The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
sweeps, like my master Grimes? I saw him fall into the water long ago;
so I surely expected he would have been here. I'm sure he was bad enough
to me."
Then the old lady looked so very stern that Tom was quite frightened,
and sorry that he had been so bold. But she was not angry with him. She
only answered, "I look after them all the week round; and they are in a
very different place from this, because they knew that they were doing
wrong."
She spoke very quietly; but there was something in her voice which made
Tom tingle from head to foot, as if he had got into a shoal of
sea-nettles.
"But these people," she went on, "did not know that they were doing
wrong: they were only stupid and impatient; and therefore I only punish
them till they become patient, and learn to use their common sense like
reasonable beings. But as for chimney-sweeps, and collier-boys, and
nailer lads, my sister has set good people to stop all that sort of
thing; and very much obliged to her I am; for if she could only stop the
cruel masters from ill-using poor children, I should grow handsome at
least a thousand years sooner. And now do you be a good boy, and do as
you would be done by, which they did not; and then, when my sister,
MADAME DOASYOUWOULDBEDONEBY, comes on Sunday, perhaps she will take
notice of you, and teach you how to behave. She understands that better
than I do." And so she went.
Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance of meeting Grimes
again, though he was a little sorry for him, considering that he used
sometimes to give him the leavings of the beer: but he determined to be
a very good boy all Saturday; and he was; for he never frightened one
crab, nor tickled any live corals, nor put stones into the sea anemones'
mouths, to make them fancy they had got a dinner; and when Sunday
morning came, sure enough, MRS. DOASYOUWOULDBEDONEBY came too. Whereat
all the little children began dancing and clapping their hands, and Tom
danced too with all his might.
And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you what the colour of her
hair was, or of her eyes: no more could Tom; for, when any one looks at
her, all they can think of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest,
tenderest, funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or want to see. But
Tom saw that she was a very tall woman, as tall as her sister: but
instead of being gnarly and horny, and scaly, and prickly, like her, she
was the most nice, soft, fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature
who ever nursed a baby; and she understood babies thoroughly, for she
had plenty of her own, whole rows and regiments of them, and has to this
day. And all her delight was, whenever she had a spare moment, to play
with babies, in which she showed herself a woman of sense; for babies
are the best company, and the pleasantest playfellows, in the world; at
least, so all the wise people in the world think. And therefore when the
children saw her, they naturally all caught hold of her, and pulled her
till she sat down on a stone, and climbed into her lap, and clung round
her neck, and caught hold of her hands; and then they all put their
thumbs into their mouths, and began cuddling and purring like so many
kittens, as they ought to have done. While those who could get nowhere
else sat down on the sand, and cuddled her feet--for no one, you know,
wear shoes in the water, except horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid
of the water-babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood staring at
them; for he could not understand what it was all about.
"And who are you, you little darling?" she said.
"Oh, that is the new baby!" they all cried, pulling their thumbs out of
their mouths; "and he never had any mother," and they all put their
thumbs back again, for they did not wish to lose any time.
"Then I will be his mother, and he shall have the very best place; so
get out, all of you, this moment."
And she took up two great armfuls of babies--nine hundred under one arm,
and thirteen hundred under the other--and threw them away, right and
left, into the water. But they minded it no more than the naughty boys
in Struwwelpeter minded when St. Nicholas dipped them in his inkstand;
and did nor even take their thumbs out of their mouths, but came
paddling and wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles, till you could
see nothing of her from head to foot for the swarm of little babies.
But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in the softest place of all,
and kissed him, and patted him, and talked to him, tenderly and low,
such things as he had never heard before in his life; and Tom looked up
into her eyes, and loved her, and loved, till he fell fast asleep from
pure love.
And when he woke she was telling the children a story. And what story
did she tell them? One story she told them, which begins every Christmas
Eve, and yet never ends at all for ever and ever; and, as she went on,
the children took their thumbs out of their mouths and listened quite
seriously; but not sadly at all; for she never told them anything sad;
and Tom listened too, and never grew tired of listening. And he listened
so long that he fell fast asleep again, and, when he woke, the lady was
nursing him still.
