
grandmother!'
'Didn't she speak as if she saw those other things herself, Curdie?'
'Yes. That's what bothers me. You would have thought she really meant
and believed that she saw every one of the things she talked about.
And not one of them there! It was too bad, I say.'
'Perhaps some people can see things other people can't see, Curdie,'
said his mother very gravely. 'I think I will tell you something I saw
myself once--only Perhaps You won't believe me either!'
'Oh, mother, mother!' cried Curdie, bursting into tears; 'I don't
deserve that, surely!'
'But what I am going to tell you is very strange,' persisted his
mother; 'and if having heard it you were to say I must have been
dreaming, I don't know that I should have any right to be vexed with
you, though I know at least that I was not asleep.'
'Do tell me, mother. Perhaps it will help me to think better of the
princess.'
'That's why I am tempted to tell you,' replied his mother. 'But first,
I may as well mention that, according to old whispers, there is
something more than common about the king's family; and the queen was
of the same blood, for they were cousins of some degree. There were
strange stories told concerning them--all good stories--but strange,
very strange. What they were I cannot tell, for I only remember the
faces of my grandmother and my mother as they talked together about
them. There was wonder and awe--not fear--in their eyes, and they
whispered, and never spoke aloud. But what I saw myself was this: Your
father was going to work in the mine one night, and I had been down
with his supper. It was soon after we were married, and not very long
before you were born. He came with me to the mouth of the mine, and
left me to go home alone, for I knew the way almost as well as the
floor of our own cottage. It was pretty dark, and in some parts of the
road where the rocks overhung nearly quite dark. But I got along
perfectly well, never thinking of being afraid, until I reached a spot
you know well enough, Curdie, where the path has to make a sharp turn
out of the way of a great rock on the left-hand side. When I got
there, I was suddenly surrounded by about half a dozen of the cobs, the
first I had ever seen, although I had heard tell of them often enough.
One of them blocked up the path, and they all began tormenting and
teasing me in a way it makes me shudder to think of even now.'
'If I had only been with you!' cried father and son in a breath.
The mother gave a funny little smile, and went on.
'They had some of their horrible creatures with them too, and I must
confess I was dreadfully frightened. They had torn my clothes very
much, and I was afraid they were going to tear myself to pieces, when
suddenly a great white soft light shone upon me. I looked up. A broad
ray, like a shining road, came down from a large globe of silvery
light, not very high up, indeed not quite so high as the horizon--so it
could not have been a new star or another moon or anything of that
sort. The cobs dropped persecuting me, and looked dazed, and I thought
they were going to run away, but presently they began again. The same
moment, however, down the path from the globe of light came a bird,
shining like silver in the sun. It gave a few rapid flaps first, and
then, with its wings straight out, shot, sliding down the slope of the
light. It looked to me just like a white pigeon. But whatever it was,
when the cobs caught sight of it coming straight down upon them, they
took to their heels and scampered away across the mountain, leaving me
safe, only much frightened. As soon as it had sent them off, the bird
went gliding again up the light, and the moment it reached the globe
the light disappeared, just as if a shutter had been closed over a
window, and I saw it no More. But I had no more trouble with the cobs
that night or ever after.'
'How strange!' exclaimed Curdie.
'Yes, it was strange; but I can't help believing it, whether you do or
not,' said his mother.
'It's exactly as your mother told it to me the very next morning,' said
his father.
'You don't think I'm doubting my own mother?' cried Curdie. 'There are
other people in the world quite as well worth believing as your own
mother,' said his mother. 'I don't know that she's so much the fitter
to be believed that she happens to be your mother, Mr. Curdie. There
are mothers far more likely to tell lies than the little girl I saw
talking to the primroses a few weeks ago. If she were to lie I should
begin to doubt my own word.'
'But princesses have told lies as well as other people,' said Curdie.
'Yes, but not princesses like that child. She's a good girl, I am
certain, and that's more than being a princess. Depend upon it you
will have to be sorry for behaving so to her, Curdie. You ought at
least to have held your tongue.'
'I am sorry now,' answered Curdie.
'You ought to go and tell her so, then.'
'I don't see how I could manage that. They wouldn't let a miner boy
like me have a word with her alone; and I couldn't tell her before that
nurse of hers. She'd be asking ever so many questions, and I don't
know how many the little princess would like me to answer. She told me
that Lootie didn't know anything about her coming to get me out of the
mountain. I am certain she would have prevented her somehow if she had
known it. But I may have a chance before long, and meantime I must try
to do something for her. I think, father, I have got on the track at
last.'
'Have you, indeed, my boy?' said Peter. 'I am sure you deserve some
success; you have worked very hard for it. What have you found out?'
'It's difficult, you know, father, inside the mountain, especially in
the dark, and not knowing what turns you have taken, to tell the lie of
things outside.'
'Impossible, my boy, without a chart, or at least a compass,' returned
his father.
'Well, I think I have nearly discovered in what direction the cobs are
mining. If I am right, I know something else that I can put to it, and
then one and one will make three.'
'They very often do, Curdie, as we miners ought to be very well aware.
Now tell us, my boy, what the two things are, and see whether we can
guess at the same third as you.'
'I don't see what that has to do with the princess,' interposed his
mother.
'I will soon let you see that, mother. Perhaps you may think me
foolish, but until I am sure there, is nothing in my present fancy, I
am more determined than ever to go on with my observations. Just as we
came to the channel by which we got out, I heard the miners at work
somewhere near--I think down below us. Now since I began to watch
them, they have mined a good half-mile, in a straight line; and so far
as I am aware, they are working in no other part of the mountain. But
I never could tell in what direction they were going. When we came out
in the king's garden, however, I thought at once whether it was
possible they were working towards the king's house; and what I want to
do tonight is to make sure whether they are or not. I will take a
light with me--'
'Oh, Curdie,' cried his mother, 'then they will see you.'
'I'm no more afraid of them now than I was before,' rejoined Curdie,
'now that I've got this precious shoe. They can't make another such in
a hurry, and one bare foot will do for my purpose. Woman as she may be,
I won't spare her next time. But I shall be careful with my light, for
I don't want them to see me. I won't stick it in my hat.'
'Go on, then, and tell us what you mean to do.'
'I mean to take a bit of paper with me and a pencil, and go in at the
mouth of the stream by which we came out. I shall mark on the paper as
near as I can the angle of every turning I take until I find the cobs
at work, and so get a good idea in what direction they are going. If
it should prove to be nearly parallel with the stream, I shall know it
is towards the king's house they are working.'
'And what if you should? How much wiser will you be then?'
