Fighting the Flames

Chapter Six

“When one is another who is which?”

“Well, boy, what do you want? Have you anything to say to me?”

Mr Auberly turned sharp round on Willie, whose gaze had gone beyond the length of simple curiosity. In fact, he was awe-struck at the sight of such a very tall and very dignified man standing so grimly in the midst of such dreadful devastation.

“Please, sir, I was sent to you, sir, by—”

“Oh, you’re the boy, the son of—that is to say, you were sent to me by your mother,” said Mr Auberly with a frown.

“Well, sir,” replied Willie, hesitating, “I—I—was sent by—by—”

“Ah, I see,” interrupted Mr Auberly with a smile that was meant to be gracious, “you were sent by a fireman; you are not the—the—I mean you’re the other boy.”

Poor Willie, being of a powerfully risible nature, found it hard to contain himself on hearing his own words of the previous evening re-echoed thus unexpectedly. His face became red, and he took refuge in blowing his nose, during which process—having observed the smile on Mr Auberly’s face—he resolved to be “the other boy.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, looking up modestly, “I was sent by a fireman; I am the other boy.”

Mr Auberly smiled again grimly, and said that the fireman was a brave fellow, and that he had saved his daughter’s life, and that he was very glad to do anything that lay in his power for him, and that he understood that Willie was the fireman’s brother; to which the boy replied that he was.

“Well, then, come this way,” continued Mr Auberly, leading Willie into the library of the adjoining house, which his friend had put at his disposal, and seating himself at a writing-table. “You want a situation of some sort—a clerkship, I suppose?”

Willie admitted that his ambition soared to that tremendous height.

“Let me see,” muttered Mr Auberly, taking up a pen and beginning to write; “yes, she will be able to help me. What is your name, boy?”

“Willie, sir.”

“Just so, William; and your surname—your other name?”

“Willders, sir.”

Mr Auberly started, and looked Willie full in the eyes. Willie, feeling that he was playing a sort of double part without being able to avoid it, grew red in the face.

“What did you say, boy?”

“Willders,” replied Willie stoutly.

“Then you’re not the other boy,” said Mr Auberly, laying down his pen, and regarding Willie with a frown.

“Please, sir,” replied Willie, with a look of meekness which was mingled with a feeling of desperation, for his desire to laugh was strong upon him, “please, sir, I don’t rightly know which boy I am.”

Mr Auberly paused for a moment.

“Boy, you’re a fool!”

“Thank ’ee, sir,” said Willie.

This reply went a long way in Mr Auberly’s mind to prove the truth of his assertion.

“Answer me, boy,” said Mr Auberly with an impressive look and tone; “were you sent here by a fireman?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Willie.

“What is his name?”

“Same as mine, sir—Willders.”

“Of course, of course,” said Mr Auberly, a little confused at having put such an unnecessary question. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

This brought the slang phrase, “Does your mother know you’re out?” so forcibly to the boy’s mind, that he felt himself swell internally, and had recourse again to his pocket-handkerchief as a safety-valve.

“Yes, sir,” said he, on recovering his composure; “arter I saw Blazes—Frank, I mean, that’s my brother, sir—I goes right away home to bed. I stops with my mother, sir, an’ she saw me come off here this mornin’, sir. She knows I was comin’ here.”

“Of course; yes, yes, I see,” muttered Mr Auberly, again taking up his pen. “I see; yes, yes; same name—strange coincidence, though; but, after all, there are many of that name in London. I suppose the other boy will be here shortly. Very odd, very odd indeed.”

“Please, sir,” observed Willie, in a gentle tone, “you said I was the other boy, sir.”

Mr Auberly seemed a little annoyed at his muttered words being thus replied to, yet he condescended to explain that there was another boy of the same name whom he expected to see that morning.

“Oh, then there’s another other boy, sir?” said Willie with a look of interest.

“Hold your tongue!” said Mr Auberly in a sharp voice; “you’re a fool, and you’re much too fond of speaking. I advise you to keep your tongue quieter if you wish to get on in life.”

