A Master's Degree | ||
SACRIFICE
The bush for the robin and wren,
But always the path that is narrow
And straight for the children of men.
—ALICE CARY
7.
CHAPTER VII
THE DAY OF RECKONING
To have a giant's strength, but tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
—SHAKESPEARE
OF course, there came a day of reckoning for Victor Burleigh, now the idol of the Walnut Valley football fans, the pride of Lagonda Ledge, the hero of Sunrise. But the reckoning was not brought to him; he brought himself deliberately to it.
The jollification following the game threatened to wreck the chapel and crack the limestone ledge beneath it.
"Dust off your halo and wrap it up in cotton till next fall, Vic," Trench whispered in the closing minutes. "We've got to face the real thing now. We're civilians in citizens' clothes, amenable to law henceforth; not a lot of athletic brigands, privileged outlaws, whose glory dazzles all common sense. Quit bumping your head against the Kansas motto up in the dome, get your hobnailers
"I was never more alive in my life." Vic's voice and eyes were alive enough.
"By heck! I believe it," Trench exclaimed. "Say, you got away with Burgess about the game. If you want the girl, go after her, too. But gently, Sweet Afton, go gently. Most girls want to do the pursuing themselves, I believe. I'll block the interference, if necessary, and you'll be the sought-after yet, not the seeking, dear child."
A circular stairway winds from the Sunrise chapel down the south turret to Dean Fenneben's study, intended originally as a
In the confusion following the chapel exercises Vic slipped into the south turret, and the lock clicked behind him as he hurried down "the road to perdition."
The door to Dean Fenneben's study was slightly open and Vic heard his own name spoken as he reached it. He hesitated, for a group of girls was surrounding Elinor Wream, discussing him. There was no escape. The upper door was locked, and he would rather have met that unknown villainous face in the dark cave than to face this group of pretty girls. So he waited.
"Oh, Elinor, you mercenary creature!"
"What if he is a bit crude?"
"I don't blame you. I'm daffy about Professor Burgess myself."
"He's got the grandest voice, Vic has!"
"I just adore Greek!"
"I think Vic is splendid!"
So the exclamations ran.
"Now, Norrie Wream, cross your heart, hope you may die, if big, handsome Victor Burleigh had his corners knocked off, and he was sandpapered down a little, and had money, wouldn't you feel a whole lot different about him, Norrie?"
"I certainly would. I couldn't help it."
Norrie's eyes were shining and her cheeks were pink as peach blossoms. To Vic she seemed exquisitely beautiful.
"But now?" somebody queried.
"Oh, now, she'll be sensible, and the Professor will take advantage of `now.' He won't wait till it's too late. Great hat! there goes the bell."
And the girls scuttled away.
Vic came in and sat down by the window through which one may find an empire for the looking.
"Burgess was right," he said to himself.
I'm not only ill-bred on the outside, I'm that way clear through. A disreputable eavesdropper! That's my size. But I didn't mean it. Fine excuse!" He frowned in disgust, and turned to the window.
The Thanksgiving weather was still
As Vic gazed his stern face softened, and the bulldog look, that he had worn since the night of the storm, relaxed before some gentler mood. The brown eyes held a strange glow under the long black lashes, as if a new purpose were growing up in the soul behind them.
"No limit out there. It's a free land," he murmured. "There shall be no limit in here." Unconsciously he struck his breast with his fist. "There's freedom for such as I am somewhere."
"Hello, Burleigh, what can I do for you?" As Dr. Fenneben came into the study he recalled how awkwardly the same boy had filled the same chair only a few months before.
"I've come in to be sentenced," Vic replied.
"Well, plead your case first."
If ever a father-heart beat in a bachelor's breast, Lloyd Fenneben had such a heart.
"I want to settle about Thanksgiving Day," Vic said. "I had a moral right to
Fenneben's eyes were smiling. "Why didn't you knock him down and fight it out with him?"
"Because he's not in my class. When I fight I fight men. And, besides, I was in a hurry. If I'm expected to apologize to Professor Burgess or be expelled, I want to know it," Vic added, hotly.
He knew he would not apologize, and he wanted the sentence of expulsion to come quickly if it must come.
"We never expel boys from Sunrise. They have done it themselves sometimes. Nor do we ever exact an apology. They offer it themselves sometimes. In either case, the choice lies with the boy."
