Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.

by B. L. Farjeon

'What other?' demanded Jimmy Virtue surlily. 'I didn't know no other. Blade-o'-Grass was the only one left.'

And this was all the information I could elicit from him. I inquired of other old residents in Stoney-alley, but not one of them remembered anything worth hearing. I returned to Mr. Merrywhistle, and after narrating to him the fruitless result of my inquiries, I asked abruptly if he knew anything concerning the circumstances attending the birth of Ruth. The old man changed colour, and his manner became very nervous.

'I can see your drift,' he said in a troubled voice. 'In your mind, Ruth and Blade-o'-Grass are associated, as if some undiscovered tie exists between them. I once shared your suspicion. I saw in Blade-o'-Grass a likeness to Ruth, and I mentioned it to Mrs. Silver. But when Mrs. Silver adopted Ruth, the babe was orphaned indeed. Both father and mother were dead, and Ruth was the only child. It is impossible, therefore, that the likeness between Ruth and Blade-o'-Grass can be anything but accidental. Do not say anything of this to Ruth or Mrs. Silver; it would grieve them. Look at Ruth and Blade-o'-Grass; see them as they are, and think what a gulf separates them.'

A gulf indeed! But still I was not satisfied.

I found it much easier to learn the fullest particulars concerning Tom Beadle. Plainly and simply, he was a thief, and had been in prison a dozen times at least. The day following our holiday-making he was brought up at the police-court on a common charge of pickpocketing. Blade-o'-Grass begged me to intercede for him with the magistrate; but it was impossible for me to do so, as I knew nothing concerning him but what was bad. 'He loves me, sir, does Tom,' she pleaded; 'and I love 'im!' And said it as if it were a sufficient reason for his not being punished. It was impossible to reason with her on the matter; all that concerned herself and Tom Beadle she could look at from only one point of view. Whether he worked or whether he stole, nearly every farthing he obtained was spent in food. Blade-o'-Grass's standpoint was that she and Tom and the baby must have bread, and that if they could not get it one way they must get it another. Tom Beadle did work sometimes as a costermonger; but the difficulties in his way were very serious because of his antecedents, and he rebelled against these difficulties sullenly and savagely, and bruised his soul against them. He was no casuist, and made no attempt to excuse himself. He was simply a man at war with society, a man whose keen intellect had been sharpened and perfected in bad soil. As I write of him now, I can see him slouching along in his patched clothes, with defiance in his mind. Watchful eyes have been upon him almost from his birth; they are upon him now, whichever way he turns, and he knows it, and has grown up in the knowledge. Respectability turns its back upon him--naturally, for he is its enemy. Even benevolence shrinks from him, for the spirit of cunning and ingratitude lurks in his every motion. I paint him as I knew him, in the plainest of colours. He had one redeeming trait in his character; he loved Blade-o'-Grass, after his fashion, with as much sincerity as good men love good women. His love for her had come to him naturally, as other worse qualities in his nature had come. By Blade-o'-Grass he was loved, as she had truly said, but with that deeper love of which only a woman's nature is capable. Hers was capable of the highest form of gratitude, of the highest form of love. She was faithful to Tom Beadle, and she loved her child with as perfect, ay, and as pure a love as can animate the breast of the most delicate lady in the land. Overshadowing these bright streaks of light was a darker line. When she was a mere babe, afterwards when she was a child, afterwards when she was a woman, she frequently suffered the pangs of hunger; she often knew what it was to want a crust of bread. From these sufferings came the singular and mournful idea that she had within her a ravenous creature which she called a tiger, and which, when she was hungry, tore at her entrails for food. This tiger had been the terror of her life, and it was with her an agonising belief that she had endowed her child with the tiger curse: I can find no other term of expression. From this belief nothing could drive her. Talk to her of its folly, of its impossibility, and you talked to stone. Her one unfailing answer was, 'Ah, I know; you can't. I feel it, and my baby feels it also.' I learnt the story of this tiger from her own lips. I found her waiting for me one morning at the corner of the street in which I lived. It was while Tom Beadle was undergoing his term of imprisonment. I stopped and spoke to her, and she asked might she say something to me. Yes, I answered, I could spare her a few minutes; and I led the way to my rooms.

'It was Mr. Wirtue as told me to come to you, sir,' she said; 'he ain't so 'ard on me as he was.'

'I am glad you are friends again,' I said. 'Will you have some bread-and-butter?'

'Yes, if you please, sir.'

I cut some bread-and-butter for her and her child, and I dissolved some preserved milk in warm water for her. She watched with keen interest the process of making this milk, and when she tasted it said, with a touch of humour of which she was quite unconscious:

'They won't want no more mothers by and by, sir, what with sich milk as this, and feedin'-bottles, and p'ramberlaters!'