With heavy steps, Dennis wearily plodded homeward. He was oppressed by that deep despondency which follows great fatigue and excitement.
In the southwest he saw a brilliant light. He heard the alarm-bells, and knew there was a fire, but to have aroused him that night it must have come scorchingly close. He reached his dark little room, threw himself dressed on the couch, and slept till nearly noon of the next day.
When he awoke, and realized how the first hours of the Sabbath had passed, he started up much vexed with himself, and after a brief retrospect said: “Such excitements as those of yesterday are little better than a debauch, and I must shun them hereafter. God has blessed and succeeded me, and it is but a poor return I am making. However my unfortunate attachment may end, nothing is gained by moping around in the hours of night. Henceforth let there be an end of such folly.”
He made a careful toilet and sat down to his Sabbath-school lesson.
To his delight he again met Mrs. Leonard, who came to visit her old mission class. She smiled most approvingly, and quoted, “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much.”
He went home with her, and in the evening they all went to church together.
He cried unto the Lord for strength and help, and almost lost consciousness of the service in his earnest prayer for true manhood and courage to go forward to what he feared would be a sad and lonely life. And the answer came; for a sense of power and readiness to do God’s will, and withal a strange hopefulness, inspired him. Trusting in the Divine strength, he felt that he could meet his future now, whatever it might be.
Again the alarm-bells were ringing, and there was a light on the southwest.
“There seems to be a fire over there in the direction of my poor German friend’s house. You remember Mrs. Bruder. I will go and call on them, I think. At any rate I should call, for it is owing to her husband that I won the prize;” and they parted at the church-door.
Christine had left the picture-gallery soon after Dennis’s abrupt departure. Her gay friends had tried in vain to rally her, and rather wondered at her manner, but said, “She is so full of moods of late, you can never know what to expect.”
Her father, with a few indifferent words, left her for his place of business. His hope still was to prevent her meeting Dennis, and to keep up the estrangement that existed.
Christine went home and spent the long hours in bitter revery, which at last she summed up by saying, “I have stamped out his love by my folly, and now his words, ‘I despise you,’ express the whole wretched truth.” Then clenching her little hands she added, with livid lips and a look of scorn: “Since I can never help him (and therefore no one) win earthly greatness, I will never be the humble recipient of it from another. Since his second picture cannot be true of my experience, neither shall the first.”
And she was one to keep such a resolve. The evening was spent, as we know, in singing alone in her studio, this being her favorite, indeed her only way, of giving expression to her feelings. Very late she sought her bed to find but little sleep.
The day of rest brought no rest to her, suggested no hope, no sacred privilege of seeking Divine help to bear up under life’s burdens. To her it was a relic of superstition, at which she chafed as interfering with the usual routine of affairs. She awoke with a headache, and a long miserable day she found it. Sabbath night she determined to have sleep, and therefore took an opiate and retired early.
Mr. Ludolph sat in his library trying to construct some plan by which Christine could be sent to Germany at once.
When Dennis reached the neighborhood of the fire he found it much larger than he supposed, and when he entered Harrison Street, near Mrs. Bruder’s home, he discovered that only prompt action could save the family. The streets were fast becoming choked with fugitives and teams, and the confusion threatened to develop into panic and wide spread danger. The fire was but a block away when he rushed upstairs to the floor which the Bruders occupied. From the way in which blazing brands were flying he knew that there were was not a moment to spare.
He found Mrs. Bruder startled, anxious, but in no way comprehending the situation.
“Quick!” cried Dennis. “Wake and dress the children—pack up what you can lay your hands on and carry—you have no time to do anything more.”
“Ah! mine Gott! vat you mean?”
“Do as I say—there’s no time to explain. Here, Ernst, help me;” and Dennis snatched up one child and commenced dressing it before it could fairly wake. Ernst took up another and followed his example. Mrs. Bruder, recovering from her bewilderment, hastily gathered a few things together, saying in the meantime, “Surely you don’t dink our home burn up?”
“Yes, my poor friend, in five minutes more we must all be out of this building.”
“Oh, den come dis minute! Let me save de schilder;” and, throwing a blanket around the youngest, the frightened woman rushed downstairs, followed by Ernst and his little brother, while Dennis hastened with the last child and the bundle.
Their escape was none too prompt, for the blazing embers were falling to such a degree in the direct line of the fire as to render that position very perilous. But though their progress was necessarily slow, from the condition of the streets, the breadth of the fire was not great at this spot, and they soon reached a point to the west and windward that was safe. Putting the family in charge of Ernst, and telling them to continue westward, Dennis rushed back,
