gs03"The wounded bird now spread out both its wings across her bosom.""Did I not tell you the truth when I sat at my wheel?" said the old lady."Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie."I can do no more than tell you the truth now," she rejoined. "It is a bad thing indeed to forget one who has told us the truth. Now go."Curdie obeyed, and took a few steps towards the door."Please, ma'am,"—"what am I to call you?" he was going to say; but when he turned to speak, he saw nobody. Whether she was there or not he could not tell, however, for the moonlight had vanished, and the room was utterly dark. A great fear, such as he had never before known, came upon him, and almost overwhelmed him. He groped his way to the door, and crawled down the stair—in doubt and anxiety as to how he should find his way out of the house in the dark. And the stair seemed ever so much longer than when he came up. Nor was that any wonder, for down and down he went, until at length his foot struck on a door, and when he rose and opened it, he found himself under the starry, moonless sky at the foot of the tower. He soon discovered the way out of the garden, with which he had some acquaintance already, and in a few minutes was climbing the mountain with a solemn and cheerful heart. It was rather dark, but he knew the way well. As he passed the rock from which the poor pigeon fell wounded with his arrow, a great joy filled his heart at the thought that he was delivered from the blood of the little bird,and he ran the next hundred yards at full speed up the hill. Some dark shadows passed him: he did not even care to think what they were, but let them run. When he reached home, he found his father and mother waiting supper for him.CHAPTER IV.CURDIE'S FATHER AND MOTHER.THEeyes of the fathers and mothers are quick to read their children's looks, and when Curdie entered the cottage, his parents saw at once that something unusual had taken place. When he said to his mother, "I beg your pardon for being so late," there was something in the tone beyond the politeness that went to her heart, for it seemed to come from the place where all lovely things were born before they began to grow in this world. When he set his father's chair to the table, an attention he had not shown him for a long time, Peter thanked him with more gratitude than the boy had ever yet felt in all his life. It was a small thing to do for the man who had been serving him since ever he was born, but I suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which he has the most right. There was a change upon Curdie, and father and motherfelt there must be something to account for it, and therefore were pretty sure he had something to tell them. For when a child's heart isallright, it is not likely he will want to keep anything from his parents. But the story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to come out with all at once. He must wait until they had had their porridge, and the affairs of this world were over for the day. But when they were seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went so sweetly blundering over the great stones of its rocky channel, for the whole meadow lay on the top of a huge rock, then he felt that the right hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful things that had come to him. It was perhaps the loveliest of all hours in the year. The summer was young and soft, and this was the warmest evening they had yet had—dusky, dark even below, while above the stars were bright and large and sharp in the blackest blue sky. The night came close around them, clasping them in one universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled, seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything they said and did. It is a way the night has sometimes, and there is a reason for it. The only sound was that of the brook, for there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music upon if there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on a great shoulder of stone where trees wouldnot grow. There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to his father and mother. What a world had slipped in between the mouth of the mine and his mother's cottage! Neither of them said a word until he had ended."Now what am I to make of it, mother? It's so strange!" he said, and stopped."It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it—isn't it, Peter?" said the good woman, turning her face towards all she could see of her husband's."It seems so to me," answered Peter, with a smile, which only the night saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words. They were the happiest couple in that country, because they always understood each other, and that was because they always meant the same thing, and that was because they always loved what was fair and true and right better—not than anything else, but than everything else put together."Then will you tell Curdie?" said she."You can talk best, Joan," said he. "You tell him, and I will listen—and learn how to say what I think," he added, laughing."I," said Curdie, "don't know what to think.""It does not matter so much," said his mother. "Ifonly you know what to make of a thing, you'll know soon enough what to think of it. Now I needn't tell you, surely, Curdie, what you've got to do with this?""I suppose you mean, mother," answered Curdie, "that I must do as the old lady told me?""That is what I mean: what else could it be? Am I not right, Peter?""Quite right, Joan," answered Peter, "so far as my judgment goes. It is a very strange story, but you see the question is not about believing it, for Curdie knows what came to him.""And you remember, Curdie," said his mother, "that when the princess took you up that tower once before, and there talked to her great-great-grandmother, you came home quite angry with her, and said there was nothing in the place but an old tub, a heap of straw—oh, I remember your inventory quite well!—an old tub, a heap of straw, a withered apple, and a sunbeam. According to your eyes, that was all there was in the great old musty garret. But now you have had a glimpse of the old princess herself!""Yes, mother, Ididsee her—or if I didn't,—" said Curdie very thoughtfully—then began again. "The hardest thing to believe, though I saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature, that seemedalmost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of the silver paper they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief made of spider-threads, took my hand, and rose up. She was taller and stronger than you, mother, ever so much!—at least, she looked so.""And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so," said Mrs. Peterson."Well, I confess," returned her son, "that one thing, if there were no other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming after all, for as wide awake as I fancied myself to be.""Of course," answered his mother, "it is not for me to say whether you were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the bunch of sweet-peas that make my heart glad with their colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring. I only think how wonderful and lovely it all is. It seems just as full of reason as it is of wonder. How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And there is this in it too, Curdie—of which you would not be so ready to think—that when you come home to your father and mother, and they find you behaving more like a dear good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at least are not likely to think you were only dreaming.""Still," said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, "I might have dreamed my duty.""Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts. But however any of these things may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing as she told you. And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such person, you are bound to do it, for you promised.""It seems to me," said his father, "that if a lady comes to you in a dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake, the least you can do is to hold your tongue.""True, father!—Yes, mother, I'll do it," said Curdie.Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next took them in its arms and made them well.CHAPTER V.THE MINERS.ITmuch increased Curdie's feeling of the strangeness of the whole affair, that, the next morning, when they were at work in the mine, the party of which he and his father were two, just as if they had known what had happened to him the night before, began talking about all manner of wonderful tales that were abroad in the country, chiefly of course those connected with the mines, and the mountains in which they lay. Their wives and mothers and grandmothers were their chief authorities. For when they sat by their firesides they heard their wives telling their children the selfsame tales, with little differences, and here and there one they had not heard before, which they had heard their mothers and grandmothers tell in one or other of the same cottages. At length they came to speak of a certain strange being they called Old Mother Wotherwop.Some said their wives had seen her. It appeared as they talked that not one had seen her more than once. Some of their mothers and grandmothers, however, had seen her also, and they all had told them tales about her when they were children. They said she could take any shape she liked, but that in reality she was a withered old woman, so old and so withered that she was as thin as a sieve with a lamp behind it; that she was never seen except at night, and when something terrible had taken place, or was going to take place—such as the falling in of the roof of a mine, or the breaking out of water in it. She had more than once been seen—it was always at night—beside some well, sitting on the brink of it, and leaning over and stirring it with her forefinger, which was six times as long as any of the rest. And whoever for months after drank of that well was sure to be ill. To this one of them, however, added that he remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story—for was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she struck every man who