"What do you do with a fellow like me?" Vic looked curiously at the Dean.
"If a boy of your build wants to meet only men when he fights, we take it he is something of a man himself, and therefore worth too much for Sunrise to lose."
Oh! blessed power of the college man to lead the half-tamed boy into the stronger
Vic sat looking thoughtfully at the man before him.
"Your confession here is all right. Your claim to a place on the team in Thursday's game was just." The simple fairness of Fenneben's words made their appeal, yet, it was so unlike what Vic had counted on he could hardly accept it as genuine.
"You have made a great name for yourself as an athlete. I paid for the roses. I know something of the degree of that greatness." Dr. Fenneben smiled genially. "You played a marvelous game and I am proud of you."
Vic did not look proud of himself just then, and Lloyd Fenneben knew it was one of life's crucial moments for the boy.
"The big letter S cut over the doorway out there stands for more than Sunrise, you remember I told you." Fenneben spoke earnestly. "It means also the strife which you have already met and must expect to meet all along the way. But, Burleigh"—Lloyd Fenneben stood up to his full height, an ideal of grace and power—
"You?" Vic's eyes widened.
"Yes, I'll meet you on any grounds. And if you ever try to coerce a professor here again, I'll meet you anyhow, and we'll have it out." Fenneben was stern now.
"I wouldn't want to scrap with you, Dr. Fenneben," Vic stammered.
"Why not?"
"I am too much of a gentleman for that."
"When I fight, I fight men. You are in my class," Fenneben quoted with a smile in his eyes, which faded away with the next words.
"You are right, Burleigh. A gentleman doesn't want to use his strength like a beast to destroy. The only legitimate battle is when a man must fight with a man as he would fight with a beast, to save himself, or something dearer to him than himself, from beastly destruction. Get into the bigger game, my boy, where the strife is for larger scores, and add to a proud athletic record, the prouder record of self-control. The prairies have given you a noble heritage, but culture comes most from contact with cultured
Lloyd Fenneben grasped the boy's hand in a firm, assuring grip and left him.
"If Sunrise means Strife, I'll face it," Vic said to himself. "As to money, I have only my two hands and that old mortgaged quadrangle of prairie sod out West. But if culture like Fenneben's might win Elinor Wream, God help me to win it."
Up in the library a week later Professor Burgess came in while Dennie Saxon was putting the books in order. Burgess was
"Don't you get tired sometimes, Miss Dennie?" the Professor asked. He was not happy himself for many reasons, and two of them were Elinor and Vic, who separately, and differently, seemed to wear out his energy. Dennie Saxon never wore on anybody's nerves.
"Yes, I do, often," Dennie answered.
"Why do you do this?" he queried.
"To get my college education." Dennie smiled, hopefully. "I like the nice things and nice ways of life. So I'm working for them."
"Elinor has all these without working for them," Vincent thought.
Then for no reason at all his mind leaped to Dennie's father and his own vow on the stormy night in October.
"What would you do if your father were taken from you, Miss Dennie?" he asked.
"I've always had to depend on myself
Well, what had Burgess expected? That she would depend on him? He was in love with Elinor Wream. Why should he feel disappointed? And why should his eye follow the soft little ripples of her sunny hair, giving a pretty outline to her face and neck.
"Could you really take care of yourself? He was talking at random.
"I might do like that woman out at Pigeon Place." Burgess didn't catch the pathos in Dennie's tone. He was only a man.
"How's that?" he asked.
"Oh, live alone and keep a big dog, and sell chickens. That's what Mrs. Marian does. By the way, she looks just a little bit like you."
"Thank you!"
"She was at the game on Thanksgiving Day, strange to say, for she seldom leaves home. Did you see a pretty white-haired woman, right south of where we were?"
"Is that how I look? No, I didn't see her. I wasn't at the game."
"You weren't? Why not? You missed a wonderful thing."
And Burgess told her the whole story from his viewpoint, of course. What he was too proud to mention to Dr. Fenneben or Elinor he spoke of freely to Dennie, and he felt as if the weight of the limestone ledge was lifted from him with the telling.
"Don't you think the young ruffian was pretty hard on me?" he asked.
