The Water-Babies
by Charles Kingsley · English · Gutenberg #1018 · 390,746 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Water-Babies
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release date: August 1, 1997 [eBook #1018]
Most recently updated: April 19, 2025
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1018
Credits: Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WATER-BABIES ***
Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
THE
WATER BABIES
A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
* * * * *
BY
CHARLES KINGSLEY
* * * * *
_NEW EDITION_
WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINLEY SAMBOURNE
* * * * *
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1889
_All rights reserved_
* * * * *
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_
* * * * *
TO
MY YOUNGEST SON
GRENVILLE ARTHUR
AND
TO ALL OTHER GOOD LITTLE BOYS
* * * * *
COME READ ME MY RIDDLE, EACH GOOD LITTLE MAN;
IF YOU CANNOT READ IT, NO GROWN-UP FOLK CAN.
[Picture: Water babies and frogs playing leap-frog]
“I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined;
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Being sad thoughts to the mind.
“To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think,
What man has made of man.”
WORDSWORTH.
CHAPTER I
“I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined;
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
“To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think,
What man has made of man.”
WORDSWORTH.
[Picture: Little chimney-sweep]
ONCE upon a time there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was Tom.
That is a short name, and you have heard it before, so you will not have
much trouble in remembering it. He lived in a great town in the North
country, where there were plenty of chimneys to sweep, and plenty of
money for Tom to earn and his master to spend. He could not read nor
write, and did not care to do either; and he never washed himself, for
there was no water up the court where he lived. He had never been taught
to say his prayers. He never had heard of God, or of Christ, except in
words which you never have heard, and which it would have been well if he
had never heard. He cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He
cried when he had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and
elbows raw; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day
in the week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the
week; and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day in the
week likewise. And he laughed the other half of the day, when he was
tossing halfpennies with the other boys, or playing leap-frog over the
posts, or bowling stones at the horses’ legs as they trotted by, which
last was excellent fun, when there was a wall at hand behind which to
hide. [Picture: Dogs] As for chimney-sweeping, and being hungry, and
being beaten, he took all that for the way of the world, like the rain
and snow and thunder, and stood manfully with his back to it till it was
over, as his old donkey did to a hail-storm; and then shook his ears and
was as jolly as ever; and thought of the fine times coming, when he would
be a man, and a master sweep, and sit in the public-house with a quart of
beer and a long pipe, and play cards for silver money, and wear
velveteens and ankle-jacks, and keep a white bull-dog with one gray ear,
and carry her puppies in his pocket, just like a man. And he would have
apprentices, one, two, three, if he could. How he would bully them, and
knock them about, just as his master did to him; and make them carry home
the soot sacks, while he rode before them on his donkey, with a pipe in
his mouth and a flower in his button-hole, like a king at the head of his
army. Yes, there were good times coming; and, when his master let him
have a pull at the leavings of his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in the
whole town.
[Picture: Smart groom and Tom]
One day a smart little groom rode into the court where Tom lived. Tom
was just hiding behind a wall, to heave half a brick at his horse’s legs,
as is the custom of that country when they welcome strangers; but the
groom saw him, and halloed to him to know where Mr. Grimes, the
chimney-sweep, lived. Now, Mr. Grimes was Tom’s own master, and Tom was
a good man of business, and always civil to customers, so he put the
half-brick down quietly behind the wall, and proceeded to take orders.
Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to Sir John Harthover’s, at the
Place, for his old chimney-sweep was gone to prison, and the chimneys
wanted sweeping. And so he rode away, not giving Tom time to ask what
the sweep had gone to prison for, which was a matter of interest to Tom,
as he had been in prison once or twice himself. Moreover, the groom
looked so very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters, drab breeches, drab
jacket, snow-white tie with a smart pin in it, and clean round ruddy
face, that Tom was offended and disgusted at his appearance, and
considered him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs because he wore
smart clothes, and other people paid for them; and went behind the wall
to fetch the half-brick after all; but did not, remembering that he had
come in the way of business, and was, as it were, under a flag of truce.
His master was so delighted at his new customer that he knocked Tom down
out of hand, and drank more beer that night than he usually did in two,
in order to be sure of getting up in time next morning; for the more a
man’s head aches when he wakes, the more glad he is to turn out, and have
a breath of fresh air. And, when he did get up at four the next morning,
he knocked Tom down again, in order to teach him (as young gentlemen used
to be taught at public schools) that he must be an extra good boy that
day, as they were going to a very great house, and might make a very good
thing of it, if they could but give satisfaction.
And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed, would have done and behaved his
best, even without being knocked down. For, of all places upon earth,
Harthover Place (which he had never seen) was the most wonderful, and, of
all men on earth, Sir John (whom he had seen, having been sent to gaol by
him twice) was the most awful.
[Picture: Sir John Harthover]
Harthover Place was really a grand place, even for the rich North
country; with a house so large that in the frame-breaking riots, which
Tom could just remember, the Duke of Wellington, and ten thousand
soldiers to match, were easily housed therein; at least, so Tom believed;
with a park full of deer, which Tom believed to be monsters who were in
the habit of eating children; with miles of game-preserves, in which Mr.
Grimes and the collier lads poached at times, on which occasions Tom saw
pheasants, and wondered what they tasted like; with a noble salmon-river,
in which Mr. Grimes and his friends would have liked to poach; but then
they must have got into cold water, and that they did not like at all.
In short, Harthover was a grand place, and Sir John a grand old man, whom
even Mr. Grimes respected; for not only could he send Mr. Grimes to
prison when he deserved it, as he did once or twice a week; not only did
he own all the land about for miles; not only was he a jolly, honest,
sensible squire, as ever kept a pack of hounds, who would do what he
thought right by his neighbours, as well as get what he thought right for
himself; but, what was more, he weighed full fifteen stone, was nobody
knew how many inches round the chest, and could have thrashed Mr. Grimes
himself in fair fight, which very few folk round there could do, and
which, my dear little boy, would not have been right for him to do, as a
great many things are not which one both can do, and would like very much
to do. So Mr. Grimes touched his hat to him when he rode through the
town, and called him a “buirdly awd chap,” and his young ladies “gradely
lasses,” which are two high compliments in the North country; and thought
that that made up for his poaching Sir John’s pheasants; whereby you may
perceive that Mr. Grimes had not been to a properly-inspected Government
National School.
Now, I dare say, you never got up at three o’clock on a midsummer
morning. Some people get up then because they want to catch salmon; and
some because they want to climb Alps; and a great many more because they
must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that three o’clock on a midsummer
morning is the pleasantest time of all the twenty-four hours, and all the
three hundred and sixty-five days; and why every one does not get up
then, I never could tell, save that they are all determined to spoil
their nerves and their complexions by doing all night what they might
just as well do all day. But Tom, instead of going out to dinner at
half-past eight at night, and to a ball at ten, and finishing off
somewhere between twelve and four, went to bed at seven, when his master
went to the public-house, and slept like a dead pig; for which reason he
was as piert as a game-cock (who always gets up early to wake the maids),
and just ready to get up when the fine gentlemen and ladies were just
ready to go to bed.
[Picture: Grimes and Tom] So he and his master set out; Grimes rode the
donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes walked behind; out of the court,
and up the street, past the closed window-shutters, and the winking weary
policemen, and the roofs all shining gray in the gray dawn.
They passed through the pitmen’s village, all shut up and silent now, and
through the turnpike; and then the were out in the real country, and
plodding along the black dusty road, between black slag walls, with no
sound but the groaning and thumping of the pit-engine in the next field.
But soon the road grew white, and the walls likewise; and at the wall’s
foot grew long grass and gay flowers, all drenched with dew; and instead
of the groaning of the pit-engine, they heard the skylark saying his
matins high up in the air, and the pit-bird warbling in the sedges, as he
had warbled all night long.
All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was still fast asleep; and, like
many pretty people, she looked still prettier asleep than awake. The
great elm-trees in the gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, and the
cows fast asleep beneath them; nay, the few clouds which were about were
fast asleep likewise, and so tired that they had lain down on the earth
to rest, in long white flakes and bars, among the stems of the elm-trees,
and along the tops of the alders by the stream, waiting for the sun to
bid them rise and go about their day’s business in the clear blue
overhead.
On they went; and Tom looked, and looked, for he never had been so far
into the country before; and longed to get over a gate, and pick
buttercups, and look for birds’ nests in the hedge; but Mr. Grimes was a
man of business, and would not have heard of that.
Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudging along with a bundle at
her back. She had a gray shawl over her head, and a crimson madder
petticoat; so you may be sure she came from Galway. She had neither
shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she were tired and footsore;
but she was a very tall handsome woman, with bright gray eyes, and heavy
black hair hanging about her cheeks. And she took Mr. Grimes’ fancy so
much, that when he came alongside he called out to her:
[Picture: The poor Irishwomen] “This is a hard road for a gradely foot
like that. Will ye up, lass, and ride behind me?”
But, perhaps, she did not admire Mr. Grimes’ look and voice; for she
answered quietly:
“No, thank you: I’d sooner walk with your little lad here.”
“You may please yourself,” growled Grimes, and went on smoking.
So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, and asked him where he
lived, and what he knew, and all about himself, till Tom thought he had
never met such a pleasant-spoken woman. And she asked him, at last,
whether he said his prayers! and seemed sad when he told her that he knew
no prayers to say.
Then he asked her where she lived, and she said far away by the sea. And
Tom asked her about the sea; and she told him how it rolled and roared
over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still in the bright summer days,
for the children to bathe and play in it; and many a story more, till Tom
longed to go and see the sea, and bathe in it likewise.
At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a spring; not such a
spring as you see here, which soaks up out of a white gravel in the bog,
among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white orchis;
nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up under the warm
sandbank in the hollow lane by the great tuft of lady ferns, and makes
the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and night, all the year round;
not such a spring as either of those; but a real North country limestone
fountain, like one of those in Sicily or Greece, where the old heathen
fancied the nymphs sat cooling themselves the hot summer’s day, while the
shepherds peeped at them from behind the bushes. Out of a low cave of
rock, at the foot of a limestone crag, the great fountain rose, quelling,
and bubbling, and gurgling, so clear that you could not tell where the
water ended and the air began; and ran away under the road, a stream
large enough to turn a mill; among blue geranium, and golden
globe-flower, and wild raspberry, and the bird-cherry with its tassels of
snow.
And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and Tom looked too. Tom was
wondering whether anything lived in that dark cave, and came out at night
to fly in the meadows. But Grimes was not wondering at all. Without a
word, he got off his donkey, and clambered over the low road wall, and
knelt down, and began dipping his ugly head into the spring—and very
dirty he made it.
Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he could. The Irishwoman helped
him, and showed him how to tie them up; and a very pretty nosegay they
had made between them. But when he saw Grimes actually wash, he stopped,
quite astonished; and when Grimes had finished, and began shaking his
ears to dry them, he said:
“Why, master, I never saw you do that before.”
“Nor will again, most likely. ’Twasn’t for cleanliness I did it, but for
coolness. I’d be ashamed to want washing every week or so, like any
smutty collier lad.”
“I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said poor little Tom. “It must
be as good as putting it under the town-pump; and there is no beadle here
to drive a chap away.”
“Thou come along,” said Grimes; “what dost want with washing thyself?
Thou did not drink half a gallon of beer last night, like me.”
“I don’t care for you,” said naughty Tom, and ran down to the stream, and
began washing his face.
Grimes was very sulky, because the woman preferred Tom’s company to his;
so he dashed at him with horrid words, and tore him up from his knees,
and began beating him. But Tom was accustomed to that, and got his head
safe between Mr. Grimes’ legs, and kicked his shins with all his might.
“Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes?” cried the Irishwoman
over the wall.
Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name; but all he answered
was, “No, nor never was yet;” and went on beating Tom.
“True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of yourself, you would have
gone over into Vendale long ago.”
“What do you know about Vendale?” shouted Grimes; but he left off beating
Tom.
“I know about Vendale, and about you, too. I know, for instance, what
happened in Aldermire Copse, by night, two years ago come Martinmas.”
“You do?” shouted Grimes; and leaving Tom, he climbed up over the wall,
and faced the woman. Tom thought he was going to strike her; but she
looked him too full and fierce in the face for that.
“Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman quietly.
“You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,” said Grimes, after many bad
words.
“Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw; and if you strike that boy
again, I can tell what I know.”
Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his donkey without another word.
“Stop!” said the Irishwoman. “I have one more word for you both; for you
will both see me again before all is over. Those that wish to be clean,
clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul, foul they will be.
Remember.”
[Picture: Griffin status with shield saying “Salvtem”]
And she turned away, and through a gate into the meadow. Grimes stood
still a moment, like a man who had been stunned. Then he rushed after
her, shouting, “You come back.” But when he got into the meadow, the
woman was not there.
Had she hidden away? There was no place to hide in. But Grimes looked
about, and Tom also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself at her
disappearing so suddenly; but look where they would, she was not there.
Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for he was a little
frightened; and, getting on his donkey, filled a fresh pipe, and smoked
away, leaving Tom in peace.
[Picture: Griffin status with shield saying “Amicis”]
And now they had gone three miles and more, and came to Sir John’s
lodge-gates.
Very grand lodges they were, with very grand iron gates and stone
gate-posts, and on the top of each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth,
horns, and tail, which was the crest which Sir John’s ancestors wore in
the Wars of the Roses; and very prudent men they were to wear it, for all
their enemies must have run for their lives at the very first sight of
them.
Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper on the spot, and opened.
“I was told to expect thee,” he said. “Now thou’lt be so good as to keep
to the main avenue, and not let me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when
thou comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell thee.”
“Not if it’s in the bottom of the soot-bag,” quoth Grimes, and at that he
laughed; and the keeper laughed and said:
“If that’s thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee to the hall.”
“I think thou best had. It’s thy business to see after thy game, man,
and not mine.”
So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom’s surprise, he and Grimes
chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know that a
keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper turned
inside out.
They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between their
stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer, which stood
up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous trees, and as he
looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on their heads. But he was
puzzled very much by a strange murmuring noise, which followed them all
the way. So much puzzled, that at last he took courage to ask the keeper
what it was.
[Picture: The keeper and Grimes]
He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he was horribly afraid of
him, which pleased the keeper, and he told him that they were the bees
about the lime flowers.
“What are bees?” asked Tom.
“What make honey.”
“What is honey?” asked Tom.
“Thou hold thy noise,” said Grimes.
“Let the boy be,” said the keeper. “He’s a civil young chap now, and
that’s more than he’ll be long if he bides with thee.”
Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment.
“I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, “to live in such a beautiful place,
and wear green velveteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my button, like
you.”
The keeper laughed; he was a kind-hearted fellow enough.
“Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times. Thy life’s safer than mine
at all events, eh, Mr. Grimes?”
And Grimes laughed again, and then the two men began talking, quite low.
Tom could hear, though, that it was about some poaching fight; and at
last Grimes said surlily, “Hast thou anything against me?”
“Not now.”
“Then don’t ask me any questions till thou hast, for I am a man of
honour.”
And at that they both laughed again, and thought it a very good joke.
And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front of
the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and azaleas,
which were all in flower; and then at the house itself, and wondered how
many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago it was built, and what
was the man’s name that built it, and whether he got much money for his
job?
These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover had
been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different styles,
and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of houses of every
imaginable shape, and then stirred them together with a spoon.
_For the attics were Anglo-Saxon_.
_The third door Norman_.
_The second Cinque-cento_.
_The first-floor Elizabethan_.
_The right wing Pure Doric_.
_The centre Early English_, _with a huge portico copied from the
Parthenon_.
_The left wing pure Bœotian_, _which the country folk admired most of
all_, _became it was just like the new barracks in the town_, _only
three times as big_.
_The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome_.
_The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra_. _This was built by
Sir John’s great-great-great-uncle_, _who won_, _in Lord Clive’s
Indian Wars_, _plenty of money_, _plenty of wounds_, _and no more
taste than his betters_.
_The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta_.
_The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton_.
And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or under the earth.