Willie once more sought relief in his pocket-handkerchief, while his patron indited and sealed an epistle, which he addressed to “Miss Tippet, Number 6, Poorthing Lane, Beverly Square.”

“Here, boy, take this to the lady to whom it is addressed—the lane is at the opposite corner of the square—and wait an answer.”

“Am I to bring the answer back to you, sir?” asked Willie with much humility.

“No; the answer is for yourself,” said Mr Auberly testily; “and hark ’ee, boy, you need not trouble me again. That note will get you all you desire.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Willie, making a bow, and preparing to retire; “but please, sir, I don’t very well know, that is to say—ahem!”

“Well, boy?” said the patron sternly.

“Excuse me, sir; I can’t help it, you know; but please, sir, I wish to explain about that other boy—no, that’s me, but the other other boy, you know—”

“Begone, boy!” cried Mr Auberly in a voice so stern that Willie found himself next moment in the street, along which he ran chuckling worse than ever.

A little reflection might have opened Mr Auberly’s eyes to the truth in regard to Willie, but a poor relation was to him a disagreeable subject of contemplation, and he possessed the faculty, in an eminent degree, of dismissing it altogether from his mind. Having care enough on his mind at that time, poor man, he deliberately cast the confusion of the two boys out of his thoughts, and gave himself up to matters more interesting and personal.

We may add here that Mrs Willders was faithful to her promise, and never more addressed her brother-in-law by word or letter. When Willie afterwards told her and Frank of the absurdity of his interview, and of the violent manner in which Mr Auberly had dismissed him when he was going to explain about the “other” boy, his mother thought it best to let things rest as they stood, yet she often wondered in her own quiet way what Mr Auberly would think of her and of the non-appearance of the “other” boy; and she felt convinced that if he only put things together he must come to understand that Willie and Frank were her sons. But Mrs Willders did not know of the before-mentioned happy facility which her kinsman possessed of forgetting poor relations; so, after wondering on for a time, she ceased to wonder or to think about it at all.

Chapter Seven

Thoughts in regard to Men

Miss Emelina Tippet was a maiden lady of pleasing countenance and exceedingly uncertain age.

She was a poor member of a poor branch of an aristocratic family, and feeling an unconquerable desire to breathe, if not the pure unadulterated atmosphere of Beverly Square, at least as much of it as was compatible with a very moderate income, she rented a small house in a very dark and dismal lane leading out of that great centre of refinement.

It is true that Beverly Square was not exactly the “West End,” but there are many degrees of West-endiness, so to speak, in the western neighbourhood of London, and this square was, in the opinion of Miss Tippet, the West-endiest place she knew, because there dwelt in it, not only a very genteel and uncommonly rich portion of the community, but several of her own aristocratic, though distant, relations, among whom was Mr Auberly.

The precise distance of the relationship between them had never been defined, and all records bearing on it having been lost in the mists of antiquity, it could not now be ascertained; but Miss Tippet laid claim to the relationship, and as she was an obliging, good-humoured, chatty, and musical lady, Mr Auberly admitted the claim.

Miss Tippet’s only weakness—for she was indeed a most estimable woman—was a tendency to allow rank and position to weigh too much in her esteem. She had also a sensitive abhorrence of everything “low and vulgar,” which would have been, of course, a very proper feeling had she not fallen into the mistake of considering humble birth lowness, and want of polish vulgarity—a mistake which is often (sometimes even wilfully) made by persons who consider themselves much wiser than Miss Tippet, but who are not wise enough to see a distinct shade of true vulgarity in their own sentiments.

The dark, dismal lane, named Poorthing Lane, besides forming an asylum for decayed and would-be aristocrats, and a vestibule, as it were, to Beverly Square, was a convenient retreat for sundry green-grocers and public-house keepers and small trades-people, who supplied the densely-peopled surrounding district, and even some of the inhabitants of Beverly Square itself, with the necessaries of life. It was also a thoroughfare for the gay equipages of the square, which passed through it daily on their way to and from the adjoining stables, thereby endangering the lives of precocious babies who could crawl, but could not walk away from home, as well as affording food for criticism and scandal, not to mention the leaving behind of a species of secondhand odour of gentility such as coachmen and footmen can give forth.

