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CHAPTER 9
Hands
Curdie went home, pondering much, and told everything to his father
and mother. As the old princess had said, it was now their turn to
find what they heard hard to believe. if they had not been able to
trust Curdie himself, they would have refused to believe more than
the half of what he reported, then they would have refused that
half too, and at last would most likely for a time have disbelieved
in the very existence of the princess, what evidence their own
senses had given them notwithstanding.
For he had nothing conclusive to show in proof of what he told
them. When he held out his hands to them, his mother said they
looked as if he had been washing them with soft soap, only they did
smell of something nicer than that, and she must allow it was more
like roses than anything else she knew. His father could not see
any difference upon his hands, but then it was night, he said, and
their poor little lamp was not enough for his old eyes. As to the
feel of them, each of his own hands, he said, was hard and horny
enough for two, and it must be the fault of the dullness of his own
thick skin that he felt no change on Curdie's palms.
'Here, Curdie,' said his mother, 'try my hand, and see what beast's
paw lies inside it.'
'No, Mother,' answered Curdie, half beseeching, half indignant, 'I
will not insult my new gift by making pretence to try it. That
would be mockery. There is no hand within yours but the hand of a
true woman, my mother.'
'I should like you just to take hold of my hand though,' said his
mother. 'You are my son, and may know all the bad there is in me.'
Then at once Curdie took her hand in his. And when he had it, he
kept it, stroking it gently with his other hand.
'Mother,' he said at length, 'your hand feels just like that of the
princess.'
'What! My horny, cracked, rheumatic old hand, with its big joints,
and its short nails all worn down to the quick with hard work -
like the hand of the beautiful princess! Why, my child, you will
make me fancy your fingers have grown very dull indeed, instead of
sharp and delicate, if you talk such nonsense. Mine is such an
ugly hand I should be ashamed to show it to any but one that loved
me. But love makes all safe - doesn't it, Curdie?'
'Well, Mother, all I can say is that I don't feel a roughness, or
a crack, or a big joint, or a short nail. Your hand feels just and
exactly, as near as I can recollect, and it's not more than two
hours since I had it in mine - well, I will say, very like indeed
to that of the old princess.'
'Go away, you flatterer,' said his mother, with a smile that showed
how she prized the love that lay beneath what she took for its
hyperbole. The praise even which one cannot accept is sweet from
a true mouth. 'If that is all your new gift can do, it won't make
a warlock of you,' she added.
'Mother, it tells me nothing but the truth,' insisted Curdie,
'however unlike the truth it may seem. it wants no gift to tell
what anybody's outside hands are like. But by it I know your
inside hands are like the princess's.'
'And I am sure the boy speaks true,' said Peter. 'He only says
about your hand what I have known ever so long about yourself,
Joan. Curdie, your mother's foot is as pretty a foot as any lady's
in the land, and where her hand is not so pretty it comes of
killing its beauty for you and me, my boy. And I can tell you
more, Curdie. I don't know much about ladies and gentlemen, but I
am sure your inside mother must be a lady, as her hand tells you,
and I will try to say how I know it. This is how: when I forget
myself looking at her as she goes about her work - and that happens
often as I grow older - I fancy for a moment or two that I am a
gentleman; and when I wake up from my little dream, it is only to
feel the more strongly that I must do everything as a gentleman
should. I will try to tell you what I mean, Curdie. If a
gentleman - I mean a real gentleman, not a pretended one, of which
sort they say there are a many above ground - if a real gentleman
were to lose all his money and come down to work in the mines to
get bread for his family - do you think, Curdie, he would work like
the lazy ones? Would he try to do as little as he could for his
wages? I know the sort of the true gentleman pretty near as well
as he does himself. And my wife, that's your mother, Curdie, she's
a true lady, you may take my word for it, for it's she that makes
me want to be a true gentleman. Wife, the boy is in the right
about your hand.'
'Now, Father, let me feel yours,' said Curdie, daring a little
more.
'No, no, my boy,' answered Peter. 'I don't want to hear anything
about my hand or my head or my heart. I am what I am, and I hope
growing better, and that's enough. No, you shan't feel my hand.
You must go to bed, for you must start with the sun.'
It was not as if Curdie had been leaving them to go to prison, or
to make a fortune, and although they were sorry enough to lose him,
they were not in the least heartbroken or even troubled at his
going.
As the princess had said he was to go like the poor man he was,
Curdie came down in the morning from his little loft dressed in his
working clothes. His mother, who was busy getting his breakfast
for him, while his father sat reading to her out of an old book,
would have had him put on his holiday garments, which, she said,
would look poor enough among the fine ladies and gentlemen he was
going to. But Curdie said he did not know that he was going among
ladies and gentlemen, and that as work was better than play, his
workday clothes must on the whole be better than his playday
Clothes; and as his father accepted the argument, his mother gave
in. When he had eaten his breakfast, she took a pouch made of
goatskin, with the long hair on it, filled it with bread and
cheese, and hung it over his shoulder. Then his father gave him a
stick he had cut for him in the wood, and he bade them good-bye
rather hurriedly, for he was afraid of breaking down. As he went
out he caught up his mattock and took it with him. It had on the
one side a pointed curve of strong steel for loosening the earth
and the ore, and on the other a steel hammer for breaking the
stones and rocks. just as he crossed the threshold the sun showed
the first segment of his disc above the horizon.
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