looked upon her stone-blind. Peter ventured the questionwhether she might not as likely be an angel that took the form of an old woman, as an old woman that took the form of an angel. But nobody except Curdie, who was holding his peace with all his might, saw any sense in the question. They said an old woman might be very glad to make herself look like a young one, but who ever heard of a young and beautiful one making herself look old and ugly? Peter asked why they were so much more ready to believe the bad that was said of her than the good. They answered because she was bad. He asked why they believed her to be bad, and they answered, because she did bad things. When he asked how they knew that, they said, because she was a bad creature. Even if they didn't know it, they said, a woman like that was so much more likely to be bad than good. Why did she go about at night? Why did she appear only now and then, and on such occasions? One went on to tell how one night when his grandfather had been having a jolly time of it with his friends in the market town, she had served him so upon his way home that the poor man never drank a drop of anything stronger than water after it to the day of his death. She dragged him into a bog, and tumbled him up and down in it till he was nearly dead."I suppose that was her way of teaching him what a good thing water was," said Peter; but the man, who liked strong drink, did not see the joke."They do say," said another, "that she has lived in the old house over there ever since the little princess left it. They say too that the housekeeper knows all about it, and is hand and glove with the old witch. I don't doubt they have many a nice airing together on broomsticks. But I don't doubt either it's all nonsense, and there's no such person at all.""When our cow died," said another, "she was seen going round and round the cowhouse the same night. To be sure she left a fine calf behind her—I mean the cow did, not the witch. I wonder she didn't kill that too, for she'll be a far finer cow than ever her mother was.""My old woman came upon her one night, not long before the water broke out in the mine, sitting on a stone on the hill-side with a whole congregation of cobs about her. When they saw my wife they all scampered off as fast as they could run, and where the witch was sitting there was nothing to be seen but a withered bracken bush. I make no doubt myself she was putting them up to it."And so they went on with one foolish tale after another, while Peter put in a word now and then, and Curdie diligently held his peace. But his silence at last drew attention upon it, and one of them said,—"Come, young Curdie, what are you thinking of?""How do you know I'm thinking of anything?" asked Curdie."Because you're not saying anything.""Does it follow then that, as you are saying so much, you're not thinking at all?" said Curdie."I know what he's thinking," said one who had not yet spoken; "—he's thinking what a set of fools you are to talk such rubbish; as if ever there was or could be such an old woman as you say! I'm sure Curdie knows better than all that comes to.""I think," said Curdie, "it would be better that he who says anything about her should be quite sure it is true, lest she should hear him, and not like to be slandered.""But would she like it any better if it were true?" said the same man. "If she is what they say—I don't know—but I never knew a man that wouldn't go in a rage to be called the very thing he was.""If bad things were true of her, and Iknewit," said Curdie, "I would not hesitate to say them, for I will never give in to being afraid of anything that's bad. I suspect that the things they tell, however, if we knew all about them, would turn out to have nothing but good in them; and I won't say a word more for fear I should say something that mightn't be to her mind."They all burst into a loud laugh."Hear the parson!" they cried. "He believes in the witch! Ha! ha!""He's afraid of her!""And says all she does is good!""He wants to make friends with her, that she may help him to find the gangue.""Give me my own eyes and a good divining rod before all the witches in the world! and so I'd advise you too, Master Curdie; that is, when your eyes have grown to be worth anything, and you have learned to cut the hazel fork."Thus they all mocked and jeered at him, but he did his best to keep his temper and go quietly on with his work. He got as close to his father as he could, however, for that helped him to bear it. As soon as they were tired of laughing and mocking, Curdie was friendly with them, and long before their midday meal all between them was as it had been.But when the evening came, Peter and Curdie felt that they would rather walk home together without other company, and therefore lingered behind when the rest of the men left the mine.CHAPTER VI.THE EMERALD.FATHERand son had seated themselves on a projecting piece of the rock at a corner where three galleries met—the one they had come along from their work, one to the right leading out of the mountain, and the other to the left leading far into a portion of it which had been long disused. Since the inundation caused by the goblins, it had indeed been rendered impassable by the settlement of a quantity of the water, forming a small but very deep lake, in a part where was a considerable descent. They had just risen and were turning to the right, when a gleam caught their eyes, and made them look along the whole gangue. Far up they saw a pale green light, whence issuing they could not tell, about halfway between floor and roof of the passage. They saw nothing but the light, which was like a large star, with a point of darker colour yet brighter radiancein the heart of it, whence the rest of the light shot out in rays that faded towards the ends until they vanished. It shed hardly any light around it, although in itself it was so bright as to sting the eyes that beheld it. Wonderful stories had from ages gone been current in the mines about certain magic gems which gave out light of themselves, and this light looked just like what might be supposed to shoot from the heart of such a gem. They went up the old gallery to find out what it could be.To their surprise they found, however, that, after going some distance, they were no nearer to it, so far as they could judge, than when they started. It did not seem to move, and yet they moving did not approach it. Still they persevered, for it was far too wonderful a thing to lose sight of so long as they could keep it. At length they drew near the hollow where the water lay, and still were no nearer the light. Where they expected to be stopped by the water, however, water was none: something had taken place in some part of the mine that had drained it off, and the gallery lay open as in former times. And now, to their surprise, the light, instead of being in front of them, was shining at the same distance to the right, where they did not know there was any passage at all. Then they discovered, by the light of the lanterns they carried, that there the water had broken through, and made an adit to a part of the mountain of which Peter knew nothing. But they were hardly well into it, still following the light, before Curdie thought he recognised some of the passages he had so often gone through when he was watching the goblins. After they had advanced a long way, with many turnings, now to the right, now to the left, all at once their eyes seemed to come suddenly to themselves, and they became aware that the light which they had taken to be a great way from them was in reality almost within reach of their hands. The same instant it began to grow larger and thinner, the point of light grew dim as it spread, the greenness melted away, and in a moment or two, instead of the star, a dark, dark and yet luminous face was looking at them with living eyes. And Curdie felt a great awe swell up in his heart, for he thought he had seen those eyes before."I see you know me, Curdie," said a voice."If your eyes are you, ma'am, then I know you," said Curdie. "But I never saw your face before.""Yes, you have seen it, Curdie," said the voice.And with that the darkness of its complexion melted away, and down from the face dawned out the form that belonged to it, until at last Curdie and his father beheld a lady, "beautiful exceedingly," dressed in something pale green, like velvet, over which her hair fell in cataracts of a rich golden colour. It looked as if it were pouringdown from her head, and, like the water of the Dustbrook, vanishing in a golden vapour ere it reached the floor. It came flowing from under the edge of a coronet of gold, set with alternated pearls and emeralds. In front of the crown was a great emerald, which looked somehow as if out of it had come the light they had followed. There was no ornament else about her, except on her slippers, which were one mass of gleaming emeralds, of various shades of green, all mingling lovely like the waving of grass in the wind and sun. She looked about five-and-twenty years old. And for all the difference, Curdie knew somehow or other, he could not have told how, that the face before him was that of the old princess, Irene's great-great-grandmother.By this time all around them had grown light, and now first they could see where they were. They stood in a great splendid cavern, which Curdie recognised as that in which the goblins held their state assemblies. But, strange to tell, the light by which they saw came streaming, sparkling, and shooting from stones of many colours in the sides and roof and floor of the cavern—stones of all the colours of the rainbow, and many more. It was a glorious sight—the whole rugged place flashing with colours—in one spot a great light of deep carbuncular red, in another of sapphirine blue, in another of topaz-yellow; while here and there were groups of stonesof all hues and sizes, and again nebulous spaces of thousands of tiniest spots of brilliancy of every conceivable shade. Sometimes the colours ran together, and made a little river or lake of lambent interfusing and changing tints, which, by their variegation, seemed to imitate the flowing of water, or waves made by the wind. Curdie would have gazed