"Don't go away," said little Tom. "This is so nice. I never had any one
to cuddle me before."
"Don't go away," said all the children; "you have not sung us one song."
"Well, I have time for only one. So what shall it be?"
"The doll you lost! The doll you lost!" cried all the babies at once.
So the strange fairy sang:--
_I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay._
_I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled:
Yet, for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world._
What a silly song for a fairy to sing!
And what silly water-babies to be quite delighted at it!
Well, but you see they have not the advantage of Aunt Agitate's
Arguments in the sea-land down below.
"Now," said the fairy to Tom, "will you be a good boy for my sake, and
torment no more sea-beasts till I come back?"
"And you will cuddle me again?" said poor little Tom.
"Of course I will, you little duck. I should like to take you with me
and cuddle you all the way, only I must not"; and away she went.
So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and tormented no sea-beasts after
that as long as he lived; and he is quite alive, I assure you, still.
Oh, how good little boys ought to be who have kind pussy mammas to
cuddle them and tell them stories; and how afraid they ought to be of
growing naughty, and bringing tears into their mammas' pretty eyes!
"Thou little child, yet glorious in the night
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The Years to bring the inevitable yoke--
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."
WORDSWORTH.
CHAPTER VI
HERE I come to the very saddest part of all my story. I know some people
will only laugh at it, and call it much ado about nothing. But I know
one man who would not; and he was an officer with a pair of grey
moustaches as long as your arm, who said once in company that two of the
most heart-rending sights in the world, which moved him most to tears,
which he would do anything to prevent or remedy, were a child over a
broken toy and a child stealing sweets.
The company did not laugh at him; his moustaches were too long and too
grey for that: but, after he was gone, they called him sentimental and
so forth, all but one dear little old Quaker lady with a soul as white
as her cap, who was not, of course, generally partial to soldiers; and
she said very quietly, like a Quaker:
"Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that is a truly brave man."
Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, when he had everything that
he could want or wish: but you would be very much mistaken. Being quite
comfortable is a very good thing; but it does not make people good.
Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made the people in
America; and as it made the people in the Bible, who waxed fat and
kicked, like horses overfed and underworked. And I am very sorry to say
that this happened to little Tom. For he grew so fond of the
sea-bullseyes and sea-lollipops that his foolish little head could think
of nothing else: and he was always longing for more, and wondering when
the strange lady would come again and give him some, and what she would
give him, and how much, and whether she would give him more than the
others. And he thought of nothing but lollipops by day, and dreamt of
nothing else by night--and what happened then?
That he began to watch the lady to see where she kept the sweet things:
and began hiding, and sneaking, and following her about, and pretending
to be looking the other way, or going after something else, till he
found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-pearl cabinet away
in a deep crack of the rocks.
And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he was afraid; and then he
longed again, and was less afraid; and at last, by continual thinking
about it, he longed so violently that he was not afraid at all. And one
night, when all the other children were asleep, and he could not sleep
for thinking of lollipops, he crept away among the rocks, and got to the
cabinet, and behold! it was open.
But, when he saw all the nice things inside, instead of being delighted,
he was quite frightened, and wished he had never come there. And then
he would only touch them, and he did; and then he would only taste one,
and he did; and then he would only eat one, and he did; and then he
would only eat two, and then three, and so on; and then he was terrified
lest she should come and catch him, and began gobbling them down so fast
that he did not taste them, or have any pleasure in them; and then he
felt sick, and would have only one more; and then only one more again;
and so on till he had eaten them all up.
And all the while, close behind him, stood Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid.
Some people may say, But why did she not keep her cupboard locked? Well,
I know.--It may seem a very strange thing, but she never does keep her
cupboard locked; every one may go and taste for themselves, and fare
accordingly. It is very odd, but so it is; and I am quite sure that she
knows best. Perhaps she wishes people to keep their fingers out of the
fire, by having them burned.
She took off her spectacles, because she did not like to see too much;
and in her pity she arched up her eyebrows into her very hair, and her
eyes grew so wide that they would have taken in all the sorrows of the
world, and filled with great big tears, as they too often do.
But all she said was:
"Ah, you poor little dear! you are just like all the rest."