Miss Tippet’s means being small, she rented a proportionately small residence, consisting of two floors, which were the upper portion of a house, whose ground floor was a toy-shop. The owner of the toy-shop, David Boone, was Miss Tippet’s landlord; but not the owner of the tenement. He rented the whole, and sublet the upper portion. Miss Tippet’s parlour windows commanded a near view of the lodging opposite, into every corner and crevice of which she could have seen, had not the windows been encrusted with impenetrable dirt. Her own domestic arrangements were concealed from view by small green venetian blinds, which rose from below, and met the large venetians which descended from above. The good lady’s bedroom windows in the upper floor commanded a near view—much too near—of a stack of chimneys, between which and another stack, farther over, she had a glimpse of part of the gable end of a house, and the topmost bough of a tree in Beverly Square. It was this prospect into paradise, terrestrially speaking, that influenced Miss Tippet in the choice of her abode.

When William Willders reached the small door of Number 6, Poorthing Lane, and raised his hand to knock, the said door opened as if it had been trained to admit visitors of its own accord, and Miss Matty Merryon issued forth, followed by a bright blue-eyed girl of about twelve years of age.

“Well, boy, was ye comin’ here?” inquired Matty, as the lad stepped aside to let them pass.

“Yes, I was. Does Miss Tippet live here?”

“She does, boy, what d’ye want with her?”

“I want to see her, young ’ooman, so you’d better cut away up an’ tell her a gen’lm’n requests a few words private conversation with her.”

The little girl laughed at this speech, and Matty, addressing Willie as a “dirty spalpeen,” said he had better go with her to a shop first, and she’d then take him back and introduce him to Miss Tippet.

“You see I can’t let ye in all be yer lone, cushla; for what would the neighbours say, you know! I’m only goin’ to the toy-shop, an’ won’t kape ye a minit, for Miss Emma don’t take long to her bargains.”

Willie might probably have demurred to this delay; but on hearing that the blue-eyed girl wanted to make purchases, he at once agreed to the proposal, and followed them into the toy-shop.

David Boone, who stepped out of the back-shop to serve them, was, if we may say so, very unlike his trade. A grave, tall, long-legged, long-nosed, raw-boned, melancholy-looking creature such as he, might have been an undertaker, or a mute, or a sexton, or a policeman, or a horse-guardsman, or even a lawyer; but it was the height of impropriety to have made him a toy-shopman, and whoever did it had no notion whatever of the fitness of things. One could not resist the idea that his clumsy legs would certainly upset the slender wooden toys with which the floor and counters were covered, and his fingers seemed made to break things. The figure of Punch which hung from the ceiling appeared inclined to hit him as he passed to and fro, and the pretty little dolls with the sweet pink faces, and very flaxen hair and cerulean eyes were evidently laughing at him.

Nevertheless, David Boone was a kind-hearted man, very fond of children, and extremely unlike, in some respects, what people imagined him at first sight to be.

“Well, Miss Ward, what can I supply you with to-day?” said he blandly.

“Please, Mr Boone, I want a slate and a piece of slate-pencil.” Emma looked up with a sweet smile at the tall shopman, who looked down upon her with grave benignity, as he produced the articles required.

“D’you kape turpentine?” said Matty, as they were about to quit the shop.

Boone started, and said almost testily, “No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“Sure, there’s no sin in askin’,” replied Matty in surprise at the man’s changed manner.

“Of course—of course not,” rejoined Boone with a slight look of confusion, as he made a sudden assault with his pocket-handkerchief on the cat, which was sleeping innocently in the window; “git out o’ that, you brute; you’re always agoin’ in the winder, capsizin’ things. There! you’ve been an’ sat on the face o’ that ’ere wax doll till you’ve a’most melted it. Out o’ that with you! No, Miss Merryon,” he added, turning to the girl with his wonted urbanity, “I don’t keep turpentine, and I was only surprised you should ask for it in a toy-shop; but you’ll get it of Mr White next door. I don’t believe there’s anythink in the world as he can’t supply to his customers.”