entranced, but that all the beauty of the cavern, yes, of all he knew of the whole creation, seemed gathered in one centre of harmony and loveliness in the person of the ancient lady who stood before him in the very summer of beauty and strength. Turning from the first glance at the circumfulgent splendour, it dwindled into nothing as he looked again at the lady. Nothing flashed or glowed or shone about her, and yet it was with a prevision of the truth that he said,—"I was here once before, ma'am.""I know that, Curdie," she replied."The place was full of torches, and the walls gleamed, but nothing as they do now, and there is no light in the place.""You want to know where the light comes from?" she said, smiling."Yes, ma'am.""Then see: I will go out of the cavern. Do not be afraid, but watch."She went slowly out. The moment she turned herback to go, the light began to pale and fade; the moment she was out of their sight the place was black as night, save that now the smoky yellow-red of their lamps, which they thought had gone out long ago, cast a dusky glimmer around them.CHAPTER VII.WHATISIN A NAME?FORa time that seemed to them long, the two men stood waiting, while still the Mother of Light did not return. So long was she absent that they began to grow anxious: how were they to find their way from the natural hollows of the mountain crossed by goblin paths, if their lamps should go out? To spend the night there would mean to sit and wait until an earthquake rent the mountain, or the earth herself fell back into the smelting furnace of the sun whence she had issued—for it was all night and no faintest dawn in the bosom of the world. So long did they wait unrevisited, that, had there not been two of them, either would at length have concluded the vision a home-born product of his own seething brain. And their lampsweregoing out, for they grew redder and smokier! But they did not lose courage, for there is a kind of capillary attraction in thefacing of two souls, that lifts faith quite beyond the level to which either could raise it alone: they knew that they had seen the lady of emeralds, and it was to give them their own desire that she had gone from them, and neither would yield for a moment to the half-doubts and half-dreads that awoke in his heart. And still she who with her absence darkened their air did not return. They grew weary, and sat down on the rocky floor, for wait they would—indeed, wait they must. Each set his lamp by his knee, and watched it die. Slowly it sank, dulled, looked lazy and stupid. But ever as it sank and dulled, the image in his mind of the Lady of Light grew stronger and clearer. Together the two lamps panted and shuddered. First one, then the other went out, leaving for a moment a great red, evil-smelling snuff. Then all was the blackness of darkness up to their very hearts and everywhere around them. Was it? No. Far away—it looked miles away—shone one minute faint point of green light—where, who could tell? They only knew that it shone. It grew larger, and seemed to draw nearer, until at last, as they watched with speechless delight and expectation, it seemed once more within reach of an outstretched hand. Then it spread and melted away as before, and there were eyes—and a face—and a lovely form—and lo! the whole cavern blazing with lights innumerable, and gorgeous, yet soft and interfused—so blended, indeed, that the eye had to search and see in order to separate distinct spots of special colour.The moment they saw the speck in the vast distance they had risen and stood on their feet. When it came nearer they bowed their heads. Yet now they looked with fearless eyes, for the woman that was old and yet young was a joy to see, and filled their hearts with reverent delight. She turned first to Peter."I have known you long," she said. "I have met you going to and from the mine, and seen you working in it for the last forty years.""How should it be, madam, that a grand lady like you should take notice of a poor man like me?" said Peter, humbly, but more foolishly than he could then have understood."I am poor as well as rich," said she. "I too work for my bread, and I show myself no favour when I pay myself my own wages. Last night when you sat by the brook, and Curdie told you about my pigeon, and my spinning, and wondered whether he could believe that he had actually seen me, I heard all you said to each other. I am always about, as the miners said the other night when they talked of me as Old Mother Wotherwop."The lovely lady laughed, and her laugh was a lightning of delight in their souls."Yes," she went on, "you have got to thank me thatyou are so poor, Peter. I have seen to that, and it has done well for both you and me, my friend. Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor, Peter—one that no man ever coveted, and but a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that, like other privileges, may be terribly misused. Hadst thou been rich, my Peter, thou wouldst not have been so good as some rich men I know. And now I am going to tell you what no one knows but myself: you, Peter, and your wife have both the blood of the royal family in your veins. I have been trying to cultivate your family tree, every branch of which is known to me, and I expect Curdie to turn out a blossom on it. Therefore I have been training him for a work that must soon be done. I was near losing him, and had to send my pigeon. Had he not shot it, that would have been better; but he repented, and that shall be as good in the end."She turned to Curdie and smiled."Ma'am," said Curdie, "may I ask questions?""Why not, Curdie?""Because I have been told, ma'am, that nobody must ask the king questions.""The king never made that law," she answered, with some displeasure. "You may ask me as many as you please—that is, so long as they are sensible. Only I may take a few thousand years to answer some of them. But that's nothing. Of all things time is the cheapest.""Then would you mind telling me now, ma'am, for I feel very confused about it—are you the Lady of the Silver Moon?""Yes, Curdie; you may call me that if you like. What it means is true.""And now I see you dark, and clothed in green, and the mother of all the light that dwells in the stones of the earth! And up there they call you Old Mother Wotherwop! And the Princess Irene told me you were her great-great-grandmother! And you spin the spider-threads, and take care of a whole people of pigeons; and you are worn to a pale shadow with old age; and are as young as anybody can be, not to be too young; and as strong, I do believe, as I am."The lady stooped towards a large green stone bedded in the rock of the floor, and looking like a well of grassy light in it. She laid hold of it with her fingers, broke it out, and gave it to Peter."There!" cried Curdie, "I told you so. Twentymen could not have done that. And your fingers are white and smooth as any lady's in the land. I don't know what to make of it.""I could give you twenty names more to call me, Curdie, and not one of them would be a false one. What does it matter how many names if the person is one?""Ah! but it is not names only, ma'am. Look at what you were like last night, and what I see you now!""Shapes are only dresses, Curdie, and dresses are only names. That which is inside is the same all the time.""But then how can all the shapes speak the truth?""It would want thousands more to speak the truth, Curdie; and then they could not. But there is a point I must not let you mistake about. It is one thing the shape I choose to put on, and quite another the shape that foolish talk and nursery tale may please to put upon me. Also, it is one thing what you or your father may think about me, and quite another what a foolish or bad man may see in me. For instance, if a thief were to come in here just now, he would think he saw the demon of the mine, all in green flames, come to protect her treasure, and would run like a hunted wild goat. I should be all the same, but his evil eyes would see me as I was not.""I think I understand," said Curdie."Peter," said the lady, turning then to him, "you will have to give up Curdie for a little while.""So long as he loves us, ma'am, that will not matter—much.""Ah! you are right there, my friend," said the beautiful princess.And as she said it she put out her hand, and took the hard, horny hand of the miner in it, and held it for a moment lovingly."I need say no more," she added, "for we understand each other—you and I, Peter."The tears came into Peter's eyes. He bowed his head in thankfulness, and his heart was much too full to speak.Then the great old young beautiful princess turned to Curdie."Now, Curdie, are you ready?" she said."Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie."You do not know what for.""You do, ma'am. That is enough.""You could not have given me a better answer, or done more to prepare yourself, Curdie," she returned, with one of her radiant smiles. "Do you think you will know me again?""I think so. But how can I tell what you may look like next?""Ah, that indeed! How can you tell? Or how could I expect you should? But those who know mewell, know me whatever new dress or shape or name I may be in; and by-and-by you will have learned to do so too.""But if you want me to know you again, ma'am, for certain sure," said Curdie, "could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes—or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?""No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me—not to know me myself. It would be no better than if I were to take this emerald out of my crown and give it you to take home with you, and you were to call it me, and talk to it as if it heard and saw and loved you. Much good that would do you, Curdie! No; you must do what you can to know me, and if you do, you will. You shall see me again—in very different circumstances from these, and, I will tell you so much, itmaybe in a very different shape. But come now, I will lead you out of this cavern; my good Joan will be getting too anxious about you. One word more: you will allow that the men knew little what they were talking about this morning, when they told all thosetales of Old Mother Wotherwop; but did it occur to you to think how it was they fell to talking about me at all?