Life in the Red Brigade: London Fire Brigade by R. M. Ballantyne (adult books to read TXT) 📗

“No fear of me being late,” replied the Bloater. “By the way, have you heard of that new method of putting out fires that somebody has invented?”

“I did hear of some nonsensical plan,” replied Joe, with a slight expression of contempt, “but I don’t think it worth while to pay attention to things o’ this sort. There’s nothin’ can beat good cold water.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Joe,” replied his friend gravely. “I have been reading an account of it in the Insurance Guardian, and it seems to me that there is something worth attending to in the new plan. It looks as if there was life in it, for a company is to be got up called the ‘Fire and Water Company.’”

“But what is this new plan?” asked Joe, sending forth a violent puff from his pipe, as if to indicate that it would all end in smoke.

“Well, I’m not sure that I’ve got a correct notion of it myself, but my impression is that carbonic acid gas is the foundation-principle of it. Fire cannot exist in the presence of this gas—wherever it goes extinction of fire is instantaneous, which is more than you can say for water, Joe; for as you know well, fire, when strong enough, can turn that into steam as fast as you can pour it on, and after getting rid of it in this way, blaze up as furious as ever. What this company proposes to do is to saturate water with this carbonic acid gas mixed with nitrogen, and then pour that prepared water on fires. Of course, if much water were required, such a plan would never succeed, but a very small quantity is said to be sufficient. It seems that some testing experiments of a very satisfactory kind have been made recently—so you see, Joe, it is time to be looking out for a new profession!”

“H’m. I’ll stick to the old brigade, at all events till the new company beats us from the field. Perhaps when that happens they’ll enrol some of us to work the—what d’ye call ’em?—soda-water engines. They’ll have engines of course, I suppose?”

“Of course,” replied the Bloater; “moreover, they mean to turn their prepared water to good account when there are no fires to put out. It is said that the proportions of the mixture can be so varied that, with one kind, the pump may be used for the clarification of beer, oils, treacle, quicksilver, and such like, and for the preservation of fruit, meat, milk, etcetera, and with another mixture they propose to ventilate mines and tunnels; water gardens; kill insects on trees and flowers; soften water for domestic uses, and breweries, and manufacture soda-water, seltzer water, and other aerated beverages—”

“Oh, I say, Bob, hold on,” cried Joe; “you seem to forget that my capacity for swallowing is limited.”

“Well, perhaps you’ll get it enlarged enough before long, to swallow all that and a deal more,” said the Bloater, with a half serious air. “Meanwhile I’ll continue to wish all success and prosperity to the Red Brigade—though you do cause a tremendous amount of damage by your floods of water, as we poor insurance companies know. Why, if it were not for the heroes of the salvage corps we should be ruined altogether. It’s my opinion, Joe, that the men of the salvage corps run quite as much risk as your fellows do in going through fire and smoke and working among falling beams and tumbling walls in order to cover goods with their tarpaulins and protect them from water.”

“I admit that the salvage men do their work like heroes,” said Joe; “but if you would read our chief’s report for last year, you would see that we do our best to put out fires with the smallest possible amount of water. Why, we only used about eleven million gallons in the last twelve months—a most insignificant quantity that, for the amount of work done!”

A tinkle of the telegraph bell here cut short the conversation. “Fire, in the Mall, Kensington,” was the signal.

“Get her out, lads!” cried Joe, referring to the engine.

Helmets and hatchets were donned and buckled on in the old style, and quiet jokes or humorous and free-and-easy remarks were uttered in slow, even sleepy tones, while the men acted with a degree of prompt celerity that could not have been excelled had their own lives depended on their speed. In three minutes, as usual, they were off at full gallop. The Bloater—who still longed to follow them as of old, but had other business on hand—wished them “good luck,” and proceeded at a smart pace to his new lodgings.

We must change the scene now, for the men of the Red Brigade do not confine their attentions exclusively to such matters as drilling, fighting, suffering, conquering, and dying. They sometimes marry! Let us look in at this little church where, as a passer-by remarks, “something appears to be going on.”

A tall handsome young man leads to the altar a delicate, beautiful, blooming bride, whose bent head and blushing cheek, and modest mien and dependent air, contrast pleasantly with the gladsome firm countenance, stalwart frame, and self-reliant aspect of the bridegroom.

Looking at them as they stood then, no one could have entertained for a moment the idea that these two had ever united in the desperate and strenuous attempt to put out a fire! Yet so it was. They had, once upon a time, devoted themselves to the extinction of a fire in a cupboard with such enthusiasm that they had been successful not only in putting that fire out, but in lighting another fire, which nothing short of union for life could extinguish!