David Boone bowed them out, and then re-entered the back-shop, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

“I don’t like it—I don’t even like to think of it, Gorman,” he said to a big low-browed man who sat smoking his pipe beside the little fireplace, the fire in which was so small that its smoke scarcely equalled in volume that of the pipe he smoked: “No, I don’t like it, and I won’t do it.”

“Well, well, you can please yourself,” said Gorman, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and placing it in his vest pocket as he rose and buttoned his thick pea-jacket up to the chin; “but I’ll tell you what it is, if you are a descendant of the hunter of the far west that you boast so much about, it’s precious little of his pluck that you’ve got; an’ so I tell ’ee to your face, David Boone. All I’ve got to say is, that you’d better be wise and take my advice, and think better of it.”

So saying, Gorman went out, and slammed the door after him.

Meanwhile, Miss Matty Merryon, having purchased a small phial of turpentine, returned to Number 6, and ushered Willie Willders into the presence of her mistress.

Miss Emelina Tippet was neither tall nor stiff, nor angular nor bony; on the contrary, she was little and plump, and not bad-looking. And people often wondered why Miss Tippet was Miss Tippet and was not Mrs Somebody-else. Whatever the reason was, Miss Tippet never divulged it, so we won’t speculate about it here.

“A note, boy, from Mr Auberly?” exclaimed Miss Tippet, with a beaming smile; “give it me—thank you.”

She opened it and read attentively, while Master Willie glanced round the parlour and took mental notes. Miss Emma Ward sat down on a stool in the window, ostensibly to “do sums,” but really to draw faces, all of which bore a strong caricatured resemblance to Willie, at whom she glanced slyly over the top of her slate.

Matty remained standing at the door to hear what the note was about. She did not pretend to busy herself about anything. There was no subterfuge in Matty. She had been Miss Tippet’s confidential servant before entering the service of Mr Auberly, and her extremely short stay in Beverly Square had not altered that condition. She had come to feel that she had a right to know all Miss Tippet’s affairs, and so waited for information.

“Ah!” exclaimed Miss Tippet, still reading, “yes; ‘get him a situation in your brother’s office,’ (oh, certainly, I’ll be sure to get that); ‘he seems smart, I might almost say impu—’ Ahem! Yes, well—.”

“Boy,” said Miss Tippet, turning suddenly to Willie, “your name is William Willders, I believe?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, William, Mr Auberly, my relative, asks me to get you into my brother’s—my brother’s, what’s ’is name—office. Of course, I shall be happy to try. I am always extremely happy to do anything for—yes, I suppose of course you can write, and, what d’ye call it—count—you can do arithmetic?”

“Yes, ma’am,” replied Willie.

“And you can spell—eh? I hope you can spell, Edward, a—I mean Thomas—is it, or William?”

Miss Tippet looked at Willie so earnestly and put this question in tones so solemn that he was much impressed, and felt as if all his earthly hopes hung on his reply, so he admitted that he could spell.

“Good,” continued Miss Tippet. “You are, I suppose, in rather poor circumstances. Is your father poor?”

“He’s dead, ma’am; was drowned.”

“Oh! shocking, that’s very sad. Was your mother drowned, too?”

“No, ma’am, she’s alive and well—at least she’s well for her, but she an’t over strong. That’s why I want to get work, that I may help her; and she wants me to be a clerk in a office, but I’d rather be a fireman. You couldn’t make me a fireman, could you, ma’am?”

At this point Willie caught Miss Ward gazing intently at him over the top of her slate, so he threw her into violent confusion by winking at her.

“No, boy, I can’t make you a fireman. Strange wish—why d’you want to be one?”

