Chapter 10
On the other hand, Curdie was in search of goblins. He had been spending restless nights for some days. One day he resolved to find them out. So he followed the goblins into their hole. Something touched his hand. It was the slightest touch, and when he looked he could see nothing. Feeling and peering about in the grey of the dawn, his fingers came upon a tight thread. He looked again, and narrowly, but still could see nothing. It flashed upon him that this must be the princess’s thread.
Without saying a word, for he knew no one would believe him any more than he had believed the princess, he followed the thread with his finger, contrived to give Lootie the slip, and was soon out of the house and on the mountainside—surprised that, if the thread were indeed the grandmother’s messenger, it should have led the princess, as he supposed it must, into the mountain, where she would be certain to meet the goblins rushing back enraged from their defeat. But he hurried on in the hope of overtaking her first.
When he arrived, however, at the place where the path turned off for the mine, he found that the thread did not turn with it, but went straight up the mountain. Could it be that the thread was leading him home to his mother’s cottage? Could the princess be there? He bounded up the mountain like one of its own goats, and before the sun was up the thread had brought him indeed to his mother’s door. There it vanished from his fingers, and he could not find it, search as he might.
The door was on the latch, and he entered. There sat his mother by the fire, and in her arms lay the princess, fast asleep.
‘Hush, Curdie!’ said his mother. ‘Do not wake her. I’m so glad you’re come! I thought the cobs must have got you again!’
With a heart full of delight, Curdie sat down at a corner of the hearth, on a stool opposite his mother’s chair, and gazed at the princess, who slept as peacefully as if she had been in her own bed. All at once she opened her eyes and fixed them on him.
‘Oh, Curdie! you’re come!’ she said quietly. ‘I thought you would!’
Curdie rose and stood before her with downcast eyes.
‘Irene,’ he said, ‘I am very sorry I did not believe you.’
‘Oh, never mind, Curdie!’ answered the princess. ‘You couldn’t, you know. You do believe me now, don’t you?’
‘I can’t help it now. I ought to have helped it before.’
‘Why can’t you help it now?’
‘Because, just as I was going into the mountain to look for you, I got hold of your thread, and it brought me here.’
‘Then you’ve come from my house, have you?’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘I didn’t know you were there.’
‘I’ve been there two or three days, I believe.’
‘And I never knew it! Then perhaps you can tell me why my grandmother has brought me here? I can’t think. Something woke me—I didn’t know what, but I was frightened, and I felt for the thread, and there it was! I was more frightened still when it brought me out on the mountain, for I thought it was going to take me into it again, and I like the outside of it best. I supposed you were in trouble again, and I had to get you out. But it brought me here instead; and, oh, Curdie! your mother has been so kind to me—just like my own grandmother!’
Here Curdie’s mother gave the princess a hug, and the princess turned and gave her a sweet smile, and held up her mouth to kiss her.
‘Then you didn’t see the cobs?’asked Curdie.
‘No; I haven’t been into the mountain, I told you, Curdie.’
‘But the cobs have been into your house—all over it—and into your bedroom, making such a row!’
‘What did they want there? It was very rude of them.’
‘They wanted you—to carry you off into the mountain with them, for a wife to their prince Harelip.’
‘Oh, how dreadful’ cried the princess, shuddering.
‘But you needn’t be afraid, you know. Your grandmother takes care of you.’
‘Ah! you do believe in my grandmother, then? I’m so glad! She made me think you would some day.’
All at once Curdie remembered his dream, and was silent, thinking.
‘But how did you come to be in my house, and me not know it?’ asked the princess.
Then Curdie had to explain everything—how he had watched for her sake, how he had been wounded and shut up by the soldiers, how he heard the noises and could not rise, and how the beautiful old lady had come to him, and all that followed.
‘Poor Curdie! to lie there hurt and ill, and me never to know it!’ exclaimed the princess, stroking his rough hand. ‘I would have come and nursed you, if they had told me.’
‘I didn’t see you were lame,’ said his mother.
‘Am I, mother? Oh—yes—I suppose I ought to be! I declare I’ve never thought of it since I got up to go down amongst the cobs!’
‘Let me see the wound,’ said his mother.
He pulled down his stocking—when behold, except a great scar, his leg was perfectly sound!
Curdie and his mother gazed in each other’s eyes, full of wonder, but Irene called out:
‘I thought so, Curdie! I was sure it wasn’t a dream. I was sure my grandmother had been to see you. Don’t you smell the roses? It was my grandmother healed your leg, and sent you to help me.’
