Barriers Burned Away Part 64

He followed her, however, with much a.s.sumed humility. When in the middle of the room, who should meet him squarely but Bill Cronk?

"h.e.l.lo!" he roared, giving Dennis a slap on his back that startled even the hungry, apathetic people at the tables.

Dennis was now almost desperate. Glad as he was to see Cronk, he felt that he was gathering around him a company as incongruous as was the supper he had brought home. If Yahcob Bunk or even the red-nosed bartender had appeared, to claim him as brother, he would scarcely have been surprised. He naturally thought that the Baroness Ludolph might hesitate before entering such a circle of intimates. But he was not guilty of the meanness of cutting a humble friend, even though he saw the eyes of Christine resting on him. In his embarra.s.sment, however, he held out the washbasin in his confused effort to shake hands, and said, heartily, "Why, Cronk, I am glad you came safely out of it."

"Is this gentleman a friend of yours?" asked Christine, with inimitable grace.

"Yes!" said Dennis, firmly, though coloring somewhat. "He once rendered me a great kindness--"

"Well, miss, you bet your money on the right hoss that time,"

interrupted Bill. "If I hain't a friend of his'n, I'd like to know where you'll find one; though I did kick up like a cussed ole mule when he knocked the bottle out of my hand. Like enough if he hadn't I wouldn't be here."

"Won't you present me, Mr. Fleet?" said Christine, with an amused twinkle in her eye.

"Mr. Cronk," said Dennis (who had now reached that state of mind when one becomes reckless), "this lady is Miss Ludolph, and, I hope I may venture to add, another friend of mine."

She at once put out her hand, that seemed like a snowflake in the great h.o.r.n.y paw of the drover, and said, "Indeed, Mr. Cronk, I will permit no one to claim stronger friendship to Mr. Fleet than mine."

"I can take any friend of Mr. Fleet's to my buzzom at once," said Bill, speaking figuratively, but Christine instinctively shrank nearer Dennis.

In talking with men, Bill used the off-hand vernacular of his calling, but when addressing ladies, he evidently thought that a certain style of metaphor bordering on sentiment was the proper thing. But Christine said, "As a friend of Mr. Fleet's you shall join our party at once"; and she led them to the further end of the room, where at a table sat Dr. Arten, Professor and Mrs. Leonard, Ernst, and the little Bruders, who at the prospect of more eating were wide awake again. After the most hearty greetings they were seated, and she took her place by the side of the little children in order to wait on them. Few more remarkable groups sat down together, even in that time of chaos and deprivation. Professor Leonard was without vest or collar, and sat with coat b.u.t.toned tight up to his chin to hide the defect. He had lost his scholarly gold-rimmed spectacles; and a wonderful pair of goggles bestrode his nose in their place. Mrs. Leonard was lost in the folds of an old delaine dress that was a mile too large, and her face looked as if she had a.s.sisted actively in an Irish wake. Dr. Arten did the honors at the head of the table in his dress coat and vest that had once been white, though he no longer figured around in red flannel drawers as he had done on the beach. The little round faces of the Bruders seemed as if protruding from animated rag babies, while nothing could dim the glory of Ernst's great spiritual eyes, as they gratefully and wistfully followed Dennis's every movement. Cronk was in a very dilapidated and famished state, and endured many and varied tortures in his efforts to be polite while he bolted sandwiches at a rate that threatened famine. Christine still wore the woollen dress she had so hastily donned with Dennis's a.s.sistance on Sunday night, and the marks of the fire were all over it. Around her neck the sparks had burned a hole here and there, through which her white shoulders gleamed. While she was self-possessed and a.s.siduous in her attention to the little children, there was a glow of excitement in her eyes which perhaps Mrs. Leonard understood better than any one else, though the shrewd old doctor was anything but blind.

Dennis sat next to Christine in shirt-sleeves once white, but now, through dust and smoke, of as many colors as Joseph's coat. He was too weary to eat much, and there was a weight upon his spirits that he could not throw off--the inevitable despondency that follows great fatigue when the mind is not at rest.

Christine darted away and brought him a huge mug of hot coffee.

"Really, Miss Ludolph," he remonstrated, "you should not wait on me in this style."

"You may well feel honored, sir," said Mrs. Leonard. "It is not every man that is waited on by a baroness."

"The trouble with Christine is that she is too grateful," put in the old doctor.

"Now I should say that was scarcely possible in view of--" commenced the professor, innocently.

"I really hope Miss Ludolph will do nothing more from grat.i.tude,"

interrupted Dennis, in a low tone that showed decided annoyance.

The doctor and Mrs. Leonard were ready to burst with suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt, and Cronk, seeing something going on that he did not understand, looked curiously around with a sandwich half-way to his open mouth, while Ernst, believing from Dennis's tone that he was wronged, turned his great eyes reproachfully from one to another. But Christine was equal to the occasion. Lifting her head and looking round with a free, clear glance she said, "And I say that men who meet this great disaster with courage and fort.i.tude, and hopefully set about retrieving it, possess an inherent n.o.bility such as no king or kaiser could bestow, and, were I twenty times a baroness, I should esteem it an honor to wait upon them."

