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.
As for his mother, she had once seen, long before Curdie was born, a
certain mysterious light of the same description as 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 shrank 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 Curdie 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
toward 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 in 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 dragonflies, 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 a 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 forever 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 his 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 as they closed and 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 this. 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 forever, 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 toward the castle, never letting his heels down, lest he should
shake the poor, wounded bird.