'Wait a minute, mother dear. I told you that when I came upon the
royal family in the cave, they were talking of their prince--Harelip,
they called him--marrying a sun-woman--that means one of us--one with
toes to her feet. Now in the speech one of them made that night at
their great gathering, of which I heard only a part, he said that peace
would be secured for a generation at least by the pledge the prince
would hold for the good behaviour of her relatives: that's what he
said, and he must have meant the sun-woman the prince was to marry. I
am quite sure the king is much too proud to wish his son to marry any
but a princess, and much too knowing to fancy that his having a peasant
woman for a wife would be of any great advantage to them.'
'I see what you are driving at now,' said his mother.
'But,' said his father, 'our king would dig the mountain to the plain
before he would have his princess the wife of a cob, if he were ten
times a prince.'
'Yes; but they think so much of themselves!' said his mother. 'Small
creatures always do. The bantam is the proudest cock in my little
yard.'
'And I fancy,' said Curdie, 'if they once got her, they would tell the
king they would kill her except he consented to the marriage.'
'They might say so,' said his father, 'but they wouldn't kill her; they
would keep her alive for the sake of the hold it gave them over our
king. Whatever he did to them, they would threaten to do the same to
the princess.'
'And they are bad enough to torment her just for their own amusement--I
know that,' said his mother.
'Anyhow, I will keep a watch on them, and see what they are up to,'
said Curdie. 'It's too horrible to think of. I daren't let myself do
it. But they shan't have her--at least if I can help it. So, mother
dear--my clue is all right--will you get me a bit of paper and a pencil
and a lump of pease pudding, and I will set out at once. I saw a place
where I can climb over the wall of the garden quite easily.'
'You must mind and keep out of the way of the men on the watch,' said
his mother.
'That I will. I don't want them to know anything about it. They would
spoil it all. The cobs would only try some other plan--they are such
obstinate creatures! I shall take good care, mother. They won't kill
and eat me either, if they should come upon me. So you needn't mind
them.'
His mother got him what he had asked for, and Curdie set out. Close
beside the door by which the princess left the garden for the mountain
stood a great rock, and by climbing it Curdie got over the wall. He
tied his clue to a stone just inside the channel of the stream, and
took his pickaxe with him. He had not gone far before he encountered a
horrid creature coming towards the mouth. The spot was too narrow for
two of almost any size or shape, and besides Curdie had no wish to let
the creature pass. Not being able to use his pickaxe, however, he had
a severe struggle with him, and it was only after receiving many bites,
some of them bad, that he succeeded in killing him with his
pocket-knife. Having dragged him out, he made haste to get in again
before another should stop up the way.
I need not follow him farther in this night's adventures. He returned
to his breakfast, satisfied that the goblins were mining in the
direction of the palace--on so low a level that their intention must,
he thought, be to burrow under the walls of the king's house, and rise
up inside it--in order, he fully believed, to lay hands on the little
princess, and carry her off for a wife to their horrid Harelip.
CHAPTER 24
Irene Behaves Like a Princess
When the princess awoke from the sweetest of sleeps, she found her
nurse bending over her, the housekeeper looking over the nurse's
shoulder, and the laundry-maid looking over the housekeeper's. The room
was full of women-servants; and the gentlemen-at-arms, with a long
column of servants behind them, were peeping, or trying to peep in at
the door of the nursery.
'Are those horrid creatures gone?' asked the princess, remembering
first what had terrified her in the morning.
'You naughty, naughty little princess!' cried Lootie.
Her face was very pale, with red streaks in it, and she looked as if
she were going to shake her; but Irene said nothing--only waited to
hear what should come next.
'How could you get under the clothes like that, and make us all fancy
you were lost! And keep it up all day too! You are the most obstinate
child! It's anything but fun to us, I can tell you!'
It was the only way the nurse could account for her disappearance.
'I didn't do that, Lootie,' said Irene, very quietly.
'Don't tell stories!' cried her nurse quite rudely.
'I shall tell you nothing at all,' said Irene.
'That's just as bad,' said the nurse.
'Just as bad to say nothing at all as to tell stories?' exclaimed the
princess. 'I will ask my papa about that. He won't say so. And I
don't think he will like you to say so.'
'Tell me directly what you mean by it!' screamed the nurse, half wild
with anger at the princess and fright at the possible consequences to
herself.
'When I tell you the truth, Lootie,' said the princess, who somehow did
not feel at all angry, 'you say to me "Don't tell stories": it seems I
must tell stories before you will believe me.'
'You are very rude, princess,' said the nurse.
'You are so rude, Lootie, that I will not speak to you again till you
are sorry. Why should I, when I know you will not believe me?'
returned the princess. For she did know perfectly well that if she
were to tell Lootie what she had been about, the more she went on to
tell her, the less would she believe her.
'You are the most provoking child!' cried her nurse. 'You deserve to
be well punished for your wicked behaviour.'
'Please, Mrs Housekeeper,' said the princess, 'will you take me to your
room, and keep me till my king-papa comes? I will ask him to come as
soon as he can.'
Every one stared at these words. Up to this moment they had all
regarded her as little more than a baby.
But the housekeeper was afraid of the nurse, and sought to patch
matters up, saying:
'I am sure, princess, nursie did not mean to be rude to you.'
'I do not think my papa would wish me to have a nurse who spoke to me
as Lootie does. If she thinks I tell lies, she had better either say
so to my papa, or go away. Sir Walter, will you take charge of me?'
'With the greatest of pleasure, princess,' answered the captain of the
gentlemen-at-arms, walking with his great stride into the room.
The crowd of servants made eager way for him, and he bowed low before
the little princess's bed. 'I shall send my servant at once, on the
fastest horse in the stable, to tell your king-papa that Your Royal
Highness desires his presence. When you have chosen one of these
under-servants to wait upon you, I shall order the room to be cleared.'
'Thank you very much, Sir Walter,' said the princess, and her eye
glanced towards a rosy-cheeked girl who had lately come to the house as
a scullery-maid.
But when Lootie saw the eyes of her dear princess going in search of
another instead of her, she fell upon her knees by the bedside, and
burst into a great cry of distress.
'I think, Sir Walter,' said the princess, 'I will keep Lootie. But I
put myself under your care; and you need not trouble my king-papa until
I speak to you again. Will you all please to go away? I am quite safe
and well, and I did not hide myself for the sake either of amusing
myself, or of troubling my people. Lootie, will you please to dress
me.'
CHAPTER 25
Curdie Comes to Grief
Everything was for some time quiet above ground. The king was still
away in a distant part of his dominions. The men-at-arms kept watching
about the house. They had been considerably astonished by finding at
the foot of the rock in the garden the hideous body of the goblin
creature killed by Curdie; but they came to the conclusion that it had
been slain in the mines, and had crept out there to die; and except an
occasional glimpse of a live one they saw nothing to cause alarm.
