The Water-Babies

At last he got to the bottom.  But, behold, it was not the bottom—as people usually find when they are coming down a mountain.  For at the foot of the crag were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size from that of your head to that of a stage-waggon, with holes between them full of sweet heath-fern; and before Tom got through them, he was out in the bright sunshine again; and then he felt, once for all and suddenly, as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life, little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live, let you be as strong and healthy as you may: and when you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling.  I hope that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by you who is not beat; for, if you have not, you had best lie where you are, and wait for better times, as poor Tom did.

He could not get on.  The sun was burning, and yet he felt chill all over.  He was quite empty, and yet he felt quite sick.  There was but two hundred yards of smooth pasture between him and the cottage, and yet he could not walk down it.  He could hear the stream murmuring only one field beyond it, and yet it seemed to him as if it was a hundred miles off.

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran over him, and the flies settled on his nose.  I don’t know when he would have got up again, if the gnats and the midges had not taken compassion on him.  But the gnats blew their trumpets so loud in his ear, and the midges nibbled so at his hands and face wherever they could find a place free from soot, that at last he woke up, and stumbled away, down over a low wall, and into a narrow road, and up to the cottage-door.

And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipped yew hedges all round the garden, and yews inside too, cut into peacocks and trumpets and teapots and all kinds of queer shapes.  And out of the open door came a noise like that of the frogs on the Great-A, when they know that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow—and how they know that I don’t know, and you don’t know, and nobody knows.

He came slowly up to the open door, which was all hung round with clematis and roses; and then peeped in, half afraid.

And there sat by the empty fireplace, which was filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest old woman that ever was seen, in her red petticoat, and short dimity bedgown, and clean white cap, with a black silk handkerchief over it, tied under her chin.  At her feet sat the grandfather of all the cats; and opposite her sat, on two benches, twelve or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby little children, learning their Chris-cross-row; and gabble enough they made about it.

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny clean stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which began shouting as soon as Tom appeared: not that it was frightened at Tom, but that it was just eleven o’clock.

All the children started at Tom’s dirty black figure,—the girls began to cry, and the boys began to laugh, and all pointed at him rudely enough; but Tom was too tired to care for that.

“What art thou, and what dost want?” cried the old dame.  “A chimney-sweep!  Away with thee!  I’ll have no sweeps here.”

“Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint.

“Water?  There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she said, quite sharply.

“But I can’t get there; I’m most clemmed with hunger and drought.”  And Tom sank down upon the door-step, and laid his head against the post.

And the old dame looked at him through her spectacles one minute, and two, and three; and then she said, “He’s sick; and a bairn’s a bairn, sweep or none.”

“Water,” said Tom.

“God forgive me!” and she put by her spectacles, and rose, and came to Tom.  “Water’s bad for thee; I’ll give thee milk.”  And she toddled off into the next room, and brought a cup of milk and a bit of bread.

Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and then looked up, revived.

“Where didst come from?” said the dame.

“Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up into the sky.

“Over Harthover? and down Lewthwaite Crag?  Art sure thou art not lying?”

“Why should I?” said Tom, and leant his head against the post.

“And how got ye up there?”

“I came over from the Place;” and Tom was so tired and desperate he had no heart or time to think of a story, so he told all the truth in a few words.

“Bless thy little heart!  And thou hast not been stealing, then?”

“No.”

“Bless thy little heart! and I’ll warrant not.  Why, God’s guided the bairn, because he was innocent!  Away from the Place, and over Harthover Fell, and down Lewthwaite Crag!  Who ever heard the like, if God hadn’t led him?  Why dost not eat thy bread?”

“I can’t.”

“It’s good enough, for I made it myself.”

“I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on his knees, and then asked -

“Is it Sunday?”

“No, then; why should it be?”

“Because I hear the church-bells ringing so.”

“Bless thy pretty heart!  The bairn’s sick.  Come wi’ me, and I’ll hap thee up somewhere.  If thou wert a bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own bed, for the Lord’s sake.  But come along here.”

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired and giddy that she had to help him and lead him.

She put him in an outhouse upon soft sweet hay and an old rug, and bade him sleep off his walk, and she would come to him when school was over, in an hour’s time.

And so she went in again, expecting Tom to fall fast asleep at once.

But Tom did not fall asleep.

