The Water-Babies

“Ah!” said Grimes, “good reason she had to hate the sight of a chimney-sweep.  I ran away from her and took up with the sweeps, and never let her know where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, and now it’s too late—too late!” said Mr. Grimes.

And he began crying and blubbering like a great baby, till his pipe dropped out of his mouth, and broke all to bits.

“Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again, to see the clear beck, and the apple-orchard, and the yew-hedge, how different I would go on!  But it’s too late now.  So you go along, you kind little chap, and don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s old enough to be your father, and never feared the face of man, nor of worse neither.  But I’m beat now, and beat I must be.  I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it.  Foul I would be, and foul I am, as an Irishwoman said to me once; and little I heeded it.  It’s all my own fault: but it’s too late.”  And he cried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.

“Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange soft new voice that Tom looked up at her; and she was so beautiful for the moment, that Tom half fancied she was her sister.

No more was it too late.  For, as poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and nobody’s on earth could do for him; for they washed the soot off his face and off his clothes; and then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began to get out of it.

Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him on the crown a tremendous thump, and drive him down again like a cork into a bottle.  But the strange lady put it aside.

“Will you obey me if I give you a chance?”

“As you please, ma’am.  You’re stronger than me—that I know too well, and wiser than me, I know too well also.  And, as for being my own master, I’ve fared ill enough with that as yet.  So whatever your ladyship pleases to order me; for I’m beat, and that’s the truth.”

“Be it so then—you may come out.  But remember, disobey me again, and into a worse place still you go.”

“I beg pardon ma’am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of.  I never had the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these ugly quarters.”

“Never saw me?  Who said to you, Those that will be foul, foul they will be?”

Grimes looked up; and Tom looked up too; for the voice was that of the Irishwoman who met them the day that they went out together to Harthover.  “I gave you your warning then: but you gave it yourself a thousand times before and since.  Every bad word that you said—every cruel and mean thing that you did—every time that you got tipsy—every day that you went dirty—you were disobeying me, whether you knew it or not.”

“If I’d only known, ma’am—”

“You knew well enough that you were disobeying something, though you did not know it was me.  But come out and take your chance.  Perhaps it may be your last.”

So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and really, if it had not been for the scars on his face, he looked as clean and respectable as a master-sweep need look.

“Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, “and give him his ticket-of-leave.”

“And what is he to do, ma’am?”

“Get him to sweep out the crater of Etna; he will find some very steady men working out their time there, who will teach him his business: but mind, if that crater gets choked again, and there is an earthquake in consequence, bring them all to me, and I shall investigate the case very severely.”

So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, looking as meek as a drowned worm.

And for aught I know, or do not know, he is sweeping the crater of Etna to this very day.

“And now,” said the fairy to Tom, “your work here is done.  You may as well go back again.”

“I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, “but how am I to get up that great hole again, now the steam has stopped blowing?”

“I will take you up the backstairs: but I must bandage your eyes first; for I never allow anybody to see those backstairs of mine.”

“I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them, ma’am, if you bid me not.”

“Aha!  So you think, my little man.  But you would soon forget your promise if you got back into the land-world.  For, if people only once found out that you had been up my backstairs, you would have all the fine ladies kneeling to you, and the rich men emptying their purses before you, and statesmen offering you place and power; and young and old, rich and poor, crying to you, ‘Only tell us the great backstairs secret, and we will be your slaves; we will make you lord, king, emperor, bishop, archbishop, pope, if you like—only tell us the secret of the backstairs.  For thousands of years we have been paying, and petting, and obeying, and worshipping quacks who told us they had the key of the backstairs, and could smuggle us up them; and in spite of all our disappointments, we will honour, and glorify, and adore, and beatify, and translate, and apotheotise you likewise, on the chance of your knowing something about the backstairs, that we may all go on pilgrimage to it; and, even if we cannot get up it, lie at the foot of it, and cry -

‘Oh, backstairs,precious backstairs,invaluable backstairs,requisite backstairs,necessary backstairs,good-natured backstairs,cosmopolitan backstairs,comprehensive backstairs,accommodating backstairs,well-bred backstairs,commercial backstairs,economical backstairs,practical backstairs,logical backstairs,deductive backstairs,comfortable backstairs,humane backstairs,reasonable backstairs,long-sought backstairs,coveted backstairs,aristocratic backstairs,respectable backstairs,gentlenmanlike backstairs,ladylike backstairs,orthodox backstairs,probable backstairs,credible backstairs,demonstrable backstairs,irrefragable backstairs,potent backstairs,all-but-omnipotent backstairs,&c.

Save us from the consequences of our own actions, and from the cruel fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid!’  Do not you think that you would be a little tempted then to tell what you know, laddie?”

Tom thought so certainly.  “But why do they want so to know about the backstairs?” asked he, being a little frightened at the long words, and not understanding them the least; as, indeed, he was not meant to do, or you either.

“That I shall not tell you.  I never put things into little folks’ heads which are but too likely to come there of themselves.  So come—now I must bandage your eyes.”  So she tied the bandage on his eyes with one hand, and with the other she took it off.

“Now,” she said, “you are safe up the stairs.”  Tom opened his eyes very wide, and his mouth too; for he had not, as he thought, moved a single step.  But, when he looked round him, there could be no doubt that he was safe up the backstairs, whatsoever they may be, which no man is going to tell you, for the plain reason that no man knows.