Curdie kept watching in the mountain, and the goblins kept burrowing
deeper into the earth. As long as they went deeper there was, Curdie
judged, no immediate danger.
To Irene the summer was as full of pleasure as ever, and for a long
time, although she often thought of her grandmother during the day, and
often dreamed about her at night, she did not see her. The kids and
the flowers were as much her delight as ever, and she made as much
friendship with the miners' children she met on the mountain as Lootie
would permit; but Lootie had very foolish notions concerning the
dignity of a princess, not understanding that the truest princess is
just the one who loves all her brothers and sisters best, and who is
most able to do them good by being humble towards them. At the same
time she was considerably altered for the better in her behaviour to
the princess. She could not help seeing that she was no longer a mere
child, but wiser than her age would account for. She kept foolishly
whispering to the servants, however--sometimes that the princess was
not right in her mind, sometimes that she was too good to live, and
other nonsense of the same sort.
All this time Curdie had to be sorry, without a chance of confessing,
that he had behaved so unkindly to the princess. This perhaps made him
the more diligent in his endeavours to serve her. His mother and he
often talked on the subject, and she comforted him, and told him she
was sure he would some day have the opportunity he so much desired.
Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in
general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a
fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is
always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the
wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and
I am sorry for having done it.' So you see there is some ground for
supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many
such instances have been known in the world's history.
At length, however, he began to see signs of a change in the
proceedings of the goblin excavators: they were going no deeper, but
had commenced running on a level; and he watched them, therefore, more
closely than ever. All at once, one night, coming to a slope of very
hard rock, they began to ascend along the inclined plane of its
surface. Having reached its top, they went again on a level for a
night or two, after which they began to ascend once more, and kept on
at a pretty steep angle. At length Curdie judged it time to transfer
his observation to another quarter, and the next night he did not go to
the mine at all; but, leaving his pickaxe and clue at home, and taking
only his usual lumps of bread and pease pudding, went down the mountain
to the king's house. He climbed over the wall, and remained in the
garden the whole night, creeping on hands and knees from one spot to
the other, and lying at full length with his ear to the ground,
listening. But he heard nothing except the tread of the men-at-arms as
they marched about, whose observation, as the night was cloudy and
there was no moon, he had little difficulty in avoiding. For several
following nights he continued to haunt the garden and listen, but with
no success.
At length, early one evening, whether it was that he had got careless
of his own safety, or that the growing moon had become strong enough to
expose him, his watching came to a sudden end. He was creeping from
behind the rock where the stream ran out, for he had been listening all
round it in the hope it might convey to his ear some indication of the
whereabouts of the goblin miners, when just as he came into the
moonlight on the lawn, a whizz in his ear and a blow upon his leg
startled him. He instantly squatted in the hope of eluding further
notice. But when he heard the sound of running feet, he jumped up to
take the chance of escape by flight. He fell, however, with a keen
shoot of pain, for the bolt of a crossbow had wounded his leg, and the
blood was now streaming from it. He was instantly laid Hold of by two
or three of the men-at-arms. It was useless to struggle, and he
submitted in silence.
'It's a boy!' cried several of them together, in a tone of amazement.
'I thought it was one of those demons. What are you about here?'
'Going to have a little rough usage, apparently,' said Curdie,
laughing, as the men shook him.
'Impertinence will do you no good. You have no business here in the
king's grounds, and if you don't give a true account of yourself, you
shall fare as a thief.'
'Why, what else could he be?' said one.
'He might have been after a lost kid, you know,' suggested another.
'I see no good in trying to excuse him. He has no business here,
anyhow.'
'Let me go away, then, if you please,' said Curdie.
'But we don't please--not except you give a good account of yourself.'
'I don't feel quite sure whether I can trust you,' said Curdie.
'We are the king's own men-at-arms,' said the captain courteously, for
he was taken with Curdie's appearance and courage.
'Well, I will tell you all about it--if you will promise to listen to
me and not do anything rash.'
'I call that cool!' said one of the party, laughing. 'He will tell us
what mischief he was about, if we promise to do as pleases him.'
'I was about no mischief,' said Curdie.
But ere he could say more he turned faint, and fell senseless on the
grass. Then first they discovered that the bolt they had shot, taking
him for one of the goblin creatures, had wounded him.
They carried him into the house and laid him down in the hall. The
report spread that they had caught a robber, and the servants crowded
in to see the villain. Amongst the rest came the nurse. The moment she
saw him she exclaimed with indignation:
'I declare it's the same young rascal of a miner that was rude to me
and the princess on the mountain. He actually wanted to kiss the
princess. I took good care of that--the wretch! And he was prowling
about, was he? Just like his impudence!' The princess being fast
asleep, she could misrepresent at her pleasure.
When he heard this, the captain, although he had considerable doubt of
its truth, resolved to keep Curdie a prisoner until they could search
into the affair. So, after they had brought him round a little, and
attended to his wound, which was rather a bad one, they laid him, still
exhausted from the loss of blood, upon a mattress in a disused
room--one of those already so often mentioned--and locked the door, and
left him. He passed a troubled night, and in the morning they found
him talking wildly. In the evening he came to himself, but felt very
weak, and his leg was exceedingly painful. Wondering where he was, and
seeing one of the men-at-arms in the room, he began to question him and
soon recalled the events of the preceding night. As he was himself
unable to watch any more, he told the soldier all he knew about the
goblins, and begged him to tell his companions, and stir them up to
watch with tenfold vigilance; but whether it was that he did not talk
quite coherently, or that the whole thing appeared incredible,
certainly the man concluded that Curdie was only raving still, and
tried to coax him into holding his tongue. This, of course, annoyed
Curdie dreadfully, who now felt in his turn what it was not to be
believed, and the consequence was that his fever returned, and by the
time when, at his persistent entreaties, the captain was called, there
could be no doubt that he was raving. They did for him what they
could, and promised everything he wanted, but with no intention of
fulfilment. At last he went to sleep, and when at length his sleep
grew profound and peaceful, they left him, locked the door again, and
withdrew, intending to revisit him early in the morning.
CHAPTER 26
The Goblin-Miners
That same night several of the servants were having a chat together
before going to bed.
'What can that noise be?' said one of the housemaids, who had been
listening for a moment or two.
'I've heard it the last two nights,' said the cook. 'If there were any
about the place, I should have taken it for rats, but my Tom keeps them
far enough.'
'I've heard, though,' said the scullery-maid, 'that rats move about in
great companies sometimes. There may be an army of them invading us.
I've heard the noises yesterday and today too.'
'It'll be grand fun, then, for my Tom and Mrs Housekeeper's Bob,' said
the cook. 'They'll be friends for once in their lives, and fight on
the same side. I'll engage Tom and Bob together will put to flight any
number of rats.'