"No, I don't," Dennie said, frankly. "I think you were pretty hard on him."
A sudden resolve seized Burgess. He came around to Dennie's side of the table.
"Miss Dennie, I want to tell you something, unimportant in itself, but better shared than kept. On the night of our picnic in October your father, who was not quite himself—"
"Yes, I understand," Dennie said, with downcast eyes.
"Pardon me, Dennie, I would not hurt your feelings." His voice was very gentle, and Dennie looked up gratefully. "On that night your father made me promise—made me hold up my hand and swear—I'm easily forced, you will think—to look after you if he were taken away. I did it to pacify him, not to ever embarrass you. He also told me enough about young Burleigh to make me
"Was my father quite himself then?" Dennie asked.
"Not quite," Burgess replied.
"Listen to him some day when he is. He is another man then. But," she added, "I know you mean well."
In spite of her courage her eyes were full of tears, and for the first time in his sheltered pleasant life the real spirit of sympathy woke in the soul of Vincent Burgess.
"You are a brave, good girl, Dennie. If I can ever serve you in any way, it will be a privilege to me to do it."
Ten minutes after they had left the library Trench, who had been stationary in the north alcove, slowly came to life. He had been posing as a statue, Winged Victory with a head on, he declared afterward to Vic Burleigh, to whom he told the whole story.
"Let me sing my swan song," he declared. "Then me for Lagonda's whirlpool. I'm not fit to live in a decent community, a blithering idiot and rascally villain, who lies in wait to hear and see like a fool. I thought Dennie knew I was there and would be in
8.
CHAPTER VIII
LOSS, OR GAIN?
Nor catch them like fishes in nets,
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets.
—CARY
ELINOR WREAM spent the holidays in the East and was two weeks late in entering school again. Then her Uncle Lloyd tightened the rules, exacting full measure for lost time, until she bewailed to her girl friends that she had no opportunity even to make fudge or wash her hair.
"Were you sorry to come back, then, Norrie?" her uncle asked one evening when they were alone in their library, and Elinor was lamenting her hard lot.
"No, I want to be with you, Uncle Lloyd."
She was sitting on the arm of his morris chair, softly stroking his heavy hair away from his forehead.
"Looks like it, the way you hurried back," Dr. Fenneben said, smiling.
"But Uncle Joshua isn't well, although, to be honest, he didn't seem a bit anxious to have me stay. He's so wrapped up in Sanscrit he has no time to live in the present. Why didn't he ever marry?"
"You have just said why," her uncle answered her.
"Why didn't you ever marry. Were you ever in love?"
The library lamp cast only a shaded light over Lloyd Fenneben lounging comfortably in his chair. To a woman's eye he would have seemed the picture of an ideal husband.
"Yes, I was in love once. I didn't marry because—because—I didn't."
"How romantic! Was it unrequited, or money, or what?" Norrie asked, eagerly.
"Or what," he answered, and her finer sense made her change the subject.
"Say, Uncle Lloyd, Uncle Joshua says he wants me to marry."
"What's he up to now? Tell me about it."
Norrie was charming tonight in a dainty red evening gown that set off her pretty
"Well," Norrie went on, "Uncle says I'm to marry rich, because my papa expected me to. He said papa had money which was mamma's and he used it for college endowments, because the Wreams love colleges best, and that it was his wish, and it's Uncle Joshua's too, that I should marry well. I knew I came honestly by my love of spending. I inherited it from my mother. Aren't the Wreams all funny men to just see nothing in money, but a cap and gown and a Master's Degree? But you are a human being, Uncle Lloyd. You wouldn't leave a daughter dependent on her uncles and use her money to endow colleges, would you?" The white arm stole round his neck affectionately, as Elinor added softly, "I'm going to tell you something else. Uncle Joshua wants me to marry Professor Burgess."
"Do you want to marry him?" Fenneben asked.
"He hasn't asked me to yet. But he is such a gentleman and he has a fortune in his
"He'll wait all right, if he wants you, Norrie. He must wait until you graduate," the Dean declared.
"Oh, yes; a Wream without a college diploma is like a ship without a compass, a mere derelict on life's sea. I'm in no hurry anyhow," and she began to talk of other things.
