EDWARD PAYSON ROE.
AUTHOR OF “BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.”
R. ROE is not considered as one of the strongest of American novelists; but that he was one of the most popular among the masses of the people, from 1875 to the time of his death, goes without saying. His novels were of a religious character, and while they were doubtless lacking in the higher arts of the fictionist, he invariably told an interesting story and pointed a healthy moral. “Barriers Burned Away” is, perhaps, his best novel, and it has been declared by certain critics to be at once one of the most vivid portrayals and correct pictures of the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871 which has up to this time been written.
Edward Payson Roe was born at New Windsor, New York, in 1838, and died, when fifty years of age, at Cornwall, the same State, in 1888. He was being educated at Williams College, but had to leave before graduating owing to an affection of the eyes. In consequence of his literary work, however, the college in after years gave him the degree of A. B. In 1862, he volunteered his services in the army and served as chaplain throughout the Civil War. From 1865 to 1874 he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he resigned his pastorate, and, to the time of his death, gave himself to literature and to the cultivation of a small fruit farm.
Other works of this author, after “Barriers Burned Away,” are “Play and Profit in my Garden” (1873); “What Can She Do?” (1873); “Opening a Chestnut Burr” (1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to Nature’s Heart” (1876); “A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877); “A Face Illumined” (1878); “A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small Fruits” (1880); “Without a Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883); “A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); “Nature’s Serial Story” (1884); “An Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to Eden” (1885); “He Fell in Love with His Wife” (1886); “The Earth Trembled” (1887); “Miss Lou” (1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken Alive” (1889), the two last mentioned being published after the death of the author.
CHRISTINE, AWAKE FOR YOUR LIFE![¹]
[¹] Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
OR a block or more Dennis was passively borne along by the rushing mob. Suddenly a voice seemed to shout almost in his ear, “The north side is burning!” and he started as from a dream. The thought of Christine flashed upon him, perishing, perhaps, in the flames. He remembered that now she had no protector, and that he for the moment had forgotten her; though in truth he had never imagined that she could be imperiled by the burning of the north side.
In an agony of fear and anxiety he put forth every effort of which he was capable, and tore through the crowd as if mad. There was no way of getting across the river now save by the La Salle street tunnel. Into this dark passage he plunged with multitudes of others. It was indeed as near Pandemonium as any earthly condition could be. Driven forward by the swiftly pursuing flames, hemmed in on every side, a shrieking, frenzied, terror-stricken throng rushed into the black cavern. Every moral grade was represented there. Those who led abandoned lives were plainly recognizable, their guilty consciences finding expression in their livid faces. These jostled the refined and delicate lady, who, in the awful democracy of the hour, brushed against thief and harlot. Little children wailed for their lost parents, and many were trampled underfoot. Parents cried for their children, women shrieked for their husbands, some praying, many cursing with oaths as hot as the flames that crackled near. Multitudes were in no other costumes than those in which they had sprung from their beds. Altogether it was a strange, incongruous, writhing mass of humanity, such as the world had never looked upon, pouring into what might seem, in its horrors, the mouth of hell.
As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused roar smote his ear that might have appalled the stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious to everything save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he put his shoulder against the living mass and pushed with the strongest till he emerged into the glare of the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from the throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph mansion, which to his joy he found was still considerably to the windward of the fire. But he saw that from the southwest another line of flame was bearing down upon it.
The front door was locked, and the house utterly dark. He rang the bell furiously, but there was no response. He walked around under the window and shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as a tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive thickness scarcely admitted of a reverberation.
“They must have escaped,” he said; “but merciful heaven! there must be no uncertainty in this case. What shall I do?”
The windows of the lower story were all strongly guarded and hopeless, but one opening on the balcony of Christine’s studio seemed practicable, if it could be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its graceful branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the tough and fibrous nature of this tree. In the New England woods of his early home he had learned to climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no great difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an overhanging branch to the point he sought. The window was down at the top, but the lower sash was fastened. He could see the catch by the light of the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, hoping that the crash might awaken Christine, if she were still there. But, after the clatter died away, there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash and stepped in....
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 passage, 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....
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 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!—O 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....
A louder and nearer explosion, like a warning voice, made him wholly desperate, and he roughly seized her hand.
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 towards the door the moment she awakened; and this somewhat reassured 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! O ye gods, what does it all mean?” and she passed 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!”
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 woolen 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 assisted 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 snatched 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.