‘No, Princess Irene,’ said Curdie; ‘I wasn’t good enough to be allowed to help you: I didn’t believe you. Your grandmother took care of you without me.’
‘She sent you to help my people, anyhow. I wish my king-papa would come. I do want so to tell him how good you have been!’
‘But,’ said the mother, ‘we are forgetting how frightened your people must be. You must take the princess home at once, Curdie—or at least go and tell them where she is.’
‘Yes, mother. Only I’m dreadfully hungry. Do let me have some breakfast first. They ought to have listened to me, and then they wouldn’t have been taken by surprise as they were.’
‘That is true, Curdie; but it is not for you to blame them much. You remember?’
‘Yes, mother, I do. Only I must really have something to eat.’
‘You shall, my boy—as fast as I can get it,’ said his mother, rising and setting the princess on her chair.
But before his breakfast was ready, Curdie jumped up so suddenly as to startle both his companions.
‘Mother, mother!’ he cried, ‘I was forgetting. You must take the princess home yourself. I must go and wake my father.’
Without a word of explanation, he rushed to the place where his father was sleeping. Having thoroughly roused him with what he told him he darted out of the cottage.
He had all at once remembered the resolution of the goblins to carry out their second plan upon the failure of the first. No doubt they were already busy, and the mine was therefore in the greatest danger of being flooded and rendered useless—not to speak of the lives of the miners.
When he reached the mouth of the mine, after rousing all the miners within reach, he found his father and a good many more just entering. They all hurried to the gang by which he had found a way into the goblin country. There the foresight of Peter had already collected a great many blocks of stone, with cement, ready for building up the weak place—well enough known to the goblins. Although there was not room for more than two to be actually building at once, they managed, by setting all the rest to work in preparing the cement and passing the stones, to finish in the course of the day a huge buttress filling the whole gang, and supported everywhere by the live rock. Before the hour when they usually dropped work, they were satisfied the mine was secure.
They had heard goblin hammers and pickaxes busy all the time, and at length fancied they heard sounds of water they had never heard before. But that was otherwise accounted for when they left the mine, for they stepped out into a tremendous storm which was raging all over the mountain. The thunder was bellowing, and the lightning lancing out of a huge black cloud which lay above it and hung down its edges of thick mist over its sides. The lightning was breaking out of the mountain, too, and flashing up into the cloud. From the state of the brooks, now swollen into raging torrents, it was evident that the storm had been storming all day.
The wind was blowing as if it would blow him off the mountain, but, anxious about his mother and the princess, Curdie darted up through the thick of the tempest. Even if they had not set out before the storm came on, he did not judge them safe, for in such a storm even their poor little house was in danger. Indeed he soon found that but for a huge rock against which it was built, and which protected it both from the blasts and the waters, it must have been swept if it was not blown away; for the two torrents into which this rock parted the rush of water behind it united again in front of the cottage—two roaring and dangerous streams, which his mother and the princess could not possibly have passed. It was with great difficulty that he forced his way through one of them, and up to the door.
The moment his hand fell on the latch, through all the uproar of winds and Waters came the joyous cry of the princess:
‘There’s Curdie! Curdie! Curdie!’
She was sitting wrapped in blankets on the bed, his mother trying for the hundredth time to light the fire which had been drowned by the rain that came down the chimney. The clay floor was one mass of mud, and the whole place looked wretched. But the faces of the mother and the princess shone as if their troubles only made them the merrier. Curdie burst out laughing at the sight of them.
‘I never had such fun!’ said the princess, her eyes twinkling and her pretty teeth shining. ‘How nice it must be to live in a cottage on the mountain!’
‘It all depends on what kind your inside house is,’ said the mother.
‘I know what you mean,’ said Irene. ‘That’s the kind of thing my grandmother says.’
By the time Peter returned the storm was nearly over, but the streams were so fierce and so swollen that it was not only out of the question for the princess to go down the mountain, but most dangerous for Peter even or Curdie to make the attempt in the gathering darkness.
‘They will be dreadfully frightened about you,’ said Peter to the princess, ‘but we cannot help it. We must wait till the morning.’
With Curdie’s help, the fire was lighted at last, and the mother set about making their supper; and after supper they all told the princess stories till she grew sleepy. Then Curdie’s mother laid her in Curdie’s bed, which was in a tiny little garret-room. As soon as she was in bed, through a little window low down in the roof she caught sight of her grandmother’s lamp shining far away beneath, and she gazed at the beautiful silvery globe until she fell asleep.
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