Chapter 15
At last after innumerable adventures, each more wonderful than the last, Tom saw before him a huge building.
He walked towards this great building, wondering what it was. Having a strange fancy that he might find Mr. Grimes inside it, till he saw running towards him, and shouting “Stop!” three or four people, who, when they came nearer, were nothing else than policemen’s truncheons, running along without legs or arms.
Tom was not astonished. He was long past that. Neither was he frightened, for he had been doing no harm.
So he stopped. When the foremost truncheon came up and asked his business, he showed Mother Carey’s pass. The truncheon looked at it in the oddest fashion, for he had one eye in the middle of his upper end. When he looked at anything, being quite stiff, he had to slope himself, and poke himself, till it was a wonder why he did not tumble over.
“All right; pass on,” said he at last. Then he added “I had better go with you, young man.” Tom had no objection, for such company was both respectable and safe. So the truncheon coiled its thong neatly round its handle, to prevent tripping itself up—for the thong had got loose in running—and marched on by Tom’s side.
“Why have you no policeman to carry you?” asked Tom, after a while.
“Because we are not like those clumsy-made truncheons in the land-world, which cannot go without having a whole man to carry them about. We do our own work for ourselves; and do it very well.”
“Then why do you have you a thong to your handle?” asked Tom.
“To hang ourselves up by, of course, when we are off duty.”
Tom had got his answer, and had no more to say, till they came up to the great iron door of the prison. And there the truncheon knocked twice, with its own head.
A wicket in the door opened, and out looked a tremendous old brass blunderbuss charged up to the muzzle with slugs, who was the porter. Tom started back a little at the sight of him.
“What case is this?” he asked in a deep voice, out of his broad bell-mouth.
“If you please, sir, it is no case; only a young gentleman from her ladyship, who wants to see Grimes, the master-sweep.”
“Grimes?” said the blunderbuss. He pulled in his muzzle, perhaps to look over his prison-lists.
“Grimes is up chimney No. 345,” he said from inside. “So the young gentleman had better go on to the roof.”
Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which seemed at least ninety miles high, and wondered how he should ever get up. When he hinted that to the truncheon, it settled the matter in a moment. It whisked round, and gave him such a shove behind as sent him up to the roof in no time, with his little dog under his arm.
There he walked along the leads, till he met another truncheon, and told him his errand.
“Very good,” it said, “Come along, but it will be of no use. He is the most unremorseful, hard-hearted, foul-mouthed fellow I have in charge. Thinks about nothing but beer and pipes, which are not allowed here, of course.”
So they walked along over the leads, and very sooty they were. Tom thought the chimneys must want sweeping very much. But he was surprised to see that the soot did not stick to his feet, or dirty them in the least. Neither did the live coals, which were lying about in plenty, burn him, being a water-baby.
At last they came to chimney No. 345. Out of the top of it, his head and shoulders just showing, stuck poor Mr. Grimes, sooty, bleared and ugly. Tom could hardly bear to look at him. And in his mouth was a pipe. But it was not alight though he was pulling at it with all his might.
“Attention, Mr. Grimes,” said the truncheon, “here is a gentleman who has come to see you.”
But Mr. Grimes only said bad words and kept grumbling, “My pipe won’t draw. My pipe won’t draw.”
“Keep a civil tongue, and attend!” said the truncheon; and popped up just like Punch, hitting Grimes such a crack over the head with itself, that his brains rattled inside like a dried walnut in its shell. He tried to get his hands out, and rub the place. But he could not, for they were stuck fast in the chimney. Now he was forced to attend.
“Hey!” he said, “why, it’s Tom! I suppose you have come here to laugh at me, you spiteful little atomy.”
Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted to help him.
“I don’t want anything except beer. That I can’t get; and a light to this bothering pipe, and that I can’t get either.”
“I’ll get you one,” said Tom; and he took up a live coal (there were plenty lying about) and put it to Grimes’ pipe. But it went out instantly.
“It’s no use,” said the truncheon, leaning itself up against the chimney and looking on, “I tell you; it is no use. His heart is so cold that it freezes everything that comes near him. You will see that presently, plain enough.”
“Oh, of course, it’s my fault. Everything’s always my fault,” said Grimes. “Now don’t go to hit me again (for the truncheon started upright, and looked very wicked); you know, if my arms were only free, you daren’t hit me then.”
The truncheon leant back against the chimney, and took no notice of the personal insult, like a well-trained policeman as it was.
“But can’t I help you in any other way? Can’t I help you to get out of this chimney?” said Tom.
“No,” interposed the truncheon, “he has come to the place where everybody must help themselves. He will find it out, I hope, before he has done with me.”
“Oh, yes,” said Grimes, “of course, it’s me. Did I ask to be brought here into the prison? Did I ask to be set to sweep your foul chimneys? Did I ask to have lighted straw put under me to make me go up? Did I ask to stick fast in the very first chimney of all, because it was so shamefully dogged up with soot? Did I ask to stay here—I don’t know how long—a hundred years, I do believe, and never get my pipe, nor my beer, nor nothing fit for a beast, let alone a man?”
“No,” answered a solemn voice behind. “No more did Tom, when you behaved to him in the very same way.”
It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. When the truncheon saw her, it started bolt upright—Attention!—and made such a low bow. Tom made his bow too.
“Oh, ma’am,” he said, “don’t think about me; that’s all past and gone, and good times and bad times and all times pass over. But may not I help poor Mr. Grimes? Mayn’t I try and get some of these bricks away, that he may move his arms?”