—It was because I came to them; I was beside them all the time they were talking about me, though they were far enough from knowing it, and had very little besides foolishness to say."As she spoke she turned and led the way from the cavern, which, as if a door had been closed, sunk into absolute blackness behind them. And now they saw nothing more of the lady except the green star, which again seemed a good distance in front of them, and to which they came no nearer, although following it at a quick pace through the mountain. Such was their confidence in her guidance, however, and so fearless were they in consequence, that they felt their way neither with hand nor foot, but walked straight on through the pitch dark galleries. When at length the night of the upper world looked in at the mouth of the mine, the green light seemed to lose its way amongst the stars, and they saw it no more.Out they came into the cool, blessed night. It was very late, and only starlight. To their surprise, three paces away they saw, seated upon a stone, an old countrywoman, in a cloak which they took for black. When they came close up to it, they saw it was red."Good evening!" said Peter."Good evening!" returned the old woman, in a voice as old as herself.But Curdie took off his cap and said,—"I am your servant, princess."The old woman replied,—"Come to me in the dove-tower to-morrow night, Curdie—alone.""I will, ma'am," said Curdie.So they parted, and father and son went home to wife and mother—two persons in one rich, happy woman.CHAPTER VIII.CURDIE'S MISSION.THEnext night Curdie went home from the mine a little earlier than usual, to make himself tidy before going to the dove-tower. The princess had not appointed an exact time for him to be there; he would go as near the time he had gone first as he could. On his way to the bottom of the hill, he met his father coming up. The sun was then down, and the warm first of the twilight filled the evening. He came rather wearily up the hill: the road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean."Ah, Curdie! there you are!" he said, seeing his son come bounding along as if it were morning with him and not evening."You look tired, father," said Curdie."Yes, my boy. I'm not so young as you.""Nor so old as the princess," said Curdie."Tell me this," said Peter: "why do people talk about going down hill when they begin to get old? It seems to me that then first they begin to go up hill.""You looked to me, father, when I caught sight of you, as if you had been climbing the hill all your life, and were soon to get to the top.""Nobody can tell when that will be," returned Peter. "We're so ready to think we're just at the top when it lies miles away. But I must not keep you, my boy, for you are wanted; and we shall be anxious to know what the princess says to you—that is, if she will allow you to tell us.""I think she will, for she knows there is nobody more to be trusted than my father and mother," said Curdie, with pride.And away he shot, and ran, and jumped, and seemed almost to fly down the long, winding, steep path, until he came to the gate of the king's house.There he met an unexpected obstruction: in the opendoor stood the housekeeper, and she seemed to broaden herself out until she almost filled the doorway."So!" she said; "it's you, is it, young man? You are the person that comes in and goes out when he pleases, and keeps running up and down my stairs, without ever saying by your leave, or even wiping his shoes, and always leaves the door open! Don't you know that this is my house?""No, I do not," returned Curdie, respectfully. "You forget, ma'am, that it is the king's house.""That is all the same. The king left it to me to take care of, and that you shall know!""Is the king dead, ma'am, that he has left it to you?" asked Curdie, half in doubt from the self-assertion of the woman."Insolent fellow!" exclaimed the housekeeper. "Don't you see by my dress that I am in the king's service?""And am I not one of his miners?""Ah! that goes for nothing. I am one of his household. You are an out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I carry the keys at my girdle. See!""But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken," said Curdie."Go along with you!" cried the housekeeper, and would have shut the door in his face, had she not beenafraid that when she stepped back he would step in ere she could get it in motion, for it was very heavy, and always seemed unwilling to shut. Curdie came a pace nearer. She lifted the great house key from her side, and threatened to strike him down with it, calling aloud on Mar and Whelk and Plout, the men-servants under her, to come and help her. Ere one of them could answer, however, she gave a great shriek and turned and fled, leaving the door wide open.Curdie looked behind him, and saw an animal whose gruesome oddity even he, who knew so many of the strange creatures, two of which were never the same, that used to live inside the mountain with their masters the goblins, had never seen equalled. Its eyes were flaming with anger, but it seemed to be at the housekeeper, for it came cowering and creeping up, and laid its head on the ground at Curdie's feet. Curdie hardly waited to look at it, however, but ran into the house, eager to get up the stairs before any of the men should come to annoy—he had no fear of their preventing him. Without halt or hindrance, though the passages were nearly dark, he reached the door of the princess's workroom, and knocked."Come in," said the voice of the princess.Curdie opened the door,—but, to his astonishment, saw no room there. Could he have opened a wrongdoor? There was the great sky, and the stars, and beneath he could see nothing—only darkness! But what was that in the sky, straight in front of him? A great wheel of fire, turning and turning, and flashing out blue lights!"Come in, Curdie," said the voice again."I would at once, ma'am," said Curdie, "if I were sure I was standing at your door.""Why should you doubt it, Curdie?""Because I see neither walls nor floor, only darkness and the great sky.""That is all right, Curdie. Come in."Curdie stepped forward at once. He was indeed, for the very crumb of a moment, tempted to feel before him with his foot; but he saw that would be to distrust the princess, and a greater rudeness he could not offer her. So he stepped straight in—I will not say without a little tremble at the thought of finding no floor beneath his foot. But that which had need of the floor found it, and his foot was satisfied.No sooner was he in than he saw that the great revolving wheel in the sky was the princess's spinning-wheel, near the other end of the room, turning very fast. He could see no sky or stars any more, but the wheel was flashing out blue—oh such lovely sky-blue light!—and behind it of course sat the princess, but whether an old woman as thin as a skeleton leaf, or a glorious ladyas young as perfection, he could not tell for the turning and flashing of the wheel."Listen to the wheel," said the voice which had already grown dear to Curdie: its very tone was precious like a jewel, notasa jewel, for no jewel could compare with it in preciousness.And Curdie listened and listened."What is it saying?" asked the voice."It is singing," answered Curdie."What is it singing?"Curdie tried to make out, but thought he could not; for no sooner had he got a hold of something than it vanished again. Yet he listened, and listened, entranced with delight."Thank you, Curdie," said the voice."Ma'am," said Curdie, "I did try hard for a while, but I could not make anything of it.""Oh, yes, you did, and you have been telling it to me! Shall I tell you again what I told my wheel, and my wheel told you, and you have just told me without knowing it?""Please, ma'am."Then the lady began to sing, and her wheel spun an accompaniment to her song, and the music of the wheel was like the music of an Æolian harp blown upon by the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Oh! the sweetsounds of that spinning-wheel! Now they were gold, now silver, now grass, now palm-trees, now ancient cities, now rubies, now mountain brooks, now peacock's feathers, now clouds, now snowdrops, and now mid-sea islands. But for the voice that sang through it all, about that I have no words to tell. It would make you weep if I were able to tell you what that was like, it was so beautiful and true and lovely. But this is something like the words of its song:—
gs03
"The wounded bird now spread out both its wings across her bosom."
"Did I not tell you the truth when I sat at my wheel?" said the old lady.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie.
"I can do no more than tell you the truth now," she rejoined. "It is a bad thing indeed to forget one who has told us the truth. Now go."
Curdie obeyed, and took a few steps towards the door.
"Please, ma'am,"—"what am I to call you?" he was going to say; but when he turned to speak, he saw nobody. Whether she was there or not he could not tell, however, for the moonlight had vanished, and the room was utterly dark. A great fear, such as he had never before known, came upon him, and almost overwhelmed him. He groped his way to the door, and crawled down the stair—in doubt and anxiety as to how he should find his way out of the house in the dark. And the stair seemed ever so much longer than when he came up. Nor was that any wonder, for down and down he went, until at length his foot struck on a door, and when he rose and opened it, he found himself under the starry, moonless sky at the foot of the tower. He soon discovered the way out of the garden, with which he had some acquaintance already, and in a few minutes was climbing the mountain with a solemn and cheerful heart. It was rather dark, but he knew the way well. As he passed the rock from which the poor pigeon fell wounded with his arrow, a great joy filled his heart at the thought that he was delivered from the blood of the little bird,and he ran the next hundred yards at full speed up the hill. Some dark shadows passed him: he did not even care to think what they were, but let them run. When he reached home, he found his father and mother waiting supper for him.