So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians, and a
thorough Naboth’s vineyard to critics, and architects, and all persons
who like meddling with other men’s business, and spending other men’s
money. So they were all setting upon poor Sir John, year after year, and
trying to talk him into spending a hundred thousand pounds or so, in
building, to please them and not himself. But he always put them off,
like a canny North-countryman as he was. One wanted him to build a
Gothic house, but he said he was no Goth; and another to build an
Elizabethan, but he said he lived under good Queen Victoria, and not good
Queen Bess; and another was bold enough to tell him that his house was
ugly, but he said he lived inside it, and not outside; and another, that
there was no unity in it, but he said that that was just why he liked the
old place. For he liked to see how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir
Ralph, and Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place, each after his
own taste; and he had no more notion of disturbing his ancestors’ work
than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real
live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world
grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own
grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic
or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it bad been all spawned in a
night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit
enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and
just the man to keep the country side in order, and show good sport with
his hounds.
[Picture: The housekeeper] But Tom and his master did not go in through
the great iron gates, as if they had been Dukes or Bishops, but round the
back way, and a very long way round it was; and into a little back-door,
where the ash-boy let them in, yawning horribly; and then in a passage
the housekeeper met them, in such a flowered chintz dressing-gown, that
Tom mistook her for My Lady herself, and she gave Grimes solemn orders
about “You will take care of this, and take care of that,” as if he was
going up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes listened, and said every
now and then, under his voice, “You’ll mind that, you little beggar?” and
Tom did mind, all at least that he could. And then the housekeeper
turned them into a grand room, all covered up in sheets of brown paper,
and bade them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a
whimper or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and
up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the
furniture; to whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous
compliments, but met with very slight encouragement in return.
[Picture: Grimes paying complements]
How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say; but he swept so many that he
got quite tired, and puzzled too, for they were not like the town flues
to which he was accustomed, but such as you would find—if you would only
get up them and look, which perhaps you would not like to do—in old
country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again
and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as Professor
Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not
that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was
as much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground; but at last,
coming down as he thought the right chimney, he came down the wrong one,
and found himself standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of which
he had never seen before.
Tom had never seen the like. He had never been in gentlefolks’ rooms but
when the carpets were all up, and the curtains down, and the furniture
huddled together under a cloth, and the pictures covered with aprons and
dusters; and he had often enough wondered what the rooms were like when
they were all ready for the quality to sit in. And now he saw, and he
thought the sight very pretty.
The room was all dressed in white,—white window-curtains, white
bed-curtains, white furniture, and white walls, with just a few lines of
pink here and there. The carpet was all over gay little flowers; and the
walls were hung with pictures in gilt frames, which amused Tom very much.
There were pictures of ladies and gentlemen, and pictures of horses and
dogs. The horses he liked; but the dogs he did not care for much, for
there were no bull-dogs among them, not even a terrier. But the two
pictures which took his fancy most were, one a man in long garments, with
little children and their mothers round him, who was laying his hand upon
the children’s heads. That was a very pretty picture, Tom thought, to
hang in a lady’s room. For he could see that it was a lady’s room by the
dresses which lay about.
The other picture was that of a man nailed to a cross, which surprised
Tom much. He fancied that he had seen something like it in a
shop-window. But why was it there? “Poor man,” thought Tom, “and he
looks so kind and quiet. But why should the lady have such a sad picture
as that in her room? Perhaps it was some kinsman of hers, who had been
murdered by the savages in foreign parts, and she kept it there for a
remembrance.” And Tom felt sad, and awed, and turned to look at
something else.
The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled him, was a washing-stand,
with ewers and basins, and soap and brushes, and towels, and a large bath
full of clean water—what a heap of things all for washing! “She must be
a very dirty lady,” thought Tom, “by my master’s rule, to want as much
scrubbing as all that. But she must be very cunning to put the dirt out
of the way so well afterwards, for I don’t see a speck about the room,
not even on the very towels.”
And then, looking toward the bed, he saw that dirty lady, and held his
breath with astonishment.
Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white pillow, lay the most
beautiful little girl that Tom had ever seen. Her cheeks were almost as
white as the pillow, and her hair was like threads of gold spread all
about over the bed. She might have been as old as Tom, or maybe a year
or two older; but Tom did not think of that. He thought only of her
delicate skin and golden hair, and wondered whether she was a real live
person, or one of the wax dolls he had seen in the shops. But when he
saw her breathe, he made up his mind that she was alive, and stood
staring at her, as if she had been an angel out of heaven.
[Picture: The girl asleep]
No. She cannot be dirty. She never could have been dirty, thought Tom
to himself. And then he thought, “And are all people like that when they
are washed?” And he looked at his own wrist, and tried to rub the soot
off, and wondered whether it ever would come off. “Certainly I should
look much prettier then, if I grew at all like her.”
And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing close to him, a little ugly,
black, ragged figure, with bleared eyes and grinning white teeth. He
turned on it angrily. What did such a little black ape want in that
sweet young lady’s room? And behold, it was himself, reflected in a
great mirror, the like of which Tom had never seen before.
And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out that he was dirty; and
burst into tears with shame and anger; and turned to sneak up the chimney
again and hide; and upset the fender and threw the fire-irons down, with
a noise as of ten thousand tin kettles tied to ten thousand mad dogs’
tails.
Up jumped the little white lady in her bed, and, seeing Tom, screamed as
shrill as any peacock. In rushed a stout old nurse from the next room,
and seeing Tom likewise, made up her mind that he had come to rob,
plunder, destroy, and burn; and dashed at him, as he lay over the fender,
so fast that she caught him by the jacket.
But she did not hold him. Tom had been in a policeman’s hands many a
time, and out of them too, what is more; and he would have been ashamed
to face his friends for ever if he had been stupid enough to be caught by
an old woman; so he doubled under the good lady’s arm, across the room,
and out of the window in a moment.
He did not need to drop out, though he would have done so bravely enough.
Nor even to let himself down a spout, which would have been an old game
to him; for once he got up by a spout to the church roof, he said to take
jackdaws’ eggs, but the policeman said to steal lead; and, when he was
seen on high, sat there till the sun got too hot, and came down by
another spout, leaving the policemen to go back to the stationhouse and
eat their dinners.
But all under the window spread a tree, with great leaves and sweet white
flowers, almost as big as his head. It was magnolia, I suppose; but Tom
knew nothing about that, and cared less; for down the tree he went, like
a cat, and across the garden lawn, and over the iron railings and up the
park towards the wood, leaving the old nurse to scream murder and fire at
the window.
[Picture: The under gardener]
The under gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and threw down his scythe; caught
his leg in it, and cut his shin open, whereby he kept his bed for a week;
but in his hurry he never knew it, and gave chase to poor Tom. The
dairymaid heard the noise, got the churn between her knees, and tumbled
over it, spilling all the cream; and yet she jumped up, and gave chase to
Tom. [Picture: The diarymaid] A groom cleaning Sir John’s hack at the
stables let him go loose, whereby he kicked himself lame in five minutes;
but he ran out and gave chase to Tom. Grimes upset the soot-sack in the
new-gravelled yard, and spoilt it all utterly; but he ran out and gave
chase to Tom. The old steward opened the park-gate in such a hurry, that
he hung up his pony’s chin upon the spikes, and, for aught I know, it
hangs there still; but he jumped off, and gave chase to Tom. The
ploughman left his horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence,
and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all; but he ran on, and
gave chase to Tom. The keeper, who was taking a stoat out of a trap, let
the stoat go, and caught his own finger; but he jumped up, and ran after
Tom; and considering what he said, and how he looked, I should have been
sorry for Tom if he had caught him. Sir John looked out of his study
window (for he was an early old gentleman) and up at the nurse, and a
marten dropped mud in his eye, so that he had at last to send for the
doctor; and yet he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. The Irishwoman, too,
was walking up to the house to beg,—she must have got round by some
byway—but she threw away her bundle, and gave chase to Tom likewise.
Only my Lady did not give chase; for when she had put her head out of the
window, her night-wig fell into the garden, and she had to ring up her
lady’s-maid, and send her down for it privately, which quite put her out
of the running, so that she came in nowhere, and is consequently not
placed.
[Picture: The old steward]
In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place—not even when the fox was
killed in the conservatory, among acres of broken glass, and tons of
smashed flower-pots—such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy, hullabaloo,
stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity, repose, and order, as
that day, when Grimes, gardener, the groom, the dairymaid, Sir John, the
steward, the ploughman, the keeper, and the Irishwoman, all ran up the
park, shouting, “Stop thief,” in the belief that Tom had at least a
thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in his empty pockets; and the very
magpies and jays followed Tom up, screaking and screaming, as if he were
a hunted fox, beginning to droop his brush.
[Picture: Grimes]
And all the while poor Tom paddled up the park with his little bare feet,
like a small black gorilla fleeing to the forest. Alas for him! there
was no big father gorilla therein to take his part—to scratch out the
gardener’s inside with one paw, toss the dairymaid into a tree with
another, and wrench off Sir John’s head with a third, while he cracked
the keeper’s skull with his teeth as easily as if it had been a cocoa-nut
or a paving-stone.
[Picture: Man on horse]
However, Tom did not remember ever having had a father; so he did not
look for one, and expected to have to take care of himself; while as for
running, he could keep up for a couple of miles with any stage-coach, if
there was the chance of a copper or a cigar-end, and turn coach-wheels on
his hands and feet ten times following, which is more than you can do.
Wherefore his pursuers found it very difficult to catch him; and we will
hope that they did not catch him at all.
[Picture: Man chasing]
Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had never been in a wood in his
life; but he was sharp enough to know that he might hide in a bush, or
swarm up a tree, and, altogether, had more chance there than in the open.
If he had not known that, he would have been foolisher than a mouse or a
minnow.
[Picture: Man on knees]
But when he got into the wood, he found it a very different sort of place
from what he had fancied. He pushed into a thick cover of rhododendrons,
and found himself at once caught in a trap. The boughs laid hold of his
legs and arms, poked him in his face and his stomach, made him shut his
eyes tight (though that was no great loss, for he could not see at best a
yard before his nose); and when he got through the rhododendrons, the
hassock-grass and sedges tumbled him over, and cut his poor little
fingers afterwards most spitefully; the birches birched him as soundly as
if he had been a nobleman at Eton, and over the face too (which is not
fair swishing as all brave boys will agree); and the lawyers tripped him
up, and tore his shins as if they had sharks’ teeth—which lawyers are
likely enough to have.
“I must get out of this,” thought Tom, “or I shall stay here till
somebody comes to help me—which is just what I don’t want.”
But how to get out was the difficult matter. And indeed I don’t think he
would ever have got out at all, but have stayed there till the
cock-robins covered him with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head
against a wall.
[Picture: Man looking out of window]
Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant, especially if it is
a loose wall, with the stones all set on edge, and a sharp cornered one
hits you between the eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful
stars. The stars are very beautiful, certainly; but unfortunately they
go in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second, and the pain which
comes after them does not. And so Tom hurt his head; but he was a brave
boy, and did not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall the
cover would end; and up it he went, and over like a squirrel.
And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors, which the country folk
called Harthover Fell—heather and bog and rock, stretching away and up,
up to the very sky.
Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow—as cunning as an old Exmoor stag.
Why not? Though he was but ten years old, he had lived longer than most
stags, and had more wits to start with into the bargain.
He knew as well as a stag, that if he backed he might throw the hounds
out. So the first thing he did when he was over the wall was to make the
neatest double sharp to his right, and run along under the wall for
nearly half a mile.
Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, and the gardener, and
the ploughman, and the dairymaid, and all the hue-and-cry together, went
on ahead half a mile in the very opposite direction, and inside the wall,
leaving him a mile off on the outside; while Tom heard their shouts die
away in the woods and chuckled to himself merrily.
At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to the bottom of it, and
then he turned bravely away from the wall and up the moor; for he knew
that he had put a hill between him and his enemies, and could go on
without their seeing him.
But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen which way Tom went. She
had kept ahead of every one the whole time; and yet she neither walked
nor ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully, while her feet
twinkled past each other so fast that you could not see which was
foremost; till every one asked the other who the strange woman was; and
all agreed, for want of anything better to say, that she must be in
league with Tom.
But when she came to the plantation, they lost sight of her; and they
could do no less. For she went quietly over the wall after Tom, and
followed him wherever he went. Sir John and the rest saw no more of her;
and out of sight was out of mind.
And now Tom was right away into the heather, over just such a moor as
those in which you have been bred, except that there were rocks and
stones lying about everywhere, and that, instead of the moor growing flat
as he went upwards, it grew more and more broken and hilly, but not so
rough but that little Tom could jog along well enough, and find time,
too, to stare about at the strange place, which was like a new world to
him.
He saw great spiders there, with crowns and crosses marked on their
backs, who sat in the middle of their webs, and when they saw Tom coming,
shook them so fast that they became invisible. Then he saw lizards,
brown and gray and green, and thought they were snakes, and would sting
him; but they were as much frightened as he, and shot away into the
heath. And then, under a rock, he saw a pretty sight—a great brown,
sharp-nosed creature, with a white tag to her brush, and round her four
or five smutty little cubs, the funniest fellows Tom ever saw. She lay
on her back, rolling about, and stretching out her legs and head and tail
in the bright sunshine; and the cubs jumped over her, and ran round her,
and nibbled her paws, and lugged her about by the tail; and she seemed to
enjoy it mightily. But one selfish little fellow stole away from the
rest to a dead crow close by, and dragged it off to hide it, though it
was nearly as big as he was. Whereat all his little brothers set off
after him in full cry, and saw Tom; and then all ran back, and up jumped
Mrs. Vixen, and caught one up in her mouth, and the rest toddled after
her, and into a dark crack in the rocks; and there was an end of the
show.
[Picture: Fox with cubs]
And next he had a fright; for, as he scrambled up a sandy
brow—whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick—something went off in his face, with
a most horrid noise. He thought the ground had blown up, and the end of
the world come.
And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them very tight) it was only an
old cock-grouse, who had been washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for
want of water; and who, when Tom had all but trodden on him, jumped up
with a noise like the express train, leaving his wife and children to
shift for themselves, like an old coward, and went off, screaming
“Cur-ru-u-uck, cur-ru-u-uck—murder, thieves, fire—cur-u-uck-cock-kick—the
end of the world is come—kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was always fancying
that the end of the world was come, when anything happened which was
farther off than the end of his own nose. But the end of the world was
not come, any more than the twelfth of August was; though the old
grouse-cock was quite certain of it.
[Picture: The grouse]
So the old grouse came back to his wife and family an hour afterwards,
and said solemnly, “Cock-cock-kick; my dears, the end of the world is not
quite come; but I assure you it is coming the day after to-morrow—cock.”
But his wife had heard that so often that she knew all about it, and a
little more. And, besides, she was the mother of a family, and had seven
little poults to wash and feed every day; and that made her very
practical, and a little sharp-tempered; so all she answered was:
“Kick-kick-kick—go and catch spiders, go and catch spiders—kick.”
So Tom went on and on, he hardly knew why; but he liked the great wide
strange place, and the cool fresh bracing air. But he went more and more
slowly as he got higher up the hill; for now the ground grew very bad
indeed. Instead of soft turf and springy heather, he met great patches
of flat limestone rock, just like ill-made pavements, with deep cracks
between the stones and ledges, filled with ferns; so he had to hop from
stone to stone, and now and then he slipped in between, and hurt his
little bare toes, though they were tolerably tough ones; but still he
would go on and up, he could not tell why.
What would Tom have said if he had seen, walking over the moor behind
him, the very same Irishwoman who had taken his part upon the road? But
whether it was that he looked too little behind him, or whether it was
that she kept out of sight behind the rocks and knolls, he never saw her,
though she saw him.
And now he began to get a little hungry, and very thirsty; for he had run
a long way, and the sun had risen high in heaven, and the rock was as hot
as an oven, and the air danced reels over it, as it does over a limekiln,
till everything round seemed quivering and melting in the glare.
But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and still less to drink.
The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries; but they were only in
flower yet, for it was June. And as for water; who can find that on the
top of a limestone rock? Now and then he passed by a deep dark
swallow-hole, going down into the earth, as if it was the chimney of some
dwarfs house underground; and more than once, as he passed, he could hear
water falling, trickling, tinkling, many many feet below. How he longed
to get down to it, and cool his poor baked lips! But, brave little
chimney-sweep as he was, he dared not climb down such chimneys as those.