'It seems to me,' said the nurse, 'that the noises are much too loud
for that. I have heard them all day, and my princess has asked me
several times what they could be. Sometimes they sound like distant
thunder, and sometimes like the noises you hear in the mountain from
those horrid miners underneath.'
'I shouldn't wonder,' said the cook, 'if it was the miners after all.
They may have come on some hole in the mountain through which the
noises reach to us. They are always boring and blasting and breaking,
you know.'
As he spoke, there came a great rolling rumble beneath them, and the
house quivered. They all started up in affright, and rushing to the
hall found the gentlemen-at-arms in consternation also. They had sent
to wake their captain, who said from their description that it must
have been an earthquake, an occurrence which, although very rare in
that country, had taken place almost within the century; and then went
to bed again, strange to say, and fell fast asleep without once
thinking of Curdie, or associating the noises they had heard with what
he had told them. He had not believed Curdie. If he had, he would at
once have thought of what he had said, and would have taken
precautions. As they heard nothing more, they concluded that Sir
Walter was right, and that the danger was over for perhaps another
hundred years. The fact, as discovered afterwards, was that the
goblins had, in working up a second sloping face of stone, arrived at a
huge block which lay under the cellars of the house, within the line of
the foundations.
It was so round that when they succeeded, after hard work, in
dislodging it without blasting, it rolled thundering down the slope
with a bounding, jarring roll, which shook the foundations of the
house. The goblins were themselves dismayed at the noise, for they
knew, by careful spying and measuring, that they must now be very near,
if not under the king's house, and they feared giving an alarm. They,
therefore, remained quiet for a while, and when they began to work
again, they no doubt thought themselves very fortunate in coming upon a
vein of sand which filled a winding fissure in the rock on which the
house was built. By scooping this away they came out in the king's
wine cellar.
No sooner did they find where they were, than they scurried back again,
like rats into their holes, and running at full speed to the goblin
palace, announced their success to the king and queen with shouts of
triumph.
In a moment the goblin royal family and the whole goblin people were on
their way in hot haste to the king's house, each eager to have a share
in the glory of carrying off that same night the Princess Irene.
The queen went stumping along in one shoe of stone and one of skin.
This could not have been pleasant, and my readers may wonder that, with
such skilful workmen about her, she had not yet replaced the shoe
carried off by Curdie. As the king, however, had more than one ground
of objection to her stone shoes, he no doubt took advantage of the
discovery of her toes, and threatened to expose her deformity if she
had another made. I presume he insisted on her being content with skin
shoes, and allowed her to wear the remaining granite one on the present
occasion only because she was going out to war.
They soon arrived in the king's wine cellar, and regardless of its huge
vessels, of which they did not know the use, proceeded at once, but as
quietly as they could, to force the door that led upwards.
CHAPTER 27
The Goblins in the King's House
When Curdie fell asleep he began at once to dream. He thought he was
ascending the Mountainside from the mouth of the mine, whistling and
singing 'Ring, dod, bang!' when he came upon a woman and child who had
lost their way; and from that point he went on dreaming everything that
had happened to him since he thus met the princess and Lootie; how he
had watched the goblins, how he had been taken by them, how he had been
rescued by the princess; everything, indeed, until he was wounded,
captured, and imprisoned by the men-at-arms. And now he thought he was
lying wide awake where they had laid him, when suddenly he heard a
great thundering sound.
'The cobs are coming!' he said. 'They didn't believe a word I told
them! The cobs'll be carrying off the princess from under their stupid
noses! But they shan't! that they shan't!'
He jumped up, as he thought, and began to dress, but, to his dismay,
found that he was still lying in bed.
'Now then, I will!' he said. 'Here goes! I am up now!'
But yet again he found himself snug in bed. Twenty times he tried, and
twenty times he failed; for in fact he was not awake, only dreaming
that he was. At length in an agony of despair, fancying he heard the
goblins all over the house, he gave a great cry. Then there came, as
he thought, a hand upon the lock of his door. It opened, and, looking
up, he saw a lady with white hair, carrying a silver box in her hand,
enter the room. She came to his bed, he thought, stroked his head and
face with cool, soft hands, took the dressing from his leg, rubbed it
with something that smelt like roses, and then waved her hands over him
three times. At the last wave of her hands everything vanished, he
felt himself sinking into the profoundest slumber, and remembered
nothing more until he awoke in earnest.
The setting moon was throwing a feeble light through the casement, and
the house was full of uproar. There was soft heavy multitudinous
stamping, a clashing and clanging of weapons, the voices of men and the
cries of women, mixed with a hideous bellowing, which sounded
victorious. The cobs were in the house! He sprang from his bed,
hurried on some of his clothes, not forgetting his shoes, which were
armed with nails; then spying an old hunting-knife, or short sword,
hanging on the wall, he caught it, and rushed down the stairs, guided
by the sounds of strife, which grew louder and louder.
When he reached the ground floor he found the whole place swarming.
All the goblins of the mountain seemed gathered there. He rushed
amongst them, shouting:
'One, two,
Hit and hew!
Three, four,
Blast and bore!'
and with every rhyme he came down a great stamp upon a foot, cutting at
the same time their faces--executing, indeed, a sword dance of the
wildest description. Away scattered the goblins in every
direction--into closets, up stairs, into chimneys, up on rafters, and
down to the cellars. Curdie went on stamping and slashing and singing,
but saw nothing of the people of the house until he came to the great
hall, in which, the moment he entered it, arose a great goblin shout.
The last of the men-at-arms, the captain himself, was on the floor,
buried beneath a wallowing crowd of goblins. For, while each knight
was busy defending himself as well as he could, by stabs in the thick
bodies of the goblins, for he had soon found their heads all but
invulnerable, the queen had attacked his legs and feet with her
horrible granite shoe, and he was soon down; but the captain had got
his back to the wall and stood out longer. The goblins would have torn
them all to pieces, but the king had given orders to carry them away
alive, and over each of them, in twelve groups, was standing a knot of
goblins, while as many as could find room were sitting upon their
prostrate bodies.
Curdie burst in dancing and gyrating and stamping and singing like a
small incarnate whirlwind.
'Where 'tis all a hole, sir,
Never can be holes:
Why should their shoes have soles, sir,
When they've got no souls?
'But she upon her foot, sir,
Has a granite shoe:
The strongest leather boot, sir,
Six would soon be through.'
The queen gave a howl of rage and dismay; and before she recovered her
presence of mind, Curdie, having begun with the group nearest him, had
eleven of the knights on their legs again.
'Stamp on their feet!' he cried as each man rose, and in a few minutes
the hall was nearly empty, the goblins running from it as fast as they
could, howling and shrieking and limping, and cowering every now and
then as they ran to cuddle their wounded feet in their hard hands, or
to protect them from the frightful stamp-stamp of the armed men.
