Читать книгу Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses - B. L. Farjeon - Страница 8

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Thus, whilst one little babe was tended and watched by benevolent hands and eyes, the fate of the other--the prettier one, she with the unfortunate dimple--was intrusted to the shapeless hands of chance. To such tender care as had happily fallen to its lot, the fortunate one may be left for a time. Turn we to the other, and watch its strange bringing-up.

Proverbially, too many cooks spoil the broth; and this forlorn babe was left to the care of too many cooks, who, however, in this instance, did not spoil the broth by meddling with it, but by almost utterly neglecting it. The landlady's declaration that 'We'll look after her between us; one'll take her one day, and one another,' although uttered in all sincerity, turned out badly in its application. What is everybody's business is nobody's business, and for the most part the babe was left to take care of herself. For a little while Mrs. Manning was the child's only friend; but in the course of a couple of months she fulfilled her husband's apprehension, and added another bantling to his already overstocked quiver. This new arrival (which, it must be confessed, was not received with gratitude by its father) was so fractious, and so besieged by a complication of infantile disorders, that all Mrs. Manning's spare moments were fully occupied, and she had none to devote to other people's children. The motherless child threatened to fare badly indeed. But now and again a mother who had lost her offspring came to the little stranger and suckled her; so that she drew life from many bosoms, and may be said to have had at least a score of wet-nurses. And thus she grew up almost literally in the gutters, no one owning her, no one really caring for her; and yet she throve, as weeds thrive--while her sister, not a mile away, throve, in the care of kind friends, as flowers thrive. Born in equality, with the same instincts for good and evil, with the same capacity for good and evil, equally likely to turn out good or bad, should it have been left entirely to chance that one might live to prove a blessing, and the other a curse, to society? But so it was.

One of the most curious circumstances connected with the little outcast was, that she was not known by any settled name. It grew to be a fashion to call her by all sorts of names--now Polly, now Sally, now Young Hussy, now Little Slut, and by a dozen others, not one of which remained to her for any length of time. But when she was three years of age, an event occurred which played the part of godmothers and godfathers to her, and which caused her to receive a title by which she was always afterwards known.

There was not a garden in Stoney-alley. Not within the memory of living man had a flower been known to bloom there. There were many poor patches of ground, crowded as the neighbourhood was, which might have been devoted to the cultivation of a few bright petals; but they were allowed to lie fallow, festering in the sun. Thought of graceful form and colour had never found expression there. Strange, therefore, that one year, when Summer was treading close upon the heel of Spring, sending warm sweet winds to herald her coming, there should spring up, in one of the dirtiest of all the backyards in Stoney-alley, two or three Blades of Grass. How they came there, was a mystery. No human hand was accountable for their presence. It may be that a bird, flying over the place, had mercifully dropped a seed; or that a kind wind had borne it to the spot. But however they came, there they were, these Blades of Grass, peeping up from the ground shyly and wonderingly, and giving promise of bright colour, even in the midst of the unwholesome surroundings. Our little castaway--she was no better--now three years of age, was sprawling in this dirty backyard with a few other children, all of them regular students of Dirt College. Attracted by the little bit of colour, she crawled to the spot where it shone in the light, and straightway fell to watching it and inhaling, quite unconsciously, whatever of grace it possessed. Once or twice she touched the tender blades, and seemed to be pleased to find them soft and pliant. The other children, delighted at having the monopoly of a gutter, that ran through the yard, did not disturb her; and so she remained during the day, watching and wondering; and fell asleep by the side of the Blades of Grass, and dreamed perhaps of brighter colours and more graceful forms than had ever yet found place in her young imagination. The next day she made her way again to the spot, and seeing that the blades had grown a little, wondered and wondered, and unconsciously exercised that innate sense of worship of the beautiful which is implanted in every nature, and which causes the merest babes to rejoice at light, and shapes of beauty, and harmony of sound. What is more wonderful, in the eyes of a babe, than vivid colour or light, however kindled? what more sweet to its senses than that perfect harmony of sound which falls upon its ears as the mother sings softly and lulls her darling to sleep? This latter blessing had never fallen to the lot of our child; but colour and light were given to her, and she was grateful for them. She grew to love these emerald leaves, and watched them day after day, until the women round about observed and commented upon her strange infatuation. But one evening, when the leaves were at their brightest and strongest, a man, running hastily through the yard, crushed the blades of grass beneath his heel, and tore them from the earth. The grief of the child was intense. She cast a passionate yet bewildered look at the man, and picking up the torn soiled blades, put them in the breast of her ragged frock, in the belief that warmth would bring them back to life. She went to bed with the mangled leaves in her hot hand, and when she looked at them the next morning, they bore no resemblance to the bright leaves which had been such a delight to her. She went to the spot where they had grown, and cried without knowing why; and the man who had destroyed the leaves happening to pass at the time, she struck at him with her little fists. He pushed her aside rather roughly with his foot, and Mrs. Manning, seeing this, and having also seen the destruction of the leaves, and the child's worship of them, blew him up for his unkindness. He merely laughed, and said he wouldn't have done it if he had looked where he was going, and that it was a good job for the child that she wasn't a Blade-o'-Grass herself, or she might have been trodden down with the others. The story got about the alley, and one and another, at first in fun or derision, began to call the child Little Blade-o'-Grass, until, in course of time, it came to be recognised as her regular name, and she was known by it all over the neighbourhood. So, being thus strangely christened, Little Blade-o'-Grass grew in years and in ignorance, and became a worthy member of Dirt College, in which school she was matriculated for the battle of life.