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Fighting the Flames

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<h3>Chapter Sixteen.</h3> <h4>Willie in a New Light.</h4> Left alone with the fairy, Willie Willders began his duties as sick-nurse, a sphere of action into which he had never thought of being introduced, even in his wildest dreams. He began by asking the fairy if she was all right and comfortable, to which she replied that she was not; upon which he explained that he meant, was she as right and comfortable as could be expected in the circumstances; could he do anything for her, in fact, or get her anything that would make her more comfortable than she was—but the fairy shook her poor head and said, “No.” “Come now, won’t you have somethin’ to eat? What had you for dinner?” said Willie, in a cheery voice, looking round the room, but not discovering any symptoms of food beyond a few empty plates and cups (the latter without handles), and a tea-pot with half a spout. “I had a little bread and butter,” said the fairy. “No tipple?” inquired the nurse. “No, except water.” “Ain’t there none in the house?” “No.” “D’ye git nothin’ better at other times?” inquired Willie in surprise. “Not often. Father is very poor. He was ill for a long time, too, and if it hadn’t been for your kind master I think we should all have starved. He’s better now, but he needs pretty good living to keep him up to his work—for there’s a deal of training to be done, and it wears him out if he don’t get meat. But the pantomimes began and we were getting on better, when the fire came and burnt everything we had almost, so we can’t afford much meat or beer, and I don’t like beer, so I’ve got them persuaded to let me live on bread and butter and water. I would like tea better, because it’s hot, but we can’t afford that.” Here was a revelation! The fairy lived upon bread and butter and water! Willie thought that, but for the interpolation of the butter, it would have borne marvellous resemblance to prison fare. “When had you dinner?” inquired Willie suddenly. “I think about four o’clock.” “An’ can’t you eat nothin’ now?” Again the fairy shook her head. “Nor drink?” “Look if there’s anything in the tea-pot,” said the fairy. Willie looked, shook his head, and said, “Not a drop.” “Any leaves?” “Why, y–yes,” he brought the pot nearer to the candle; “there are a few used-up ones.” “Oh, do pour some hot water into it; but I fear the water is cold, and the fire’s too low to boil it, and I know the coals are done; but father gets paid his salary to-morrow, and he’ll give me some tea then. He’s very kind to me, father is, and so is Jim.” She sighed as she spoke, and shut her eyes. “Ziza,” said Willie in a careless tone, “you won’t object to my leavin’ you for a few minutes; only a few; I want to get a little fresh air, an’ see what sort of a night it is; I won’t be long gone.” Ziza, so far from objecting, said that she was used to being left alone for long, long hours at a time, and wouldn’t mind it. So Willie put the candle nearer to her bedside, placed a tea-cup of water within reach, went out, shut the door softly behind him, groped his way through the passage and up the stair, and got into the street. That day his eccentric employer had paid him his first month’s wage, a sovereign, with many complimentary remarks as to his usefulness. The golden coin lay in his pocket. It was the first he had ever earned. He had intended to go straight home and lay the shining piece in his mother’s lap, for Willie was a peculiar boy, and had some strange notions in regard to the destination of “first-fruits.” Where he had got them nobody could tell. Perhaps his mother knew, but nobody ever questioned her upon the point. Taking this gold piece from his pocket, he ran into the nearest respectable street, and selected there the most respectable grocer’s shop, into which he entered, and demanded a pound of the shopman’s best tea, a pound of his best sugar, a pound of his best butter, a cut of his best bacon, and one of his best wax-candles. Willie knew nothing about relative proportion in regard to such things; he only knew that they were usually bought and consumed together. The shopman looked at the little purchaser in surprise, but as Willie emphatically repeated his demands he gave him the required articles. On receiving the sovereign he looked twice at Willie, rung the piece of money three times on the counter, and then returned the change. Gathering the packages in his arms, and putting the candle between his vest and bosom, he went into a baker’s shop, purchased a loaf, and returned to the “subterraneous grotto” laden like the bee. To say that the fairy was surprised when he displayed these things, would be a feeble use of language. She opened her large eyes until Willie begged her in alarm not to open them wider for fear they should come out, at which sally she laughed, and then, being weak, she cried. After that she fell in with her nurse’s humour, and the two proceeded to “have a night of it.” Ziza said she’d be a real fairy and tell him what to do, and Willie said he’d be a gnome or a he-fairy and do it. At the outset Willie discovered that he had forgotten coals, but this was rectified by another five minutes’ airing, and a rousing fire was quickly roaring in the chimney, while the kettle sang and spluttered on it like a sympathetic thing, as no doubt it was. Willie cleared the small table that stood at the invalid’s bed side, and arranged upon it the loaf, the tea-pot, two cracked tea-cups, the butter and sugar, and the wax-candle—which latter was stuck into a quart bottle in default of a better candle-stick. “Now, ain’t that jolly?” said the nurse, sitting down and rubbing his hands. “Very!” replied the patient, her eyes sparkling with delight. “It’s so like a scene in a play,” continued Willie. “Only much more real,” suggested the fairy. “Now, then, Ziza, have a cup o’ tea, fresh from the market o’ Chiny, as your dad would say, if he was sellin’ it by auction. He’s a knowin’ codger your dad is, Ziza. There. I knowed I forgot somethin’ else—the cream!” “I don’t mind it, indeed I don’t,” said Ziza earnestly. Willie had started up to run out and rectify this omission, but on being assured that the fairy liked tea almost as well without as with cream, and that there was no cream to be got near at hand, he sat down again and continued to do the honours of the table. First he made the fairy