The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars, high and sharp against the rosy dawn; and St. Brandan’s Isle reflected double in the still broad silver sea.  The wind sang softly in the cedars, and the water sang among the eaves: the sea-birds sang as they streamed out into the ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the boughs; and the air was so full of song that it stirred St. Brandan and his hermits, as they slumbered in the shade; and they moved their good old lips, and sang their morning hymn amid their dreams.  But among all the songs one came across the water more sweet and clear than all; for it was the song of a young girl’s voice.

And what was the song which she sang?  Ah, my little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to understand it.  But have patience, and keep your eye single, and your hands clean, and you will learn some day to sing it yourself, without needing any man to teach you.

And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon a rock the most graceful creature that ever was seen, looking down, with her chin upon her hand, and paddling with her feet in the water.  And when they came to her she looked up, and behold it was Ellie.

“Oh, Miss Ellie,” said he, “how you are grown!”

“Oh, Tom,” said she, “how you are grown too!”

And no wonder; they were both quite grown up—he into a tall man, and she into a beautiful woman.

“Perhaps I may be grown,” she said.  “I have had time enough; for I have been sitting here waiting for you many a hundred years, till I thought you were never coming.”

“Many a hundred years?” thought Tom; but he had seen so much in his travels that he had quite given up being astonished; and, indeed, he could think of nothing but Ellie.  So he stood and looked at Ellie, and Ellie looked at him; and they liked the employment so much that they stood and looked for seven years more, and neither spoke nor stirred.

At last they heard the fairy say: “Attention, children.  Are you never going to look at me again?”

“We have been looking at you all this while,” they said.  And so they thought they had been.

“Then look at me once more,” said she.

They looked—and both of them cried out at once, “Oh, who are you, after all?”

“You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.”

“No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid; but you are grown quite beautiful now!”

“To you,” said the fairy.  “But look again.”

“You are Mother Carey,” said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice; for he had found out something which made him very happy, and yet frightened him more than all that he had ever seen.

“But you are grown quite young again.”

“To you,” said the fairy.  “Look again.”

“You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I went to Harthover!”

And when they looked she was neither of them, and yet all of them at once.

“My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to see it there.”

And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and they changed again and again into every hue, as the light changes in a diamond.

“Now read my name,” said she, at last.

And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white, blazing light: but the children could not read her name; for they were dazzled, and hid their faces in their hands.

“Not yet, young things, not yet,” said she, smiling; and then she turned to Ellie.

“You may take him home with you now on Sundays, Ellie.  He has won his spurs in the great battle, and become fit to go with you and be a man; because he has done the thing he did not like.”

So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and sometimes on week-days, too; and he is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth; and knows everything about everything, except why a hen’s egg don’t turn into a crocodile, and two or three other little things which no one will know till the coming of the Cocqcigrues.  And all this from what he learnt when he was a water-baby, underneath the sea.

“And of course Tom married Ellie?”

My dear child, what a silly notion!  Don’t you know that no one ever marries in a fairy tale, under the rank of a prince or a princess?

“And Tom’s dog?”

Oh, you may see him any clear night in July; for the old dog-star was so worn out by the last three hot summers that there have been no dog-days since; so that they had to take him down and put Tom’s dog up in his place.  Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may hope for some warm weather this year.  And that is the end of my story.

MORAL

And now, my dear little man, what should we learn from this parable?

We should learn thirty-seven or thirty-nine things, I am not exactly sure which: but one thing, at least, we may learn, and that is this—when we see efts in the pond, never to throw stones at them, or catch them with crooked pins, or put them into vivariums with sticklebacks, that the sticklebacks may prick them in their poor little stomachs, and make them jump out of the glass into somebody’s work-box, and so come to a bad end.  For these efts are nothing else but the water-babies who are stupid and dirty, and will not learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and, therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty years hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you now), their skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and their brains grow small, and their tails grow long, and they lose all their ribs (which I am sure you would not like to do), and their skins grow dirty and spotted, and they never get into the clear rivers, much less into the great wide sea, but hang about in dirty ponds, and live in the mud, and eat worms, as they deserve to do.

But that is no reason why you should ill-use them: but only why you should pity them, and be kind to them, and hope that some day they will wake up, and be ashamed of their nasty, dirty, lazy, stupid life, and try to amend, and become something better once more.  For, perhaps, if they do so, then after 379,423 years, nine months, thirteen days, two hours, and twenty-one minutes (for aught that appears to the contrary), if they work very hard and wash very hard all that time, their brains may grow bigger, and their jaws grow smaller, and their ribs come back, and their tails wither off, and they will turn into water-babies again, and perhaps after that into land-babies; and after that perhaps into grown men.

You know they won’t?  Very well, I daresay you know best.  But you see, some folks have a great liking for those poor little efts.  They never did anybody any harm, or could if they tried; and their only fault is, that they do no good—any more than some thousands of their betters.  But what with ducks, and what with pike, and what with sticklebacks, and what with water-beetles, and what with naughty boys, they are “sae sair hadden doun,” as the Scotsmen say, that it is a wonder how they live; and some folks can’t help hoping, with good Bishop Butler, that they may have another chance, to make things fair and even, somewhere, somewhen, somehow.

Meanwhile, do you learn your lessons, and thank God that you have plenty of cold water to wash in; and wash in it too, like a true Englishman.  And then, if my story is not true, something better is; and if I am not quite right, still you will be, as long as you stick to hard work and cold water.

But remember always, as I told you at first, that this is all a fairy tale, and only fun and pretence: and, therefore, you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true.