Joe Dashwood gave away the bride, and he could not help remarking in a whisper to the Bloater, (who was also there in sumptuous attire), that if ever a man was the born image of his father that man was Fred Crashington—an opinion which was heartily responded to by Mrs Maggie Crashington, who, then in the period of life which is described as “fat, fair, and forty,” looked on at the proceedings with intense satisfaction. Mary Dashwood—also fat, fair, and forty—was there too, and if ever a woman congratulated herself on a rosebud having grown into a full blown blush-rose, that woman was Mary.

Besides a pretty large company of well-dressed people, with white favours in their breasts, there was a sprinkling of active men with sailor-like caps, who hung about the outskirts of the crowd, and among these were two or three stout fellows with brass helmets and dirty hands and faces, and wet garments, who had returned from a recent fire just in time to take a look at their comrade and his fair bride.

“Poor Ned, how his kind heart would have rejoiced to see this day!” murmured Joe, brushing his cheek hastily as he retired from the altar.

So, the wedding party left the church, and the firemen returned to their posts of watchfulness and duty.

About the same period that this wedding took place, there was another wedding in the great metropolis to which we would draw the reader’s attention. Not that it was a great one or a splendid one; on the contrary, if it was marked by any unusual peculiarities, these were shabbiness and poverty. The wedding party consisted of only two, besides the bride and bridegroom, and everything was conducted with such quietness, and gravity, and absence of excitement, that it might almost have been mistaken for a funeral on a small scale by any one unacquainted with the ceremonial appertaining thereto.

The happy pair, besides looking very sad, were past the meridian of life. Both were plainly dressed, and each appeared desirous of avoiding observation. The man, in particular, hung his head and moved awkwardly, as if begging forgiveness generally for presuming to appear in the character of a bridegroom. His countenance had evidently never been handsome, but there was a sad subdued look about it—the result, perhaps, of prolonged suffering—which prevented it from being repulsive. He looked somewhat like an invalid, yet his powerful frame and the action of his strong muscular hands were not in keeping with that idea.

The bride, although careworn and middle-aged, possessed a singularly sweet and attractive countenance—all the more attractive that it wore a habitual expression of sadness. It was a sympathetic face, too, because it was the index to a loving, sympathetic, Christian soul, and its ever-varying indications of feeling, lightened and subdued and modified, but never quite removed, the sadness.

The two who composed the remainder of this wedding party were young men, apparently in a higher position of life than the principals. The one was tall and strapping, the other rather small, but remarkably active and handsome. It was evident that they were deeply interested in the ceremony in which they took part, and the smaller of the two appeared to enjoy some humorous reminiscences occasionally, to judge from the expression of his face when his glance chanced to meet that of his tall friend.

As they were leaving the altar, the bridegroom bent down and murmured in a deep soft voice—

“It’s like a dream, Martha. It ain’t easy to believe that such good luck should come to the likes o’ me.”

The bride whispered something in reply, which was inaudible to those who followed.

“Yes, Martha, yes,” returned the bridegroom; “no doubt it is as you put it. But after all, there’s only one of His sayin’s that has gone right home to me. I’ve got it by heart now—‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ ’Twould have bin all up with me long ago but for that, Martha.”

They reached the door at this point, got into a cab, and drove away. The remainder of the wedding party left the little church on foot.

The same evening on which this event took place, the strapping young man and the little active youth sat together at the open window of a comfortable though small parlour, enjoying a cup of tea. The view from the window was limited, but it possessed the charm of variety; commanding as it did, a vista of chimney-pots of every shape and form conceivable—many of which were capped with those multiform and hideous contrivances with which foolish man vainly endeavours to cure smoke.

“Well, Jim,” asked the strapping youth, as he gazed pensively on this prospect, “what d’you think of it?”

“What do you refer to, Bob—our view or the wedding?”

“The wedding, of course.”

“It’s hard to say,” replied Jim, musing. “He seemed to be such an unmitigated scoundrel when we first made his acquaintance that it is difficult to believe he is a changed man now.”

“By which you mean to insinuate, Jim, that the Gospel is not sufficient for out-and-out blackguards; that it is only powerful enough to deal with such modified scoundrels as you and I were.”

“By no means,” replied Jim, with a peculiar smile; “but, d’you know, Bloater, I never can feel that we were such desperate villains as you make us out to have been, when we swept the streets together.”

“Just listen to him!” exclaimed the Bloater, smiting his knee with his fist, “you can’t feel!—what have feelings to do with knowledge? Don’t you know that we were fairly and almost hopelessly in the current, and that we should probably have been swept off the face of the earth by this time if it had not been for that old gentleman with the bald head and the kindly—”

“There, now, Bloater, don’t let us have any more of that, you become positively rabid when you get upon that old gentleman, and you are conceited enough, also, to suppose that all the gratitude in the world has been shovelled into your own bosom. Come, let us return to the point, what do I think of the wedding—well, I think a good deal of it. There is risk, no doubt, but there is that in everything sublunary. I think, moreover, that the marriage is founded on