CURDIE'S FATHER AND MOTHER.
HEeyes of the fathers and mothers are quick to read their children's looks, and when Curdie entered the cottage, his parents saw at once that something unusual had taken place. When he said to his mother, "I beg your pardon for being so late," there was something in the tone beyond the politeness that went to her heart, for it seemed to come from the place where all lovely things were born before they began to grow in this world. When he set his father's chair to the table, an attention he had not shown him for a long time, Peter thanked him with more gratitude than the boy had ever yet felt in all his life. It was a small thing to do for the man who had been serving him since ever he was born, but I suspect there is nothing a man can be so grateful for as that to which he has the most right. There was a change upon Curdie, and father and motherfelt there must be something to account for it, and therefore were pretty sure he had something to tell them. For when a child's heart isallright, it is not likely he will want to keep anything from his parents. But the story of the evening was too solemn for Curdie to come out with all at once. He must wait until they had had their porridge, and the affairs of this world were over for the day. But when they were seated on the grassy bank of the brook that went so sweetly blundering over the great stones of its rocky channel, for the whole meadow lay on the top of a huge rock, then he felt that the right hour had come for sharing with them the wonderful things that had come to him. It was perhaps the loveliest of all hours in the year. The summer was young and soft, and this was the warmest evening they had yet had—dusky, dark even below, while above the stars were bright and large and sharp in the blackest blue sky. The night came close around them, clasping them in one universal arm of love, and although it neither spoke nor smiled, seemed all eye and ear, seemed to see and hear and know everything they said and did. It is a way the night has sometimes, and there is a reason for it. The only sound was that of the brook, for there was no wind, and no trees for it to make its music upon if there had been, for the cottage was high up on the mountain, on a great shoulder of stone where trees wouldnot grow. There, to the accompaniment of the water, as it hurried down to the valley and the sea, talking busily of a thousand true things which it could not understand, Curdie told his tale, outside and in, to his father and mother. What a world had slipped in between the mouth of the mine and his mother's cottage! Neither of them said a word until he had ended.
"Now what am I to make of it, mother? It's so strange!" he said, and stopped.
"It's easy enough to see what Curdie has got to make of it—isn't it, Peter?" said the good woman, turning her face towards all she could see of her husband's.
"It seems so to me," answered Peter, with a smile, which only the night saw, but his wife felt in the tone of his words. They were the happiest couple in that country, because they always understood each other, and that was because they always meant the same thing, and that was because they always loved what was fair and true and right better—not than anything else, but than everything else put together.
"Then will you tell Curdie?" said she.
"You can talk best, Joan," said he. "You tell him, and I will listen—and learn how to say what I think," he added, laughing.
"I," said Curdie, "don't know what to think."
"It does not matter so much," said his mother. "Ifonly you know what to make of a thing, you'll know soon enough what to think of it. Now I needn't tell you, surely, Curdie, what you've got to do with this?"
"I suppose you mean, mother," answered Curdie, "that I must do as the old lady told me?"
"That is what I mean: what else could it be? Am I not right, Peter?"
"Quite right, Joan," answered Peter, "so far as my judgment goes. It is a very strange story, but you see the question is not about believing it, for Curdie knows what came to him."
"And you remember, Curdie," said his mother, "that when the princess took you up that tower once before, and there talked to her great-great-grandmother, you came home quite angry with her, and said there was nothing in the place but an old tub, a heap of straw—oh, I remember your inventory quite well!—an old tub, a heap of straw, a withered apple, and a sunbeam. According to your eyes, that was all there was in the great old musty garret. But now you have had a glimpse of the old princess herself!"
"Yes, mother, Ididsee her—or if I didn't,—" said Curdie very thoughtfully—then began again. "The hardest thing to believe, though I saw it with my own eyes, was when the thin, filmy creature, that seemedalmost to float about in the moonlight like a bit of the silver paper they put over pictures, or like a handkerchief made of spider-threads, took my hand, and rose up. She was taller and stronger than you, mother, ever so much!—at least, she looked so."
"And most certainly was so, Curdie, if she looked so," said Mrs. Peterson.
"Well, I confess," returned her son, "that one thing, if there were no other, would make me doubt whether I was not dreaming after all, for as wide awake as I fancied myself to be."
"Of course," answered his mother, "it is not for me to say whether you were dreaming or not if you are doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the bunch of sweet-peas that make my heart glad with their colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring. I only think how wonderful and lovely it all is. It seems just as full of reason as it is of wonder. How it is done I can't tell, only there it is! And there is this in it too, Curdie—of which you would not be so ready to think—that when you come home to your father and mother, and they find you behaving more like a dear good son than you have behaved for a long time, they at least are not likely to think you were only dreaming."
"Still," said Curdie, looking a little ashamed, "I might have dreamed my duty."
"Then dream often, my son; for there must then be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts. But however any of these things may be, this one point remains certain: there can be no harm in doing as she told you. And, indeed, until you are sure there is no such person, you are bound to do it, for you promised."
"It seems to me," said his father, "that if a lady comes to you in a dream, Curdie, and tells you not to talk about her when you wake, the least you can do is to hold your tongue."
"True, father!—Yes, mother, I'll do it," said Curdie.
Then they went to bed, and sleep, which is the night of the soul, next took them in its arms and made them well.
THE MINERS.
Tmuch increased Curdie's feeling of the strangeness of the whole affair, that, the next morning, when they were at work in the mine, the party of which he and his father were two, just as if they had known what had happened to him the night before, began talking about all manner of wonderful tales that were abroad in the country, chiefly of course those connected with the mines, and the mountains in which they lay. Their wives and mothers and grandmothers were their chief authorities. For when they sat by their firesides they heard their wives telling their children the selfsame tales, with little differences, and here and there one they had not heard before, which they had heard their mothers and grandmothers tell in one or other of the same cottages. At length they came to speak of a certain strange being they called Old Mother Wotherwop.Some said their wives had seen her. It appeared as they talked that not one had seen her more than once. Some of their mothers and grandmothers, however, had seen her also, and they all had told them tales about her when they were children. They said she could take any shape she liked, but that in reality she was a withered old woman, so old and so withered that she was as thin as a sieve with a lamp behind it; that she was never seen except at night, and when something terrible had taken place, or was going to take place—such as the falling in of the roof of a mine, or the breaking out of water in it. She had more than once been seen—it was always at night—beside some well, sitting on the brink of it, and leaning over and stirring it with her forefinger, which was six times as long as any of the rest. And whoever for months after drank of that well was sure to be ill. To this one of them, however, added that he remembered his mother saying that whoever in bad health drank of the well was sure to get better. But the majority agreed that the former was the right version of the story—for was she not a witch, an old hating witch, whose delight was to do mischief? One said he had heard that she took the shape of a young woman sometimes, as beautiful as an angel, and then was most dangerous of all, for she struck every man who looked upon her stone-blind. Peter ventured the questionwhether she might not as likely be an angel that took the form of an old woman, as an old woman that took the form of an angel. But nobody except Curdie, who was holding his peace with all his might, saw any sense in the question. They said an old woman might be very glad to make herself look like a young one, but who ever heard of a young and beautiful one making herself look old and ugly? Peter asked why they were so much more ready to believe the bad that was said of her than the good. They answered because she was bad. He asked why they believed her to be bad, and they answered, because she did bad things. When he asked how they knew that, they said, because she was a bad creature. Even if they didn't know it, they said, a woman like that was so much more likely to be bad than good. Why did she go about at night? Why did she appear only now and then, and on such occasions? One went on to tell how one night when his grandfather had been having a jolly time of it with his friends in the market town, she had served him so upon his way home that the poor man never drank a drop of anything stronger than water after it to the day of his death. She dragged him into a bog, and tumbled him up and down in it till he was nearly dead.