And now Curdie approached the group which, in trusting in the queen and
her shoe, kept their guard over the prostrate captain. The king sat on
the captain's head, but the queen stood in front, like an infuriated
cat, with her perpendicular eyes gleaming green, and her hair standing
half up from her horrid head. Her heart was quaking, however, and she
kept moving about her skin-shod foot with nervous apprehension. When
Curdie was within a few paces, she rushed at him, made one tremendous
stamp at his opposing foot, which happily he withdrew in time, and
caught him round the waist, to dash him on the marble floor. But just
as she caught him, he came down with all the weight of his iron-shod
shoe upon her skin-shod foot, and with a hideous howl she dropped him,
squatted on the floor, and took her foot in both her hands. Meanwhile
the rest rushed on the king and the bodyguard, sent them flying, and
lifted the prostrate captain, who was all but pressed to death. It was
some moments before he recovered breath and consciousness.
'Where's the princess?' cried Curdie, again and again.
No one knew, and off they all rushed in search of her.
Through every room in the house they went, but nowhere was she to be
found. Neither was one of the servants to be seen. But Curdie, who
had kept to the lower part of the house, which was now quiet enough,
began to hear a confused sound as of a distant hubbub, and set out to
find where it came from. The noise grew as his sharp ears guided him
to a stair and so to the wine cellar. It was full of goblins, whom the
butler was supplying with wine as fast as he could draw it.
While the queen and her party had encountered the men-at-arms, Harelip
with another company had gone off to search the house. They captured
every one they met, and when they could find no more, they hurried away
to carry them safe to the caverns below. But when the butler, who was
amongst them, found that their path lay through the wine cellar, he
bethought himself of persuading them to taste the wine, and, as he had
hoped, they no sooner tasted than they wanted more. The routed
goblins, on their way below, joined them, and when Curdie entered they
were all, with outstretched hands, in which were vessels of every
description from sauce pan to silver cup, pressing around the butler,
who sat at the tap of a huge cask, filling and filling. Curdie cast
one glance around the place before commencing his attack, and saw in
the farthest corner a terrified group of the domestics unwatched, but
cowering without courage to attempt their escape. Amongst them was the
terror-stricken face of Lootie; but nowhere could he see the princess.
Seized with the horrible conviction that Harelip had already carried
her off, he rushed amongst them, unable for wrath to sing any more, but
stamping and cutting with greater fury than ever.
'Stamp on their feet; stamp on their feet!' he shouted, and in a moment
the goblins were disappearing through the hole in the floor like rats
and mice.
They could not vanish so fast, however, but that many more goblin feet
had to go limping back over the underground ways of the mountain that
morning.
Presently, however, they were reinforced from above by the king and his
party, with the redoubtable queen at their head. Finding Curdie again
busy amongst her unfortunate subjects, she rushed at him once more with
the rage of despair, and this time gave him a bad bruise on the foot.
Then a regular stamping fight got up between them, Curdie, with the
point of his hunting-knife, keeping her from clasping her mighty arms
about him, as he watched his opportunity of getting once more a good
stamp at her skin-shod foot. But the queen was more wary as well as
more agile than hitherto.
The rest meantime, finding their adversary thus matched for the moment,
paused in their headlong hurry, and turned to the shivering group of
women in the corner. As if determined to emulate his father and have a
sun-woman of some sort to share his future throne, Harelip rushed at
them, caught up Lootie, and sped with her to the hole. She gave a
great shriek, and Curdie heard her, and saw the plight she was in.
Gathering all his strength, he gave the queen a sudden cut across the
face with his weapon, came down, as she started back, with all his
weight on the proper foot, and sprung to Lootie's rescue. The prince
had two defenceless feet, and on both of them Curdie stamped just as he
reached the hole. He dropped his burden and rolled shrieking into the
earth. Curdie made one stab at him as he disappeared, caught hold of
the senseless Lootie, and having dragged her back to the corner, there
mounted guard over her, preparing once more to encounter the queen.
Her face streaming with blood, and her eyes flashing green lightning
through it, she came on with her mouth open and her teeth grinning like
a tiger's, followed by the king and her bodyguard of the thickest
goblins. But the same moment in rushed the captain and his men, and
ran at them stamping furiously. They dared not encounter such an
onset. Away they scurried, the queen foremost. Of course, the right
thing would have been to take the king and queen prisoners, and hold
them hostages for the princess, but they were so anxious to find her
that no one thought of detaining them until it was too late.
Having thus rescued the servants, they set about searching the house
once more. None of them could give the least information concerning
the princess. Lootie was almost silly with terror, and, although
scarcely able to walk would not leave Curdie's side for a single
moment. Again he allowed the others to search the rest of the
house--where, except a dismayed goblin lurking here and there, they
found no one--while he requested Lootie to take him to the princess's
room. She was as submissive and obedient as if he had been the king.
He found the bedclothes tossed about, and most of them on the floor,
while the princess's garments were scattered all over the room, which
was in the greatest confusion. It was only too evident that the
goblins had been there, and Curdie had no longer any doubt that she had
been carried off at the very first of the inroad. With a pang of
despair he saw how wrong they had been in not securing the king and
queen and prince; but he determined to find and rescue the princess as
she had found and rescued him, or meet the worst fate to which the
goblins could doom him.
CHAPTER 28
Curdie's Guide
Just as the consolation of this resolve dawned upon his mind and he was
turning away for the cellar to follow the goblins into their hole,
something touched his hand. It was the slightest touch, and when he
looked he could see nothing. Feeling and peering about in the grey of
the dawn, his fingers came upon a tight thread. He looked again, and
narrowly, but still could see nothing. It flashed upon him that this
must be the princess's thread. Without saying a word, for he knew no
one would believe him any more than he had believed the princess, he
followed the thread with his finger, contrived to give Lootie the slip,
and was soon out of the house and on the mountainside--surprised that,
if the thread were indeed the grandmother's messenger, it should have
led the princess, as he supposed it must, into the mountain, where she
would be certain to meet the goblins rushing back enraged from their
defeat. But he hurried on in the hope of overtaking her first. When
he arrived, however, at the place where the path turned off for the
mine, he found that the thread did not turn with it, but went straight
up the mountain. Could it be that the thread was leading him home to
his mother's cottage? Could the princess be there? He bounded up the
mountain like one of its own goats, and before the sun was up the
thread had brought him indeed to his mother's door. There it vanished
from his fingers, and he could not find it, search as he might.
The door was on the latch, and he entered. There sat his mother by the
fire, and in her arms lay the princess, fast asleep.
'Hush, Curdie!' said his mother. 'Do not wake her. I'm so glad you're
come! I thought the cobs must have got you again!'
