Now it was at this critical moment that I chanced to come upon the scene.
I had just ascertained from the brass plate on the door that Dr McTougall dwelt there, and was thinking what an ugly unromantic name that was for a pretty girl as I descended the steps, when Dumps’s first yell broke upon my astonished ears. I recognised the voice at once, though I must confess that the second yell from the interior of the watering-pan perplexed me not a little, but the hideous clatter with which it was associated, and the sudden bursting out of flames in the drawing-room, drove all thoughts of Dumps instantly away.
My first impulse was to rush to the nearest fire-station; but a wild shouting in the lobby of the house arrested me. I rang the bell violently. At the same moment I heard the report of a pistol, and a savage curse, as a bullet came crashing through the door and went close past my head. Then I heard a blow, followed by a groan. This was succeeded by female shrieks overhead, and the violent undoing of the bolts, locks, and chains of the front door.
Thought is quick. Burglary flashed into my mind! A villainous-looking fellow leaped out as the door flew open. I recognised him instantly as the man who had sold Dumps to me. I put my foot in front of him. He went over it with a wild pitch, and descended the steps on his nose!
I was about to leap on him when a policeman came tearing round the corner, just in time to receive the stunned Brassey with open arms, as he rose and staggered forward.
“Just so. Don’t give way too much to your feelings! I’ll take care of you, my poor unfortunate fellow,” said the policeman, as a brother in blue came to his assistance.
Already one of those ubiquitous creatures, a street-boy, had flown to the fire-station on the wings of hope and joy, and an engine came careering round the corner as I turned to rush up the stairs, which were already filled with smoke.
I dashed in the first door I came to. A lady, partially clothed, stood there pale as death, and motionless.
“Quick, madam! descend! the house is on fire!” I gasped in sharp sentences as I seized her. “Where is your—your (she looked young) sister?” I cried, as she resisted my efforts to lead her out.
“I’ve no sister!” she shrieked.
“Your daughter, then! Quick, direct me!”
“Oh! my darling!” she cried, wringing her hands.
“Where?” I shouted in desperation, for the smoke was thickening.
“Up-stairs,” she screamed, and rushed out, intending evidently to go up.
I caught her round the waist and forced her down the stairs, thrust her into the arms of an ascending fireman, and then ran up again, taking three steps at a time. The cry of a child attracted me. I made for a door opposite, and burst it open. The scene that presented itself was striking. Out of four cribs and a cradle arose five cones of bed-clothes, with a pretty little curly head surmounting each cone, and ten eyes blazing with amazement. A tall nurse stood erect in the middle of the floor with outstretched arms, glaring.
Instantly I grasped a cone in each arm and bore it from the room. Blinded with smoke, I ran like a thunderbolt into the arms of a gigantic fireman.
“Take it easy, sir. You’ll do far more work if you keep cool. Straight on to front room! Fire-escape’s there by this time.”
I understood, and darted into a front room, through the window of which the head of the fire-escape entered at the same moment, sending glass in splinters all over us. It was immediately drawn back a little, enabling me to throw up the window-sash and thrust the two children into the arms of another fireman, whose head suddenly emerged from the smoke that rose from the windows below. I could see that the fire was roaring out into the street, and lighting up hundreds of faces below, while the steady clank of engines told that the brigade was busily at work fighting the flames. But I had no time to look or think. Indeed, I felt as if I had no power of volition properly my own, but that I acted under the strong impulse of another spirit within me.
Darting back towards the nursery I met the first fireman dragging with his right hand the tall nurse, who seemed unreasonably to struggle against him, while in his left arm he carried two of the children, and the baby by its night-dress in his teeth.
I saw at a glance that he had emptied the nursery, and turned to search for another door. During the whole of this scene—which passed in a few minutes—a feeling of desperate anxiety possessed me as to the fate of the young lady to whom I had given up my doggie. I felt persuaded she slept on the same floor with the children, and groped about the passage in search of another door. By this time the smoke was so dense that I was all but suffocated. A minute or two more and it would be too late. I could not see. Suddenly I felt a door and kicked it open. The black smoke entered with me, but it was still clear enough inside for me to perceive the form of a girl lying on the floor. It was she!
