The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is coming." But Tom never heeded them, being quite
riotous with high spirits and good luck, till, one Friday morning early,
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid came indeed.
A very tremendous lady she was; and when the children saw her they all
stood in a row, very upright indeed, and smoothed down their bathing
dresses, and put their hands behind them, just as if they were going to
be examined by the inspector.
And she had on a black bonnet, and a black shawl, and no crinoline at
all; and a pair of large green spectacles, and a great hooked nose,
hooked so much that the bridge of it stood quite up above her eyebrows;
and under her arm she carried a great birch-rod. Indeed, she was so ugly
that Tom was tempted to make faces at her: but did not; for he did not
admire the look of the birch-rod under her arm.
And she looked at the children one by one, and seemed very much
pleased with them, though she never asked them one question about
how they were behaving; and then began giving them all sorts of nice
sea-things--sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges, sea-bullseyes,
sea-toffee; and to the very best of all she gave sea-ices, made out of
sea-cows' cream, which never melt under water.
And, if you don't quite believe me, then just think--What is more cheap
and plentiful than sea-rock? Then why should there not be sea-toffee as
well? And every one can find sea-lemons (ready quartered too) if they
will look for them at low tide; and sea-grapes too sometimes, hanging in
bunches; and, if you will go to Nice, you will find the fish-market full
of sea-fruit, which they call "frutta di mare": though I suppose they
call them "fruits de mer" now, out of compliment to that most
successful, and therefore most immaculate, potentate who is seemingly
desirous of inheriting the blessing pronounced on those who remove their
neighbours' land-mark. And, perhaps, that is the very reason why the
place is called Nice, because there are so many nice things in the sea
there: at least, if it is not, it ought to be.
Now little Tom watched all these sweet things given away, till his mouth
watered, and his eyes grew as round as an owl's. For he hoped that his
turn would come at last; and so it did. For the lady called him up, and
held out her fingers with something in them, and popped it into his
mouth; and, lo and behold, it was a nasty cold hard pebble.
"You are a very cruel woman," said he, and began to whimper.
"And you are a very cruel boy; who puts pebbles into the sea-anemones'
mouths, to take them in, and make them fancy that they had caught a good
dinner! As you did to them, so I must do to you."
"Who told you that?" said Tom.
"You did yourself, this very minute."
Tom had never opened his lips; so he was very much taken aback indeed.
"Yes; every one tells me exactly what they have done wrong; and that
without knowing it themselves. So there is no use trying to hide
anything from me. Now go, and be a good boy, and I will put no more
pebbles in your mouth, if you put none in other creatures'."
"I did not know there was any harm in it," said Tom.
"Then you know now. People continually say that to me: but I tell them,
if you don't know that fire burns, that is no reason that it should not
burn you; and if you don't know that dirt breeds fever, that is no
reason why the fevers should not kill you. The lobster did not know that
there was any harm in getting into the lobster-pot; but it caught him
all the same."
"Dear me," thought Tom, "she knows everything!" And so she did, indeed.
"And so, if you do not know that things are wrong, that is no reason why
you should not be punished for them; though not as much, not as much, my
little man" (and the lady looked very kindly, after all), "as if you did
know."
"Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad," said Tom.
"Not at all; I am the best friend you ever had in all your life. But I
will tell you; I cannot help punishing people when they do wrong. I like
it no more than they do; I am often very, very sorry for them, poor
things: but I cannot help it. If I tried not to do it, I should do it
all the same. For I work by machinery, just like an engine; and am full
of wheels and springs inside; and am wound up very carefully, so that I
cannot help going."
"Was it long ago since they wound you up?" asked Tom. For he thought,
the cunning little fellow, "She will run down some day: or they may
forget to wind her up, as old Grimes used to forget to wind up his watch
when he came in from the public-house; and then I shall be safe."
"I was wound up once and for all, so long ago, that I forget all about
it."
"Dear me," said Tom, "you must have been made a long time!"
"I never was made, my child; and I shall go for ever and ever; for I am
as old as Eternity, and yet as young as Time."
And there came over the lady's face a very curious expression--very
solemn, and very sad; and yet very, very sweet. And she looked up and
away, as if she were gazing through the sea, and through the sky, at
something far, far off; and as she did so, there came such a quiet,
tender, patient, hopeful smile over her face that Tom thought for the
moment that she did not look ugly at all. And no more she did; for she
was like a great many people who have not a pretty feature in their
faces, and yet are lovely to behold, and draw little children's hearts
to them at once; because though the house is plain enough, yet from the
windows a beautiful and good spirit is looking forth.