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked about in the strangest way, and felt so hot all over that he longed to get into the river and cool himself; and then he fell half asleep, and dreamt that he heard the little white lady crying to him, “Oh, you’re so dirty; go and be washed;” and then that he heard the Irishwoman saying, “Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be.”  And then he heard the church-bells ring so loud, close to him too, that he was sure it must be Sunday, in spite of what the old dame had said; and he would go to church, and see what a church was like inside, for he had never been in one, poor little fellow, in all his life.  But the people would never let him come in, all over soot and dirt like that.  He must go to the river and wash first.  And he said out loud again and again, though being half asleep he did not know it, “I must be clean, I must be clean.”

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in the outhouse on the hay, but in the middle of a meadow, over the road, with the stream just before him, saying continually, “I must be clean, I must be clean.”  He had got there on his own legs, between sleep and awake, as children will often get out of bed, and go about the room, when they are not quite well.  But he was not a bit surprised, and went on to the bank of the brook, and lay down on the grass, and looked into the clear, clear limestone water, with every pebble at the bottom bright and clean, while the little silver trout dashed about in fright at the sight of his black face; and he dipped his hand in and found it so cool, cool, cool; and he said, “I will be a fish; I will swim in the water; I must be clean, I must be clean.”

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste that he tore some of them, which was easy enough with such ragged old things.  And he put his poor hot sore feet into the water; and then his legs; and the farther he went in, the more the church-bells rang in his head.

“Ah,” said Tom, “I must be quick and wash myself; the bells are ringing quite loud now; and they will stop soon, and then the door will be shut, and I shall never be able to get in at all.”

Tom was mistaken: for in England the church doors are left open all service time, for everybody who likes to come in, Churchman or Dissenter; ay, even if he were a Turk or a Heathen; and if any man dared to turn him out, as long as he behaved quietly, the good old English law would punish that man, as he deserved, for ordering any peaceable person out of God’s house, which belongs to all alike.  But Tom did not know that, any more than he knew a great deal more which people ought to know.

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman, not behind him this time, but before.

For just before he came to the river side, she had stept down into the cool clear water; and her shawl and her petticoat floated off her, and the green water-weeds floated round her sides, and the white water-lilies floated round her head, and the fairies of the stream came up from the bottom and bore her away and down upon their arms; for she was the Queen of them all; and perhaps of more besides.

“Where have you been?” they asked her.

“I have been smoothing sick folks’ pillows, and whispering sweet dreams into their ears; opening cottage casements, to let out the stifling air; coaxing little children away from gutters, and foul pools where fever breeds; turning women from the gin-shop door, and staying men’s hands as they were going to strike their wives; doing all I can to help those who will not help themselves: and little enough that is, and weary work for me.  But I have brought you a new little brother, and watched him safe all the way here.”

Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the thought that they had a little brother coming.

“But mind, maidens, he must not see you, or know that you are here.  He is but a savage now, and like the beasts which perish; and from the beasts which perish he must learn.  So you must not play with him, or speak to him, or let him see you: but only keep him from being harmed.”

Then the fairies were sad, because they could not play with their new brother, but they always did what they were told.

And their Queen floated away down the river; and whither she went, thither she came.  But all this Tom, of course, never saw or heard: and perhaps if he had it would have made little difference in the story; for was so hot and thirsty, and longed so to be clean for once, that he tumbled himself as quick as he could into the clear cool stream.

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep that ever he had in his life; and he dreamt about the green meadows by which he had walked that morning, and the tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows; and after that he dreamt of nothing at all.

The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep is very simple; and yet hardly any one has found it out.  It was merely that the fairies took him.

Some people think that there are no fairies.  Cousin Cramchild tells little folks so in his Conversations.  Well, perhaps there are none—in Boston, U.S., where he was raised.  There are only a clumsy lot of spirits there, who can’t make people hear without thumping on the table: but they get their living thereby, and I suppose that is all they want.  And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments on political economy, says there are none.  Well, perhaps there are none—in her political economy.  But it is a wide world, my little man—and thank Heaven for it, for else, between crinolines and theories, some of us would get squashed—and plenty of room in it for fairies, without people seeing them; unless, of course, they look in the right place.  The most wonderful and the strongest things in the world, you know, are just the things which no one can see.  There is life in you; and it is the life in you which makes you grow, and move, and think: and yet you can’t see it.  And there is steam in a steam-engine; and that is what makes it move: and yet you can’t see it; and so there may be fairies in the world, and they may be just what makes the world go round to the old tune of

“C’est l’amour, l’amour, l’amourQui fait la monde à la ronde:”

and yet no one may be able to see them except those whose hearts are going round to that same tune.  At all events, we will make believe that there are fairies in the world.  It will not be the last time by many a one that we shall have to make believe.  And yet, after all, there is no need for that.  There must be fairies; for this is a fairy tale: and how can one have a fairy tale if there are no fairies?