In the months that followed Trench had no need to watch Professor Burgess in his relation to Dennie Saxon, for Burgess had no thought of her other than of kindly sympathy. That is, Burgess thought he had no thought. He knew he was in love with Elinor, knew that back in Cambridge before he was graduated from the university. He had been told that Elinor liked luxurious living, and he had money—he had told Fenneben as much in their first interview. Everything seemed to be settled now, for Joshua Wream had written Burgess the kind of letter only a very old man, and an abstract
Meanwhile the big boy from the western claim was as surely going up the rounds of culture as the Professor was coming down to the common needs of common minds, and both were unconscious then that back of each was Dr. Fenneben, "dear old Funnybone" to the student body, playing each man for his king row in the great game of life fought out in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut.
Toward Elinor, Victor Burleigh seemed utterly indifferent. Even Lloyd Fenneben, who had caught an insight into things on the night of the October storm, and had begun to read that new line in the boy's face, failed to grasp what lay back of those innocent-looking, wide-open eyes, whose tiger-golden gleam showed but rarely now. Vic was easily the most popular fellow in his class, and the year at Sunrise had worked a marvelous change in him.
"You are a darned smooth citizen," Trench drawled, as he and Burleigh stood in the shade by the campus gate on the closing day of their freshman year.
A group of girls had been bidding the two good-bye for the summer. As Elinor
"You are a—well, any kind of a smooth citizen, I say," he repeated.
"What's troubling your liver now?" Vic asked.
Trench did not heed the question, but said, slowly: "And-the-big-noble-hearted-young-fellow-walked-in-and-out-beside-her-day-by-day,-and-she-never-knew-whose-face-haunted-his-dreams,-nor-ever-thought-how-the-touch-of-her-hand-thrilled-his-every-pulse-beat,-and-how-her-smile-was-the-light-of-his-soul. And-he-grew-handsomer-and-more-beloved-with-the-passing-seasons,-and,-lonely-and-longing,-he-grew-braver-also-to-meet-life's-battles,-a-splendid-manhood—"
A sudden clutch on Trench's arm, the blaze of the old-time fury in burning eyes, as Vic's hoarse voice cried:
"For God's sake, Trench, get out of my sight!"
"I will," drawled Trench. "The only friend you ever had. I'll carry my troubles up to Big Chief Funnybone. Like as not he'll sentence me to tumble you through the chapel door of the south turret down the `road to perdition.' No use though, you go that road every day. Better treat me right and tell me all your troubles. If there is any cool handle to take hold of Gehanna by next to Funnybone, I'm the one fellow in Sunrise to grab onto it."
But Vic was out of hearing.
And the days of a long, hot Kansas summer, a glorious autumn, and a short, nippy winter swung by in their appointed seasons. And now the springtime was unrolling in dainty beauty of tender green leaf, and growing grass, and warm, sweet air, and trill of song bird. College students philosophize little in the springtime of their sophomore year. Having learned all that books can teach, and a little more, they seek other pastime. Nobody in Sunrise except Dr. Fenneben took the time to remember how stiff and ungenial Professor Burgess was when he first came West; nor what an awkward gosling Victor Burleigh was the day he entered Sunrise; nor that once it could
None of these things were noted especially, save by Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, and he wasn't a sophomore nor a professor in love with a pretty girl; a professor learning for the first time that sympathy has also its culture value, as well as perfectly translated
There were some unchanged things, however, which Fenneben only guessed at. Victor Burleigh had never apologized to Professor Burgess for his rude attack, unless a certain strained dignified courtesy be the mark of a tacit apology. And Burgess could give only cold recognition to the big fellow who had choked him into submission and had gone unpunished by the college authorities.
Between these two Fenneben guessed there was no change. But he did not grieve deeply. There must be a personal phase in this grudge that no third person could handle. It might be a girl—but the face of the returns indicated otherwise. Meanwhile the college was doing its perfect work for Burleigh, whose strength of mind, and self-control, and growing graciousness of manner betokened the splendid manhood that should rest on this foundation. While
Little Bug Buler, now four years of age, had changed least of all among changing things about Lagonda Ledge. A sweet-faced, quaint little fellow he was, with big appealing eyes, a baby lisp to his words, and innocent ways. He was a sturdy, pudgy, self-reliant youngster, however, who took long rambles alone and turned up safe at the right moment. All Lagonda Ledge petted him, even to Burgess, who never forgot the day in the rotunda when Bug's pitying voice had broken Burleigh's grip on his neck.
