Barriers Burned Away Part 54

What a rush of memories came over him as he looked around the familiar place! There was the spot on which he had stood and asked for the love that he had valued more than life. There stood the easel on which, through Christine's gifted touch, his painted face had pleaded with scarcely less eloquence, till he blotted it out with his own hand. In memory of it all his heart again failed him, and he sighed, "She will never love me."

But there was no time for sentiment. He called loudly: "Miss Ludolph, awake! awake! for your life!"

There was no answer. "She must be gone," he said. The front room, facing toward the west, he knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going through the pa.s.sage, he knocked loudly, and called again; but in the silence that followed he heard his own watch tick, and his heart beat.

He pushed the door open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine, and looked timidly in. Even in that thrilling hour of peril and anxiety, his eye was enraptured by the beauty of the room. Not only was it furnished with the utmost luxuriance, but everything spoke of a quaint and cultured taste, from the curious marble clock and bronze on the mantel, even to the pattern of the Turkey carpet on which the glare of the fire, as it glinted through the shutters, played faintly. One of the most marked features, however, was an exquisite life-size statue of Diana at the foot of the bed, grasping her bow with one hand, and in the act of seizing an arrow with the other, as if aroused to self-defence. When Dennis first saw it, he was so startled by its lifelike att.i.tude that he stepped back into the pa.s.sage. But, with all the beauty of the room, it was utterly pagan; not a single thing suggested Christian faith or a knowledge of the true G.o.d. With the exception of its modern air, it might just as well have been the resting-place of a Greek or Roman maiden of rank.

Rea.s.sured, he timidly advanced again, and then for the first time, between the two marble statuettes holding back the curtains of the bed, saw Christine, but looking more white and deathlike than the marble itself.

She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined, streamed over the pillow; one fair round arm, from which her night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon her face and neck with the strangest and most weird effect.

So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, and Dennis, in his overwrought state, thought that she was. For a moment his heart stood still, and his tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused him.

Approaching softly he said, in an awed whisper (he seemed powerless to speak louder), "Miss Ludolph!--Christine!"

But the light of the coming fire played and flickered over the still, white face, that never before had seemed so strangely beautiful.

"Miss Ludolph!--Oh, Christine, awake!" cried Dennis, louder.

To his wonder and unbounded perplexity, he saw the hitherto motionless lips wreathe themselves into a lovely smile, but otherwise there was no response, and the ghostly light played and flickered on, dancing on temple, brow, and snowy throat, and clasping the white arm in wavy circlets of gold. It was all so weird and strange that he was growing superst.i.tious, and losing faith in his own senses. He could not know that she was under the influence of an opiate, and that his voice of all others could, like a faint echo, find access to her mind so deeply sunk in lethargy.

But a louder and nearer explosion, like a warning voice, made him wholly desperate; and he roughly seized her hand, determining to dispel the illusion, and learn the truth at once.

Christine's blue eyes opened wide with a bewildered stare; a look of the wildest terror came into them, and she started up and shrieked, "Father! father!"

Then turning toward the as yet unknown invader, she cried, piteously: "Oh, spare my life! Take everything; I will give you anything you ask, only spare my life."

She evidently thought herself addressing a ruthless robber.

Dennis retreated toward the door the moment she awakened; and this somewhat rea.s.sured her.

In the firm, quiet tone that always calms excitement he replied, "I only ask you to give me your confidence, Miss Ludolph, and to join with me, Dennis Fleet, in my effort to save your life."

"Dennis Fleet! Dennis Fleet! save my life! Oh, ye G.o.ds, what does it all mean?" and she pa.s.sed her hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if to brush away the wild fancies of a dream.

"Miss Ludolph, as you love your life arouse yourself and escape! The city is burning!"

"I don't believe it!" she cried, in an agony of terror and anger.

"Leave the room! How dare you! You are not Dennis Fleet; he is a white man, and you are black! You are an impostor! Leave quick, or my father will come and take your life! Father! father!"

Dennis without a word stepped to the window, tore aside the curtain, threw open the shutters, and the fire filled the room with the glare of noonday. At that moment an explosion occurred which shook the very earth. Everything rattled, and a beautiful porcelain vase fell cras.h.i.+ng to the floor.

Christine shrieked and covered her face with her hands.

Dennis approached the bedside, and said in a gentle, firm tone that she knew to be his: "Miss Ludolph, I _am_ Mr. Fleet. My face is blackened through smoke and dust, as is every one's out in the streets to-night. You know something of me, and I think you know nothing dishonorable. Can you not trust me? Indeed you must; your life depends upon it!"

"Oh, pardon me, Mr. Fleet!" she cried, eagerly. "I am not worthy of this, but now that I know you, I do trust you from the depth of my soul!"

