Story Four: Violets in the Snow.
Story 4--Chapter I.
On one side there was a square, with trees that tried to look green in summer, but in winter time stuck in scraggy form out of the soot-peppered snow, with a beadle who wore a gold band round his hat and lived in a lodge, out of which he issued every morning with a thin rattan cane to keep away the boys; on the other side there was a row of goodly mansions, with a mews for the horses and carriages of the grandees who inhabited those mansions; and down between square and mansions, hidden behind the mews, as if it was a brick-and-mortar snake, there was Gutter-alley.
People said, how could such a dirty, squalid, unhealthy, beggar-inhabited place get there between the mansions of the rich. People said so to the parish officers, and the parish officers shook their heads; not so much as to say that they did not know, but to imply thereby, a great deal, as if the wickedness of the inhabitants had something to do with it. Then people said so to the dwellers in Gutter-alley in an ill-used fashion, to which Gutter-alley very reasonably replied that it must get somewhere, which was perfectly true; that it squeezed itself up as much out of the way as it could, which was also quite true; that it—to wit, Gutter-alley—did not get between the square and the row of mansions, but that the square came and sat upon it on one side, and the row of mansions came and sat upon it on the other, which was true again; and lastly, Gutter-alley said, where was it to go, for it must have living room? Then people who knew its squalor said that it was all very shocking, and that a meeting ought to be held. And it was very shocking, but a meeting was not held; and Gutter-alley stood where it had stood before, in the year of our Lord 1862, when there was a very great exhibition building very close at hand; and Gutter-alley remained an exhibition itself, staying as it did where, without much effort, it could have thrown a stone into the grounds of a palace.
Story 4--Chapter II.
Now, whether in summer or winter, poor people can patronise as well as rich; and so it fell out that the custom in poverty-stricken, hunger-pinched Gutter-alley was for the poor folk there to speak condescendingly to old Dick Bradds, when he stood at the door of Number 5, with his poor old head on one side as he looked up the court; head on the other side as he looked down. “Dickey” he was generally called, and more than one stout costermonger—they did a deal in costering in Gutter-alley, and if you penetrated into the rooms of the human rabbit-warren, fish could be found mingled with furniture, turnips amongst the wash-tubs, and a good full bucket of mussels often formed the seat of the father of a family while he helped his wife to make up ropes of onions for the morrow’s sale—well, many a stout costermonger told his wife in confidence that old Dickey Bradds always put him in mind of a moulting thrush. No inapt simile, and doubtless taken from the life, for there were always plenty of feathered captives to be seen in Gutter-alley.
It was quite true Dick—old Dickey Bradds—did look very much like some aged and shabby bird, lame of one leg; and when he stood on a cold winter’s morning peering up and down through the fog that loved to hang about the court, no one would have felt at all surprised to have seen the old man begin to peck, or to whet his long sharp old nose against the door-post.
Not that Dick did do anything of this kind—he only gave two or three keen one-sided bird-like looks about before slowly hopping up-stairs to his room on the second floor—the front room—to wait for Jenny.
A keen old blade though was Dick—a piece of that right good true steel so often to be found in the humblest implements, while your finely-polished, gaily-handled, ornamental upper-ten-thousand cutlery is so often inferior, dull of edge, and given to shut up just when they are wanted the most. Dick was not human hurried up, but a piece of fine old charcoal-made steel. Toil and hard usage had ground and ground Dick till there was little left of him but the haft, and seventy years of existence rubbing away through the world—that hard grindstone to some of us—had made that haft very rickety of rivet and springs. Certainly there was blade enough left to cut in one direction, but you could not trust Dick for fear of his giving way, or perhaps closing upon the hand that employed him.