A round of applause followed this speech, in which Cronk joined vociferously, and Mrs. Leonard whispered: "Oh, Christine, how beautifully I learn from your face the difference between dignity and pride! That was your same old proud look, changed and glorified into something so much better."

Dennis also saw her expression, and could not disguise his admiration, but every moment he increasingly felt how desperately hard it would be to give her up, now that she seemed to realize his very ideal of womanhood.

And Cronk, having satisfied the clamors of his appet.i.te, began to be fascinated in his rough way with her grace and beauty. Nudging Dennis he asked in a loud whisper heard by all, which nearly caused Dr. Arten to choke, "The young filly is a German lady, ain't she?"

Dennis, much embarra.s.sed, nodded a.s.sent.

A happy thought struck Bill. Though impeded by the weight of an indefinite number of sandwiches, he slowly rose and looked solemnly round on the little group. Dennis trembled, for he feared some dreadful bull on the part of his rough, though well-meaning friend, but Dr.

Arten, in a state of intense enjoyment, cried, "Mr. Cronk has the floor."

Lifting a can of coffee containing about a quart, the drover said impressively, and with an attempt at great stateliness:

"Beautiful ladies and honorable gentlemen here a.s.sembled, I would respectfully ask you to drink to a toast in this harmless beverage: _The United States of Ameriky!_ When the two great elemental races--the sanguinary Yankee and the phlegmatic German--become one, and, as represented in the blooded team before me" (waving his hand majestically over the heads of Dennis and Christine), "pull in the traces together, how will the ship of state go forward!" and his face disappeared behind his huge flagon of coffee in the deepest pledge.

Bill thought he had uttered a very profound and elegant sentiment, but his speech fell like a bombsh.e.l.l in the little company.

"The very spirit of mischief is abroad to-day," Dennis groaned. And Christine, with a face like a peony, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the youngest little Bruder, saying, "It is time these sleepy children were in bed"; but the doctor and the Leonards went off again and again in uncontrollable fits of laughter, in which Dennis could not refrain from joining, though he wished the unlucky Cronk a thousand miles away. Bill put down his mug, stared around in a surprised and nonplussed manner, and then said, in a loud whisper, "I say, Fleet, was there any hitch in what I said?"

This set them off again, but Dennis answered good-naturedly, slapping his friend on the shoulder, "Cronk, you would make a man laugh in the face of fate."

Bill took this as a compliment, and the strange party, thrown together by an event that mingled all cla.s.ses in the community, broke up and went their several ways.

CHAPTER L

EVERY BARRIER BURNED AWAY

Dennis was glad to escape, and went to a side door where he could cool his hot cheeks in the night air. He fairly dreaded to meet Christine again, and, even where the wind blew cold upon him, his cheeks grew hotter and hotter, as he remembered what had occurred. He had been there but a little time when a light hand fell on his arm, and he was startled by her voice--"Mr. Fleet, are you very tired?"

"Not in the least," he answered, eagerly.

"You must be: it is wrong for me to think of it."

"Miss Ludolph, please tell me what I can do for you?"

She looked at him wistfully and said: "This is a time when loss and disaster burden every heart, and I know it is a duty to try to maintain a cheerful courage, and forget personal troubles. I have tried to-day, and, with G.o.d's help, hope in time to succeed. While endeavoring to wear in public a cheerful face, I may perhaps now, and to so true a friend as yourself, show more of my real feelings. Is it too far--would it take too long, to go to where my father died? His remains could not have been removed."

"Alas, Miss Ludolph," said Dennis, very gently, "there can be no visible remains. The words of the Prayer Book are literally true in this case--'Ashes to ashes.' But I can take you to the spot, and it is natural that you should wish to go. Are you equal to the fatigue?"

"I shall not feel it if you go with me, and then we can ride part of the way, for I have a little money." (Dr. Arten had insisted on her taking some.) "Wait for me a moment."

She soon reappeared with her shawl cut in two equal parts. One she insisted on folding and putting around him as a Scotsman wears his plaid. "You will need it in the cool night wind," she said, and then she took his arm in perfect trust, and they started.

In the cars she gave him her money, and he said, "I will return my fare to-morrow night."

"What!" she replied, looking a little hurt. "After spending two dollars on me, will you not take five cents in return?"

"But I spent it foolishly."

"You spent it like a generous man. Surely, Mr. Fleet, you did not understand my badinage this evening. If I had not spoken to you in that strain, I could not have spoken at all. You have been a brother to me, and we should not stand on these little things."

"That is it," thought he again. "She looks upon and trusts me as a brother, and such I must try to be till she departs for her own land; yet if she knew the agony of the effort she would scarcely ask it."

But as they left the car, he said, "All that you would ask from a brother, please ask from me."

She put her hand in his, and said, "I now ask your support, sympathy, and prayer, for I feel that I shall need all here."

Still retaining her hand, he placed it on his arm and guided her most carefully around the hot ruins and heaps of rubbish till they came to where the Art Building had stood. The moon shone brightly down, lighting up with weird and ghostly effect the few walls remaining. They were utterly alone in the midst of a desolation sevenfold more impressing than that of the desert. Pointing to the spot where, in the midst of his treasures of art and idolized worldly possessions, Mr. Ludolph had perished, she said, in a thrilling whisper, "My father's ashes are there."