You don’t see the logic of that?  Perhaps not.  Then please not to see the logic of a great many arguments exactly like it, which you will hear before your beard is gray.

The kind old dame came back at twelve, when school was over, to look at Tom: but there was no Tom there.  She looked about for his footprints; but the ground was so hard that there was no slot, as they say in dear old North Devon.  And if you grow up to be a brave healthy man, you may know some day what no slot means, and know too, I hope, what a slot does mean—a broad slot, with blunt claws, which makes a man put out his cigar, and set his teeth, and tighten his girths, when he sees it; and what his rights mean, if he has them, brow, bay, tray, and points; and see something worth seeing between Haddon Wood and Countisbury Cliff, with good Mr. Palk Collyns to show you the way, and mend your bones as fast as you smash them.  Only when that jolly day comes, please don’t break your neck; stogged in a mire you never will be, I trust; for you are a heath-cropper bred and born.

So the old dame went in again quite sulky, thinking that little Tom had tricked her with a false story, and shammed ill, and then run away again.

But she altered her mind the next day.  For, when Sir John and the rest of them had run themselves out of breath, and lost Tom, they went back again, looking very foolish.

And they looked more foolish still when Sir John heard more of the story from the nurse; and more foolish still, again, when they heard the whole story from Miss Ellie, the little lady in white.  All she had seen was a poor little black chimney-sweep, crying and sobbing, and going to get up the chimney again.  Of course, she was very much frightened: and no wonder.  But that was all.  The boy had taken nothing in the room; by the mark of his little sooty feet, they could see that he had never been off the hearthrug till the nurse caught hold of him.  It was all a mistake.

So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and promised him five shillings if he would bring the boy quietly up to him, without beating him, that he might be sure of the truth.  For he took for granted, and Grimes too, that Tom had made his way home.

But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that evening; and he went to the police-office, to tell them to look out for the boy.  But no Tom was heard of.  As for his having gone over those great fells to Vendale, they no more dreamed of that than of his having gone to the moon.

So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next day with a very sour face; but when he got there, Sir John was over the hills and far away; and Mr. Grimes had to sit in the outer servants’ hall all day, and drink strong ale to wash away his sorrows; and they were washed away long before Sir John came back.

For good Sir John had slept very badly that night; and he said to his lady, “My dear, the boy must have got over into the grouse-moors, and lost himself; and he lies very heavily on my conscience, poor little lad.  But I know what I will do.”

So, at five the next morning up he got, and into his bath, and into his shooting-jacket and gaiters, and into the stableyard, like a fine old English gentleman, with a face as red as a rose, and a hand as hard as a table, and a back as broad as a bullock’s; and bade them bring his shooting pony, and the keeper to come on his pony, and the huntsman, and the first whip, and the second whip, and the under-keeper with the bloodhound in a leash—a great dog as tall as a calf, of the colour of a gravel-walk, with mahogany ears and nose, and a throat like a church-bell.  They took him up to the place where Tom had gone into the wood; and there the hound lifted up his mighty voice, and told them all he knew.

Then he took them to the place where Tom had climbed the wall; and they shoved it down, and all got through.

And then the wise dog took them over the moor, and over the fells, step by step, very slowly; for the scent was a day old, you know, and very light from the heat and drought.  But that was why cunning old Sir John started at five in the morning.

And at last he came to the top of Lewthwaite Crag, and there he bayed, and looked up in their faces, as much as to say, “I tell you he is gone down here!”

They could hardly believe that Tom would have gone so far; and when they looked at that awful cliff, they could never believe that he would have dared to face it.  But if the dog said so, it must be true.

“Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John.  “If we find him at all, we shall find him lying at the bottom.”  And he slapped his great hand upon his great thigh, and said -

“Who will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, and see if that boy is alive?  Oh that I were twenty years younger, and I would go down myself!”  And so he would have done, as well as any sweep in the county.  Then he said -

“Twenty pounds to the man who brings me that boy alive!” and as was his way, what he said he meant.

Now among the lot was a little groom-boy, a very little groom indeed; and he was the same who had ridden up the court, and told Tom to come to the Hall; and he said -

“Twenty pounds or none, I will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, if it’s only for the poor boy’s sake.  For he was as civil a spoken little chap as ever climbed a flue.”

