THE WHITE PIGEON.
When in the winter they had had their supper and sat about the fire, or
when in the summer they lay on the border of the rock-margined stream
that ran through their little meadow, close by the door of their
cottage, issuing from the far-up whiteness often folded in clouds,
Curdie's mother would not seldom lead the conversation to one peculiar
personage said and believed to have been much concerned in the late
issue of events. That personage was the great-great-grandmother of the
princess, of whom the princess had often talked, but whom neither Curdie
nor his mother had ever seen. Curdie could indeed remember, although
already it looked more like a dream than he could account for if it had
really taken place, how the princess had once led him up many stairs to
what she called a beautiful room in the top of the tower, where she went
through all the--what should he call it?--the behaviour of presenting
him to her grandmother, talking now to her and now to him, while all the
time he saw nothing but a bare garret, a heap of musty straw, a sunbeam,
and a withered apple. Lady, he would have declared before the king
himself, young or old, there was none, except the princess herself, who
was certainly vexed that he could not see what she at least believed she
saw. And for his mother, she had once seen, long before Curdie was born,
a certain mysterious light of the same description with one Irene spoke
of, calling it her grandmother's moon; and Curdie himself had seen this
same light, shining from above the castle, just as the king and princess
were taking their leave. Since that time neither had seen or heard
anything that could be supposed connected with her. Strangely enough,
however, nobody had seen her go away. If she was such an old lady, she
could hardly be supposed to have set out alone and on foot when all the
house was asleep. Still, away she must have gone, for of course, if she
was so powerful, she would always be about the princess to take care of
her.
But as Curdie grew older, he doubted more and more whether Irene had not
been talking of some dream she had taken for reality: he had heard it
said that children could not always distinguish betwixt dreams and
actual events. At the same time there was his mother's testimony: what
was he to do with that? His mother, through whom he had learned
everything, could hardly be imagined by her own dutiful son to have
mistaken a dream for a fact of the waking world. So he rather shrunk
from thinking about it, and the less he thought about it, the less he
was inclined to believe it when he did think about it, and therefore, of
course, the less inclined to talk about it to his father and mother; for
although his father was one of those men who for one word they say think
twenty thoughts, Curdie was well assured that he would rather doubt his
own eyes than his wife's testimony. There were no others to whom he
could have talked about it. The miners were a mingled company--some
good, some not so good, some rather bad--none of them so bad or so good
as they might have been; Curdie liked most of them, and was a favourite
with all; but they knew very little about the upper world, and what
might or might not take place there. They knew silver from copper ore;
they understood the underground ways of things, and they could look very
wise with their lanterns in their hands searching after this or that
sign of ore, or for some mark to guide their way in the hollows of the
earth; but as to great-great-grandmothers, they would have mocked him
all the rest of his life for the absurdity of not being absolutely
certain that the solemn belief of his father and mother was
nothing but ridiculous nonsense. Why, to them the very word
"great-great-grandmother" would have been a week's laughter! I am not
sure that they were able quite to believe there were such persons as
great-great-grandmothers; they had never seen one. They were not
companions to give the best of help towards progress, and as Curdie
grew, he grew at this time faster in body than in mind--with the usual
consequence, that he was getting rather stupid--one of the chief signs
of which was that he believed less and less of things he had never seen.
At the same time I do not think he was ever so stupid as to imagine that
this was a sign of superior faculty and strength of mind. Still, he was
becoming more and more a miner, and less and less a man of the upper
world where the wind blew. On his way to and from the mine he took less
and less notice of bees and butterflies, moths and dragon-flies, the
flowers and the brooks and the clouds. He was gradually changing into a
commonplace man. There is this difference between the growth of some
human beings and that of others: in the one case it is a continuous
dying, in the other a continuous resurrection. One of the latter sort
comes at length to know at once whether a thing is true the moment it
comes before him; one of the former class grows more and more afraid of
being taken in, so afraid of it that he takes himself in altogether, and
comes at length to believe in nothing but his dinner: to be sure of a
thing with him is to have it between his teeth. Curdie was not in a very
good way then at that time. His father and mother had, it is true, no
fault to find with him--and yet--and yet--neither of them was ready to
sing when the thought of him came up. There must be something wrong when
a mother catches herself sighing over the time when her boy was in
petticoats, or the father looks sad when he thinks how he used to carry
him on his shoulder. The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the
old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be
a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and
more. The child is not meant to die, but to be for ever fresh-born.
