Chicago (Ill.) -- History -- To 1875 -- Fiction; Fires -- Fiction; Great Fire, Chicago, Ill., 1871 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
"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."
"Yes."
Her breath came quick and short, and her face was so pale and agonized
that he trembled for her, but he tightened his grasp on her hand, and
his tears fell with hers.
"Oh, my father!" she cried, in a tone of unspeakable pathos, "can I
never, never see you again? Can I never tell you of the love of Jesus,
and the better and happier life beyond? Oh, how my heart yearns after
you! God forgive me if this is wrong, but I cannot help it!"
"It is not wrong," said Dennis, brokenly. "Our Lord himself wept over
those He could not save."
"It is all that I can do," she murmured, and, leaning her head on his
shoulder, a tempest of sobs shook her person.
He supported her tenderly, and said, in accents of the deepest sympathy,
"Let every tear fall that will: they will do you good." At last, as
she became calmer, he added, "Remember that your great Elder Brother
has called the heavy laden to Him for rest."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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