“’Cause it’s such jolly fun,” replied Willie; with real enthusiasm, “reg’lar bangin’ crashin’ sort o’ work—as good as fightin’ any day! An’ my brother Frank’s a fireman. Such a one, too, you’ve no notion; six fut four he is, an’ as strong as—oh, why, ma’am, he could take you up in one hand, ma’am, an’ twirl you round his head like an old hat! He was at the fire in Beverly Square last night.”

This speech was delivered with such vehemence, contained so many objectionable sentiments, and involved such a dreadful supposition in regard to the treatment of Miss Tippet’s person, that the worthy lady was shocked beyond all expression. The concluding sentence, however, diverted her thoughts.

“Ah! was he indeed at that sad fire, and did he help to put it out?”

“Sure, an’ he did more than that,” exclaimed Matty, regarding the boy with sudden interest. “If that was yer brother that saved Miss Loo he’s a ra’al man—”

“Saved Loo!” cried Miss Tippet; “was it your brother that saved Loo?”

“Yes, ma’am, it was.”

“Bless him; he is a noble fellow, and I have great pleasure in taking you by the hand for his sake.”

Miss Tippet suited the action to the word, and seized Willie’s hand, which she squeezed warmly. Matty Merryon, with tears in her eyes, embraced him, and said that she only wished she had the chance of embracing his brother, too. Then they all said he must stay to lunch, as it was about lunchtime, and Miss Tippet added that he deserved to have been born in a higher position in life—at least his brother did, which was the same thing, for he was a true what’s-’is-name, who ought to be crowned with thingumyjigs.

Emma, who had latterly been looking at Willie with deepening respect, immediately crowned him with laurels on the slate, and then Matty rushed away for the lunch-tray—rejoicing in the fire, that had sent her back so soon to the old mistress whom she never wanted to leave; that had afforded scope for the display of such heroism, and had brought about altogether such an agreeable state of unwonted excitation.

Just as the party were on the point of sitting down to luncheon, the street-door knocker was applied to the door with an extremely firm touch.

“Miss Deemas!” exclaimed Miss Tippet. “Oh! I’m so glad. Rush, Matty.”

Matty rushed, and immediately there was a sound on the wooden passage as of a gentleman with heavy boots. A moment later, and Matty ushered in a very tall, broad-shouldered, strapping lady; if we may venture to use that expression in reference to one of the fair sex.

Miss Deemas was a sort of human eagle. She had an eagle eye, an aquiline nose, an eagle flounce, and an eagle heart. Going up to Miss Tippet, she put a hand on each of her shoulders, and stooping down, pecked her, so to speak, on each cheek.

“How are you, my dear?” said Miss Deemas, not by any means tenderly; but much in the tone in which one would expect to have one’s money or one’s life demanded.

“Quite well, dear Julia, and so glad to see you. It is so good of you to take me by surprise this way; just at lunch-time, too. Another plate and knife, Matty. This is a little boy—a friend—not exactly a friend, but a—a thingumy, you know.”

“No, I don’t know, Emelina, what is the precise ‘thingumy’ you refer to this time,” said the uncompromising and matter-of-fact Miss Deemas.

“You’re so particular, dear Julia,” replied Miss Tippet with a little sigh; “a what’s-’is-n–, a protégé, you know.”

“Indeed,” said Miss Deemas, regarding Willie with a severe frown, as if in her estimation all protégés were necessarily villains.

“Yes, dear Julia, and, would you believe it, that this boy’s brother-in-law—”

“Brother, ma’am,” interrupted Willie.

“Yes, brother, actually saved my darling’s life last night, at the—the thing in Beverly Square.”

“What ‘darling’s life,’ and what ‘thing’ in Beverly Square?” demanded Miss Deemas.

“What! have you not heard of the fire last night in Beverly Square—my relative, James Auberly—living there with his family—all burnt to ashes—and my sweet Loo, too? A what’s-’is-name was brought, and a brave fireman went up it, through fire and water and smoke. Young Auberly went up before him and fell—heat and suffocation—and saved her in his arms, and his name is Frank, and he’s this boy’s brother-in-law!”