So he went on and on, till his head spun round with the heat, and he
thought he heard church-bells ringing a long way off.
“Ah!” he thought, “where there is a church there will be houses and
people; and, perhaps, some one will give me a bit and a sup.” So he set
off again, to look for the church; for he was sure that he heard the
bells quite plain.
And in a minute more, when he looked round, he stopped again, and said,
“Why, what a big place the world is!”
And so it was; for, from the top of the mountain he could see—what could
he not see?
Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and the dark woods, and the shining
salmon river; and on his left, far below, was the town, and the smoking
chimneys of the collieries; and far, far away, the river widened to the
shining sea; and little white specks, which were ships, lay on its bosom.
Before him lay, spread out like a map, great plains, and farms, and
villages, amid dark knots of trees. They all seemed at his very feet;
but he had sense to see that they were long miles away.
And to his right rose moor after moor, hill after hill, till they faded
away, blue into blue sky. But between him and those moors, and really at
his very feet, lay something, to which, as soon as Tom saw it, he
determined to go, for that was the place for him.
A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very narrow, and filled with wood;
but through the wood, hundreds of feet below him, he could see a clear
stream glance. Oh, if he could but get down to that stream! Then, by
the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, and a little garden set
out in squares and beds. And there was a tiny little red thing moving in
the garden, no bigger than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that it was
a woman in a red petticoat. Ah! perhaps she would give him something to
eat. And there were the church-bells ringing again. Surely there must
be a village down there. Well, nobody would know him, or what had
happened at the Place. The news could not have got there yet, even if
Sir John had set all the policemen in the county after him; and he could
get down there in five minutes.
Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry not having got thither; for he
had come without knowing it, the best part of ten miles from Harthover;
but he was wrong about getting down in five minutes, for the cottage was
more than a mile off, and a good thousand feet below.
[Picture: Youth reclining near stream]
However, down he went; like a brave little man as he was, though he was
very footsore, and tired, and hungry, and thirsty; while the church-bells
rang so loud, he began to think that they must be inside his own head,
and the river chimed and tinkled far below; and this was the song which
it sang:—
_Clear and cool_, _clear and cool_,
_By laughing shallow_, _and dreaming pool_;
_Cool and clear_, _cool and clear_,
_By shining shingle_, _and foaming wear_;
_Under the crag where the ouzel sings_,
_And the ivied wall where the church-bell rings_,
_Undefiled_, _for the undefiled_;
_Play by me_, _bathe in me_, _mother and child_.
_Dank and foul_, _dank and foul_,
_By the smoky town in its murky cowl_;
_Foul and dank_, _foul and dank_,
_By wharf and sewer and slimy bank_;
_Darker and darker the farther I go_,
_Baser and baser the richer I grow_;
_Who dares sport with the sin-defiled_?
_Shrink from me_, _turn from me_, _mother and child_.
_Strong and free_, _strong and free_,
_The floodgates are open_, _away to the sea_,
_Free and strong_, _free and strong_,
_Cleansing my streams as I hurry along_,
_To the golden sands_, _and the leaping bar_,
_And the taintless tide that awaits me afar_.
_As I lose myself in the infinite main_,
_Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again_.
_Undefiled_, _for the undefiled_;
_Play by me_, _bathe in me_, _mother and child_.
So Tom went down; and all the while he never saw the Irishwoman going
down behind him.
[Picture: Girl and woman walking on beech]
CHAPTER II
“And is there care in heaven? and is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is:—else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts: But oh! the exceeding grace
Of Highest God that loves His creatures so,
And all His works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed Angels He sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve His wicked foe!”
SPENSER.
[Picture: Tom at the old dame’s house] A MILE off, and a thousand feet
down.
So Tom found it; though it seemed as if he could have chucked a pebble on
to the back of the woman in the red petticoat who was weeding in the
garden, or even across the dale to the rocks beyond. For the bottom of
the valley was just one field broad, and on the other side ran the
stream; and above it, gray crag, gray down, gray stair, gray moor walled
up to heaven.
A quiet, silent, rich, happy place; a narrow crack cut deep into the
earth; so deep, and so out of the way, that the bad bogies can hardly
find it out. The name of the place is Vendale; and if you want to see it
for yourself, you must go up into the High Craven, and search from
Bolland Forest north by Ingleborough, to the Nine Standards and Cross
Fell; and if you have not found it, you must turn south, and search the
Lake Mountains, down to Scaw Fell and the sea; and then, if you have not
found it, you must go northward again by merry Carlisle, and search the
Cheviots all across, from Annan Water to Berwick Law; and then, whether
you have found Vendale or not, you will have found such a country, and
such a people, as ought to make you proud of being a British boy.
So Tom went to go down; and first he went down three hundred feet of
steep heather, mixed up with loose brown gritstone, as rough as a file;
which was not pleasant to his poor little heels, as he came bump, stump,
jump, down the steep. And still he thought he could throw a stone into
the garden.
Then he went down three hundred feet of lime-stone terraces, one below
the other, as straight as if a carpenter had ruled them with his ruler
and then cut them out with his chisel. There was no heath there, but—
First, a little grass slope, covered with the prettiest flowers, rockrose
and saxifrage, and thyme and basil, and all sorts of sweet herbs.
Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone.
Then another bit of grass and flowers.
Then bump down a one-foot step.
Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty yards, as steep as the
house-roof, where he had to slide down on his dear little tail.
Then another step of stone, ten feet high; and there he had to stop
himself, and crawl along the edge to find a crack; for if he had rolled
over, he would have rolled right into the old woman’s garden, and
frightened her out of her wits.
Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack, full of green-stalked fern,
such as hangs in the basket in the drawing-room, and had crawled down
through it, with knees and elbows, as he would down a chimney, there was
another grass slope, and another step, and so on, till—oh, dear me! I
wish it was all over; and so did he. And yet he thought he could throw a
stone into the old woman’s garden.
At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs; white-beam with its great
silver-backed leaves, and mountain-ash, and oak; and below them cliff and
crag, cliff and crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge;
while through the shrubs he could see the stream sparkling, and hear it
murmur on the white pebbles. He did not know that it was three hundred
feet below.
You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking down: but Tom was not. He
was a brave little chimney-sweep; and when he found himself on the top of
a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying for his baba (though he
never had had any baba to cry for), he said, “Ah, this will just suit
me!” though he was very tired; and down he went, by stock and stone,
sedge and ledge, bush and rush, as if he had been born a jolly little
black ape, with four hands instead of two.
And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman coming down behind him.
But he was getting terribly tired now. The burning sun on the fells had
sucked him up; but the damp heat of the woody crag sucked him up still
more; and the perspiration ran out of the ends of his fingers and toes,
and washed him cleaner than he had been for a whole year. But, of
course, he dirtied everything, terribly as he went. There has been a
great black smudge all down the crag ever since. And there have been
more black beetles in Vendale since than ever were known before; all, of
course, owing to Tom’s having blacked the original papa of them all, just
as he was setting off to be married, with a sky-blue coat and scarlet
leggins, as smart as a gardener’s dog with a polyanthus in his mouth.
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.
[Picture: The Queen of them all]
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’amour_
_Qui fait la monde à la ronde_:”
[Picture: Fairy cherub with arrow] 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.”
[Picture: Sir John]
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.
[Picture: Water baby]
“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.
[Picture: Examining a water baby in a jar]
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.
Or suppose again, that you had come, like M. Du Chaillu, a traveller from
unknown parts; and that no human being had ever seen or heard of an
elephant. And suppose that you described him to people, and said, “This
is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast, and of his feet, and of
his trunk, and of his grinders, and of his tusks, though they are not
tusks at all, but two fore teeth run mad; and this is the section of his
skull, more like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable or
unreasonable beast; and so forth, and so forth; and though the beast
(which I assure you I have seen and shot) is first cousin to the little
hairy coney of Scripture, second cousin to a pig, and (I suspect)
thirteenth or fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is the wisest of all
beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast accounts.”
People would surely have said, “Nonsense; your elephant is contrary to
nature;” and have thought you were telling stories—as the French thought
of Le Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had shot a
giraffe; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands thought of the English
sailor, when he said that in his country water turned to marble, and rain
fell as feathers. They would tell you, the more they knew of science,
“Your elephant is an impossible monster, contrary to the laws of
comparative anatomy, as far as yet known.” To which you would answer the
less, the more you thought.
Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years,
that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know
that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world?
People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed
to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons
could exist.
The truth is, that folks’ fancy that such and such things cannot be,
simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s
fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never
saw one running wild in the forest. Wise men know that their business is
to examine what is, and not to settle what is not. They know that there
are elephants; they know that there have been flying dragons; and the
wiser they are, the less inclined they will be to say positively that
there are no water-babies.
No water-babies, indeed? Why, wise men of old said that everything on
earth had its double in the water; and you may see that that is, if not
quite true, still quite as true as most other theories which you are
likely to hear for many a day. There are land-babies—then why not
water-babies? _Are there not water-rats_, _water-flies_,
_water-crickets_, _water-crabs_, _water-tortoises_, _water-scorpions_,
_water-tigers and water-hogs_, _water-cats and water-dogs_, _sea-lions
and sea-bears_, _sea-horses and sea-elephants_, _sea-mice and
sea-urchins_, _sea-razors and sea-pens_, _sea-combs and sea-fans_; _and
of plants_, _are there not water-grass_, _and water-crowfoot_,
_water-milfoil_, _and so on_, _without end_?
“But all these things are only nicknames; the water things are not really
akin to the land things.”
That’s not always true. They are, in millions of cases, not only of the
same family, but actually the same individual creatures. Do not even you
know that a green drake, and an alder-fly, and a dragon-fly, live under
water till they change their skins, just as Tom changed his? And if a
water animal can continually change into a land animal, why should not a
land animal sometimes change into a water animal? Don’t be put down by
any of Cousin Cramchild’s arguments, but stand up to him like a man, and
answer him (quite respectfully, of course) thus:—
If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-babies, they must grow
into water-men, ask him how he knows that they do not? and then, how he
knows that they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg caverns
grows into a perfect newt.
If he says that it is too strange a transformation for a land-baby to
turn into a water-baby, ask him if he ever heard of the transformation of
Syllis, or the Distomas, or the common jelly-fish, of which M.
Quatrefages says excellently well—“Who would not exclaim that a miracle
had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the egg dropped by the
hen in his poultry-yard, and the reptile give birth at once to an
indefinite number of fishes and birds? Yet the history of the jelly-fish
is quite as wonderful as that would be.” Ask him if he knows about all
this; and if he does not, tell him to go and look for himself; and advise
him (very respectfully, of course) to settle no more what strange things
cannot happen, till he has seen what strange things do happen every day.
If he says that things cannot degrade, that is, change downwards into
lower forms, ask him, who told him that water-babies were lower than
land-babies? But even if they were, does he know about the strange
degradation of the common goose-barnacles, which one finds sticking on
ships’ bottoms; or the still stranger degradation of some cousins of
theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk, so shocking and ugly it is?
And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) that these
transformations only take place in the lower animals, and not in the
higher, say that that seems to little boys, and to some grown people, a
very strange fancy. For if the changes of the lower animals are so
wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should not there be changes
in the higher animals far more wonderful, and far more difficult to
discover? And may not man, the crown and flower of all things, undergo
some change as much more wonderful than all the rest, as the Great
Exhibition is more wonderful than a rabbit-burrow? Let him answer that.
And if he says (as he will) that not having seen such a change in his
experience, he is not bound to believe it, ask him respectfully, where
his microscope has been? Does not each of us, in coming into this world,
go through a transformation just as wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a
butterfly? and do not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us
that that transformation is not the last? and that, though what we shall
be, we know not, yet we are here but as the crawling caterpillar, and
shall be hereafter as the perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they
were, saw as much as that two thousand years ago; and I care very little
for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less than they. And so forth, and
so forth, till he is quite cross. And then tell him that if there are no
water-babies, at least there ought to be; and that, at least, he cannot
answer.
And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you know a great deal more about
nature than Professor Owen and Professor Huxley put together, don’t tell
me about what cannot be, or fancy that anything is too wonderful to be
true. “We are fearfully and wonderfully made,” said old David; and so we
are; and so is everything around us, down to the very deal table. Yes;
much more fearfully and wonderfully made, already, is the table, as it
stands now, nothing but a piece of dead deal wood, than if, as foxes say,
and geese believe, spirits could make it dance, or talk to you by rapping
on it.
Am I in earnest? Oh dear no! Don’t you know that this is a fairy tale,
and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it,
even if it is true?
But at all events, so it happened to Tom. And, therefore, the keeper,
and the groom, and Sir John made a great mistake, and were very unhappy
(Sir John at least) without any reason, when they found a black thing in
the water, and said it was Tom’s body, and that he had been drowned.
They were utterly mistaken. Tom was quite alive; and cleaner, and
merrier, than he ever had been. The fairies had washed him, you see, in
the swift river, so thoroughly, that not only his dirt, but his whole
husk and shell had been washed quite off him, and the pretty little real
Tom was washed out of the inside of it, and swam away, as a caddis does
when its case of stones and silk is bored through, and away it goes on
its back, paddling to the shore, there to split its skin, and fly away as
a caperer, on four fawn-coloured wings, with long legs and horns. They
are foolish fellows, the caperers, and fly into the candle at night, if
you leave the door open. We will hope Tom will be wiser, now he has got
safe out of his sooty old shell.
[Picture: Collage of events]
But good Sir John did not understand all this, not being a fellow of the
Linnæan Society; and he took it into his head that Tom was drowned. When
they looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and found no jewels
there, nor money—nothing but three marbles, and a brass button with a
string to it—then Sir John did something as like crying as ever he did in
his life, and blamed himself more bitterly than he need have done. So he
cried, and the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman cried, and the dame
cried, and the little girl cried, and the dairymaid cried, and the old
nurse cried (for it was somewhat her fault), and my lady cried, for
though people have wigs, that is no reason why they should not have
hearts; but the keeper did not cry, though he had been so good-natured to
Tom the morning before; for he was so dried up with running after
poachers, that you could no more get tears out of him than milk out of
leather: and Grimes did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten pounds, and he
drank it all in a week. Sir John sent, far and wide, to find Tom’s
father and mother: but he might have looked till Doomsday for them, for
one was dead, and the other was in Botany Bay. And the little girl would
not play with her dolls for a whole week, and never forgot poor little
Tom. And soon my lady put a pretty little tombstone over Tom’s shell in
the little churchyard in Vendale, where the old dalesmen all sleep side
by side between the lime-stone crags. And the dame decked it with
garlands every Sunday, till she grew so old that she could not stir
abroad; then the little children decked it, for her. And always she sang
an old old song, as she sat spinning what she called her wedding-dress.
The children could not understand it, but they liked it none the less for
that; for it was very sweet, and very sad; and that was enough for them.
And these are the words of it:—
_When all the world is young_, _lad_,
_And all the trees are green_;
_And every goose a swan_, _lad_,
_And every lass a queen_;
_Then hey for boot and horse_, _lad_,
_And round the world away_;
_Young blood must have its course_, _lad_,
_And every dog his day_.
_When all the world is old_, _lad_,
_And all the trees are brown_;
_And all the sport is stale_, _lad_,
_And all the wheels run down_;
_Creep home_, _and take your place there_,
_The spent and maimed among_:
_God grant you find one face there_,
_You loved when all was young_.
[Picture: Time and the old man]
Those are the words: but they are only the body of it: the soul of the
song was the dear old woman’s sweet face, and sweet voice, and the sweet
old air to which she sang; and that, alas! one cannot put on paper. And
at last she grew so stiff and lame, that the angels were forced to carry
her; and they helped her on with her wedding-dress, and carried her up
over Harthover Fells, and a long way beyond that too; and there was a new
schoolmistress in Vendale, and we will hope that she was not
certificated.
And all the while Tom was swimming about in the river, with a pretty
little lace-collar of gills about his neck, as lively as a grig, and as
clean as a fresh-run salmon.
Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the schoolroom and learn your
multiplication-table, and see if you like that better. Some people, no
doubt, would do so. So much the better for us, if not for them. It
takes all sorts, they say, to make a world.
[Picture: Water baby and sums]
CHAPTER III
“He prayeth well who loveth well
Both men and bird and beast;
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small:
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
COLERIDGE.
[Picture: Mermaid] TOM was now quite amphibious. You do not know what
that means? You had better, then, ask the nearest Government
pupil-teacher, who may possibly answer you smartly enough, thus—
“Amphibious. Adjective, derived from two Greek words, _amphi_, a fish,
and _bios_, a beast. An animal supposed by our ignorant ancestors to be
compounded of a fish and a beast; which therefore, like the hippopotamus,
can’t live on the land, and dies in the water.”
However that may be, Tom was amphibious: and what is better still, he was
clean. For the first time in his life, he felt how comfortable it was to
have nothing on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it: he did not know
it, or think about it; just as you enjoy life and health, and yet never
think about being alive and healthy; and may it be long before you have
to think about it!
He did not remember having ever been dirty. Indeed, he did not remember
any of his old troubles, being tired, or hungry, or beaten, or sent up
dark chimneys. Since that sweet sleep, he had forgotten all about his
master, and Harthover Place, and the little white girl, and in a word,
all that had happened to him when he lived before; and what was best of
all, he had forgotten all the bad words which he had learned from Grimes,
and the rude boys with whom he used to play.
That is not strange: for you know, when you came into this world, and
became a land-baby, you remembered nothing. So why should he, when he
became a water-baby?
Then have you lived before?
My dear child, who can tell? One can only tell that, by remembering
something which happened where we lived before; and as we remember
nothing, we know nothing about it; and no book, and no man, can ever tell
us certainly.
There was a wise man once, a very wise man, and a very good man, who
wrote a poem about the feelings which some children have about having
lived before; and this is what he said—
“_Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting_;
_The soul that rises with us_, _our life’s star_,
_Hath elsewhere had its setting_,
_And cometh from afar_:
_Not in entire forgetfulness_,
_And not in utter nakedness_,
_But trailing clouds of glory_, _do we come_
_From God_, _who is our home_.”
[Picture: Woman teacher]
There, you can know no more than that. But if I was you, I would believe
that. For then the great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all
the fairies for many a year to come, can only do you good, and never do
you harm; and instead of fancying with some people, that your body makes
your soul, as if a steam-engine could make its own coke; or, with some
people, that your soul has nothing to do with your body, but is only
stuck into it like a pin into a pincushion, to fall out with the first
shake;—you will believe the one true,
_orthodox_, _inductive_,
_rational_, _deductive_,
_philosophical_, _seductive_,
_logical_, _productive_,
_irrefragable_, _salutary_,
_nominalistic_, _comfortable_,
_realistic_,
_and
on-all-accounts-to-be-received_
doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale; which is, that your soul makes
your body, just as a snail makes his shell. For the rest, it is enough
for us to be sure that whether or not we lived before, we shall live
again; though not, I hope, as poor little heathen Tom did. For he went
downward into the water: but we, I hope, shall go upward to a very
different place.
[Picture: Tom in the stream]
But Tom was very happy in the water. He had been sadly overworked in the
land-world; and so now, to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays
in the water-world for a long, long time to come. He had nothing to do
now but enjoy himself, and look at all the pretty things which are to be
seen in the cool clear water-world, where the sun is never too hot, and
the frost is never too cold.
[Picture: Insect] And what did he live on? Water-cresses, perhaps; or
perhaps water-gruel, and water-milk; too many land-babies do so likewise.
But we do not know what one-tenth of the water-things eat; so we are not
answerable for the water-babies.
Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water-ways, looking at the
crickets which ran in and out among the stones, as rabbits do on land; or
he climbed over the ledges of rock, and saw the sand-pipes hanging in
thousands, with every one of them a pretty little head and legs peeping
out; or he went into a still corner, and watched the caddises eating dead
sticks as greedily as you would eat plum-pudding, and building their
houses with silk and glue. Very fanciful ladies they were; none of them
would keep to the same materials for a day. One would begin with some
pebbles; then she would stick on a piece of green wood; then she found a
shell, and stuck it on too; and the poor shell was alive, and did not
like at all being taken to build houses with: but the caddis did not let
him have any voice in the matter, being rude and selfish, as vain people
are apt to be; then she stuck on a piece of rotten wood, then a very
smart pink stone, and so on, till she was patched all over like an
Irishman’s coat. Then she found a long straw, five times as long as
herself, and said, “Hurrah! my sister has a tail, and I’ll have one too;”
and she stuck it on her back, and marched about with it quite proud,
though it was very inconvenient indeed. And, at that, tails became all
the fashion among the caddis-baits in that pool, as they were at the end
of the Long Pond last May, and they all toddled about with long straws
sticking out behind, getting between each other’s legs, and tumbling over
each other, and looking so ridiculous, that Tom laughed at them till he
cried, as we did. But they were quite right, you know; for people must
always follow the fashion, even if it be spoon-bonnets.
[Picture: Lady in 1862 bonnet] Then sometimes he came to a deep still
reach; and there he saw the water-forests. They would have looked to you
only little weeds: but Tom, you must remember, was so little that
everything looked a hundred times as big to him as it does to you, just
as things do to a minnow, who sees and catches the little water-creatures
which you can only see in a microscope.
And in the water-forest he saw the water-monkeys and water-squirrels
(they had all six legs, though; everything almost has six legs in the
water, except efts and water-babies); and nimbly enough they ran among
the branches. There were water-flowers there too, in thousands; and Tom
tried to pick them: but as soon as he touched them, they drew themselves
in and turned into knots of jelly; and then Tom saw that they were all
alive—bells, and stars, and wheels, and flowers, of all beautiful shapes
and colours; and all alive and busy, just as Tom was. So now he found
that there was a great deal more in the world than he had fancied at
first sight.
There was one wonderful little fellow, too, who peeped out of the top of
a house built of round bricks. He had two big wheels, and one little
one, all over teeth, spinning round and round like the wheels in a
thrashing-machine; and Tom stood and stared at him, to see what he was
going to make with his machinery. And what do you think he was doing?
Brick-making. With his two big wheels he swept together all the mud
which floated in the water: all that was nice in it he put into his
stomach and ate; and all the mud he put into the little wheel on his
breast, which really was a round hole set with teeth; and there he spun
it into a neat hard round brick; and then he took it and stuck it on the
top of his house-wall, and set to work to make another. Now was not he a
clever little fellow?
Tom thought so: but when he wanted to talk to him the brick-maker was
much too busy and proud of his work to take notice of him.
Now you must know that all the things under the water talk; only not such
a language as ours; but such as horses, and dogs, and cows, and birds
talk to each other; and Tom soon learned to understand them and talk to
them; so that he might have had very pleasant company if he had only been
a good boy. But I am sorry to say, he was too like some other little
boys, very fond of hunting and tormenting creatures for mere sport. Some
people say that boys cannot help it; that it is nature, and only a proof
that we are all originally descended from beasts of prey. But whether it
is nature or not, little boys can help it, and must help it. For if they
have naughty, low, mischievous tricks in their nature, as monkeys have,
that is no reason why they should give way to those tricks like monkeys,
who know no better. And therefore they must not torment dumb creatures;
for if they do, a certain old lady who is coming will surely give them
exactly what they deserve.
But Tom did not know that; and he pecked and howked the poor water-things
about sadly, till they were all afraid of him, and got out of his way, or
crept into their shells; so he had no one to speak to or play with.
The water-fairies, of course, were very sorry to see him so unhappy, and
longed to take him, and tell him how naughty he was, and teach him to be
good, and to play and romp with him too: but they had been forbidden to
do that. Tom had to learn his lesson for himself by sound and sharp
experience, as many another foolish person has to do, though there may be
many a kind heart yearning over them all the while, and longing to teach
them what they can only teach themselves.
At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted it to peep out of its
house: but its house-door was shut. He had never seen a caddis with a
house-door before: so what must he do, the meddlesome little fellow, but
pull it open, to see what the poor lady was doing inside. What a shame!
How should you like to have any one breaking your bedroom-door in, to see
how you looked when you where in bed? So Tom broke to pieces the door,
which was the prettiest little grating of silk, stuck all over with
shining bits of crystal; and when he looked in, the caddis poked out her
head, and it had turned into just the shape of a bird’s. But when Tom
spoke to her she could not answer; for her mouth and face were tight tied
up in a new night-cap of neat pink skin. However, if she didn’t answer,
all the other caddises did; for they held up their hands and shrieked
like the cats in Struwelpeter: “_Oh_, _you nasty horrid boy_; _there you
are at it again_! _And she had just laid herself up for a fortnight’s
sleep_, _and then she would have come out with such beautiful wings_,
_and flown about_, _and laid such lots of eggs_: _and now you have broken
her door_, _and she can’t mend it because her mouth is tied up for a
fortnight_, _and she will die_. _Who sent you here to worry us out of
our lives_?”
[Picture: Tom and a fish]
So Tom swam away. He was very much ashamed of himself, and felt all the
naughtier; as little boys do when they have done wrong and won’t say so.
Then he came to a pool full of little trout, and began tormenting them,
and trying to catch them: but they slipped through his fingers, and
jumped clean out of water in their fright. But as Tom chased them, he
came close to a great dark hover under an alder root, and out floushed a
huge old brown trout ten times as big as he was, and ran right against
him, and knocked all the breath out of his body; and I don’t know which
was the more frightened of the two.
Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he deserved to be; and under a bank
he saw a very ugly dirty creature sitting, about half as big as himself;
which had six legs, and a big stomach, and a most ridiculous head with
two great eyes and a face just like a donkey’s.
“Oh,” said Tom, “you are an ugly fellow to be sure!” and he began making
faces at him; and put his nose close to him, and halloed at him, like a
very rude boy.
When, hey presto; all the thing’s donkey-face came off in a moment, and
out popped a long arm with a pair of pincers at the end of it, and caught
Tom by the nose. It did not hurt him much; but it held him quite tight.
“Yah, ah! Oh, let me go!” cried Tom.
“Then let me go,” said the creature. “I want to be quiet. I want to
split.”
Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go.
“Why do you want to split?” said Tom.
“Because my brothers and sisters have all split, and turned into
beautiful creatures with wings; and I want to split too. Don’t speak to
me. I am sure I shall split. I will split!”
Tom stood still, and watched him. And he swelled himself, and puffed,
and stretched himself out stiff, and at last—crack, puff, bang—he opened
all down his back, and then up to the top of his head.
And out of his inside came the most slender, elegant, soft creature, as
soft and smooth as Tom: but very pale and weak, like a little child who
has been ill a long time in a dark room. It moved its legs very feebly;
and looked about it half ashamed, like a girl when she goes for the first
time into a ballroom; and then it began walking slowly up a grass stem to
the top of the water.
Tom was so astonished that he never said a word but he stared with all
his eyes. And he went up to the top of the water too, and peeped out to
see what would happen.
And as the creature sat in the warm bright sun, a wonderful change came
over it. It grew strong and firm; the most lovely colours began to show
on its body, blue and yellow and black, spots and bars and rings; out of
its back rose four great wings of bright brown gauze; and its eyes grew
so large that they filled all its head, and shone like ten thousand
diamonds.
“Oh, you beautiful creature!” said Tom; and he put out his hand to catch
it.
But the thing whirred up into the air, and hung poised on its wings a
moment, and then settled down again by Tom quite fearless.
[Picture: Tom and the dragon-fly]
“No!” it said, “you cannot catch me. I am a dragon-fly now, the king of
all the flies; and I shall dance in the sunshine, and hawk over the
river, and catch gnats, and have a beautiful wife like myself. I know
what I shall do. Hurrah!” And he flew away into the air, and began
catching gnats.
“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom, “you beautiful creature. I have
no one to play with, and I am so lonely here. If you will but come back
I will never try to catch you.”
“I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the dragon-fly; “for you
can’t. But when I have had my dinner, and looked a little about this
pretty place, I will come back, and have a little chat about all I have
seen in my travels. Why, what a huge tree this is! and what huge leaves
on it!”
It was only a big dock: but you know the dragon-fly had never seen any
but little water-trees; starwort, and milfoil, and water-crowfoot, and
such like; so it did look very big to him. Besides, he was very
short-sighted, as all dragon-flies are; and never could see a yard before
his nose; any more than a great many other folks, who are not half as
handsome as he.
The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted away with Tom. He was a little
conceited about his fine colours and his large wings; but you know, he
had been a poor dirty ugly creature all his life before; so there were
great excuses for him. He was very fond of talking about all the
wonderful things he saw in the trees and the meadows; and Tom liked to
listen to him, for he had forgotten all about them. So in a little while
they became great friends.
And I am very glad to say, that Tom learned such a lesson that day, that
he did not torment creatures for a long time after. And then the
caddises grew quite tame, and used to tell him strange stories about the
way they built their houses, and changed their skins, and turned at last
into winged flies; till Tom began to long to change his skin, and have
wings like them some day.
[Picture: Acrobat] And the trout and he made it up (for trout very soon
forget if they have been frightened and hurt). So Tom used to play with
them at hare and hounds, and great fun they had; and he used to try to
leap out of the water, head over heels, as they did before a shower came
on; but somehow he never could manage it. He liked most, though, to see
them rising at the flies, as they sailed round and round under the shadow
of the great oak, where the beetles fell flop into the water, and the
green caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk ropes for
no reason at all; and then changed their foolish minds for no reason at
all either; and hauled themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the
rope in a ball between their paws; which is a very clever rope-dancer’s
trick, and neither Blondin nor Leotard could do it: but why they should
take so much trouble about it no one can tell; for they cannot get their
living, as Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their necks on a
string.
And very often Tom caught them just as they touched the water; and caught
the alder-flies, and the caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners,
yellow, and brown, and claret, and gray, and gave them to his friends the
trout. Perhaps he was not quite kind to the flies; but one must do a
good turn to one’s friends when one can.
And at last he gave up catching even the flies; for he made acquaintance
with one by accident and found him a very merry little fellow. And this
was the way it happened; and it is all quite true.
He was basking at the top of the water one hot day in July, catching duns
and feeding the trout, when he saw a new sort, a dark gray little fellow
with a brown head. He was a very little fellow indeed: but he made the
most of himself, as people ought to do. He cocked up his head, and he
cocked up his wings, and he cocked up his tail, and he cocked up the two
whisks at his tail-end, and, in short, he looked the cockiest little man
of all little men. And so he proved to be; for instead of getting away,
he hopped upon Tom’s finger, and sat there as bold as nine tailors; and
he cried out in the tiniest, shrillest, squeakiest little voice you ever
heard,
“Much obliged to you, indeed; but I don’t want it yet.”
“Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback by his impudence.
“Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold out for me to sit on. I
must just go and see after my wife for a few minutes. Dear me! what a
troublesome business a family is!” (though the idle little rogue did
nothing at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself).
“When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you’ll be so good as to keep
it sticking out just so;” and off he flew.
Tom thought him a very cool sort of personage; and still more so, when,
in five minutes he came back, and said—“Ah, you were tired waiting?
Well, your other leg will do as well.”
And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee, and began chatting away in his
squeaking voice.
“So you live under the water? It’s a low place. I lived there for some
time; and was very shabby and dirty. But I didn’t choose that that
should last. So I turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put on
this gray suit. It’s a very business-like suit, you think, don’t you?”
“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom.
“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable, and all that sort of
thing for a little, when one becomes a family man. But I’m tired of it,
that’s the truth. I’ve done quite enough business, I consider, in the
last week, to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball dress, and go
out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and have a dance or two.
Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one can?”
“And what will become of your wife?”
“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s the truth; and
thinks about nothing but eggs. If she chooses to come, why she may; and
if not, why I go without her;—and here I go.”
And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then quite white.
“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did not answer.
“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he stood on his knee as white
as a ghost.
“No, I ain’t!” answered a little squeaking voice over his head. “This is
me up here, in my ball-dress; and that’s my skin. Ha, ha! you could not
do such a trick as that!”
And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin, nor Frikell, nor all the
conjurors in the world. For the little rogue had jumped clean out of his
own skin, and left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail,
exactly as if it had been alive.