"I suppose that was her way of teaching him what a good thing water was," said Peter; but the man, who liked strong drink, did not see the joke.
"They do say," said another, "that she has lived in the old house over there ever since the little princess left it. They say too that the housekeeper knows all about it, and is hand and glove with the old witch. I don't doubt they have many a nice airing together on broomsticks. But I don't doubt either it's all nonsense, and there's no such person at all."
"When our cow died," said another, "she was seen going round and round the cowhouse the same night. To be sure she left a fine calf behind her—I mean the cow did, not the witch. I wonder she didn't kill that too, for she'll be a far finer cow than ever her mother was."
"My old woman came upon her one night, not long before the water broke out in the mine, sitting on a stone on the hill-side with a whole congregation of cobs about her. When they saw my wife they all scampered off as fast as they could run, and where the witch was sitting there was nothing to be seen but a withered bracken bush. I make no doubt myself she was putting them up to it."
And so they went on with one foolish tale after another, while Peter put in a word now and then, and Curdie diligently held his peace. But his silence at last drew attention upon it, and one of them said,—
"Come, young Curdie, what are you thinking of?"
"How do you know I'm thinking of anything?" asked Curdie.
"Because you're not saying anything."
"Does it follow then that, as you are saying so much, you're not thinking at all?" said Curdie.
"I know what he's thinking," said one who had not yet spoken; "—he's thinking what a set of fools you are to talk such rubbish; as if ever there was or could be such an old woman as you say! I'm sure Curdie knows better than all that comes to."
"I think," said Curdie, "it would be better that he who says anything about her should be quite sure it is true, lest she should hear him, and not like to be slandered."
"But would she like it any better if it were true?" said the same man. "If she is what they say—I don't know—but I never knew a man that wouldn't go in a rage to be called the very thing he was."
"If bad things were true of her, and Iknewit," said Curdie, "I would not hesitate to say them, for I will never give in to being afraid of anything that's bad. I suspect that the things they tell, however, if we knew all about them, would turn out to have nothing but good in them; and I won't say a word more for fear I should say something that mightn't be to her mind."
They all burst into a loud laugh.
"Hear the parson!" they cried. "He believes in the witch! Ha! ha!"
"He's afraid of her!"
"And says all she does is good!"
"He wants to make friends with her, that she may help him to find the gangue."
"Give me my own eyes and a good divining rod before all the witches in the world! and so I'd advise you too, Master Curdie; that is, when your eyes have grown to be worth anything, and you have learned to cut the hazel fork."
Thus they all mocked and jeered at him, but he did his best to keep his temper and go quietly on with his work. He got as close to his father as he could, however, for that helped him to bear it. As soon as they were tired of laughing and mocking, Curdie was friendly with them, and long before their midday meal all between them was as it had been.
But when the evening came, Peter and Curdie felt that they would rather walk home together without other company, and therefore lingered behind when the rest of the men left the mine.
THE EMERALD.
ATHERand son had seated themselves on a projecting piece of the rock at a corner where three galleries met—the one they had come along from their work, one to the right leading out of the mountain, and the other to the left leading far into a portion of it which had been long disused. Since the inundation caused by the goblins, it had indeed been rendered impassable by the settlement of a quantity of the water, forming a small but very deep lake, in a part where was a considerable descent. They had just risen and were turning to the right, when a gleam caught their eyes, and made them look along the whole gangue. Far up they saw a pale green light, whence issuing they could not tell, about halfway between floor and roof of the passage. They saw nothing but the light, which was like a large star, with a point of darker colour yet brighter radiancein the heart of it, whence the rest of the light shot out in rays that faded towards the ends until they vanished. It shed hardly any light around it, although in itself it was so bright as to sting the eyes that beheld it. Wonderful stories had from ages gone been current in the mines about certain magic gems which gave out light of themselves, and this light looked just like what might be supposed to shoot from the heart of such a gem. They went up the old gallery to find out what it could be.
To their surprise they found, however, that, after going some distance, they were no nearer to it, so far as they could judge, than when they started. It did not seem to move, and yet they moving did not approach it. Still they persevered, for it was far too wonderful a thing to lose sight of so long as they could keep it. At length they drew near the hollow where the water lay, and still were no nearer the light. Where they expected to be stopped by the water, however, water was none: something had taken place in some part of the mine that had drained it off, and the gallery lay open as in former times. And now, to their surprise, the light, instead of being in front of them, was shining at the same distance to the right, where they did not know there was any passage at all. Then they discovered, by the light of the lanterns they carried, that there the water had broken through, and made an adit to a part of the mountain of which Peter knew nothing. But they were hardly well into it, still following the light, before Curdie thought he recognised some of the passages he had so often gone through when he was watching the goblins. After they had advanced a long way, with many turnings, now to the right, now to the left, all at once their eyes seemed to come suddenly to themselves, and they became aware that the light which they had taken to be a great way from them was in reality almost within reach of their hands. The same instant it began to grow larger and thinner, the point of light grew dim as it spread, the greenness melted away, and in a moment or two, instead of the star, a dark, dark and yet luminous face was looking at them with living eyes. And Curdie felt a great awe swell up in his heart, for he thought he had seen those eyes before.
"I see you know me, Curdie," said a voice.
"If your eyes are you, ma'am, then I know you," said Curdie. "But I never saw your face before."
"Yes, you have seen it, Curdie," said the voice.
And with that the darkness of its complexion melted away, and down from the face dawned out the form that belonged to it, until at last Curdie and his father beheld a lady, "beautiful exceedingly," dressed in something pale green, like velvet, over which her hair fell in cataracts of a rich golden colour. It looked as if it were pouringdown from her head, and, like the water of the Dustbrook, vanishing in a golden vapour ere it reached the floor. It came flowing from under the edge of a coronet of gold, set with alternated pearls and emeralds. In front of the crown was a great emerald, which looked somehow as if out of it had come the light they had followed. There was no ornament else about her, except on her slippers, which were one mass of gleaming emeralds, of various shades of green, all mingling lovely like the waving of grass in the wind and sun. She looked about five-and-twenty years old. And for all the difference, Curdie knew somehow or other, he could not have told how, that the face before him was that of the old princess, Irene's great-great-grandmother.
By this time all around them had grown light, and now first they could see where they were. They stood in a great splendid cavern, which Curdie recognised as that in which the goblins held their state assemblies. But, strange to tell, the light by which they saw came streaming, sparkling, and shooting from stones of many colours in the sides and roof and floor of the cavern—stones of all the colours of the rainbow, and many more. It was a glorious sight—the whole rugged place flashing with colours—in one spot a great light of deep carbuncular red, in another of sapphirine blue, in another of topaz-yellow; while here and there were groups of stonesof all hues and sizes, and again nebulous spaces of thousands of tiniest spots of brilliancy of every conceivable shade. Sometimes the colours ran together, and made a little river or lake of lambent interfusing and changing tints, which, by their variegation, seemed to imitate the flowing of water, or waves made by the wind. Curdie would have gazed entranced, but that all the beauty of the cavern, yes, of all he knew of the whole creation, seemed gathered in one centre of harmony and loveliness in the person of the ancient lady who stood before him in the very summer of beauty and strength. Turning from the first glance at the circumfulgent splendour, it dwindled into nothing as he looked again at the lady. Nothing flashed or glowed or shone about her, and yet it was with a prevision of the truth that he said,—
"I was here once before, ma'am."
