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CHAPTER 2
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.
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