“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped up and down, never stopping
an instant, just as if he had St. Vitus’s dance. “Ain’t I a pretty
fellow now?”
And so he was; for his body was white, and his tail orange, and his eyes
all the colours of a peacock’s tail. And what was the oddest of all, the
whisks at the end of his tail had grown five times as long as they were
before.
“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world. My living, won’t cost me
much, for I have no mouth, you see, and no inside; so I can never be
hungry nor have the stomach-ache neither.”
No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard and empty as a quill, as
such silly shallow-hearted fellows deserve to grow.
But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he was quite proud of it,
as a good many fine gentlemen are, and began flirting and flipping up and
down, and singing—
“_My wife shall dance_, _and I shall sing_,
_So merrily pass the day_;
_For I hold it for quite the wisest thing_,
_To drive dull care away_.”
And he danced up and down for three days and three nights, till he grew
so tired, that he tumbled into the water, and floated down. But what
became of him Tom never knew, and he himself never minded; for Tom heard
him singing to the last, as he floated down—
“_To drive dull care away-ay-ay_!”
And if he did not care, why nobody else cared either.
But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was sitting on a water-lily
leaf, he and his friend the dragon-fly, watching the gnats dance. The
dragon-fly had eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still
and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright. The gnats (who did not care
the least for their poor brothers’ death) danced a foot over his head
quite happily, and a large black fly settled within an inch of his nose,
and began washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws: but
the dragon-fly never stirred, and kept on chatting to Tom about the times
when he lived under the water.
Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the stream; cooing, and
grunting, and whining, and squeaking, as if you had put into a bag two
stock-doves, nine mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, and left
them there to settle themselves and make music.
He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight as strange as the noise;
a great ball rolling over and over down the stream, seeming one moment of
soft brown fur, and the next of shining glass: and yet it was not a ball;
for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces, and then it joined
again; and all the while the noise came out of it louder and louder.
Tom asked the dragon-fly what it could be: but, of course, with his short
sight, he could not even see it, though it was not ten yards away. So he
took the neatest little header into the water, and started off to see for
himself; and, when he came near, the ball turned out to be four or five
beautiful creatures, many times larger than Tom, who were swimming about,
and rolling, and diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and
kissing and biting, and scratching, in the most charming fashion that
ever was seen. And if you don’t believe me, you may go to the Zoological
Gardens (for I am afraid that you won’t see it nearer, unless, perhaps,
you get up at five in the morning, and go down to Cordery’s Moor, and
watch by the great withy pollard which hangs over the backwater, where
the otters breed sometimes), and then say, if otters at play in the water
are not the merriest, lithest, gracefullest creatures you ever saw.
But, when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted out from the rest, and
cried in the water-language sharply enough, “Quick, children, here is
something to eat, indeed!” and came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked
pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning mouth, that
Tom, who had thought her very handsome, said to himself, _Handsome is
that handsome does_, and slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast
as he could, and then turned round and made faces at her.
“Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will be worse for you.”
But Tom looked at her from between two thick roots, and shook them with
all his might, making horrible faces all the while, just as he used to
grin through the railings at the old women, when he lived before. It was
not quite well bred, no doubt; but you know, Tom had not finished his
education yet.
[Picture: The otter]
“Come, away, children,” said the otter in disgust, “it is not worth
eating, after all. It is only a nasty eft, which nothing eats, not even
those vulgar pike in the pond.”
“I am not an eft!” said Tom; “efts have tails.”
“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively; “I see your two hands
quite plain, and I know you have a tail.”
“I tell you I have not,” said Tom. “Look here!” and he turned his pretty
little self quite round; and, sure enough, he had no more tail than you.
The otter might have got out of it by saying that Tom was a frog: but,
like a great many other people, when she had once said a thing, she stood
to it, right or wrong; so she answered:
“I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not fit food for
gentlefolk like me and my children. You may stay there till the salmon
eat you (she knew the salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor
Tom). Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;” and the otter
laughed such a wicked cruel laugh—as you may hear them do sometimes; and
the first time that you hear it you will probably think it is bogies.
“What are salmon?” asked Tom.
“Fish, you eft, great fish, nice fish to eat. They are the lords of the
fish, and we are lords of the salmon;” and she laughed again. “We hunt
them up and down the pools, and drive them up into a corner, the silly
things; they are so proud, and bully the little trout, and the minnows,
till they see us coming, and then they are so meek all at once, and we
catch them, but we disdain to eat them all; we just bite out their soft
throats and suck their sweet juice—Oh, so good!”—(and she licked her
wicked lips)—“and then throw them away, and go and catch another. They
are coming soon, children, coming soon; I can smell the rain coming up
off the sea, and then hurrah for a fresh, and salmon, and plenty of
eating all day long.”
[Picture: Tom and the otter]
And the otter grew so proud that she turned head over heels twice, and
then stood upright half out of the water, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
“And where do they come from?” asked Tom, who kept himself very close,
for he was considerably frightened.
“Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where they might stay and be
safe if they liked. But out of the sea the silly things come, into the
great river down below, and we come up to watch for them; and when they
go down again we go down and follow them. And there we fish for the bass
and the pollock, and have jolly days along the shore, and toss and roll
in the breakers, and sleep snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a
merry life too, children, if it were not for those horrid men.”
“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow he seemed to know before he asked.
“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to look at you, they are
actually something like you, if you had not a tail” (she was determined
that Tom should have a tail), “only a great deal bigger, worse luck for
us; and they catch the fish with hooks and lines, which get into our feet
sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch lobsters. They speared
my poor dear husband as he went out to find something for me to eat. I
was laid up among the crags then, and we were very low in the world, for
the sea was so rough that no fish would come in shore. But they speared
him, poor fellow, and I saw them carrying him away upon a pole. All, he
lost his life for your sakes, my children, poor dear obedient creature
that he was.”
And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can be very sentimental
when they choose, like a good many people who are both cruel and greedy,
and no good to anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away down the
burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time. And lucky it was for her
that she did so; for no sooner was she gone, than down the bank came
seven little rough terrier doors, snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and
splashing, in full cry after the otter. Tom hid among the water-lilies
till they were gone; for he could not guess that they were the
water-fairies come to help him.
But he could not help thinking of what the otter had said about the great
river and the broad sea. And, as he thought, he longed to go and see
them. He could not tell why; but the more he thought, the more he grew
discontented with the narrow little stream in which he lived, and all his
companions there; and wanted to get out into the wide wide world, and
enjoy all the wonderful sights of which he was sure it was full.
And once he set off to go down the stream. But the stream was very low;
and when he came to the shallows he could not keep under water, for there
was no water left to keep under. So the sun burned his back and made him
sick; and he went back again and lay quiet in the pool for a whole week
more.
And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.
He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout; for they would not
move an inch to take a fly, though there were thousands on the water, but
lay dozing at the bottom under the shade of the stones; and Tom lay
dozing too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth cool sides, for the water
was quite warm and unpleasant.
But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and Tom looked up and saw a
blanket of black clouds lying right across the valley above his head,
resting on the crags right and left. He felt not quite frightened, but
very still; for everything was still. There was not a whisper of wind,
nor a chirp of a bird to be heard; and next a few great drops of rain
fell plop into the water, and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop
his head down quickly enough.
And then the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed, and leapt across
Vendale and back again, from cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the
very rocks in the stream seemed to shake: and Tom looked up at it through
the water, and thought it the finest thing he ever saw in his life.
But out of the water he dared not put his head; for the rain came down by
bucketsful, and the hail hammered like shot on the stream, and churned it
into foam; and soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and higher,
and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks; and straws, and
worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice, and leeches, and odds and ends, and
omnium-gatherums, and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine
museums.
Tom could hardly stand against the stream, and hid behind a rock. But
the trout did not; for out they rushed from among the stones, and began
gobbling the beetles and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way,
and swimming about with great worms hanging out of their mouths, tugging
and kicking to get them away from each other.
And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a new sight—all the
bottom of the stream alive with great eels, turning and twisting along,
all down stream and away. They had been hiding for weeks past in the
cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the mud; and Tom had hardly ever
seen them, except now and then at night: but now they were all out, and
went hurrying past him so fiercely and wildly that he was quite
frightened. And as they hurried past he could hear them say to each
other, “We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunderstorm! Down to
the sea, down to the sea!”
And then the otter came by with all her brood, twining and sweeping along
as fast as the eels themselves; and she spied Tom as she came by, and
said “Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world. Come along,
children, never mind those nasty eels: we shall breakfast on salmon
to-morrow. Down to the sea, down to the sea!”
[Picture: Tom with the eels]
Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by the light of it—in
the thousandth part of a second they were gone again—but he had seen
them, he was certain of it—Three beautiful little white girls, with their
arms twined round each other’s necks, floating down the torrent, as they
sang, “Down to the sea, down to the sea!”
“Oh stay! Wait for me!” cried Tom; but they were gone: yet he could hear
their voices clear and sweet through the roar of thunder and water and
wind, singing as they died away, “Down to the sea!”
“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything is going to the sea, and I will
go too. Good-bye, trout.” But the trout were so busy gobbling worms
that they never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared the pain of
bidding them farewell.
And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the bright flashes of the
storm; past tall birch-fringed rocks, which shone out one moment as clear
as day, and the next were dark as night; past dark hovers under swirling
banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, thinking him to be good
to eat, and turned back sulkily, for the fairies sent them home again
with a tremendous scolding, for daring to meddle with a water-baby; on
through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom was deafened and
blinded for a moment by the rushing waters; along deep reaches, where the
white water-lilies tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail; past
sleeping villages; under dark bridge-arches, and away and away to the
sea. And Tom could not stop, and did not care to stop; he would see the
great world below, and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide wide
sea.
And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out in the salmon river.
And what sort of a river was it? Was it like an Irish stream, winding
through the brown bogs, where the wild ducks squatter up from among the
white water-lilies, and the curlews flit to and fro, crying
“Tullie-wheep, mind your sheep;” and Dennis tells you strange stories of
the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in the black peat pools,
among the old pine-stems, and puts his head out at night to snap at the
cattle as they come down to drink?—But you must not believe all that
Dennis tells you, mind; for if you ask him:
“Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis?”
“Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes? Salmon? Cartloads it is of
thim, thin, an’ ridgmens, shouldthering ache out of water, av’ ye’d but
the luck to see thim.”
Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a rise.
“But there can’t be a salmon here, Dennis! and, if you’ll but think, if
one had come up last tide, he’d be gone to the higher pools by now.”
[Picture: Dennis with pigs]
“Shure thin, and your honour’s the thrue fisherman, and understands it
all like a book. Why, ye spake as if ye’d known the wather a thousand
years! As I said, how could there be a fish here at all, just now?”
“But you said just now they were shouldering each other out of water?”
And then Dennis will look up at you with his handsome, sly, soft, sleepy,
good-natured, untrustable, Irish gray eye, and answer with the prettiest
smile:
“Shure, and didn’t I think your honour would like a pleasant answer?”
So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the habit of giving
pleasant answers: but, instead of being angry with him, you must remember
that he is a poor Paddy, and knows no better; so you must just burst out
laughing; and then he will burst out laughing too, and slave for you, and
trot about after you, and show you good sport if he can—for he is an
affectionate fellow, and as fond of sport as you are—and if he can’t,
tell you fibs instead, a hundred an hour; and wonder all the while why
poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland, and some
other places, where folk have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is
the best policy.
Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remarkable chiefly (at
least, till this last year) for containing no salmon, as they have been
all poached out by the enlightened peasantry, to prevent the _Cythrawl
Sassenach_ (which means you, my little dear, your kith and kin, and
signifies much the same as the Chinese _Fan Quei_) from coming bothering
into Wales, with good tackle, and ready money, and civilisation, and
common honesty, and other like things of which the Cymry stand in no need
whatsoever?
Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will see among the
Hampshire water-meadows before your hairs are gray, under the wise new
fishing-laws?—when Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did
three hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more than three
days a week; and fresh-run fish shall be as plentiful under Salisbury
spire as they are in Holly-hole at Christchurch; in the good time coming,
when folks shall see that, of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the one to be
protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon, who is generous
enough to go down to the sea weighing five ounces, and to come back next
year weighing five pounds, without having cost the soil or the state one
farthing?
Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough drew in his
“Bothie”:—
“_Where over a ledge of granite_
_Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended_. . . . .
_Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under_;
_Beautiful most of all_, _where beads of foam uprising_
_Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the
stillness_. . . .
_Cliff over cliff for its sides_, _with rowan and pendant birch
boughs_.” . . .
Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish such a stream as
that, you will hardly care, I think, whether she be roaring down in full
spate, like coffee covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling
at your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing up the
cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of the foam; or whether
the fall be dwindled to a single thread, and the shingle below be as
white and dusty as a turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in
one dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their time till the
rain creeps back again off the sea. You will not care much, if you have
eyes and brains; for you will lay down your rod contentedly, and drink in
at your eyes the beauty of that glorious place; and listen to the
water-ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the yellow roes come down to
drink and look up at you with their great soft trustful eyes, as much as
to say, “You could not have the heart to shoot at us?” And then, if you
have sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly who lies
basking on the stone beside you. He will tell you no fibs, my little
man; for he is a Scotchman, and fears God, and not the priest; and, as
you talk with him, you will be surprised more and more at his knowledge,
his sense, his humour, his courtesy; and you will find out—unless you
have found it out before—that a man may learn from his Bible to be a more
thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the
drawing-rooms in London.
[Picture: Scotsman]
No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at Harthover. It was such a
stream as you see in dear old Bewick; Bewick, who was born and bred upon
them. A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on from broad pool to
broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool, over great fields of
shingle, under oak and ash coverts, past low cliffs of sandstone, past
green meadows, and fair parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown
moors above, and here and there against the sky the smoking chimney of a
colliery. You must look at Bewick to see just what it was like, for he
has drawn it a hundred times with the care and the love of a true north
countryman; and, even if you do not care about the salmon river, you
ought, like all good boys, to know your Bewick.
At least, so old Sir John used to say, and very sensibly he put it too,
as he was wont to do:
“If they want to describe a finished young gentleman in France, I hear,
they say of him, ‘_Il sait son Rabelais_.’ But if I want to describe one
in England, I say, ‘_He knows his Bewick_.’ And I think that is the
higher compliment.”
But Tom thought nothing about what the river was like. All his fancy
was, to get down to the wide wide sea.
And after a while he came to a place where the river spread out into
broad still shallow reaches, so wide that little Tom, as he put his head
out of the water, could hardly see across.
And there he stopped. He got a little frightened. “This must be the
sea,” he thought. “What a wide place it is! If I go on into it I shall
surely lose my way, or some strange thing will bite me. I will stop here
and look out for the otter, or the eels, or some one to tell me where I
shall go.”
So he went back a little way, and crept into a crack of the rock, just
where the river opened out into the wide shallows, and watched for some
one to tell him his way: but the otter and the eels were gone on miles
and miles down the stream.
There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite tired with his night’s
journey; and, when he woke, the stream was clearing to a beautiful amber
hue, though it was still very high. And after a while he saw a sight
which made him jump up; for he knew in a moment it was one of the things
which he had come to look for.
Such a fish! ten times as big as the biggest trout, and a hundred times
as big as Tom, sculling up the stream past him, as easily as Tom had
sculled down.
Such a fish! shining silver from head to tail, and here and there a
crimson dot; with a grand hooked nose and grand curling lip, and a grand
bright eye, looking round him as proudly as a king, and surveying the
water right and left as if all belonged to him. Surely he must be the
salmon, the king of all the fish.
[Picture: Tom and the salmon]
Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep into a hole; but he need
not have been; for salmon are all true gentlemen, and, like true
gentlemen, they look noble and proud enough, and yet, like true
gentlemen, they never harm or quarrel with any one, but go about their
own business, and leave rude fellows to themselves.
The salmon looked at him full in the face, and then went on without
minding him, with a swish or two of his tail which made the stream boil
again. And in a few minutes came another, and then four or five, and so
on; and all passed Tom, rushing and plunging up the cataract with strong
strokes of their silver tails, now and then leaping clean out of water
and up over a rock, shining gloriously for a moment in the bright sun;
while Tom was so delighted that he could have watched them all day long.