“Miss McTougall!” I shouted, endeavouring to rouse her; but she had fainted. Not a moment now to lose. A lurid tongue of flame came up the staircase. I rolled a blanket round the girl—head and all. She was very light. In the excitement of the moment I raised her as if she had been a child, and darted back towards the passage, but the few moments I had lost almost cost us our lives. I knew that to breathe the dense smoke would be certain suffocation, and went through it holding my breath like a diver. I felt as if the hot flames were playing round my head, and smelt the singeing of my own hair. Another moment and I had reached the window, where the grim but welcome head of the escape still rested. With a desperate bound I went head first into the shoot, taking my precious bundle along with me.
A fireman chanced to be going down the shoot at the time, carefully piloting one of the maids who had been rescued from the attics, and checking his speed with outspread legs. Against him I canonned with tremendous force, and sent him and his charge in a heap to the bottom.
This was fortunate, for the pace at which I must have otherwise come down would have probably broken my neck. As it was, I felt so stunned that I nearly lost consciousness. Still I retained my senses sufficiently to observe a stout elderly little man in full evening dress, with his coat slit up behind to his neck, his face half-blackened, and his shaggy hair flying wildly in all directions—chiefly upwards. Amid wild cheering from the crowd I confusedly heard the conversation that followed.
“They’re all accounted for now, sir,” said a policeman, who supported me.
The elderly gentleman had leaped forward with an exclamation of earnest thankfulness, and unrolled the blanket.
“Not hurt! No, thank God. Lift her carefully now. To the same house.—And who are you?” he added, turning and looking full at me as I leaned in a dazed condition on the fireman’s shoulder. I heard the question and saw the speaker, but could not reply.
“This is the gen’leman as saved two o’ the child’n an’ the young lady,” said the tall fireman, whom I recognised as the one into whose bosom I had plunged on the upper floor.
“Ay, an’ he’s the gen’leman,” said another fireman, “who shoved your missus, sir, into my arms, w’en she was bent on runnin’ up-stairs.”
“Is this so?” said the little gentleman, stepping forward and grasping my hand.
Still I could not speak. I felt as if the whole affair were a dream, and looked on and listened with a vacant smile.
Just at that moment a long, melancholy wail rose above the roaring of the fire and clanking of the engines.
The cry restored me at once.
“Dumps! my doggie!” I exclaimed; and, bursting through the crowd, rushed towards the now furiously-burning house, but strong hands restrained me.
“What dog is it?” asked the elderly gentleman. A man, drenched, blackened, and bloodstained, whom I had not before observed, here said—
“A noo dog, sir, Dumps by name, come to us this wery day. We putt ’im in the scullery for the night.”
Again I made a desperate effort to return to the burning house, but was restrained as before.
“All right, sir,” whispered a fireman in a confidential tone, “I know the scullery. The fire ain’t got down there yet. Your dog can only have bin damaged by water as yet. I’ll save ’im sir, never fear.”
He went off with a quiet little nod that did much to comfort me. Meanwhile the elderly gentleman sought to induce me to leave the place and obtain refreshment in the house of a friendly neighbour, who had taken in his family.
“You need rest, my dear sir,” he said; “come, I must take you in hand. You have rendered me a service which I can never repay. What? Obstinate! Do you know that I am a doctor, sir, and must be obeyed?”
I smiled, but refused to move until the fate of Dumps was ascertained.
Presently the fireman returned with my doggie in his arms.
Poor Dumps! He was a pitiable sight. Tons of hot water had been pouring on his devoted head, and his shaggy, shapeless coat was so plastered to his long, little body, that he looked more like a drowned weazel than a terrier. He was trembling violently, and whined piteously, as they gave him to me; nevertheless, he attempted to wag his tail and lick my hands. In both attempts he failed. His tail was too wet to wag—but it wriggled.
“He’d have saved himself, sir,” said the man who brought him, “only there was a rope round his neck, which had caught on a coal-scuttle and held him. He’s not hurt, sir, though he do seem as if some one had bin tryin’ to choke him.”
“My poor doggie!” said I, fondling him.
“He won’t want washin’ for some time to come,” observed one of the bystanders.
There was a laugh at this.
“Come; now the dog is safe you have no reason for refusing to go with me,” said the elderly gentleman, who, I now understood, was the master of the burning house.