"I know that, Curdie," she replied.
"The place was full of torches, and the walls gleamed, but nothing as they do now, and there is no light in the place."
"You want to know where the light comes from?" she said, smiling.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then see: I will go out of the cavern. Do not be afraid, but watch."
She went slowly out. The moment she turned herback to go, the light began to pale and fade; the moment she was out of their sight the place was black as night, save that now the smoky yellow-red of their lamps, which they thought had gone out long ago, cast a dusky glimmer around them.
WHATISIN A NAME?
ORa time that seemed to them long, the two men stood waiting, while still the Mother of Light did not return. So long was she absent that they began to grow anxious: how were they to find their way from the natural hollows of the mountain crossed by goblin paths, if their lamps should go out? To spend the night there would mean to sit and wait until an earthquake rent the mountain, or the earth herself fell back into the smelting furnace of the sun whence she had issued—for it was all night and no faintest dawn in the bosom of the world. So long did they wait unrevisited, that, had there not been two of them, either would at length have concluded the vision a home-born product of his own seething brain. And their lampsweregoing out, for they grew redder and smokier! But they did not lose courage, for there is a kind of capillary attraction in thefacing of two souls, that lifts faith quite beyond the level to which either could raise it alone: they knew that they had seen the lady of emeralds, and it was to give them their own desire that she had gone from them, and neither would yield for a moment to the half-doubts and half-dreads that awoke in his heart. And still she who with her absence darkened their air did not return. They grew weary, and sat down on the rocky floor, for wait they would—indeed, wait they must. Each set his lamp by his knee, and watched it die. Slowly it sank, dulled, looked lazy and stupid. But ever as it sank and dulled, the image in his mind of the Lady of Light grew stronger and clearer. Together the two lamps panted and shuddered. First one, then the other went out, leaving for a moment a great red, evil-smelling snuff. Then all was the blackness of darkness up to their very hearts and everywhere around them. Was it? No. Far away—it looked miles away—shone one minute faint point of green light—where, who could tell? They only knew that it shone. It grew larger, and seemed to draw nearer, until at last, as they watched with speechless delight and expectation, it seemed once more within reach of an outstretched hand. Then it spread and melted away as before, and there were eyes—and a face—and a lovely form—and lo! the whole cavern blazing with lights innumerable, and gorgeous, yet soft and interfused—so blended, indeed, that the eye had to search and see in order to separate distinct spots of special colour.
The moment they saw the speck in the vast distance they had risen and stood on their feet. When it came nearer they bowed their heads. Yet now they looked with fearless eyes, for the woman that was old and yet young was a joy to see, and filled their hearts with reverent delight. She turned first to Peter.
"I have known you long," she said. "I have met you going to and from the mine, and seen you working in it for the last forty years."
"How should it be, madam, that a grand lady like you should take notice of a poor man like me?" said Peter, humbly, but more foolishly than he could then have understood.
"I am poor as well as rich," said she. "I too work for my bread, and I show myself no favour when I pay myself my own wages. Last night when you sat by the brook, and Curdie told you about my pigeon, and my spinning, and wondered whether he could believe that he had actually seen me, I heard all you said to each other. I am always about, as the miners said the other night when they talked of me as Old Mother Wotherwop."
The lovely lady laughed, and her laugh was a lightning of delight in their souls.
"Yes," she went on, "you have got to thank me thatyou are so poor, Peter. I have seen to that, and it has done well for both you and me, my friend. Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor, Peter—one that no man ever coveted, and but a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. You must not mistake, however, and imagine it a virtue; it is but a privilege, and one also that, like other privileges, may be terribly misused. Hadst thou been rich, my Peter, thou wouldst not have been so good as some rich men I know. And now I am going to tell you what no one knows but myself: you, Peter, and your wife have both the blood of the royal family in your veins. I have been trying to cultivate your family tree, every branch of which is known to me, and I expect Curdie to turn out a blossom on it. Therefore I have been training him for a work that must soon be done. I was near losing him, and had to send my pigeon. Had he not shot it, that would have been better; but he repented, and that shall be as good in the end."
She turned to Curdie and smiled.
"Ma'am," said Curdie, "may I ask questions?"
"Why not, Curdie?"
"Because I have been told, ma'am, that nobody must ask the king questions."
"The king never made that law," she answered, with some displeasure. "You may ask me as many as you please—that is, so long as they are sensible. Only I may take a few thousand years to answer some of them. But that's nothing. Of all things time is the cheapest."
"Then would you mind telling me now, ma'am, for I feel very confused about it—are you the Lady of the Silver Moon?"
"Yes, Curdie; you may call me that if you like. What it means is true."
"And now I see you dark, and clothed in green, and the mother of all the light that dwells in the stones of the earth! And up there they call you Old Mother Wotherwop! And the Princess Irene told me you were her great-great-grandmother! And you spin the spider-threads, and take care of a whole people of pigeons; and you are worn to a pale shadow with old age; and are as young as anybody can be, not to be too young; and as strong, I do believe, as I am."
The lady stooped towards a large green stone bedded in the rock of the floor, and looking like a well of grassy light in it. She laid hold of it with her fingers, broke it out, and gave it to Peter.
"There!" cried Curdie, "I told you so. Twentymen could not have done that. And your fingers are white and smooth as any lady's in the land. I don't know what to make of it."
"I could give you twenty names more to call me, Curdie, and not one of them would be a false one. What does it matter how many names if the person is one?"
"Ah! but it is not names only, ma'am. Look at what you were like last night, and what I see you now!"
"Shapes are only dresses, Curdie, and dresses are only names. That which is inside is the same all the time."
"But then how can all the shapes speak the truth?"
"It would want thousands more to speak the truth, Curdie; and then they could not. But there is a point I must not let you mistake about. It is one thing the shape I choose to put on, and quite another the shape that foolish talk and nursery tale may please to put upon me. Also, it is one thing what you or your father may think about me, and quite another what a foolish or bad man may see in me. For instance, if a thief were to come in here just now, he would think he saw the demon of the mine, all in green flames, come to protect her treasure, and would run like a hunted wild goat. I should be all the same, but his evil eyes would see me as I was not."
"I think I understand," said Curdie.
"Peter," said the lady, turning then to him, "you will have to give up Curdie for a little while."
"So long as he loves us, ma'am, that will not matter—much."
"Ah! you are right there, my friend," said the beautiful princess.
And as she said it she put out her hand, and took the hard, horny hand of the miner in it, and held it for a moment lovingly.
"I need say no more," she added, "for we understand each other—you and I, Peter."
The tears came into Peter's eyes. He bowed his head in thankfulness, and his heart was much too full to speak.
Then the great old young beautiful princess turned to Curdie.
"Now, Curdie, are you ready?" she said.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Curdie.
"You do not know what for."
"You do, ma'am. That is enough."
"You could not have given me a better answer, or done more to prepare yourself, Curdie," she returned, with one of her radiant smiles. "Do you think you will know me again?"
"I think so. But how can I tell what you may look like next?"
"Ah, that indeed! How can you tell? Or how could I expect you should? But those who know mewell, know me whatever new dress or shape or name I may be in; and by-and-by you will have learned to do so too."
"But if you want me to know you again, ma'am, for certain sure," said Curdie, "could you not give me some sign, or tell me something about you that never changes—or some other way to know you, or thing to know you by?"