“You may try, of course,” she said.
So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks. But he could not move one. Then he tried to wipe Mr. Grimes’ face but the soot would not come off.
“Oh, dear!” he said. “I have come all this way, through all these terrible places, to help you, and now I am of no use at all.”
“You had better leave me alone,” said Grimes, “you are a good-natured forgiving little chap, and that’s truth. But you’d better be off. The hail’s coming on soon, and it will beat the eyes out of your little head.”
“What hail?”
“Why, hail that falls every evening here till it comes dose to me. It’s like so much warm rain, but then it turns to hail over my head, and knocks me about like a small shot.”
“That hail will never come any more,” said the strange lady, “I have told you before what it was. It was your mother’s tears, those which she shed when she prayed for you by her bedside. But your cold heart froze it into hail. But she has gone to heaven now, and will weep no more for her graceless son.”
Then Grimes was silent awhile; and then he looked very sad.
“So my old mother’s gone, and I never there to speak to her! Ah! a good woman she was, and might have been a happy one, in her little school there in Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and my bad ways.”
“Did she keep the school in Vendale?” asked Tom. Then he told Grimes all the story of his going to her house, and how she could not abide the sight of a chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, and how he turned into a water-baby.
“Ah!” said Grimes, “good reason she had to hate the sight of a chimney-sweep. I ran away from her and took up with the sweeps, and never let her know where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her. Now it’s too late—too late!”
He began crying and blubbering like a great baby, till his pipe dropped out of his mouth, and broke all to bits.
“Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again, to see the clear beck, and the apple-orchard, and the yew-hedge. How different I would go on! But it’s too late now. So you go along, you kind little chap, and don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s old enough to be your father, and never feared the face of man, nor of worse neither. But I’m depressed now, and depressed I must be. I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it. Foul I would be, and foul I am, as an Irish woman said to me once. Little I heeded it. It’s all my own fault. But it’s too late.” He cried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.
“Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange soft new voice that Tom looked up at her. She was so beautiful for the moment, that Tom half fancied she was her sister.
No more was it too late. As poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mother’s could not do. Tom’s could not do, and nobody’s on earth could do for him, for they washed the soot off his face and off his clothes. Then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks. The chimney crumbled down and Grimes began to get out of it.
Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him on the crown a tremendous thump, and drive him down again like a cork into a bottle. But the strange lady put it aside.
“Will you obey me if I give you a chance?”
“As you please, ma’am. You’re stronger than I that I know too well, and wiser than I, I know too well also. As for being my own master, I’ve fared ill enough with that as yet. So whatever your ladyship pleases to order me, I’m ready to accept it.”
“Be it so then; you may come out. But remember, disobey me again, and into a worse place still you go.”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of. I never had the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these ugly quarters.”
“Never saw me? Who said to you? They will be foul, foul they will be.”
Grimes looked up and Tom looked up too for the voice was that of the Irish woman who met them the day that they went out together to Harthover. “I gave you your warning then. But you gave it yourself a thousand times before and since. Every bad word that you said—every cruel and mean thing that you did every time that you got tipsy—every day that you went dirty—you were disobeying me, whether you knew it or not.”
“If I’d only known, ma’am.”
“You knew well enough that you were disobeying something, though you did not know it was me. But come out and take your chance. Perhaps it may be your last.”
So Grimes stepped out of the chimney. Really, if it had not been for the scars on his face, he looked as clean and respectable as a master-sweep should look.
“Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, “and give him his ticket-of-leave.”
“And what is he to do, ma’am?”
“Get him to sweep out of the crater of Etna; he will find some very steady men working out their time there, who will teach him his business. But mind, if that crater gets choked again, and there is an earthquake in consequence. Bring them all to me, and I shall investigate the case very severely.”
So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, looking as meek as a drowned worm.
And for aught I know, or do not know, he is sweeping the crater of Etna to this very day.
“And now,” said the fairy to Tom, “your work here is done. You may as well go back again.”
“I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, “but how am I to get up that great hole again, now the steam has stopped blowing?”
“I will take you up the backstairs. But I must bandage your eyes first, for I never allow anybody to see those backstairs of mine.”
“I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them, ma’am, if you bid me not.”
“Aha! So you think, my little man. But you would soon forget your promise if you got back into the land-world. So come—now I must bandage your eyes.” So she tied the bandage on his eyes with one hand, and with the other she took it off.
“Now,” she said, “you are safe up the stairs.” Tom opened his eyes very wide, and his mouth too for he had, as he thought, moved a single step. But, when he looked round him, there could be no doubt that he was safe up the backstairs, whatsoever they may be.
The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars, high and sharp against the rosy dawn; and St. Brandan’s Isle reflected double in the still broad silver sea. The wind sang softly in the cedars, and the water sang among the caves. The seabirds sang as they streamed out into the ocean, and the land birds as they built among the boughs. The air was full of song. But among all the songs one came across the water more sweet and clear than all, for it was the song of a young girl’s voice.
What was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to understand it. But have patience, and keep your eye single, and your hands clean. You will learn some day to sing it yourself, without needing any man to teach you.
As Tom neared the island, there sat upon a rock the most graceful creature that ever was seen, looking down, with her chin upon her hand, and paddling with her feet in the water. When they came to her, she looked up. Behold it was Ellie.
“Oh, Miss Ellie,” said he, “how you are grown!”
“Oh, Tom,” said she, “how you are grown too!” And no wonder; they had both quite grown up—he into a tall man, and she into a beautiful woman. They married later on and lived in bliss thereafter.