So down over Lewthwaite Crag he went: a very smart groom he was at the top, and a very shabby one at the bottom; for he tore his gaiters, and he tore his breeches, and he tore his jacket, and he burst his braces, and he burst his boots, and he lost his hat, and what was worst of all, he lost his shirt pin, which he prized very much, for it was gold, and he had won it in a raffle at Malton, and there was a figure at the top of it, of t’ould mare, noble old Beeswing herself, as natural as life; so it was a really severe loss: but he never saw anything of Tom.

And all the while Sir John and the rest were riding round, full three miles to the right, and back again, to get into Vendale, and to the foot of the crag.

When they came to the old dame’s school, all the children came out to see.  And the old dame came out too; and when she saw Sir John, she curtsied very low, for she was a tenant of his.

“Well, dame, and how are you?” said Sir John.

“Blessings on you as broad as your back, Harthover,” says she—she didn’t call him Sir John, but only Harthover, for that is the fashion in the North country—“and welcome into Vendale: but you’re no hunting the fox this time of the year?”

“I am hunting, and strange game too,” said he.

“Blessings on your heart, and what makes you look so sad the morn?”

“I’m looking for a lost child, a chimney-sweep, that is run away.”

“Oh, Harthover, Harthover,” says she, “ye were always a just man and a merciful; and ye’ll no harm the poor little lad if I give you tidings of him?”

“Not I, not I, dame.  I’m afraid we hunted him out of the house all on a miserable mistake, and the hound has brought him to the top of Lewthwaite Crag, and—”

Whereat the old dame broke out crying, without letting him finish his story.

“So he told me the truth after all, poor little dear!  Ah, first thoughts are best, and a body’s heart’ll guide them right, if they will but hearken to it.”  And then she told Sir John all.

“Bring the dog here, and lay him on,” said Sir John, without another word, and he set his teeth very hard.

And the dog opened at once; and went away at the back of the cottage, over the road, and over the meadow, and through a bit of alder copse; and there, upon an alder stump, they saw Tom’s clothes lying.  And then they knew as much about it all as there was any need to know.

And Tom?

Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of this wonderful story.  Tom, when he woke, for of course he woke—children always wake after they have slept exactly as long as is good for them—found himself swimming about in the stream, being about four inches, or—that I may be accurate—3.87902 inches long and having round the parotid region of his fauces a set of external gills (I hope you understand all the big words) just like those of a sucking eft, which he mistook for a lace frill, till he pulled at them, found he hurt himself, and made up his mind that they were part of himself, and best left alone.

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.

A water-baby?  You never heard of a water-baby.  Perhaps not.  That is the very reason why this story was written.  There are a great many things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more which nobody ever heard of; and a great many things, too, which nobody will ever hear of, at least until the coming of the Cocqcigrues, when man shall be the measure of all things.

“But there are no such things as water-babies.”

How do you know that?  Have you been there to see?  And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none.  If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood—as folks sometimes fear he never will—that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes.  And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world.  And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.

“But surely if there were water-babies, somebody would have caught one at least?”

Well.  How do you know that somebody has not?

“But they would have put it into spirits, or into the Illustrated News, or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor dear little thing, and sent one to Professor Owen, and one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would each say about it.”

Ah, my dear little man! that does not follow at all, as you will see before the end of the story.

“But a water-baby is contrary to nature.”

Well, but, my dear little man, you must learn to talk about such things, when you grow older, in a very different way from that.  You must not talk about “ain’t” and “can’t” when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature.  You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect.  They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, “That cannot exist.  That is contrary to nature,” you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong.  It is only children who read Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, or Cousin Cramchild’s Conversations; or lads who go to popular lectures, and see a man pointing at a few big ugly pictures on the wall, or making nasty smells with bottles and squirts, for an hour or two, and calling that anatomy or chemistry—who talk about “cannot exist,” and “contrary to nature.”  Wise men are afraid to say that there is anything contrary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical truth; for two and two cannot make five, and two straight lines cannot join twice, and a part cannot be as great as the whole, and so on (at least, so it seems at present): but the wiser men are, the less they talk about “cannot.”  That is a very rash, dangerous word, that “cannot”; and if people use it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies, who makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite, and takes just as much trouble about one as about the other, is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing them, that though they say she cannot, yet she can, and what is more, will, whether they approve or not.

And therefore it is, that there are dozens and hundreds of things in the world which we should certainly have said were contrary to nature, if we did not see them going on under our eyes all day long.  If people had never seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite different shape from themselves, and these trees again produce fresh seeds, to grow into fresh trees, they would have said, “The thing cannot be; it is contrary to nature.”  And they would have been quite as right in saying so, as in saying that most other things cannot be.