The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby
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 dare 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.
"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.
CHAPTER II
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, grey crag, grey down, grey stair, grey 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 limestone 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 leggings, 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.