With a heart full of delight, Curdie sat down at a corner of the
hearth, on a stool opposite his mother's chair, and gazed at the
princess, who slept as peacefully as if she had been in her own bed.
All at once she opened her eyes and fixed them on him.
'Oh, Curdie! you're come!' she said quietly. 'I thought you would!'
Curdie rose and stood before her with downcast eyes.
'Irene,' he said, 'I am very sorry I did not believe you.'
'Oh, never mind, Curdie!' answered the princess. 'You couldn't, you
know. You do believe me now, don't you?'
'I can't help it now. I ought to have helped it before.'
'Why can't you help it now?'
'Because, just as I was going into the mountain to look for you, I got
hold of your thread, and it brought me here.'
'Then you've come from my house, have you?'
'Yes, I have.'
'I didn't know you were there.'
'I've been there two or three days, I believe.'
'And I never knew it! Then perhaps you can tell me why my grandmother
has brought me here? I can't think. Something woke me--I didn't know
what, but I was frightened, and I felt for the thread, and there it
was! I was more frightened still when it brought me out on the
mountain, for I thought it was going to take me into it again, and I
like the outside of it best. I supposed you were in trouble again, and
I had to get you out. But it brought me here instead; and, oh, Curdie!
your mother has been so kind to me--just like my own grandmother!'
Here Curdie's mother gave the princess a hug, and the princess turned
and gave her a sweet smile, and held up her mouth to kiss her.
'Then you didn't see the cobs?'asked Curdie.
'No; I haven't been into the mountain, I told you, Curdie.'
'But the cobs have been into your house--all over it--and into your
bedroom, making such a row!'
'What did they want there? It was very rude of them.'
'They wanted you--to carry you off into the mountain with them, for a
wife to their prince Harelip.'
'Oh, how dreadful' cried the princess, shuddering.
'But you needn't be afraid, you know. Your grandmother takes care of
you.'
'Ah! you do believe in my grandmother, then? I'm so glad! She made me
think you would some day.'
All at once Curdie remembered his dream, and was silent, thinking.
'But how did you come to be in my house, and me not know it?' asked the
princess.
Then Curdie had to explain everything--how he had watched for her sake,
how he had been wounded and shut up by the soldiers, how he heard the
noises and could not rise, and how the beautiful old lady had come to
him, and all that followed.
'Poor Curdie! to lie there hurt and ill, and me never to know it!'
exclaimed the princess, stroking his rough hand. 'I would have come
and nursed you, if they had told me.'
'I didn't see you were lame,' said his mother.
'Am I, mother? Oh--yes--I suppose I ought to be! I declare I've never
thought of it since I got up to go down amongst the cobs!'
'Let me see the wound,' said his mother.
He pulled down his stocking--when behold, except a great scar, his leg
was perfectly sound!
Curdie and his mother gazed in each other's eyes, full of wonder, but
Irene called out:
'I thought so, Curdie! I was sure it wasn't a dream. I was sure my
grandmother had been to see you. Don't you smell the roses? It was my
grandmother healed your leg, and sent you to help me.'
'No, Princess Irene,' said Curdie; 'I wasn't good enough to be allowed
to help you: I didn't believe you. Your grandmother took care of you
without me.'
'She sent you to help my people, anyhow. I wish my king-papa would
come. I do want so to tell him how good you have been!'
'But,' said the mother, 'we are forgetting how frightened your people
must be. You must take the princess home at once, Curdie--or at least
go and tell them where she is.'
'Yes, mother. Only I'm dreadfully hungry. Do let me have some
breakfast first. They ought to have listened to me, and then they
wouldn't have been taken by surprise as they were.'
'That is true, Curdie; but it is not for you to blame them much. You
remember?'
'Yes, mother, I do. Only I must really have something to eat.'
'You shall, my boy--as fast as I can get it,' said his mother, rising
and setting the princess on her chair.
But before his breakfast was ready, Curdie jumped up so suddenly as to
startle both his companions.
'Mother, mother!' he cried, 'I was forgetting. You must take the
princess home yourself. I must go and wake my father.'
Without a word of explanation, he rushed to the place where his father
was sleeping. Having thoroughly roused him with what he told him he
darted out of the cottage.
CHAPTER 29
Masonwork
He had all at once remembered the resolution of the goblins to carry
out their second plan upon the failure of the first. No doubt they
were already busy, and the mine was therefore in the greatest danger of
being flooded and rendered useless--not to speak of the lives of the
miners.
When he reached the mouth of the mine, after rousing all the miners
within reach, he found his father and a good many more just entering.
They all hurried to the gang by which he had found a way into the
goblin country. There the foresight of Peter had already collected a
great many blocks of stone, with cement, ready for building up the weak
place--well enough known to the goblins. Although there was not room
for more than two to be actually building at once, they managed, by
setting all the rest to work in preparing the cement and passing the
stones, to finish in the course of the day a huge buttress filling the
whole gang, and supported everywhere by the live rock. Before the hour
when they usually dropped work, they were satisfied the mine was secure.
They had heard goblin hammers and pickaxes busy all the time, and at
length fancied they heard sounds of water they had never heard before.
But that was otherwise accounted for when they left the mine, for they
stepped out into a tremendous storm which was raging all over the
mountain. The thunder was bellowing, and the lightning lancing out of
a huge black cloud which lay above it and hung down its edges of thick
mist over its sides. The lightning was breaking out of the mountain,
too, and flashing up into the cloud. From the state of the brooks, now
swollen into raging torrents, it was evident that the storm had been
storming all day.
The wind was blowing as if it would blow him off the mountain, but,
anxious about his mother and the princess, Curdie darted up through the
thick of the tempest. Even if they had not set out before the storm
came on, he did not judge them safe, for in such a storm even their
poor little house was in danger. Indeed he soon found that but for a
huge rock against which it was built, and which protected it both from
the blasts and the waters, it must have been swept if it was not blown
away; for the two torrents into which this rock parted the rush of
water behind it united again in front of the cottage--two roaring and
dangerous streams, which his mother and the princess could not possibly
have passed. It was with great difficulty that he forced his way
through one of them, and up to the door.
The moment his hand fell on the latch, through all the uproar of winds
and Waters came the joyous cry of the princess:
'There's Curdie! Curdie! Curdie!'
She was sitting wrapped in blankets on the bed, his mother trying for
the hundredth time to light the fire which had been drowned by the rain
that came down the chimney. The clay floor was one mass of mud, and
the whole place looked wretched. But the faces of the mother and the
princess shone as if their troubles only made them the merrier. Curdie
burst out laughing at the sight of them.
'I never had such fun!' said the princess, her eyes twinkling and her
pretty teeth shining. 'How nice it must be to live in a cottage on the
mountain!'
