The Classic Children's Literature Collection: 39 Classic Novels

by Various Authors

  ‘How strange!’ exclaimed Curdie.

  ‘Yes, it was strange; but I can’t help believing it, whether you do or not,’ said his mother.

  ‘It’s exactly as your mother told it to me the very next morning,’ said his father.

  ‘You don’t think I’m doubting my own mother?’ cried Curdie. ‘There are other people in the world quite as well worth believing as your own mother,’ said his mother. ‘I don’t know that she’s so much the fitter to be believed that she happens to be your mother, Mr. Curdie. There are mothers far more likely to tell lies than the little girl I saw talking to the primroses a few weeks ago. If she were to lie I should begin to doubt my own word.’

  ‘But princesses have told lies as well as other people,’ said Curdie.

  ‘Yes, but not princesses like that child. She’s a good girl, I am certain, and that’s more than being a princess. Depend upon it you will have to be sorry for behaving so to her, Curdie. You ought at least to have held your tongue.’

  ‘I am sorry now,’ answered Curdie.

  ‘You ought to go and tell her so, then.’

  ‘I don’t see how I could manage that. They wouldn’t let a miner boy like me have a word with her alone; and I couldn’t tell her before that nurse of hers. She’d be asking ever so many questions, and I don’t know how many the little princess would like me to answer. She told me that Lootie didn’t know anything about her coming to get me out of the mountain. I am certain she would have prevented her somehow if she had known it. But I may have a chance before long, and meantime I must try to do something for her. I think, father, I have got on the track at last.’

  ‘Have you, indeed, my boy?’ said Peter. ‘I am sure you deserve some success; you have worked very hard for it. What have you found out?’

  ‘It’s difficult, you know, father, inside the mountain, especially in the dark, and not knowing what turns you have taken, to tell the lie of things outside.’

  ‘Impossible, my boy, without a chart, or at least a compass,’ returned his father.

  ‘Well, I think I have nearly discovered in what direction the cobs are mining. If I am right, I know something else that I can put to it, and then one and one will make three.’

  ‘They very often do, Curdie, as we miners ought to be very well aware. Now tell us, my boy, what the two things are, and see whether we can guess at the same third as you.’

  ‘I don’t see what that has to do with the princess,’ interposed his mother.

  ‘I will soon let you see that, mother. Perhaps you may think me foolish, but until I am sure there, is nothing in my present fancy, I am more determined than ever to go on with my observations. Just as we came to the channel by which we got out, I heard the miners at work somewhere near—I think down below us. Now since I began to watch them, they have mined a good half-mile, in a straight line; and so far as I am aware, they are working in no other part of the mountain. But I never could tell in what direction they were going. When we came out in the king’s garden, however, I thought at once whether it was possible they were working towards the king’s house; and what I want to do tonight is to make sure whether they are or not. I will take a light with me—’

  ‘Oh, Curdie,’ cried his mother, ‘then they will see you.’

  ‘I’m no more afraid of them now than I was before,’ rejoined Curdie, ‘now that I’ve got this precious shoe. They can’t make another such in a hurry, and one bare foot will do for my purpose. Woman as she may be, I won’t spare her next time. But I shall be careful with my light, for I don’t want them to see me. I won’t stick it in my hat.’

  ‘Go on, then, and tell us what you mean to do.’

  ‘I mean to take a bit of paper with me and a pencil, and go in at the mouth of the stream by which we came out. I shall mark on the paper as near as I can the angle of every turning I take until I find the cobs at work, and so get a good idea in what direction they are going. If it should prove to be nearly parallel with the stream, I shall know it is towards the king’s house they are working.’

  ‘And what if you should? How much wiser will you be then?’

  ‘Wait a minute, mother dear. I told you that when I came upon the royal family in the cave, they were talking of their prince—Harelip, they called him—marrying a sun-woman—that means one of us—one with toes to her feet. Now in the speech one of them made that night at their great gathering, of which I heard only a part, he said that peace would be secured for a generation at least by the pledge the prince would hold for the good behaviour of her relatives: that’s what he said, and he must have meant the sun-woman the prince was to marry. I am quite sure the king is much too proud to wish his son to marry any but a princess, and much too knowing to fancy that his having a peasant woman for a wife would be of any great advantage to them.’

  ‘I see what you are driving at now,’ said his mother.

  ‘But,’ said his father, ‘our king would dig the mountain to the plain before he would have his princess the wife of a cob, if he were ten times a prince.’

  ‘Yes; but they think so much of themselves!’ said his mother. ‘Small creatures always do. The bantam is the proudest cock in my little yard.’

  ‘And I fancy,’ said Curdie, ‘if they once got her, they would tell the king they would kill her except he consented to the marriage.’

  ‘They might say so,’ said his father, ‘but they wouldn’t kill her; they would keep her alive for the sake of the hold it gave them over our king. Whatever he did to them, they would threaten to do the same to the princess.’

  ‘And they are bad enough to torment her just for their own amusement—I know that,’ said his mother.