As we walked away he asked my name and profession, and I thought he smiled with peculiar satisfaction when I said I was a student of medicine.
“Oh, indeed!” he said; “well—we shall see. But here we are. This is the house of my good friend Dobson. City man—capital fellow, like all City men—ahem! He has put his house at my disposal at this very trying period of my existence.”
“But are you sure, Dr McTougall, that all the household is saved?” I asked, becoming more thoroughly awake to the tremendous reality of the scene through which I had just passed.
“Sure! my good fellow, d’you think I’d be talking thus quietly to you if I were not sure? Yes, thanks to you and the firemen, under God, there’s not a hair of their heads injured.”
“Are you—I beg pardon—are you quite sure? Have you seen Miss McTougall since she—”
“Miss McTougall!” exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh. “D’you mean my little Jenny by that dignified title?”
“Well, of course, I did not know her name, and she is not very large; but I brought her down the shoot with such violence that—”
An explosion of laughter from the doctor stopped me as I entered a large library, the powerful lights of which at first dazzled me.
“Here, Dobson, let me introduce you to the man who has saved my whole family, and who has mistaken Miss Blythe for my Jenny!—Why, sir,” he continued, turning to me, “the bundle you brought down so unceremoniously is only my governess. Ah! I’d give twenty thousand pounds down on the spot if she were only my daughter. My Jenny will be a lucky woman if she grows up to be like her.”
“I congratulate you, Mr Mellon,” said the City man, shaking me warmly by the hand.
“You have acted with admirable promptitude—which is most important at a fire—and they tell me that the header you took into the escape, with Miss Blythe in your arms, was the finest acrobatic feat that has been seen off the stage.”
“I say, Dobson, where have you stowed my wife and the children? I want to introduce him to them.”
“In the dining-room,” returned the City man. “You see, I thought it would be more agreeable that they should be all together until their nerves are calmed, so I had mattresses, blankets, etcetera, brought down. Being a bachelor, as you know, I could do nothing more than place the wardrobes of my domestics at the disposal of the ladies. The things are not, indeed, a very good fit, but—this way, Mr Mellon.”
The City man, who was tall and handsome, ushered his guests into what he styled his hospital, and there, ranged in a row along the wall, were five shakedowns, with a child on each. Seldom have I beheld a finer sight than the sparkling lustre of their ten still glaring eyes! Two pleasant young domestics were engaged in feeding the smaller ones with jam and pudding. We arrange the words advisedly, because the jam was, out of all proportion, too much for the pudding. The elder children were feeding themselves with the same materials, and in the same relative proportions. Mrs McTougall, in a blue cotton gown with white spots, which belonged to the housemaid, reclined on a sofa; she was deadly pale, and the expression of horror was not quite removed from her countenance.
Beside her, administering restoratives, sat Miss Blythe, in a chintz dress belonging to the cook, which was ridiculously too large for her. She was dishevelled and flushed, and looked so pleasantly anxious about Mrs McTougall that I almost forgave her having robbed me of my doggie.
“Miss Blythe, your deliverer!” cried the little doctor, who seemed to delight in blowing my trumpet with the loudest possible blast; “my dear, your preserver!”
I bowed in some confusion, and stammered something incoherently. Mrs McTougall said something else, languidly, and Miss Blythe rose and held out her hand with a pleasant smile.
“Well, if this isn’t one of the very jolliest larks I ever had!” exclaimed Master Harry from his corner, between two enormous spoonfuls.
“Hah!” exclaimed Master Jack.
He could say no more. He was too busy!
We all laughed, and, much to my relief, general attention was turned to the little ones.
“You young scamps!—the ‘lark’ will cost me some thousands of pounds,” said the doctor.
“Never mind, papa. Just go to the bank and they’ll give you as much as you want.”
“More pooding!” demanded Master Job. The pleasant-faced domestic hesitated.
“Oh! give it him. Act the banker on this occasion, and give him as much as he wants,” said the doctor.
“Good papa!” exclaimed the overjoyed Jenny; “how I wis’ we had a house on fire every night!”
Even Dolly crowed with delight at this, as if she really appreciated the idea, and continued her own supper with increased fervour.
Thus did that remarkable family spend the small hours of that morning, while their home was being burned to ashes.
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