And at last one came up bigger than all the rest; but he came slowly, and
stopped, and looked back, and seemed very anxious and busy. And Tom saw
that he was helping another salmon, an especially handsome one, who had
not a single spot upon it, but was clothed in pure silver from nose to
tail.
“My dear,” said the great fish to his companion, “you really look
dreadfully tired, and you must not over-exert yourself at first. Do rest
yourself behind this rock;” and he shoved her gently with his nose, to
the rock where Tom sat.
You must know that this was the salmon’s wife. For salmon, like other
true gentlemen, always choose their lady, and love her, and are true to
her, and take care of her and work for her, and fight for her, as every
true gentleman ought; and are not like vulgar chub and roach and pike,
who have no high feelings, and take no care of their wives.
Then he saw Tom, and looked at him very fiercely one moment, as if he was
going to bite him.
“What do you want here?” he said, very fiercely.
“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only want to look at you; you are so
handsome.”
“Ah?” said the salmon, very stately but very civilly. “I really beg your
pardon; I see what you are, my little dear. I have met one or two
creatures like you before, and found them very agreeable and
well-behaved. Indeed, one of them showed me a great kindness lately,
which I hope to be able to repay. I hope we shall not be in your way
here. As soon as this lady is rested, we shall proceed on our journey.”
What a well-bred old salmon he was!
“So you have seen things like me before?” asked Tom.
“Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only last night that one at the
river’s mouth came and warned me and my wife of some new stake-nets which
had got into the stream, I cannot tell how, since last winter, and showed
us the way round them, in the most charmingly obliging way.”
“So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom, and clapped his little
hands. “Then I shall have some one to play with there? How delightful!”
“Were there no babies up this stream?” asked the lady salmon.
“No! and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw three last night; but they
were gone in an instant, down to the sea. So I went too; for I had
nothing to play with but caddises and dragon-flies and trout.”
“Ugh!” cried the lady, “what low company!”
“My dear, if he has been in low company, he has certainly not learnt
their low manners,” said the salmon.
“No, indeed, poor little dear: but how sad for him to live among such
people as caddises, who have actually six legs, the nasty things; and
dragon-flies, too! why they are not even good to eat; for I tried them
once, and they are all hard and empty; and, as for trout, every one knows
what they are.” Whereon she curled up her lip, and looked dreadfully
scornful, while her husband curled up his too, till he looked as proud as
Alcibiades.
“Why do you dislike the trout so?” asked Tom.
“My dear, we do not even mention them, if we can help it; for I am sorry
to say they are relations of ours who do us no credit. A great many
years ago they were just like us: but they were so lazy, and cowardly,
and greedy, that instead of going down to the sea every year to see the
world and grow strong and fat, they chose to stay and poke about in the
little streams and eat worms and grubs; and they are very properly
punished for it; for they have grown ugly and brown and spotted and
small; and are actually so degraded in their tastes, that they will eat
our children.”
“And then they pretend to scrape acquaintance with us again,” said the
lady. “Why, I have actually known one of them propose to a lady salmon,
the little impudent little creature.”
[Picture: Trout and salmon]
“I should hope,” said the gentleman, “that there are very few ladies of
our race who would degrade themselves by listening to such a creature for
an instant. If I saw such a thing happen, I should consider it my duty
to put them both to death upon the spot.” So the old salmon said, like
an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain; and what is more, he would have
done it too. For you must know, no enemies are so bitter against each
other as those who are of the same race; and a salmon looks on a trout,
as some great folks look on some little folks, as something just too much
like himself to be tolerated.
CHAPTER IV
“Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things
We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art:
Close up these barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.”
WORDSWORTH.
[Picture: Tom on rock] SO the salmon went up, after Tom had warned them
of the wicked old otter; and Tom went down, but slowly and cautiously,
coasting along shore. He was many days about it, for it was many miles
down to the sea; and perhaps he would never have found his way, if the
fairies had not guided him, without his seeing their fair faces, or
feeling their gentle hands.
And, as he went, he had a very strange adventure. It was a clear still
September night, and the moon shone so brightly down through the water,
that he could not sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as possible.
So at last he came up to the top, and sat upon a little point of rock,
and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and wondered what she was, and
thought that she looked at him. And he watched the moonlight on the
rippling river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-frosted
lawns, and listened to the owl’s hoot, and the snipe’s bleat, and the
fox’s bark, and the otter’s laugh; and smelt the soft perfume of the
birches, and the wafts of heather honey off the grouse moor far above;
and felt very happy, though he could not well tell why. You, of course,
would have been very cold sitting there on a September night, without the
least bit of clothes on your wet back; but Tom was a water-baby, and
therefore felt cold no more than a fish.
Suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. A bright red light moved along the
river-side, and threw down into the water a long tap-root of flame. Tom,
curious little rogue that he was, must needs go and see what it was; so
he swam to the shore, and met the light as it stopped over a shallow run
at the edge of a low rock.
And there, underneath the light, lay five or six great salmon, looking up
at the flame with their great goggle eyes, and wagging their tails, as if
they were very much pleased at it.
Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful light nearer, and made a
splash.
And he heard a voice say:
“There was a fish rose.”
He did not know what the words meant: but he seemed to know the sound of
them, and to know the voice which spoke them; and he saw on the bank
three great two-legged creatures, one of whom held the light, flaring and
sputtering, and another a long pole. And he knew that they were men, and
was frightened, and crept into a hole in the rock, from which he could
see what went on.
The man with the torch bent down over the water, and looked earnestly in;
and then he said:
“Tak’ that muckle fellow, lad; he’s ower fifteen punds; and haud your
hand steady.”
Tom felt that there was some danger coming, and longed to warn the
foolish salmon, who kept staring up at the light as if he was bewitched.
But before he could make up his mind, down came the pole through the
water; there was a fearful splash and struggle, and Tom saw that the poor
salmon was speared right through, and was lifted out of the water.
And then, from behind, there sprang on these three men three other men;
and there were shouts, and blows, and words which Tom recollected to have
heard before; and he shuddered and turned sick at them now, for he felt
somehow that they were strange, and ugly, and wrong, and horrible. And
it all began to come back to him. They were men; and they were fighting;
savage, desperate, up-and-down fighting, such as Tom had seen too many
times before.
And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim away; and was very
glad that he was a water-baby, and had nothing to do any more with horrid
dirty men, with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on their
lips; but he dared not stir out of his hole: while the rock shook over
his head with the trampling and struggling of the keepers and the
poachers.
All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a frightful flash, and
a hissing, and all was still.
For into the water, close to Tom, fell one of the men; he who held the
light in his hand. Into the swift river he sank, and rolled over and
over in the current. Tom heard the men above run along seemingly looking
for him; but he drifted down into the deep hole below, and there lay
quite still, and they could not find him.
Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet; and then he peeped out, and
saw the man lying. At last he screwed up his courage and swam down to
him. “Perhaps,” he thought, “the water has made him fall asleep, as it
did me.”
Then he went nearer. He grew more and more curious, he could not tell
why. He must go and look at him. He would go very quietly, of course;
so he swam round and round him, closer and closer; and, as he did not
stir, at last he came quite close and looked him in the face.
The moon shone so bright that Tom could see every feature; and, as he
saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was his old master, Grimes.
Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he could.
“Oh dear me!” he thought, “now he will turn into a water-baby. What a
nasty troublesome one he will be! And perhaps he will find me out, and
beat me again.”
So he went up the river again a little way, and lay there the rest of the
night under an alder root; but, when morning came, he longed to go down
again to the big pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes had turned into a
water-baby yet.
So he went very carefully, peeping round all the rocks, and hiding under
all the roots. Mr. Grimes lay there still; he had not turned into a
water-baby. In the afternoon Tom went back again. He could not rest
till he had found out what had become of Mr. Grimes. But this time Mr.
Grimes was gone; and Tom made up his mind that he was turned into a
water-baby.
He might have made himself easy, poor little man; Mr. Grimes did not turn
into a water-baby, or anything like one at all. But he did not make
himself easy; and a long time he was fearful lest he should meet Grimes
suddenly in some deep pool. He could not know that the fairies had
carried him away, and put him, where they put everything which falls into
the water, exactly where it ought to be. But, do you know, what had
happened to Mr. Grimes had such an effect on him that he never poached
salmon any more. And it is quite certain that, when a man becomes a
confirmed poacher, the only way to cure him is to put him under water for
twenty-four hours, like Grimes. So when you grow to be a big man, do you
behave as all honest fellows should; and never touch a fish or a head of
game which belongs to another man without his express leave; and then
people will call you a gentleman, and treat you like one; and perhaps
give you good sport: instead of hitting you into the river, or calling
you a poaching snob.
Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of staying near Grimes: and as
he went, all the vale looked sad. The red and yellow leaves showered
down into the river; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone; the
chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes spread itself so
thickly on the river that he could not see his way. But he felt his way
instead, following the flow of the stream, day after day, past great
bridges, past boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs, and
mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which rode at anchor in the
stream; and now and then he ran against their hawsers, and wondered what
they were, and peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board smoking
their pipes; and ducked under again, for he was terribly afraid of being
caught by man and turned into a chimney-sweep once more. He did not know
that the fairies were close to him always, shutting the sailors’ eyes
lest they should see him, and turning him aside from millraces, and
sewer-mouths, and all foul and dangerous things. Poor little fellow, it
was a dreary journey for him; and more than once he longed to be back in
Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright summer sun. But it could
not be. What has been once can never come over again. And people can be
little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives.
Besides, people who make up their minds to go and see the world, as Tom
did, must needs find it a weary journey. Lucky for them if they do not
lose heart and stop half-way, instead of going on bravely to the end as
Tom did. For then they will remain neither boys nor men, neither fish,
flesh, nor good red-herring: having learnt a great deal too much, and yet
not enough; and sown their wild oats, without having the advantage of
reaping them.
But Tom was always a brave, determined, little English bull-dog, who
never knew when he was beaten; and on and on he held, till he saw a long
way off the red buoy through the fog. And then he found to his surprise,
the stream turned round, and running up inland.
It was the tide, of course: but Tom knew nothing of the tide. He only
knew that in a minute more the water, which had been fresh, turned salt
all round him. And then there came a change over him. He felt as
strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run champagne; and
gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the water, a yard high, and
head over heels, just as the salmon do when they first touch the noble
rich salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother of all
living things.
[Picture: Seal]
He did not care now for the tide being against him. The red buoy was in
sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go, and to it he
went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet, leaping and rushing in
after the shrimps, but he never heeded them, or they him; and once he
passed a great black shining seal, who was coming in after the mullet.
The seal put his head and shoulders out of water, and stared at him,
looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with a gray pate. And Tom,
instead of being frightened, said, “How d’ye do, sir; what a beautiful
place the sea is!” And the old seal, instead of trying to bite him,
looked at him with his soft sleepy winking eyes, and said, “Good tide to
you, my little man; are you looking for your brothers and sisters? I
passed them all at play outside.”
“Oh, then,” said Tom, “I shall have playfellows at last,” and he swam on
to the buoy, and got upon it (for he was quite out of breath) and sat
there, and looked round for water-babies: but there were none to be seen.
[Picture: The old bouy] The sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide and
blew the fog away; and the little waves danced for joy around the buoy,
and the old buoy danced with them. The shadows of the clouds ran races
over the bright blue bay, and yet never caught each other up; and the
breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and jumped up over
the rocks, to see what the green fields inside were like, and tumbled
down and broke themselves all to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but
mended themselves and jumped up again. And the terns hovered over Tom
like huge white dragon-flies with black heads, and the gulls laughed like
girls at play, and the sea-pies, with their red bills and legs, flew to
and fro from shore to shore, and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked
and looked, and listened; and he would have been very happy, if he could
only have seen the water-babies. Then when the tide turned, he left the
buoy, and swam round and round in search of them: but in vain. Sometimes
he thought he heard them laughing: but it was only the laughter of the
ripples. And sometimes he thought he saw them at the bottom: but it was
only white and pink shells. And once he was sure he had found one, for
he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the sand. So he dived down, and
began scraping the sand away, and cried, “Don’t hide; I do want some one
to play with so much!” And out jumped a great turbot with his ugly eyes
and mouth all awry, and flopped away along the bottom, knocking poor Tom
over. And he sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears
from sheer disappointment.
To have come all this way, and faced so many dangers, and yet to find no
water-babies! How hard! Well, it did seem hard: but people, even little
babies, cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and working for
it too, my little man, as you will find out some day.
And Tom sat upon the buoy long days, long weeks, looking out to sea, and
wondering when the water-babies would come back; and yet they never came.
[Picture: Tom and a flat-fish]
Then he began to ask all the strange things which came in out of the sea
if they had seen any; and some said “Yes,” and some said nothing at all.
He asked the bass and the pollock; but they were so greedy after the
shrimps that they did not care to answer him a word.
Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails, floating along,
each on a sponge full of foam, and Tom said, “Where do you come from, you
pretty creatures? and have you seen the water-babies?”
And the sea-snails answered, “Whence we come we know not; and whither we
are going, who can tell? We float out our life in the mid-ocean, with
the warm sunshine above our heads, and the warm gulf-stream below; and
that is enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen the water-babies. We
have seen many strange things as we sailed along.” And they floated
away, the happy stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands.
Then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big as a fat pig cut in half;
and he seemed to have been cut in half too, and squeezed in a
clothes-press till he was flat; but to all his big body and big fins he
had only a little rabbit’s mouth, no bigger than Tom’s; and, when Tom
questioned him, he answered in a little squeaky feeble voice:
“I’m sure I don’t know; I’ve lost my way. I meant to go to the
Chesapeake, and I’m afraid I’ve got wrong somehow. Dear me! it was all
by following that pleasant warm water. I’m sure I’ve lost my way.”
[Picture: Sunfish] And, when Tom asked him again, he could only answer,
“I’ve lost my way. Don’t talk to me; I want to think.”
But, like a good many other people, the more he tried to think the less
he could think; and Tom saw him blundering about all day, till the
coast-guardsmen saw his big fin above the water, and rowed out, and
struck a boat-hook into him, and took him away. They took him up to the
town and showed him for a penny a head, and made a good day’s work of it.
But of course Tom did not know that.
Then there came by a shoal of porpoises, rolling as they went—papas, and
mammas, and little children—and all quite smooth and shiny, because the
fairies French-polish them every morning; and they sighed so softly as
they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them: but all they
answered was, “Hush, hush, hush;” for that was all they had learnt to
say.
And then there came a shoal of basking sharks’ some of them as long as a
boat, and Tom was frightened at them. But they were very lazy
good-natured fellows, not greedy tyrants, like white sharks and blue
sharks and ground sharks and hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw-fish and
threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old whales. They came and
rubbed their great sides against the buoy, and lay basking in the sun
with their backfins out of water; and winked at Tom: but he never could
get them to speak. They had eaten so many herrings that they were quite
stupid; and Tom was glad when a collier brig came by and frightened them
all away; for they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to hold
his nose tight as long as they were there.
And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a ribbon of pure silver
with a sharp head and very long teeth; but it seemed very sick and sad.
Sometimes it rolled helpless on its side; and then it dashed away
glittering like white fire; and then it lay sick again and motionless.
“Where do you come from?” asked Tom. “And why are _you_ so sick and
sad?”
“I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sandbanks fringed with pines;
where the great owl-rays leap and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide.
But I wandered north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream,
till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean. So I got
tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with their frozen breath. But
the water-babies helped me from among them, and set me free again. And
now I am mending every day; but I am very sick and sad; and perhaps I
shall never get home again to play with the owl-rays any more.”
“Oh!” cried Tom. “And you have seen water-babies? Have you seen any
near here?”
“Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should have been eaten by a
great black porpoise.”
How vexatious! The water-babies close to him, and yet he could not find
one.
And then he left the buoy, and used to go along the sands and round the
rocks, and come out in the night—like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold’s
beautiful, beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some day—and sit
upon a point of rock, among the shining sea-weeds, in the low October
tides, and cry and call for the water-babies; but he never heard a voice
call in return. And at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew quite
lean and thin.
