but at whose door could her death have been laid?
Tom Beadle, whispering hurriedly and anxiously, and certainly quite superfluously, 'Lay still, Bladergrass! I'll be back in a minute,' ran off to buy food, and soon returned with it. He had a little difficulty in rousing her, but when she began to taste the food, and, opening her eyes, saw the store which Tom had brought, she tore at it almost deliriously, crying out of thankfulness, as she ate. Tom was sufficiently rewarded by seeing the colour return to her cheeks; before long, Blade-o'-Grass was herself again, and was laughing with Tom.
'But I thought you was a-dyin', Bladergrass,' said Tom, somewhat solemnly, in the midst of the merriment.
'No, it was you that was a-dyin', Tom!' exclaimed Blade-o'-Grass, clapping her hands. 'A-dyin' by inches, you know!'
Gratified vanity gleamed in Tom Beadle's eyes, and when Blade-o'-Grass added, 'But, O Tom, how you frightened me at first!' his triumph was complete, and he enjoyed an artist's sweetest pleasure. Then he gloated over the imposition he had practised upon the benevolent stranger, and cried in glee,
'Wasn't he green, Bladergrass? He thought I was dyin' by inches, as well as you. O, O, O!' and laughed and danced, to the admiration of Blade-o'-Grass, without feeling a particle of gratitude for the benevolent instinct which had saved his companion from starvation.
After this fashion did Blade-o'-Grass learn life's lessons, and learn to fight its battles. Deprived of wholesome teaching and wholesome example; believing, from very necessity, that bad was good; without any knowledge of God and His infinite goodness, she, almost a baby-child, went out into the world, in obedience to the law of nature, in search of food. A slice of bread-and-butter was more to her than all the virtues, the exercise of which, as we are taught, bestows the light of eternal happiness. And yet, if earnest men are to be believed, and if there be truth in newspaper columns, the vast machinery around her was quick with sympathy for her, as one of a class whom it is man's duty to lift from the dust. Such struggles for the amelioration (fine word!) of the human race were being made by earnest natures, that it was among the most awful mysteries of the time, how Blade-o'-Grass was allowed to grow up in the ignorance which deprives crime of responsibility; how she was forced to be dead to the knowledge of virtue; how she was compelled to earn the condemnation of men, and to make sorrowful the heart of the Supreme!
MR. MERRYWHISTLE RELIEVES HIMSELF ON THE SUBJECT OF INDISCRIMINATE CHARITY
The name of the man who gave Tom Beadle the shilling was Merrywhistle. He was a bachelor, and he lived in the eastern part of the City, in Buttercup-square, next door to his best friends, the Silvers. Although Buttercup-square was in the east of the City, where the greatest poverty is to be found, and where people crowd upon each other unhealthfully, it was as pretty and comfortable a square as could be found anywhere; and you might live in any house in it and fancy yourself in the country, when you looked out of window. The trees in the square were full of birds' nests, and the singing of the birds of a summer morning was very sweet to the ear.
Mr. Merrywhistle had no trade or profession. When the last census was taken, and the paper was given to him to fill-in, he set himself down as 'Nothing Particular,' and this eccentric definition of himself coming under the eyes of his landlady-who, like every other landlady, was mighty curious about the age, religion, and occupation of her lodgers, and whether they were single, widowed, or divorced men-was retailed by her to her friends. As a necessary consequence, her friends retailed the information to their friends; and for some little time afterwards, they used to ask of the landlady and of each other, jocosely, how Nothing Particular was getting along, and whether he had lately done Anything Particular; and so on. But this mildest of jokes soon died out, and never reached Mr. Merrywhistle's ears. He had an income more than sufficient for his personal wants; but at the year's end not a shilling remained of his year's income. A pale face, a look of distress, a poor woman with a baby in arms, a person looking hungrily in a cook-shop window-any one of these sights was sufficient to melt his benevolent heart, and to draw copper or silver from his pocket. It was said of him that his hands were always in his pockets-a saying which was the occasion of a piece of sarcasm, which grew into a kind of proverb. A lady-resident of Buttercup-square, whose husband was of the parsimonious breed, when speaking of Mr. Merrywhistle's benevolence, said, with a sigh, 'My husband is just like Mr. Merrywhistle; his hands are always in his pockets.' 'Yes, ma'am,' said an ill-natured friend, 'but there the similarity ends. Your husband's hands never come out.' Which produced a lifelong breach between the parties.
Mr. Merrywhistle was in a very disturbed mood this evening. He was haunted by the face of the old man who had been amused, because he had given a poor child, a shilling. The thought of this old man proved the most obstinate of tenants to Mr. Merrywhistle; having got into his mind, it refused to be dislodged. He had never seen this man before, and here, in the most unaccountable manner, he being haunted and distressed by a face which presented itself to his imagination with a mocking expression upon it, because he had been guilty of a charitable act. 'I should like to meet him again,' said Mr. Merrywhistle to himself; 'I'd talk to him!' Which mild determination, hotly expressed, was intended to convey an exceedingly severe meaning. As he could not dislodge the thought of the man from his mind, Mr. Merrywhistle resolved to go to his friends next door, the Silvers, and take tea with them. He went in, and found them, as he expected, just sitting down to tea. Only two of them, husband and wife.
'I am glad you have come in,' said Mrs. Silver to him. Her voice might surely have suggested her name, it was so mild and gentle. But everything about her was the same. Her dress, her quiet manner, her delicate face, her hands, her eyes, where purity dwelt, breathed peace and goodness. She and her sisters (and there are many, thank God!) are the human pearls of the world which is so often called 'erring.'
'How are the youngsters?' asked Mr. Merrywhistle, stirring his tea.
'All well,' answered Mr. Silver; 'you'll stay and see them?'
Mr. Merrywhistle nodded, and proceeded with his tea. The meal being nearly over, Mrs. Silver said, 'Now, friend, tell us your trouble.'
'You see it in my face,' responded Mr. Merrywhistle.
'Yes; I saw it when you entered.'
'You have the gift of divination.'
'Say, the gift of sympathy for those I love.'
Mr. Merrywhistle held out his hand, and she grasped it cordially. Then he told them of the occurrence that took place on the Royal Exchange, and of the singular manner in which he was haunted by the mocking face of the old man who had watched him.
'You have an instinct, perhaps,' said Mrs. Silver, 'that he was one of the men who might have preached at you, if he had had the opportunity, against indiscriminate charity?'
'No, I don't know, I don't know, I really don't know,' replied Mr. Merrywhistle excitedly. 'I think he rather enjoyed it; he seemed to look upon it as an amusing exhibition, for he was almost convulsed by laughter. Laughter! It wasn't laughter. It was a series of demoniac chuckles, that's what it was-demoniac chuckles. But I can't exactly describe what it was that set my blood boiling. It wasn't his demoniac chuckling alone, it was everything about him; his manner, his expression, his extraordinary eyes; one of which looked like the eye of an infuriated bull, as if it were half inclined to fly out of its head at you, and the other as if it were the rightful property of the meekest and mildest of baa-lambs. Then his eye-brows-lapping over as if they were precipices, and as thick as blacking-brushes. Then his face, like a little sour and withered apple. Your pro-indiscriminate-charity men would not have behaved as he did. They would have asked me. How dare I-how dare I? – yes, that is what they would have said-How dare I encourage pauperism by giving money to little boys and girls and ragged men and women, whom I have never seen in my life before, whom I have never heard of in my life before? This fellow wasn't one of them. No, no-no, I say, he wasn't one of them.