  ‘Anyhow, I will keep a watch on them, and see what they are up to,’ said Curdie. ‘It’s too horrible to think of. I daren’t let myself do it. But they shan’t have her—at least if I can help it. So, mother dear—my clue is all right—will you get me a bit of paper and a pencil and a lump of pease pudding, and I will set out at once. I saw a place where I can climb over the wall of the garden quite easily.’

  ‘You must mind and keep out of the way of the men on the watch,’ said his mother.

  ‘That I will. I don’t want them to know anything about it. They would spoil it all. The cobs would only try some other plan—they are such obstinate creatures! I shall take good care, mother. They won’t kill and eat me either, if they should come upon me. So you needn’t mind them.’

  His mother got him what he had asked for, and Curdie set out. Close beside the door by which the princess left the garden for the mountain stood a great rock, and by climbing it Curdie got over the wall. He tied his clue to a stone just inside the channel of the stream, and took his pickaxe with him. He had not gone far before he encountered a horrid creature coming towards the mouth. The spot was too narrow for two of almost any size or shape, and besides Curdie had no wish to let the creature pass. Not being able to use his pickaxe, however, he had a severe struggle with him, and it was only after receiving many bites, some of them bad, that he succeeded in killing him with his pocket-knife. Having dragged him out, he made haste to get in again before another should stop up the way.

  I need not follow him farther in this night’s adventures. He returned to his breakfast, satisfied that the goblins were mining in the direction of the palace—on so low a level that their intention must, he thought, be to burrow under the walls of the king’s house, and rise up inside it—in order, he fully believed, to lay hands on the little princess, and carry her off for a wife to their horrid Harelip.

  CHAPTER 24.Irene Behaves Like a Princess

  When the princess awoke from the sweetest of sleeps, she found her nurse bending over her, the housekeeper looking over the nurse’s shoulder, and the laundry-maid looking over the housekeeper’s. The room was full of women-servants; and the gentlemen-at-arms, with a long column of servants behind them, were peepin
g, or trying to peep in at the door of the nursery.

  ‘Are those horrid creatures gone?’ asked the princess, remembering first what had terrified her in the morning.

  ‘You naughty, naughty little princess!’ cried Lootie.

  Her face was very pale, with red streaks in it, and she looked as if she were going to shake her; but Irene said nothing—only waited to hear what should come next.

  ‘How could you get under the clothes like that, and make us all fancy you were lost! And keep it up all day too! You are the most obstinate child! It’s anything but fun to us, I can tell you!’

  It was the only way the nurse could account for her disappearance.

  ‘I didn’t do that, Lootie,’ said Irene, very quietly.

  ‘Don’t tell stories!’ cried her nurse quite rudely.

  ‘I shall tell you nothing at all,’ said Irene.

  ‘That’s just as bad,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Just as bad to say nothing at all as to tell stories?’ exclaimed the princess. ‘I will ask my papa about that. He won’t say so. And I don’t think he will like you to say so.’

  ‘Tell me directly what you mean by it!’ screamed the nurse, half wild with anger at the princess and fright at the possible consequences to herself.

  ‘When I tell you the truth, Lootie,’ said the princess, who somehow did not feel at all angry, ‘you say to me “Don’t tell stories”: it seems I must tell stories before you will believe me.’

  ‘You are very rude, princess,’ said the nurse.

  ‘You are so rude, Lootie, that I will not speak to you again till you are sorry. Why should I, when I know you will not believe me?’ returned the princess. For she did know perfectly well that if she were to tell Lootie what she had been about, the more she went on to tell her, the less would she believe her.

  ‘You are the most provoking child!’ cried her nurse. ‘You deserve to be well punished for your wicked behaviour.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Housekeeper,’ said the princess, ‘will you take me to your room, and keep me till my king-papa comes? I will ask him to come as soon as he can.’

  Every one stared at these words. Up to this moment they had all regarded her as little more than a baby.

  But the housekeeper was afraid of the nurse, and sought to patch matters up, saying:

  ‘I am sure, princess, nursie did not mean to be rude to you.’

  ‘I do not think my papa would wish me to have a nurse who spoke to me as Lootie does. If she thinks I tell lies, she had better either say so to my papa, or go away. Sir Walter, will you take charge of me?’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure, princess,’ answered the captain of the gentlemen-at-arms, walking with his great stride into the room.

  The crowd of servants made eager way for him, and he bowed low before the little princess’s bed. ‘I shall send my servant at once, on the fastest horse in the stable, to tell your king-papa that Your Royal Highness desires his presence. When you have chosen one of these under-servants to wait upon you, I shall order the room to be cleared.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Sir Walter,’ said the princess, and her eye glanced towards a rosy-cheeked girl who had lately come to the house as a scullery-maid.

  But when Lootie saw the eyes of her dear princess going in search of another instead of her, she fell upon her knees by the bedside, and burst into a great cry of distress.

  ‘I think, Sir Walter,’ said the princess, ‘I will keep Lootie. But I put myself under your care; and you need not trouble my king-papa until I speak to you again. Will you all please to go away? I am quite safe and well, and I did not hide myself for the sake either of amusing myself, or of troubling my people. Lootie, will you please to dress me.’