sit up in bed, and commented sadly on her poor thin neck as she did it, observing that she was nothing better than a skeleton in a skin. Then he took off his own jacket and put it on her shoulders, tying the arms round her neck. Next he placed a piece of board in front of her, saying that it was a capital tray, and on this he arranged the viands neatly. “Now, then, go at it, Ziza,” he said, when all was arranged. Ziza, who received his attentions with looks that were wonderfully gleeful for one in her weak state of health, went at it with such vigour that the bread was eaten and the tea drunk in a few minutes, and the supply had to be renewed. When she was in the middle of her second round of buttered toast (for Willie had toasted the bread), she stopped suddenly. “Why don’t you go on?” asked Willie. “Because you have not eaten or drunk one mouthful yet.” “But I’m lookin’ at you, and ain’t that better? Howsever, if ye won’t go on, I’ll not keep you back,” and with that Willie set to work, and, being uncommonly hungry, did what he styled “terrible execution among the wittles.” For some time the nurse and patient ate in comparative silence, but by degrees they began to talk, and as they became more confidential their talk became more personal. “D’you like bein’ a fairy?” said Willie, after a lull in the conversation. “No, I don’t,” replied Ziza. “Why not?” “Because—because—I don’t like the kind of things we have to do, and—and—in short, I don’t like it at all, and I often pray God to deliver me from it.” “That’s strange, now,” said Willie, “I would have thought it great fun to be a fairy. I’d rather be a little clown or a he-fairy myself, now, than anything else I know of, except a fireman.” “A fireman, Willie?” “Yes, a fireman. My brother, Blaz—a—Frank, I mean, is one, and he saved the lives of some people not long since.” Of course Willie here diverged into a graphic account of the fire in Beverly Square, and, seeing that Ziza listened with intense earnestness, he dilated upon every point, and went with special minuteness into the doings of Frank. When he concluded, Ziza heaved a very deep sigh and closed her eyes. “I’ve tired you, Ziza,” exclaimed Willie, jumping up, with a look of anxiety, and removing the tea-board and jacket, as the child slipped down under the clothes. He asked if she wanted to go to sleep. “Yes, for I’m very tired,” she sighed languidly; then added, “but please read to me a little first.” “What book am I to read you?” said Willie, looking round the room, where no book of any kind was to be seen. “Here, it’s under the pillow.” Willie put his hand under the pillow and pulled out a small pocket-Bible. “Read the third chapter of Saint John’s Gospel,” said the child, closing her eyes. Willie read in the monotonous tones of a schoolboy’s voice until he came to the sixteenth verse, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “Stop at that verse,” whispered Ziza. “I’ll go to sleep now.” Her deep breathing soon proclaimed that she was in the land of dreams, so Willie removed the candle a little further away from her, and then, resting his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, began to read the Bible. He turned over a few pages without much intention of finding any particular place, for he was beginning to feel sleepy. The first words his eyes fell upon were, “Blessed are they that consider the poor.” He roused up a little at this, and read the verse again, for he connected it with the fact that the fairy was poor. Then he pondered it for some time, and, falling asleep, dropt his head on the Bible with such force that he woke up for a little and tried to read again, but do what he would he could not get beyond that verse; finally he gave up the attempt, and, laying his forehead down upon it, quickly fell sound asleep. In this state the couple were discovered an hour or two later by Messrs Cattley senior and junior on their return from the theatre. “Inscrutable mysteries! say, what is this?” exclaimed the elder clown, advancing into the room on tiptoe. Apostrophising his eye and one Betty Martin, the younger clown said that it was a “rare go and no mistake,” whereupon his father laid his hand on Willie’s shoulder and gently shook him. “Eh! another cup, Ziza?” exclaimed the self-accused nurse, as he put out his hand to seize the tea-pot. “Hallo! I thought it was the fairy,” he added, looking up with a sleepy smile; “I do believe I’ve gone and fell asleep.” “Why, lad, where got ye all those things?” inquired the senior Cattley, laying aside his cloak and cap, and speaking in a low tone, for Ziza was still sleeping soundly. “Well, I got ’em,” replied Willie in a meditative tone, “from a friend of mine—a very partikler friend o’ mine—as declines to let me mention his name, so you’ll have to be satisfied with the wittles and without the name of the wirtuous giver. P’r’aps it was a dook, or a squire, or a archbishop as did it. Anyway his name warn’t Walker. See now, you’ve bin an’ woke up the fairy.” The sick child moved as he spoke, but it was only to turn, without awaking, on her side. “Well, lad,” said the clown, sitting down and looking wistfully in the face of his daughter, “you’ve got your own reasons for not tellin’ me—mayhap I’ve a pretty good guess—anyhow I say God bless him, for I do b’lieve he’s saved the child’s life. I’ve not seen her sleep like that for weeks. Look at her, Jim; ain’t she like her old self?” “Yes, father, she don’t need no paint and flour to make a fairy on her just now. She’s just like what she was the last time I seed her go up in a gauze cloud to heaven, with red and blue fire blazin’ all round her.” “I’ll bid ye good-night now,” said Willie, buttoning up his jacket to the chin, and pulling his cap down on his brows with the air of a man who has a long walk before him. “You’re off, are you—eh?” said the elder clown, rising and taking Willie by the hand, “well, you’re a good lad. Thank’ee for comin’ here an’ takin’ care of Ziza. My subterranean grotto ain’t much to boast of, but such as it is you’re welcome to it at all times. Good-night.” “Good-night,” said Willie; “good-night, Jim.” Jim replied good-night heartily, and then Willie stepped into the dark passage. He glanced back at the fairy before shutting the door, but her eyes were closed, so he said good-night to her in his heart, and went home. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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