But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow. It was not a
water-baby, alas! but it was a lobster; and a very distinguished lobster
he was; for he had live barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of
distinction in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money than a good
conscience or the Victoria Cross.
[Picture: Tom and the lobster]
Tom had never seen a lobster before; and he was mightily taken with this
one; for he thought him the most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had
ever seen; and there he was not far wrong; for all the ingenious men, and
all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world, with all
the old German bogy-painters into the bargain, could never invent, if all
their wits were boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous,
as a lobster.
He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged; and Tom delighted in
watching him hold on to the seaweed with his knobbed claw, while he cut
up salads with his jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after
smelling at them, like a monkey. And always the little barnacles threw
out their casting-nets and swept the water, and came in for their share
of whatever there was for dinner.
But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired himself off—snap! like
the leap-frogs which you make out of a goose’s breast-bone. Certainly he
took the most wonderful shots, and backwards, too. For, if he wanted to
go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you think he did? If he
had gone in head foremost, of course he could not have turned round. So
he used to turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his
sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that sixth sense is),
straight down his back to guide him, and twist his eyes back till they
almost came out of their sockets, and then made ready, present, fire,
snap!—and away he went, pop into the hole; and peeped out and twiddled
his whiskers, as much as to say, “You couldn’t do that.”
Tom asked him about water-babies. “Yes,” he said. He had seen them
often. But he did not think much of them. They were meddlesome little
creatures, that went about helping fish and shells which got into
scrapes. Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by little
soft creatures that had not even a shell on their backs. He had lived
quite long enough in the world to take care of himself.
He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not very civil to Tom;
and you will hear how he had to alter his mind before he was done, as
conceited people generally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely,
that he could not quarrel with him; and they used to sit in holes in the
rocks, and chat for hours.
And about this time there happened to Tom a very strange and important
adventure—so important, indeed, that he was very near never finding the
water-babies at all; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that.
I hope that you have not forgotten the little white lady all this while.
At least, here she comes, looking like a clean white good little darling,
as she always was, and always will be. For it befell in the pleasant
short December days, when the wind always blows from the south-west, till
Old Father Christmas comes and spreads the great white table-cloth, ready
for little boys and girls to give the birds their Christmas dinner of
crumbs—it befell (to go on) in the pleasant December days, that Sir John
was so busy hunting that nobody at home could get a word out of him.
Four days a week he hunted, and very good sport he had; and the other two
he went to the bench and the board of guardians, and very good justice he
did; and, when he got home in time, he dined at five; for he hated this
absurd new fashion of dining at eight in the hunting season, which forces
a man to make interest with the footman for cold beef and beer as soon as
he comes in, and so spoil his appetite, and then sleep in an arm-chair in
his bedroom, all stiff and tired, for two or three hours before he can
get his dinner like a gentleman. And do you be like Sir John, my dear
little man, when you are your own master; and, if you want either to read
hard or ride hard, stick to the good old Cambridge hours of breakfast at
eight and dinner at five; by which you may get two days’ work out of one.
But, of course, if you find a fox at three in the afternoon and run him
till dark, and leave off twenty miles from home, why you must wait for
your dinner till you can get it, as better men than you have done. Only
see that, if you go hungry, your horse does not; but give him his warm
gruel and beer, and take him gently home, remembering that good horses
don’t grow on the hedge like blackberries.
It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John, hunting all day, and
dining at five, fell asleep every evening, and snored so terribly that
all the windows in Harthover shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys.
Whereon My Lady, being no more able to get conversation out of him than a
song out of a dead nightingale, determined to go off and leave him, and
the doctor, and Captain Swinger the agent, to snore in concert every
evening to their hearts’ content. So she started for the seaside with
all the children, in order to put herself and them into condition by mild
applications of iodine. She might as well have stayed at home and used
Parry’s liquid horse-blister, for there was plenty of it in the stables;
and then she would have saved her money, and saved the chance, also, of
making all the children ill instead of well (as hundreds are made), by
taking them to some nasty smelling undrained lodging, and then wondering
how they caught scarlatina and diphtheria: but people won’t be wise
enough to understand that till they are dead of bad smells, and then it
will be too late; besides you see, Sir John did certainly snore very
loud.
[Picture: Sir John with horse and groom]
But where she went to nobody must know, for fear young ladies should
begin to fancy that there are water-babies there! and so hunt and howk
after them (besides raising the price of lodgings), and keep them in
aquariums, as the ladies at Pompeii (as you may see by the paintings)
used to keep Cupids in cages. But nobody ever heard that they starved
the Cupids, or let them die of dirt and neglect, as English young ladies
do by the poor sea-beasts. So nobody must know where My Lady went.
Letting water-babies die is as bad as taking singing birds’ eggs; for,
though there are thousands, ay, millions, of both of them in the world,
yet there is not one too many.
Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the very rocks, where Tom
was sitting with his friend the lobster, there walked one day the little
white lady, Ellie herself, and with her a very wise man indeed—Professor
Ptthmllnsprts.
His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore he was born at Curaçao (of
course you have learnt your geography, and therefore know why); and his
father a Pole, and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of
course you have learnt your modern politics, and therefore know why): but
for all that he was as thorough an Englishman as ever coveted his
neighbour’s goods. And his name, as I said, was Professor Ptthmllnsprts,
which is a very ancient and noble Polish name.
He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and chief professor of
_Necrobioneopalæonthydrochthonanthropopithekology_ in the new university
which the king of the Cannibal Islands had founded; and, being a member
of the Acclimatisation Society, he had come here to collect all the nasty
things which he could find on the coast of England, and turn them loose
round the Cannibal Islands, because they had not nasty things enough
there to eat what they left.
[Picture: The Professor]
But he was a very worthy kind good-natured little old gentleman; and very
fond of children (for he was not the least a cannibal himself); and very
good to all the world as long as it was good to him. Only one fault he
had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you may see if you look out of
the nursery window—that, when any one else found a curious worm, he would
hop round them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and bristle up his
feathers, just as a cock-robin would; and declare that he found the worm
first; and that it was his worm; and, if not, that then it was not a worm
at all.
He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood, or somewhere or other
(if you don’t care where, nobody else does), and had made acquaintance
with him, and become very fond of his children. Now, Sir John knew
nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided the fishmonger
sent him good fish for dinner; and My Lady knew as little: but she
thought it proper that the children should know something. For in the
stupid old times, you must understand, children were taught to know one
thing, and to know it well; but in these enlightened new times they are
taught to know a little about everything, and to know it all ill; which
is a great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.
So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he was showing her about
one in ten thousand of all the beautiful and curious things which are to
be seen there. But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She
liked much better to play with live children, or even with dolls, which
she could pretend were alive; and at last she said honestly, “I don’t
care about all these things, because they can’t play with me, or talk to
me. If there were little children now in the water, as there used to be,
and I could see them, I should like that.”
[Picture: Ellie]
“Children in the water, you strange little duck?” said the professor.
“Yes,” said Ellie. “I know there used to be children in the water, and
mermaids too, and mermen. I saw them all in a picture at home, of a
beautiful lady sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying
round her, and one sitting in her lap; and the mermaids swimming and
playing, and the mermen trumpeting on conch-shells; and it is called ‘The
Triumph of Galatea;’ and there is a burning mountain in the picture
behind. It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it ever
since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred times; and it is so
beautiful, that it must be true.”
But the professor had not the least notion of allowing that things were
true, merely because people thought them beautiful. For at that rate, he
said, the Baltas would be quite right in thinking it a fine thing to eat
their grandpapas, because they thought it an ugly thing to put them
underground. The professor, indeed, went further, and held that no man
was forced to believe anything to be true, but what he could see, hear,
taste, or handle.
He held very strange theories about a good many things. He had even got
up once at the British Association, and declared that apes had
hippopotamus majors in their brains just as men have. Which was a
shocking thing to say; for, if it were so, what would become of the
faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions? You may think that there
are other more important differences between you and an ape, such as
being able to speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong, and
say your prayers, and other little matters of that kind; but that is a
child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is to be depended on but the great
hippopotamus test. If you have a hippopotamus major in your brain, you
are no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were more apish than
the apes of all aperies. But if a hippopotamus major is ever discovered
in one single ape’s brain, nothing will save your
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
greater-greatest-grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my dear
little man; always remember that the one true, certain, final, and
all-important difference between you and an ape is, that you have a
hippopotamus major in your brain, and it has none; and that, therefore,
to discover one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous thing, at
which every one will be very much shocked, as we may suppose they were at
the professor.—Though really, after all, it don’t much matter; because—as
Lord Dundreary and others would put it—nobody but men have hippopotamuses
in their brains; so, if a hippopotamus was discovered in an ape’s brain,
why it would not be one, you know, but something else.
But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than that;
for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in
the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found himself the
better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never had been, and
could not be, any rational or half-rational beings except men, anywhere,
anywhen, or anyhow; that _nymphs_, _satyrs_, _fauns_, _inui_, _dwarfs_,
_trolls_, _elves_, _gnomes_, _fairies_, _brownies_, _nixes_, _wills_,
_kobolds_, _leprechaunes_, _cluricaunes_, _banshees_,
_will-o’-the-wisps_, _follets_, _lutins_, _magots_, _goblins_, _afrits_,
_marids_, _jinns_, _ghouls_, _peris_, _deevs_, _angels_, _archangels_,
_imps_, _bogies_, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind.
And he had to get up very early in the morning to prove that, and to eat
his breakfast overnight; but he did it, at least to his own satisfaction.
Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever divine was he, called
him a regular Sadducee; and probably he was quite right. Whereon the
professor, in return, called him a regular Pharisee; and probably he was
quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the least; for, when men
are men of the world, hard words run off them like water off a duck’s
back. So the professor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and
sat together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked over the
state of female labour on the antarctic continent (for nobody talks shop
after his claret), and each vowed that the other was the best company he
ever met in his life. What an advantage it is to be men of the world!
From all which you may guess that the professor was not the least of
little Ellie’s opinion. So he gave her a succinct compendium of his
famous paper at the British Association, in a form suited for the
youthful mind. But, as we have gone over his arguments against
water-babies once already, which is once too often, we will not repeat
them here.
Now little Ellie was, I suppose, a stupid little girl; for, instead of
being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’ arguments, she only asked the
same question over again.
“But why are there not water-babies?”
I trust and hope that it was because the professor trod at that moment on
the edge of a very sharp mussel, and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he
answered quite sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and
therefore ought to have known that he couldn’t know; and that he was a
logician, and therefore ought to have known that he could not prove a
universal negative—I say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt
his corn, that the professor answered quite sharply:
“Because there ain’t.”
Which was not even good English, my dear little boy; for, as you must
know from Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, the professor ought to have said, if
he was so angry as to say anything of the kind—Because there are not: or
are none: or are none of them; or (if he had been reading Aunt Agitate
too) because they do not exist.
And he groped with his net under the weeds so violently, that, as it
befell, he caught poor little Tom.
He felt the net very heavy; and lifted it out quickly, with Tom all
entangled in the meshes.
“Dear me!” he cried. “What a large pink Holothurian; with hands, too!
It must be connected with Synapta.”
And he took him out.
“It has actually eyes!” he cried. “Why, it must be a Cephalopod! This
is most extraordinary!”
“No, I ain’t!” cried Tom, as loud as he could; for he did not like to be
called bad names.
“It is a water-baby!” cried Ellie; and of course it was.
“Water-fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the professor; and he turned away
sharply.
There was no denying it. It was a water-baby: and he had said a moment
ago that there were none. What was he to do?
He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom home in a bucket. He
would not have put him in spirits. Of course not. He would have kept
him alive, and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman), and
written a book about him, and given him two long names, of which the
first would have said a little about Tom, and the second all about
himself; for of course he would have called him Hydrotecnon
Ptthmllnsprtsianum, or some other long name like that; for they are
forced to call everything by long names now, because they have used up
all the short ones, ever since they took to making nine species out of
one. But—what would all the learned men say to him after his speech at
the British Association? And what would Ellie say, after what he had
just told her?
There was a wise old heathen once, who said, “Maxima debetur pueris
reverentia”—The greatest reverence is due to children; that is, that
grown people should never say or do anything wrong before children, lest
they should set them a bad example.—Cousin Cramchild says it means, “The
greatest respectfulness is expected from little boys.” But he was raised
in a country where little boys are not expected to be respectful, because
all of them are as good as the President:—Well, every one knows his own
concerns best; so perhaps they are. But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him
justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral mission, and being
no scholar to speak of, and hard up for an authority—why, it was a very
great temptation for him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor
was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious, one-sided,
left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-before fashion than even
Cousin Cramchild; for they make it mean, that you must show your respect
for children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to them, even if
you know that you are so, lest they should lose confidence in their
elders.
Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes, my darling, it is a
water-baby, and a very wonderful thing it is; and it shows how little I
know of the wonders of nature, in spite of forty years’ honest labour. I
was just telling you that there could be no such creatures; and, behold!
here is one come to confound my conceit and show me that Nature can do,
and has done, beyond all that man’s poor fancy can imagine. So, let us
thank the Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature for all His wonderful
and glorious works, and try and find out something about this one;”—I
think that, if the professor had said that, little Ellie would have
believed him more firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him
better, than ever she had done before. But he was of a different
opinion. He hesitated a moment. He longed to keep Tom, and yet he half
wished he never had caught him; and at last he quite longed to get rid of
him. So he turned away and poked Tom with his finger, for want of
anything better to do; and said carelessly, “My dear little maid, you
must have dreamt of water-babies last night, your head is so full of
them.”
Now Tom had been in the most horrible and unspeakable fright all the
while; and had kept as quiet as he could, though he was called a
Holothurian and a Cephalopod; for it was fixed in his little head that if
a man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on him too, and
make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him again. But, when the professor
poked him, it was more than he could bear; and, between fright and rage,
he turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, and bit the
professor’s finger till it bled.
“Oh! ah! yah!” cried he; and glad of an excuse to be rid of Tom, dropped
him on to the seaweed, and thence he dived into the water and was gone in
a moment.
“But it was a water-baby, and I heard it speak!” cried Ellie. “Ah, it is
gone!” And she jumped down off the rock, to try and catch Tom before he
slipped into the sea.
[Picture: Ellie, the professor and Tom]
Too late! and what was worse, as she sprang down, she slipped, and fell
some six feet, with her head on a sharp rock, and lay quite still.
The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her, and called to her,
and cried over her, for he loved her very much: but she would not waken
at all. So he took her up in his arms and carried her to her governess,
and they all went home; and little Ellie was put to bed, and lay there
quite still; only now and then she woke up and called out about the
water-baby: but no one knew what she meant, and the professor did not
tell, for he was ashamed to tell.
And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies came flying in at the
window and brought her such a pretty pair of wings that she could not
help putting them on; and she flew with them out of the window, and over
the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds, and nobody heard
or saw anything of her for a very long while.
And this is why they say that no one has ever yet seen a water-baby. For
my part, I believe that the naturalists get dozens of them when they are
out dredging; but they say nothing about them, and throw them overboard
again, for fear of spoiling their theories. But, you see the professor
was found out, as every one is in due time. A very terrible old fairy
found the professor out; she felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and
took the lunars of him carefully inside and out; and so she knew what he
would do as well as if she had seen it in a print book, as they say in
the dear old west country; and he did it; and so he was found out
beforehand, as everybody always is; and the old fairy will find out the
naturalists some day, and put them in the _Times_, and then on whose side
will the laugh be?
So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there and then. But she
says she is always most severe with the best people, because there is
most chance of curing them, and therefore they are the patients who pay
her best; for she has to work on the same salary as the Emperor of
China’s physicians (it is a pity that all do not), no cure, no pay.
So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not content
with things as they are, she filled his head with things as they are not,
to try if he would like them better; and because he did not choose to
believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in worse
things than water-babies—in _unicorns_, _fire-drakes_, _manticoras_,
_basilisks_, _amphisbænas_, _griffins_, _phoenixes_, _rocs_, _orcs_,
_dog-headed men_, _three-headed dogs_, _three-bodied geryons_, and other
pleasant creatures, which folks think never existed yet, and which folks
hope never will exist, though they know nothing about the matter, and
never will; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered,
aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally flabbergasted the
poor professor that the doctors said that he was out of his wits for
three months; and perhaps they were right, as they are now and then.