And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so pleasant for the moment. And
the strange fairy smiled too, and said:
"Yes. You thought me very ugly just now, did you not?"
Tom hung down his head, and got very red about the ears.
"And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the world; and I shall
be, till people behave themselves as they ought to do. And then I shall
grow as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in the world;
and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins where I end,
and I begin where she ends; and those who will not listen to her must
listen to me, as you will see. Now, all of you run away, except Tom; and
he may stay and see what I am going to do. It will be a very good
warning for him to begin with, before he goes to school.
"Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here and call up all who have
ill-used little children and serve them as they served the children."
And at that Tom was frightened, and crept under a stone; which made the
two crabs who lived there very angry, and frightened their friend the
butter-fish into flapping hysterics: but he would not move for them.
And first she called up all the doctors who give little children so much
physic (they were most of them old ones; for the young ones have learnt
better, all but a few army surgeons, who still fancy that a baby's
inside is much like a Scotch grenadier's), and she set them all in a
row; and very rueful they looked; for they knew what was coming.
And first she pulled all their teeth out; and then she bled them all
round: and then she dosed them with calomel, and jalap, and salts and
senna, and brimstone and treacle; and horrible faces they made; and then
she gave them a great emetic of mustard and water, and no basons; and
began all over again; and that was the way she spent the morning.
And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies, who pinch up
their children's waists and toes; and she laced them all up in tight
stays, so that they were choked and sick, and their noses grew red, and
their hands and feet swelled; and then she crammed their poor feet into
the most dreadfully tight boots, and made them all dance, which they did
most clumsily indeed; and then she asked them how they liked it; and
when they said not at all, she let them go: because they had only done
it out of foolish fashion, fancying it was for their children's good, as
if wasps' waists and pigs' toes could be pretty, or wholesome, or of any
use to anybody.
Then she called up all the careless nursery-maids, and stuck pins into
them all over, and wheeled them about in perambulators with tight straps
across their stomachs and their heads and arms hanging over the side,
till they were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sun-strokes:
but, being under the water, they could only have water-strokes; which, I
assure you, are nearly as bad, as you will find if you try to sit under
a mill-wheel. And mind--when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the
sea, sailors will tell you that it is a ground-swell: but now you know
better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids about in perambulators.
And by that time she was so tired, she had to go to luncheon.
And after luncheon she set to work again, and called up all the cruel
schoolmasters--whole regiments and brigades of them; and when she saw
them, she frowned most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the
best part of the day's work was to come. More than half of them were
nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old monks, who, because they dare
not hit a man of their own size, amused themselves with beating little
children instead; as you may see in the picture of old Pope Gregory
(good man and true though he was, when he meddled with things which he
did understand), teaching children to sing their fa-fa-mi-fa with a
cat-o'-nine-tails under his chair: but, because they never had any
children of their own, they took into their heads (as some folks do
still) that they were the only people in the world who knew how to
manage children: and they first brought into England, in the old
Anglo-Saxon times, the fashion of treating free boys, and girls too,
worse than you would treat a dog or a horse: but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid
has caught them all long ago; and given them many a taste of their own
rods; and much good may it do them.
And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over the head with rulers,
and pandied their hands with canes, and told them that they told
stories, and were this and that bad sort of people; and the more they
were very indignant, and stood upon their honour, and declared they told
the truth, the more she declared they were not, and that they were only
telling lies; and at last she birched them all round soundly with her
great birch-rod and set them each an imposition of three hundred
thousand lines of Hebrew to learn by heart before she came back next
Friday. And at that they all cried and howled so, that their breaths
came all up through the sea like bubbles out of soda-water; and that is
one reason of the bubbles in the sea. There are others: but that is the
one which principally concerns little boys. And by that time she was so
tired that she was glad to stop; and, indeed, she had done a very good
day's work.
Tom did not quite dislike the old lady: but he could not help thinking
her a little spiteful--and no wonder if she was, poor old soul; for if
she has to wait to grow handsome till people do as they would be done
by, she will have to wait a very long time.
Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid! she has a great deal of hard work before
her, and had better have been born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub
all day: but, you see, people cannot always choose their own profession.
But Tom longed to ask her one question; and after all, whenever she
looked at him, she did not look cross at all; and now and then there was
a funny smile in her face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which
gave Tom courage, and at last he said:
"Pray, ma'am, may I ask you a question?"
"Certainly, my little dear."
"Why don't you bring all the bad masters here and serve them out too?
The butties that knock about the poor collier-boys; and the nailers that
file off their lads' noses and hammer their fingers; and all the master