'It all depends on what kind your inside house is,' said the mother.
'I know what you mean,' said Irene. 'That's the kind of thing my
grandmother says.'
By the time Peter returned the storm was nearly over, but the streams
were so fierce and so swollen that it was not only out of the question
for the princess to go down the mountain, but most dangerous for Peter
even or Curdie to make the attempt in the gathering darkness.
'They will be dreadfully frightened about you,' said Peter to the
princess, 'but we cannot help it. We must wait till the morning.'
With Curdie's help, the fire was lighted at last, and the mother set
about making their supper; and after supper they all told the princess
stories till she grew sleepy. Then Curdie's mother laid her in
Curdie's bed, which was in a tiny little garret-room. As soon as she
was in bed, through a little window low down in the roof she caught
sight of her grandmother's lamp shining far away beneath, and she gazed
at the beautiful silvery globe until she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 30
The King and the Kiss
The next morning the sun rose so bright that Irene said the rain had
washed his face and let the light out clean. The torrents were still
roaring down the side of the mountain, but they were so much smaller as
not to be dangerous in the daylight. After an early breakfast, Peter
went to his work and Curdie and his mother set out to take the princess
home. They had difficulty in getting her dry across the streams, and
Curdie had again and again to carry her, but at last they got safe on
the broader part of the road, and walked gently down towards the king's
house. And what should they see as they turned the last corner but the
last of the king's troop riding through the gate!
'Oh, Curdie!' cried Irene, clapping her hands right joyfully,'my
king-papa is come.'
The moment Curdie heard that, he caught her up in his arms, and set off
at full speed, crying:
'Come on, mother dear! The king may break his heart before he knows
that she is safe.'
Irene clung round his neck and he ran with her like a deer. When he
entered the gate into the court, there sat the king on his horse, with
all the people of the house about him, weeping and hanging their heads.
The king was not weeping, but his face was white as a dead man's, and
he looked as if the life had gone out of him. The men-at-arms he had
brought with him sat with horror-stricken faces, but eyes flashing with
rage, waiting only for the word of the king to do something--they did
not know what, and nobody knew what.
The day before, the men-at-arms belonging to the house, as soon as they
were satisfied the princess had been carried away, rushed after the
goblins into the hole, but found that they had already so skilfully
blockaded the narrowest part, not many feet below the cellar, that
without miners and their tools they could do nothing. Not one of them
knew where the mouth of the mine lay, and some of those who had set out
to find it had been overtaken by the storm and had not even yet
returned. Poor Sir Walter was especially filled with shame, and almost
hoped the king would order his head to be cut off, for to think of that
sweet little face down amongst the goblins was unendurable.
When Curdie ran in at the gate with the princess in his arms, they were
all so absorbed in their own misery and awed by the king's presence and
grief, that no one observed his arrival. He went straight up to the
king, where he sat on his horse.
'Papa! papa!' the princess cried, stretching out her arms to him; 'here
I am!'
The king started. The colour rushed to his face. He gave an
inarticulate cry. Curdie held up the princess, and the king bent down
and took her from his arms. As he clasped her to his bosom, the big
tears went dropping down his cheeks and his beard. And such a shout
arose from all the bystanders that the startled horses pranced and
capered, and the armour rang and clattered, and the rocks of the
mountain echoed back the noises. The princess greeted them all as she
nestled in her father's bosom, and the king did not set her down until
she had told them all the story. But she had more to tell about Curdie
than about herself, and what she did tell about herself none of them
could understand--except the king and Curdie, who stood by the king's
knee stroking the neck of the great white horse. And still as she told
what Curdie had done, Sir Walter and others added to what she told,
even Lootie joining in the praises of his courage and energy.
Curdie held his peace, looking quietly up in the king's face. And his
mother stood on the outskirts of the crowd listening with delight, for
her son's deeds were pleasant in her ears, until the princess caught
sight of her.
'And there is his mother, king-papa!' she said. 'See--there. She is
such a nice mother, and has been so kind to me!'
They all parted asunder as the king made a sign to her to come forward.
She obeyed, and he gave her his hand, but could not speak.
'And now, king-papa,' the princess went on, 'I must tell you another
thing. One night long ago Curdie drove the goblins away and brought
Lootie and me safe from the mountain. And I promised him a kiss when
we got home, but Lootie wouldn't let me give it him. I don't want you
to scold Lootie, but I want you to tell her that a princess must do as
she promises.'
'Indeed she must, my child--except it be wrong,' said the king. 'There,
give Curdie a kiss.'
And as he spoke he held her towards him.
The princess reached down, threw her arms round Curdie's neck, and
kissed him on the mouth, saying: 'There, Curdie! There's the kiss I
promised you!'
Then they all went into the house, and the cook rushed to the kitchen
and the servants to their work. Lootie dressed Irene in her shiningest
clothes, and the king put off his armour, and put on purple and gold;
and a messenger was sent for Peter and all the miners, and there was a
great and a grand feast, which continued long after the princess was
put to bed.
CHAPTER 31
The Subterranean Waters
The king's harper, who always formed a part of his escort, was chanting
a ballad which he made as he went on playing on his instrument--about
the princess and the goblins, and the prowess of Curdie, when all at
once he ceased, with his eyes on one of the doors of the hall.
Thereupon the eyes of the king and his guests turned thitherward also.
The next moment, through the open doorway came the princess Irene. She
went straight up to her father, with her right hand stretched out a
little sideways, and her forefinger, as her father and Curdie
understood, feeling its way along the invisible thread. The king took
her on his knee, and she said in his ear:
'King-papa, do you hear that noise?'
'I hear nothing,' said the king.
'Listen,' she said, holding up her forefinger.
The king listened, and a great stillness fell upon the company. Each
man, seeing that the king listened, listened also, and the harper sat
with his harp between his arms, and his finger silent upon the strings.
'I do hear a noise,' said the king at length--'a noise as of distant
thunder. It is coming nearer and nearer. What can it be?'
They all heard it now, and each seemed ready to start to his feet as he
listened. Yet all sat perfectly still. The noise came rapidly nearer.
'What can it be?' said the king again.
'I think it must be another storm coming over the mountain,' said Sir
Walter.
Then Curdie, who at the first word of the king had slipped from his
seat, and laid his ear to the ground, rose up quickly, and approaching
the king said, speaking very fast:
'Please, Your Majesty, I think I know what it is. I have no time to
explain, for that might make it too late for some of us. Will Your
Majesty give orders that everybody leave the house as quickly as
possible and get up the mountain?'
The king, who was the wisest man in the kingdom, knew well there was a
time when things must be done and questions left till afterwards. He
had faith in Curdie, and rose instantly, with Irene in his arms.
'Every man and woman follow me,' he said, and strode out into the
darkness.