  CHAPTER 25.Curdie Comes to Grief

  Everything was for some time quiet above ground. The king was still away in a distant part of his dominions. The men-at-arms kept watching about the house. They had been considerably astonished by finding at the foot of the rock in the garden the hideous body of the goblin creature killed by Curdie; but they came to the conclusion that it had been slain in the mines, and had crept out there to die; and except an occasional glimpse of a live one they saw nothing to cause alarm. Curdie kept watching in the mountain, and the goblins kept burrowing deeper into the earth. As long as they went deeper there was, Curdie judged, no immediate danger.

  To Irene the summer was as full of pleasure as ever, and for a long time, although she often thought of her grandmother during the day, and often dreamed about her at night, she did not see her. The kids and the flowers were as much her delight as ever, and she made as much friendship with the miners’ children she met on the mountain as Lootie would permit; but Lootie had very foolish notions concerning the dignity of a princess, not understanding that the truest princess is just the one who loves all her brothers and sisters best, and who is most able to do them good by being humble towards them. At the same time she was considerably altered for the better in her behaviour to the princess. She could not help seeing that she was no longer a mere child, but wiser than her age would account for. She kept foolishly whispering to the servants, however—sometimes that the princess was not right in her mind, sometimes that she was too good to live, and other nonsense of the same sort.

  All this time Curdie had to be sorry, without a chance of confessing, that he had behaved so unkindly to the princess. This perhaps made him the more diligent in his endeavours to serve her. His mother and he often talked on the subject, and she comforted him, and told him she was sure he would some day have the opportunity he so much desired.

  Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: ‘I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.’ So you see there is some ground for supposing that Curdie was not a miner only, but a prince as well. Many such instances have been known in the world’s history.

  At length, however, he began to see signs of a change in the proceedings of the goblin excavators: they were going no deeper, but had commenced running on a level; and he watched them, therefore, more closely than ever. All at once, one night, coming to a slope of very hard rock, they began to ascend along the inclined plane of its surface. Having reached its top, they went again on a level for a night or two, after which they began to ascend once more, and kept on at a pretty steep angle. At length Curdie judged it time to transfer his observation to another quarter, and the next night he did not go to the mine at all; but, leaving his pickaxe and clue at home, and taking only his usual lumps of bread and pease pudding, went down the mountain to the king’s house. He climbed over the wall, and remained in the garden the whole night, creeping on hands and knees from one spot to the other, and lying at full length with his ear to the ground, listening. But he heard nothing except the tread of the men-at-arms as they marched about, whose observation, as the night was cloudy and there was no moon, he had little difficulty in avoiding. For several following nights he continued to haunt the garden and listen, but with no success.

  At length, early one evening, whether it was that he had got careless of his own safety, or that the growing moon had become strong enough to expose him, his watching came to a sudden end. He was creeping from behind the rock where the stream ran out, for he had been listening all round it in the hope it might convey to his ear some indication of the whereabouts of the goblin miners, when just as he came into the moonlight on the lawn, a whizz in his ear and a blow upon his leg startled him. He instantly squatted in the hope of eluding further notice. But when he heard the sound of running feet, he jumped up to take the chance of escape by flight. He fell, however, with a keen shoot of pain, for the bolt of a crossbow had wounded his leg, and the bloo
d was now streaming from it. He was instantly laid Hold of by two or three of the men-at-arms. It was useless to struggle, and he submitted in silence.

  ‘It’s a boy!’ cried several of them together, in a tone of amazement. ‘I thought it was one of those demons. What are you about here?’

  ‘Going to have a little rough usage, apparently,’ said Curdie, laughing, as the men shook him.

  ‘Impertinence will do you no good. You have no business here in the king’s grounds, and if you don’t give a true account of yourself, you shall fare as a thief.’

  ‘Why, what else could he be?’ said one.

  ‘He might have been after a lost kid, you know,’ suggested another.

  ‘I see no good in trying to excuse him. He has no business here, anyhow.’

  ‘Let me go away, then, if you please,’ said Curdie.

  ‘But we don’t please—not except you give a good account of yourself.’

  ‘I don’t feel quite sure whether I can trust you,’ said Curdie.

  ‘We are the king’s own men-at-arms,’ said the captain courteously, for he was taken with Curdie’s appearance and courage.

  ‘Well, I will tell you all about it—if you will promise to listen to me and not do anything rash.’

  ‘I call that cool!’ said one of the party, laughing. ‘He will tell us what mischief he was about, if we promise to do as pleases him.’

  ‘I was about no mischief,’ said Curdie.

  But ere he could say more he turned faint, and fell senseless on the grass. Then first they discovered that the bolt they had shot, taking him for one of the goblin creatures, had wounded him.

  They carried him into the house and laid him down in the hall. The report spread that they had caught a robber, and the servants crowded in to see the villain. Amongst the rest came the nurse. The moment she saw him she exclaimed with indignation: