<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></SPAN>CHAPTER II.</h2>
<p class="h2">THE WHITE PIGEON.</p>
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<p class="noin"><span style="font-weight:bold">HEN</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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. "<i>It's not
dead!</i>" 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.</p>
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<p class="caption">"<i>That moment the pigeon fell on the path, broken-winged
and bleeding.</i>"</p>
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