"No, Curdie; that would be to keep you from knowing me. You must know me in quite another way from that. It would not be the least use to you or me either if I were to make you know me in that way. It would be but to know the sign of me—not to know me myself. It would be no better than if I were to take this emerald out of my crown and give it you to take home with you, and you were to call it me, and talk to it as if it heard and saw and loved you. Much good that would do you, Curdie! No; you must do what you can to know me, and if you do, you will. You shall see me again—in very different circumstances from these, and, I will tell you so much, itmaybe in a very different shape. But come now, I will lead you out of this cavern; my good Joan will be getting too anxious about you. One word more: you will allow that the men knew little what they were talking about this morning, when they told all thosetales of Old Mother Wotherwop; but did it occur to you to think how it was they fell to talking about me at all?—It was because I came to them; I was beside them all the time they were talking about me, though they were far enough from knowing it, and had very little besides foolishness to say."
As she spoke she turned and led the way from the cavern, which, as if a door had been closed, sunk into absolute blackness behind them. And now they saw nothing more of the lady except the green star, which again seemed a good distance in front of them, and to which they came no nearer, although following it at a quick pace through the mountain. Such was their confidence in her guidance, however, and so fearless were they in consequence, that they felt their way neither with hand nor foot, but walked straight on through the pitch dark galleries. When at length the night of the upper world looked in at the mouth of the mine, the green light seemed to lose its way amongst the stars, and they saw it no more.
Out they came into the cool, blessed night. It was very late, and only starlight. To their surprise, three paces away they saw, seated upon a stone, an old countrywoman, in a cloak which they took for black. When they came close up to it, they saw it was red.
"Good evening!" said Peter.
"Good evening!" returned the old woman, in a voice as old as herself.
But Curdie took off his cap and said,—
"I am your servant, princess."
The old woman replied,—
"Come to me in the dove-tower to-morrow night, Curdie—alone."
"I will, ma'am," said Curdie.
So they parted, and father and son went home to wife and mother—two persons in one rich, happy woman.
CURDIE'S MISSION.
HEnext night Curdie went home from the mine a little earlier than usual, to make himself tidy before going to the dove-tower. The princess had not appointed an exact time for him to be there; he would go as near the time he had gone first as he could. On his way to the bottom of the hill, he met his father coming up. The sun was then down, and the warm first of the twilight filled the evening. He came rather wearily up the hill: the road, he thought, must have grown steeper in parts since he was Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make him look mean.
"Ah, Curdie! there you are!" he said, seeing his son come bounding along as if it were morning with him and not evening.
"You look tired, father," said Curdie.
"Yes, my boy. I'm not so young as you."
"Nor so old as the princess," said Curdie.
"Tell me this," said Peter: "why do people talk about going down hill when they begin to get old? It seems to me that then first they begin to go up hill."
"You looked to me, father, when I caught sight of you, as if you had been climbing the hill all your life, and were soon to get to the top."
"Nobody can tell when that will be," returned Peter. "We're so ready to think we're just at the top when it lies miles away. But I must not keep you, my boy, for you are wanted; and we shall be anxious to know what the princess says to you—that is, if she will allow you to tell us."
"I think she will, for she knows there is nobody more to be trusted than my father and mother," said Curdie, with pride.
And away he shot, and ran, and jumped, and seemed almost to fly down the long, winding, steep path, until he came to the gate of the king's house.
There he met an unexpected obstruction: in the opendoor stood the housekeeper, and she seemed to broaden herself out until she almost filled the doorway.
"So!" she said; "it's you, is it, young man? You are the person that comes in and goes out when he pleases, and keeps running up and down my stairs, without ever saying by your leave, or even wiping his shoes, and always leaves the door open! Don't you know that this is my house?"
"No, I do not," returned Curdie, respectfully. "You forget, ma'am, that it is the king's house."
"That is all the same. The king left it to me to take care of, and that you shall know!"
"Is the king dead, ma'am, that he has left it to you?" asked Curdie, half in doubt from the self-assertion of the woman.
"Insolent fellow!" exclaimed the housekeeper. "Don't you see by my dress that I am in the king's service?"
"And am I not one of his miners?"
"Ah! that goes for nothing. I am one of his household. You are an out-of-doors labourer. You are a nobody. You carry a pickaxe. I carry the keys at my girdle. See!"
"But you must not call one a nobody to whom the king has spoken," said Curdie.
"Go along with you!" cried the housekeeper, and would have shut the door in his face, had she not beenafraid that when she stepped back he would step in ere she could get it in motion, for it was very heavy, and always seemed unwilling to shut. Curdie came a pace nearer. She lifted the great house key from her side, and threatened to strike him down with it, calling aloud on Mar and Whelk and Plout, the men-servants under her, to come and help her. Ere one of them could answer, however, she gave a great shriek and turned and fled, leaving the door wide open.
Curdie looked behind him, and saw an animal whose gruesome oddity even he, who knew so many of the strange creatures, two of which were never the same, that used to live inside the mountain with their masters the goblins, had never seen equalled. Its eyes were flaming with anger, but it seemed to be at the housekeeper, for it came cowering and creeping up, and laid its head on the ground at Curdie's feet. Curdie hardly waited to look at it, however, but ran into the house, eager to get up the stairs before any of the men should come to annoy—he had no fear of their preventing him. Without halt or hindrance, though the passages were nearly dark, he reached the door of the princess's workroom, and knocked.
"Come in," said the voice of the princess.
Curdie opened the door,—but, to his astonishment, saw no room there. Could he have opened a wrongdoor? There was the great sky, and the stars, and beneath he could see nothing—only darkness! But what was that in the sky, straight in front of him? A great wheel of fire, turning and turning, and flashing out blue lights!
"Come in, Curdie," said the voice again.
"I would at once, ma'am," said Curdie, "if I were sure I was standing at your door."
"Why should you doubt it, Curdie?"
"Because I see neither walls nor floor, only darkness and the great sky."
"That is all right, Curdie. Come in."
Curdie stepped forward at once. He was indeed, for the very crumb of a moment, tempted to feel before him with his foot; but he saw that would be to distrust the princess, and a greater rudeness he could not offer her. So he stepped straight in—I will not say without a little tremble at the thought of finding no floor beneath his foot. But that which had need of the floor found it, and his foot was satisfied.
No sooner was he in than he saw that the great revolving wheel in the sky was the princess's spinning-wheel, near the other end of the room, turning very fast. He could see no sky or stars any more, but the wheel was flashing out blue—oh such lovely sky-blue light!—and behind it of course sat the princess, but whether an old woman as thin as a skeleton leaf, or a glorious ladyas young as perfection, he could not tell for the turning and flashing of the wheel.
"Listen to the wheel," said the voice which had already grown dear to Curdie: its very tone was precious like a jewel, notasa jewel, for no jewel could compare with it in preciousness.
And Curdie listened and listened.
"What is it saying?" asked the voice.
"It is singing," answered Curdie.
"What is it singing?"
Curdie tried to make out, but thought he could not; for no sooner had he got a hold of something than it vanished again. Yet he listened, and listened, entranced with delight.
"Thank you, Curdie," said the voice.
"Ma'am," said Curdie, "I did try hard for a while, but I could not make anything of it."
"Oh, yes, you did, and you have been telling it to me! Shall I tell you again what I told my wheel, and my wheel told you, and you have just told me without knowing it?"
"Please, ma'am."
Then the lady began to sing, and her wheel spun an accompaniment to her song, and the music of the wheel was like the music of an Æolian harp blown upon by the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Oh! the sweetsounds of that spinning-wheel! Now they were gold, now silver, now grass, now palm-trees, now ancient cities, now rubies, now mountain brooks, now peacock's feathers, now clouds, now snowdrops, and now mid-sea islands. But for the voice that sang through it all, about that I have no words to tell. It would make you weep if I were able to tell you what that was like, it was so beautiful and true and lovely. But this is something like the words of its song:—