Curdie had made himself a bow and some arrows, and was teaching himself
to shoot with them. One evening in the early summer, as he was walking
home from the mine with them in his hand, a light flashed across his
eyes. He looked, and there was a snow-white pigeon settling on a rock in
front of him, in the red light of the level sun. There it fell at once
to work with one of its wings, in which a feather or two had got some
sprays twisted, causing a certain roughness unpleasant to the fastidious
creature of the air. It was indeed a lovely being, and Curdie thought
how happy it must be flitting through the air with a flash--a live bolt
of light. For a moment he became so one with the bird that he seemed to
feel both its bill and its feathers, as the one adjusted the other to
fly again, and his heart swelled with the pleasure of its involuntary
sympathy. Another moment and it would have been aloft in the waves of
rosy light--it was just bending its little legs to spring: that moment
it fell on the path broken-winged and bleeding from Curdie's cruel
arrow. With a gush of pride at his skill, and pleasure at its success,
he ran to pick up his prey. I must say for him he picked it up
gently--perhaps it was the beginning of his repentance. But when he had
the white thing in his hands--its whiteness stained with another red
than that of the sunset flood in which it had been revelling--ah God!
who knows the joy of a bird, the ecstasy of a creature that has neither
storehouse nor barn!--when he held it, I say, in his victorious hands,
the winged thing looked up in his face--and with such eyes! asking what
was the matter, and where the red sun had gone, and the clouds, and the
wind of its flight. Then they closed, but to open again presently, with
the same questions in them. And so they closed and opened several times,
but always when they opened, their look was fixed on his. It did not
once flutter or try to get away; it only throbbed and bled and looked at
him. Curdie's heart began to grow very large in his bosom. What could it
mean? It was nothing but a pigeon, and why should he not kill a
pigeon? But the fact was, that not till this very moment had he ever
known what a pigeon was. A good many discoveries of a similar kind have
to be made by most of us. Once more it opened its eyes--then closed them
again, and its throbbing ceased. Curdie gave a sob: its last look
reminded him of the princess--he did not know why. He remembered how
hard he had laboured to set her beyond danger, and yet what dangers she
had had to encounter for his sake: they had been saviours to each
other--and what had he done now? He had stopped saving, and had begun
killing! What had he been sent into the world for? Surely not to be a
death to its joy and loveliness. He had done the thing that was contrary
to gladness; he was a destroyer! He was not the Curdie he had been meant
to be! Then the underground waters gushed from the boy's heart. And with
the tears came the remembrance that a white pigeon, just before the
princess went away with her father, came from somewhere--yes, from the
grandmother's lamp, and flew round the king and Irene and himself, and
then flew away: this might be that very pigeon! Horrible to think! And
if it wasn't, yet it was a white pigeon, the same as it. And if she kept
a great many pigeons--and white ones, as Irene had told him, then whose
pigeon could he have killed but the grand old princess's? Suddenly
everything round about him seemed against him. The red sunset stung
him: the rocks frowned at him; the sweet wind that had been laving his
face as he walked up the hill, dropped--as if he wasn't fit to be kissed
any more. Was the whole world going to cast him out? Would he have to
stand there for ever, not knowing what to do, with the dead pigeon in
his hand? Things looked bad indeed. Was the whole world going to make a
work about a pigeon--a white pigeon? The sun went down. Great clouds
gathered over the west, and shortened the twilight. The wind gave a
howl, and then lay down again. The clouds gathered thicker. Then came a
rumbling. He thought it was thunder. It was a rock that fell inside the
mountain. A goat ran past him down the hill, followed by a dog sent to
fetch him home. He thought they were goblin creatures, and trembled. He
used to despise them. And still he held the dead pigeon tenderly in his
hand. It grew darker and darker. An evil something began to move in his
heart. "What a fool I am!" he said to himself. Then he grew angry, and
was just going to throw the bird from him and whistle, when a brightness
shone all round him. He lifted his eyes, and saw a great globe of
light--like silver at the hottest heat: he had once seen silver run from
the furnace. It shone from somewhere above the roofs of the castle: it
must be the great old princess's moon! How could she be there? Of
course she was not there! He had asked the whole household, and nobody
knew anything about her or her globe either. It couldn't be! And yet
what did that signify, when there was the white globe shining, and here
was the dead white bird in his hand? That moment the pigeon gave a
little flutter. "_It's not dead!_" cried Curdie, almost with a shriek.
The same instant he was running full speed towards the castle, never
letting his heels down, lest he should shake the poor wounded bird.
[Illustration: "_That moment the pigeon fell on the path, broken-winged
and bleeding._"]