Before he had reached the gate, the noise had grown to a great
thundering roar, and the ground trembled beneath their feet, and before
the last of them had crossed the court, out after them from the great
hall door came a huge rush of turbid water, and almost swept them away.
But they got safe out of the gate and up the mountain, while the
torrent went roaring down the road into the valley beneath.
Curdie had left the king and the princess to look after his mother,
whom he and his father, one on each side, caught up when the stream
overtook them and carried safe and dry.
When the king had got out of the way of the water, a little up the
mountain, he stood with the princess in his arms, looking back with
amazement on the issuing torrent, which glimmered fierce and foamy
through the night. There Curdie rejoined them.
'Now, Curdie,' said the king, 'what does it mean? Is this what you
expected?'
'It is, Your Majesty,' said Curdie; and proceeded to tell him about the
second scheme of the goblins, who, fancying the miners of more
importance to the upper world than they were, had resolved, if they
should fail in carrying off the king's daughter, to flood the mine and
drown the miners. Then he explained what the miners had done to
prevent it. The goblins had, in pursuance of their design, let loose
all the underground reservoirs and streams, expecting the water to run
down into the mine, which was lower than their part of the mountain,
for they had, as they supposed, not knowing of the solid wall close
behind, broken a passage through into it. But the readiest outlet the
water could find had turned out to be the tunnel they had made to the
king's house, the possibility of which catastrophe had not occurred to
the young miner until he had laid his ear to the floor of the hall.
What was then to be done? The house appeared in danger of falling, and
every moment the torrent was increasing.
'We must set out at once,' said the king. 'But how to get at the
horses!'
'Shall I see if we can manage that?' said Curdie.
'Do,' said the king.
Curdie gathered the men-at-arms, and took them over the garden wall,
and so to the stables. They found their horses in terror; the water
was rising fast around them, and it was quite time they were got out.
But there was no way to get them out, except by riding them through the
stream, which was now pouring from the lower windows as well as the
door. As one horse was quite enough for any man to manage through such
a torrent, Curdie got on the king's white charger and, leading the way,
brought them all in safety to the rising ground.
'Look, look, Curdie!' cried Irene, the moment that, having dismounted,
he led the horse up to the king.
Curdie did look, and saw, high in the air, somewhere about the top of
the king's house, a great globe of light shining like the purest silver.
'Oh!' he cried in some consternation, 'that is your grandmother's lamp!
We must get her out. I will go an find her. The house may fall, you
know.'
'My grandmother is in no danger,' said Irene, smiling.
'Here, Curdie, take the princess while I get on my horse,' said the
king.
Curdie took the princess again, and both turned their eyes to the globe
of light. The same moment there shot from it a white bird, which,
descending with outstretched wings, made one circle round the king an
Curdie and the princess, and then glided up again. The light and the
pigeon vanished together.
'Now, Curdie!' said the princess, as he lifted her to her father's
arms, 'you see my grandmother knows all about it, and isn't frightened.
I believe she could walk through that water and it wouldn't wet her a
bit.'
'But, my child,' said the king, 'you will be cold if you haven't
Something more on. Run, Curdie, my boy, and fetch anything you can lay
your hands on, to keep the princess warm. We have a long ride before
us.'
Curdie was gone in a moment, and soon returned with a great rich fur,
and the news that dead goblins were tossing about in the current
through the house. They had been caught in their own snare; instead of
the mine they had flooded their own country, whence they were now swept
up drowned. Irene shuddered, but the king held her close to his bosom.
Then he turned to Sir Walter, and said:
'Bring Curdie's father and mother here.'
'I wish,' said the king, when they stood before him, 'to take your son
with me. He shall enter my bodyguard at once, and wait further
promotion.'
Peter and his wife, overcome, only murmured almost inaudible thanks.
But Curdie spoke aloud.
'Please, Your Majesty,' he said, 'I cannot leave my father and mother.'
'That's right, Curdie!' cried the princess. 'I wouldn't if I was you.'
The king looked at the princess and then at Curdie with a glow of
satisfaction on his countenance.
'I too think you are right, Curdie,' he said, 'and I will not ask you
again. But I shall have a chance of doing something for you some time.'
'Your Majesty has already allowed me to serve you,' said Curdie.
'But, Curdie,' said his mother, 'why shouldn't you go with the king?
We can get on very well without you.'
'But I can't get on very well without you,' said Curdie. 'The king is
very kind, but I could not be half the use to him that I am to you.
Please, Your Majesty, if you wouldn't mind giving my mother a red
petticoat! I should have got her one long ago, but for the goblins.'
'As soon as we get home,' said the king, 'Irene and I will search out
the warmest one to be found, and send it by one of the gentlemen.'
'Yes, that we will, Curdie!' said the princess. 'And next summer we'll
come back and see you wear it, Curdie's mother,' she added. 'Shan't we,
king-papa?'
'Yes, my love; I hope so,' said the king.
Then turning to the miners, he said:
'Will you do the best you can for my servants tonight? I hope they
will be able to return to the house tomorrow.'
The miners with one voice promised their hospitality. Then the king
commanded his servants to mind whatever Curdie should say to them, and
after shaking hands with him and his father and mother, the king and
the princess and all their company rode away down the side of the new
stream, which had already devoured half the road, into the starry night.
CHAPTER 32
The Last Chapter
All the rest went up the mountain, and separated in groups to the homes
of the miners. Curdie and his father and mother took Lootie with them.
And the whole way a light, of which all but Lootie understood the
origin, shone upon their path. But when they looked round they could
see nothing of the silvery globe.
For days and days the water continued to rush from the doors and
windows of the king's house, and a few goblin bodies were swept out
into the road.
Curdie saw that something must be done. He spoke to his father and the
rest of the miners, and they at once proceeded to make another outlet
for the waters. By setting all hands to the work, tunnelling here and
building there, they soon succeeded; and having also made a little
tunnel to drain the water away from under the king's house, they were
soon able to get into the wine cellar, where they found a multitude of
dead goblins--among the rest the queen, with the skin-shoe gone, and
the stone one fast to her ankle--for the water had swept away the
barricade, which prevented the men-at-arms from following the goblins,
and had greatly widened the passage. They built it securely up, and
then went back to their labours in the mine.
A good many of the goblins with their creatures escaped from the
inundation out upon the mountain. But most of them soon left that part
of the country, and most of those who remained grew milder in
character, and indeed became very much like the Scotch brownies. Their
skulls became softer as well as their hearts, and their feet grew
harder, and by degrees they became friendly with the inhabitants of the
mountain and even with the miners. But the latter were merciless to
any of the cobs' creatures that came in their way, until at length they
all but disappeared.
The rest of the history of The Princess and Curdie must be kept for
another volume.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
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