So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on his
case; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the other: else
what use is there in being men of science? But at last the majority
agreed on a report in the true medical language, one half bad Latin, the
other half worse Greek, and the rest what might have been English, if
they had only learnt to write it. And this is the beginning thereof—
“_The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in
the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of whose
symptomatic phœnomena we had the melancholy honour_ (_subsequently to
a preliminary diagnostic inspection_) _of making an inspectorial
diagnosis_, _presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and
antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles_, _we
proceeded_”—
But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew; for she was so
frightened at the long words that she ran for her life, and locked
herself into her bedroom, for fear of being squashed by the words and
strangled by the sentence. A boa constrictor, she said, was bad company
enough: but what was a boa constrictor made of paving stones?
“It was quite shocking! What can they think is the matter with him?”
said she to the old nurse.
“That his wit’s just addled; may be wi’ unbelief and heathenry,” quoth
she.
“Then why can’t they say so?”
And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the vales re-echoed—“Why
indeed?” But the doctors never heard them.
So she made Sir John write to the _Times_ to command the Chancellor of
the Exchequer for the time being to put a tax on long words;—
A light tax on words over three syllables, which are necessary evils,
like rats: but, like them, must be kept down judiciously.
A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as _heterodoxy_, _spontaneity_,
_spiritualism_, _spuriosity_, _etc._
And on words over five syllables (of which I hope no one will wish to see
any examples), a totally prohibitory tax.
And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived from three or more
languages at once; words derived from two languages having become so
common that there was no more hope of rooting out them than of rooting
out peth-winds.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a scholar and a man of sense,
jumped at the notion; for he saw in it the one and only plan for
abolishing Schedule D: but when he brought in his bill, most of the Irish
members, and (I am sorry to say) some of the Scotch likewise, opposed it
most strongly, on the ground that in a free country no man was bound
either to understand himself or to let others understand him. So the
bill fell through on the first reading; and the Chancellor, being a
philosopher, comforted himself with the thought that it was not the first
time that a woman had hit off a grand idea and the men turned up their
stupid noses thereat.
Now the doctors had it all their own way; and to work they went in
earnest, and they gave the poor professor divers and sundry medicines, as
prescribed by the ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates to
Feuchtersleben, as below, viz.—
1. _Hellebore_, _to wit_—
_Hellebore of Æta_.
_Hellebore of Galatia_.
_Hellebore of Sicily_.
_And all other Hellebores_, _after the method of the Helleborising
Helleborists of the Helleboric era_. _But that would not do_.
_Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles would not stir an inch out of his
encephalo digital region_.
2. _Trying to find out what was the matter with him_, _after the method
of Hippocrates_,
_Aretæus_,
_Celsus_,
_Coelius Aurelianus_,
_And Galen_.
But they found that a great deal too much trouble, as most people have
since; and so had recourse to—
3. _Borage_.
_Cauteries_.
Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes, which (says Gordonius) “will,
without doubt, do much good.” But it didn’t.
_Bezoar stone_.
_Diamargaritum_.
_A ram’s brain boiled in spice_.
_Oil of wormwood_.
_Water of Nile_.
_Capers_.
_Good wine_ (_but there was none to be got_).
_The water of a smith’s forge_.
_Ambergris_.
_Mandrake pillows_.
_Dormouse fat_.
_Hares’ ears_.
_Starvation_.
_Camphor_.
_Salts and senna_.
_Musk_.
_Opium_.
_Strait-waistcoats_.
_Bullyings_.
_Bumpings_.
_Bleedings_.
_Bucketings with cold water_.
_Knockings down_.
_Kneeling on his chest till they broke it in_, _etc. etc._; _after the
mediæval or monkish method_: _but that would not do_.
_Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles stuck there still_.
Then—
4. _Coaxing_.
_Kissing_.
_Champagne and turtle_.
_Red herrings and soda water_.
_Good advice_.
_Gardening_.
_Croquet_.
_Musical soirées_.
_Aunt Salty_.
_Mild tobacco_.
_The Saturday Review_.
_A carriage with outriders_, _etc. etc._
After the modern method. But that would not do.
And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and had shot at the Queen,
killed all his creditors to avoid paying them, or indulged in any other
little amiable eccentricity of that kind, they would have given him in
addition—
The healthiest situation in England, on Easthampstead Plain.
Free run of Windsor Forest.
The _Times_ every morning.
A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to shoot three Wellington
College boys a week (not more) in case black game was scarce.
But as he was neither mad enough nor bad enough to be allowed such
luxuries, they grew desperate, and fell into bad ways, viz.—
5. _Suffumigations of sulphur_.
_Herrwiggius his_ “_Incomparable drink for madmen_:”
Only they could not find out what it was.
_Suffumigation of the liver of the fish_ * * *
Only they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray could not well procure them
a specimen.
_Metallic tractors_.
_Holloway’s Ointment_.
_Electro-biology_.
_Valentine Greatrakes his Stroking Cure_.
_Spirit-rapping_.
_Holloway’s Pills_.
_Table-turning_.
_Morison’s Pills_.
_Homœopathy_.
_Parr’s Life Pills_.
_Mesmerism_.
_Pure Bosh_.
_Exorcisms_, _for which the read Maleus Maleficarum_, _Nideri
Formicarium_, _Delrio_, _Wierus_, _etc._
But could not get one that mentioned water-babies.
_Hydropathy_.
_Madame Rachel’s Elixir of Youth_.
_The Poughkeepsie Seer his Prophecies_.
_The distilled liquor of addle eggs_.
_Pyropathy_.
As successfully employed by the old inquisitors to cure the malady of
thought, and now by the Persian Mollahs to cure that of rheumatism.
_Geopathy_, _or burying him_.
_Atmopathy_, _or steaming him_.
_Sympathy_, _after the method of Basil Valentine his Triumph of
Antimony_, _and Kenelm Digby his Weapon-salve_, _which some call a hair
of the dog that bit him_.
_Hermopathy_, _or pouring mercury down his throat to move the animal
spirits_.
_Meteoropathy_, _or going up to the moon to look for his lost wits_,
_as Ruggiero did for Orlando Furioso’s_: _only_, _having no
hippogriff_, _they were forced to use a balloon_; _and_, _falling into
the North Sea_, _were picked up by a Yarmouth herring-boat_, _and came
home much the wiser_, _and all over scales_.
_Antipathy_, _or using him like_ “_a man and a brother_.”
_Apathy_, _or doing nothing at all_.
_With all other ipathies and opathies which Noodle has invented_, _and
Foodle tried_, _since black-fellows chipped flints at Abbéville_—_which
is a considerable time ago_, _to judge by the Great Exhibition_.
But nothing would do; for he screamed and cried all day for a water-baby,
to come and drive away the monsters; and of course they did not try to
find one, because they did not believe in them, and were thinking of
nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles; having, as usual, set the
cart before the horse, and taken the effect for the cause.
So they were forced at last to let the poor professor ease his mind by
writing a great book, exactly contrary to all his old opinions; in which
he proved that the moon was made of green cheese, and that all the mites
in it (which you may see sometimes quite plain through a telescope, if
you will only keep the lens dirty enough, as Mr. Weekes kept his voltaic
battery) are nothing in the world but little babies, who are hatching and
swarming up there in millions, ready to come down into this world
whenever children want a new little brother or sister.
Which must be a mistake, for this one reason: that, there being no
atmosphere round the moon (though some one or other says there is, at
least on the other side, and that he has been round at the back of it to
see, and found that the moon was just the shape of a Bath bun, and so wet
that the man in the moon went about on Midsummer-day in Macintoshes and
Cording’s boots, spearing eels and sneezing); that, therefore, I say,
there being no atmosphere, there can be no evaporation; and therefore the
dew-point can never fall below 71.5° below zero of Fahrenheit: and,
therefore, it cannot be cold enough there about four o’clock in the
morning to condense the babies’ mesenteric apophthegms into their left
ventricles; and, therefore, they can never catch the hooping-cough; and
if they do not have hooping-cough, they cannot be babies at all; and,
therefore, there are no babies in the moon.—Q.E.D.
[Picture: Man in rain]
Which may seem a roundabout reason; and so, perhaps, it is: but you will
have heard worse ones in your time, and from better men than you are.
But one thing is certain; that, when the good old doctor got his book
written, he felt considerably relieved from Bumpsterhausen’s blue
follicles, and a few things infinitely worse; to wit, from pride and
vain-glory, and from blindness and hardness of heart; which are the true
causes of Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and of a good many other ugly
things besides. Whereon the foul flood-water in his brains ran down, and
cleared to a fine coffee colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very
fine clean fresh-run fish did begin to rise in his brains; and he caught
two or three of them (which is exceedingly fine sport, for brain rivers),
and anatomised them carefully, and never mentioned what he found out from
them, except to little children; and became ever after a sadder and a
wiser man; which is a very good thing to become, my dear little boy, even
though one has to pay a heavy price for the blessing.
[Picture: Bat with man’s face]
CHAPTER V
“Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong.”
WORDSWORTH, _Ode to Duty_.
[Picture: Dog and cat] BUT what became of little Tom?
He slipped away off the rocks into the water, as I said before. But he
could not help thinking of little Ellie. He did not remember who she
was; but he knew that she was a little girl, though she was a hundred
times as big as he. That is not surprising: size has nothing to do with
kindred. A tiny weed may be first cousin to a great tree; and a little
dog like Vick knows that Lioness is a dog too, though she is twenty times
larger than herself. So Tom knew that Ellie was a little girl, and
thought about her all that day, and longed to have had her to play with;
but he had very soon to think of something else. And here is the account
of what happened to him, as it was published next morning, in the
Water-proof Gazette, on the finest watered paper, for the use of the
great fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who reads the news very carefully
every morning, and especially the police cases, as you will hear very
soon.
He was going along the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock
catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and
all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking
very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling his
horns, instead of thumbs.
[Picture: Tom, the lobster and otter]
“What, have you been naughty, and have they put you in the lock-up?”
asked Tom.
The lobster felt a little indignant at such a notion, but he was too much
depressed in spirits to argue; so he only said, “I can’t get out.”
“Why did you get in?”
“After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had thought it looked and
smelt very nice when he was outside, and so it did, for a lobster: but
now he turned round and abused it because he was angry with himself.
“Where did you get in?”
“Through that round hole at the top.”
“Then why don’t you get out through it?”
“Because I can’t:” and the lobster twiddled his horns more fiercely than
ever, but he was forced to confess.
“I have jumped upwards, downwards, backwards, and sideways, at least four
thousand times; and I can’t get out: I always get up underneath there,
and can’t find the hole.”
Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit than the lobster, he saw
plainly enough what was the matter; as you may if you will look at a
lobster-pot.
“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up to me, and I’ll pull you
through hindforemost, and then you won’t stick in the spikes.”
But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that he couldn’t hit the hole.
Like a great many fox-hunters, he was very sharp as long as he was in his
own country; but as soon as they get out of it they lose their heads; and
so the lobster, so to speak, lost his tail.
Tom reached and clawed down the hole after him, till he caught hold of
him; and then, as was to be expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in
head foremost.
“Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom. “Now take your great
claws, and break the points off those spikes, and then we shall both get
out easily.”
“Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the lobster; “and after all the
experience of life that I have had!”
You see, experience is of very little good unless a man, or a lobster,
has wit enough to make use of it. For a good many people, like old
Polonius, have seen all the world, and yet remain little better than
children after all.
But they had not got half the spikes away when they saw a great dark
cloud over them: and lo, and behold, it was the otter.
How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom. “Yar!” said she, “you little
meddlesome wretch, I have you now! I will serve you out for telling the
salmon where I was!” And she crawled all over the pot to get in.
Tom was horribly frightened, and still more frightened when she found the
hole in the top, and squeezed herself right down through it, all eyes and
teeth. But no sooner was her head inside than valiant Mr. Lobster caught
her by the nose and held on.
And there they were all three in the pot, rolling over and over, and very
tight packing it was. And the lobster tore at the otter, and the otter
tore at the lobster, and both squeezed and thumped poor Tom till he had
no breath left in his body; and I don’t know what would have happened to
him if he had not at last got on the otter’s back, and safe out of the
hole.
He was right glad when he got out: but he would not desert his friend who
had saved him; and the first time he saw his tail uppermost he caught
hold of it, and pulled with all his might.
But the lobster would not let go.
“Come along,” said Tom; “don’t you see she is dead?” And so she was,
quite drowned and dead.
And that was the end of the wicked otter.
But the lobster would not let go.
“Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the-mud,” cried Tom, “or the
fisherman will catch you!” And that was true, for Tom felt some one
above beginning to haul up the pot.
[Picture: Tom and the lobster]
But the lobster would not let go. Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to
the boat-side, and thought it was all up with him. But when Mr. Lobster
saw the fisherman, he gave such a furious and tremendous snap, that he
snapped out of his hand, and out of the pot, and safe into the sea. But
he left his knobbed claw behind him; for it never came into his stupid
head to let go after all, so he just shook his claw off as the easier
method. It was something of a bull, that; but you must know the lobster
was an Irish lobster, and was hatched off Island Magee at the mouth of
Belfast Lough.
Tom asked the lobster why he never thought of letting go. He said very
determinedly that it was a point of honour among lobsters. And so it is,
as the Mayor of Plymouth found out once to his cost—eight or nine hundred
years ago, of course; for if it had happened lately it would be personal
to mention it.
For one day he was so tired with sitting on a hard chair, in a grand
furred gown, with a gold chain round his neck, hearing one policeman
after another come in and sing, “What shall we do with the drunken
sailor, so early in the morning?” and answering them each exactly alike:
“Put him in the round house till he gets sober, so early in the morning”—
That, when it was over, he jumped up, and played leap-frog with the
town-clerk till he burst his buttons, and then had his luncheon, and
burst some more buttons, and then said: “It is a low spring-tide; I shall
go out this afternoon and cut my capers.”
Now he did not mean to cut such capers as you eat with boiled mutton. It
was the commandant of artillery at Valetta who used to amuse himself with
cutting them, and who stuck upon one of the bastions a notice, “No one
allowed to cut capers here but me,” which greatly edified the midshipmen
in port, and the Maltese on the Nix Mangiare stairs. But all that the
mayor meant was that he would go and have an afternoon’s fun, like any
schoolboy, and catch lobsters with an iron hook.
So to the Mewstone he went, and for lobsters he looked. And when he came
to a certain crack in the rocks he was so excited that, instead of
putting in his hook, he put in his hand; and Mr. Lobster was at home, and
caught him by the finger, and held on.
“Yah!” said the mayor, and pulled as hard as he dared: but the more he
pulled, the more the lobster pinched, till he was forced to be quiet.
Then he tried to get his hook in with his other hand; but the hole was
too narrow.
Then he pulled again; but he could not stand the pain.
Then he shouted and bawled for help: but there was no one nearer him than
the men-of-war inside the breakwater.
Then he began to turn a little pale; for the tide flowed, and still the
lobster held on.
Then he turned quite white; for the tide was up to his knees, and still
the lobster held on.
Then he thought of cutting off his finger; but he wanted two things to do
it with—courage and a knife; and he had got neither.
Then he turned quite yellow; for the tide was up to his waist, and still
the lobster held on.
Then he thought over all the naughty things he ever had done; all the
sand which he had put in the sugar, and the sloe-leaves in the tea, and
the water in the treacle, and the salt in the tobacco (because his
brother was a brewer, and a man must help his own kin).
Then he turned quite blue; for the tide was up to his breast, and still
the lobster held on.
Then, I have no doubt, he repented fully of all the said naughty things
which he had done, and promised to mend his life, as too many do when
they think they have no life left to mend. Whereby, as they fancy, they
make a very cheap bargain. But the old fairy with the birch rod soon
undeceives them.
And then he grew all colours at once, and turned up his eyes like a duck
in thunder; for the water was up to his chin, and still the lobster held
on.
And then came a man-of-war’s boat round the Mewstone, and saw his head
stick
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