"Prove it then by doing just as I bid you," he replied, in a voice so firm and prompt that it seemed almost stern. Retreating to the door, he continued: "I give you just five minutes in which to make your toilet and gather a light bundle of your choicest valuables. Dress in woollen throughout, and dress warmly. I will see that the servants are aroused. Your father is on the south side, and cannot reach you. You must trust in G.o.d and what I can do for you."

"I must trust to you _alone_," she said. "Please send my maid to me."

Mr. Ludolph had sipped his wine during the evening, and his servants had sipped, in no dainty way, something stronger, and therefore had not awakened readily. But the uproar in the streets had aroused them, and Dennis found them scuttling down the upper stairs in a half-clad state, each bearing a large bundle, which had been made up without regard to _meum_ and _tuum_.

"Och, murther! is the world burning up?" cried the cook.

"Be still, ye howlin' fool," said the cool and travelled maid. "It's only von big fire!"

"Go to your mistress and help her, quick!" cried Dennis.

"Go to my meestress! I go to de street and save my life."

"Oh, Janette!" cried Christine. "Come and help me!"

"I am meeserable zat I cannot. I must bid mademoiselle quick adieu,"

said the heartless creature, still keeping up the veneer of French politeness.

Dennis looked through the upper rooms and was satisfied that they were empty. Suddenly a piercing shriek from Christine sent him flying to her room. As he ran he heard her cry, "Oh, Mr. Fleet! come! help!"

To go back a little (for on that awful night events marched as rapidly as the flames, and the experience of years was crowded into hours, and that of hours into moments), Christine had sought as best she could to obey Dennis's directions, but she was sadly helpless, having been trained to a foolish dependence on her maid. She had accomplished but little when she heard a heavy step in the room. Looking up, she saw a strange man regarding her with an evil eye.

"What do you want?" she faltered.

"You, for one thing, and all you have got, for another," was the brutal reply.

"Leave this room!" she cried, in a voice she vainly tried to render firm.

"Not just yet," he answered, with a satanic grin. She sought to escape by him with the loud cry that Dennis heard, but the ruffian planted his big grimy hand in the delicate frill of her night-robe where it clasped her throat, and with a coa.r.s.e laugh said: "Not so fast, my dainty!"

Trembling and half fainting (for she had no physical courage), she cried for Dennis, and never did knightly heart respond with more brave and loving throb to the cry of helpless woman than his. He came with almost the impetus of a thunderbolt, and the man, startled, looked around, and catching a glimpse of Dennis's blazing eyes, dropped his hold on Christine, and shrank and cowered from the blow he could not avert. Before his hand could instinctively reach the pistol it sought, there was a thud, and he fell like a log to the floor. Then, springing upon him, Dennis took away his weapons, and, seizing him by the collar of his coat, dragged him backward downstairs and thrust him into the street. Pointing his own pistol at him, he said, "If you trouble us again, I will shoot you like a dog!"

The villain slunk off, and finding some kindred spirits sacking a liquor-store not far off, he joined the orgy, seeking to drown his rage in rum, and he succeeded so effectually that he lay in the gutter soon after. The escaping mult.i.tude trampled over him, and soon the fire blotted out his miserable existence, as it did that of so many who rendered themselves powerless by drink.

When Dennis returned he found Christine panting helplessly on a chair.

"Oh, dress! dress!" he cried. "We have not a moment to spare."

The sparks and cinders were falling about the house, a perfect storm of fire. The roof was already blazing, and smoke was pouring down the stairs.

At his suggestion she had at first laid out a heavy woollen dress and Scotch plaid shawl. She nervously sought to put on the dress, but her trembling fingers could not fasten it over her wildly throbbing bosom.

Dennis saw that in the terrible emergency he must act the part of a brother or husband, and springing forward he a.s.sisted her with the dexterity he had learned in childhood.

Just then a blazing piece of roof, borne on the wings of the gale, crashed through the window, and in a moment the apartment, that had seemed like a beautiful casket for a still more exquisite jewel, was in flames.

Hastily wrapping Christine in the blanket shawl, he s.n.a.t.c.hed her, crying and wringing her hands, into the street.

Holding his hand she ran two or three blocks with all the speed her wild terror prompted; then her strength began to fail, and she pantingly cried that she could run no longer. But this rapid rush carried them out of immediate peril, and brought them into the flying throng pressing their way northward and westward. Wedged into the mult.i.tude they could only move on with it in the desperate struggle forward. But fire was falling about them like a meteoric shower.

Suddenly Christine uttered a sharp cry of pain. She had stepped on a burning cinder, and then realized for the first time, in her excitement, that her feet were bare.

"Oh, what shall I do?" she cried piteously, limping and leaning heavily on Dennis's arm.