Bond Saxon had not changed, nor the white-haired woman of Pigeon Place—nor the reputation of the ravines and rocky coverts for hiding law breakers across the Walnut River. And Fenneben noted often the slender blue smoke rising where nobody had a house.
It was an April day in the Walnut Valley, with all the freshness of the earth just washed and perfumed by April showers. The sunshine was pale gold. There was a gray-green filmy light from budding trees, and the old-time miracle of the grass was wrought out once more before the eyes of men. The orchards along the Walnut were faintly pink, and the eggs in the robin's nest, the south winds purring through the wooded spaces, the odor of far-plowed furrows on the prairie farms, all gave assurance of the year's gladdest days. From the Sunrise ledge the beauty of the landscape was exquisite. There was no haze overhanging the earth now, and the Walnut Valley was a picture beyond a Master's dream. Victor Burleigh sat on the top of the flight of steps leading from the lower campus, looking lazily out with dreamy eyes on all that the earth had to give on this sweet April afternoon.
Presently Elinor Wream came around the north angle of the building, hesitated a little, then walked straight to the steps.
"Good afternoon, Victor," she said.
Burleigh looked up, glad then of his months of discipline and self-control. A
"Hello, Elinor," Vic said, calmly, making room for her on the stone steps. "Take a seat."
Elinor sat down beside him, throwing her hat on the ground.
"Whither away?" Vic asked.
"I'll tell you presently. I want to get over my stage fright first."
"All right, look at this view. I'll give it to you if you like it." Vic had turned to the west again and was looking away toward the dreamy prairies beyond the valley.
Elinor recalled the September day when the bull snake lay sunning itself on this very stone. How shy and awkward he seemed then, with only a deep sweet voice to attract favorable attention. And now, big, and graceful, and handsome, and reserved—any girl might be proud to have his regard. Of course, for herself, there was Vincent
"What time next month do we have the big baseball game?" she asked. "The game that is to make Sunrise the champion college in Kansas, and you our college champion?" Vic's lips suddenly grew gray.
"Friday, the thirteenth—auspicious date!" he answered. "But I may not play in it. I might fail."
"Oh, we must win this game, anyhow, and you never do fail. Don't forget the name your mother gave you. Do you remember when you told me that?"
"A couple of thousand years ago, wasn't it?" Vic asked, smiling down on her. "If I don't play Sunrise needn't fail, even for Friday, the thirteenth."
"But it will fail without you. You pulled us to victory a year ago at the Thanksgiving game, and last fall the Sunrise goal line wasn't crossed the whole season with `Burleigh! Burly! Burlee!' for a slogan. We must win this year. Then it will be a complete championship: football, basket-ball,
A shadow crossed his face and he looked away to where a tiny film of blue smoke was rising above the rough ledges beyond the river.
"I'm getting over my stage fright now," Elinor said, the pink deepening on her fair cheek, "and I'll tell you what I want."
"Command me!" he said, gallantly.
"Well, it's awful, and the girls are too mean to live. But they are getting even with me, they say, for something I did last fall."
"All right." Vic was waiting, graciously.
"A lot of us have broken some of the rules of the Sorority and it's decreed that I must go over the route we came home by on the night of the storm down in the Kickapoo Corral. They are having a `spread' down there at five o'clock and we are to get there in time for it, going by the west side of the river, and they'll bring us home. They said I should ask you to go with me, and if you wouldn't go for me to ask Mr. Trench to go. They are too silly for anything."
"Trench was executed for manslaughter at two forty-five today. It's three o'clock
"Do you really mind going with me, Victor?" Elinor asked.
"Do I mind? I've been waiting two years for you to ask me to go." His voice was very deep and there was a soft light in his brown eyes.
Elinor's pulse beat felt a thrill. A sudden sense of the sweetness of the day and of a joy unlike any other joy of her life possessed her.
Down on the bridge they stopped to watch the sunlit waters of the Walnut rippling below them.
"Are we the same two who crept up on this bridge, wet, and muddy and tired, and scared one stormy October night eighteen months ago?" Elinor asked.
"I've had no reincarnation that I know of," Vic replied.
"I have," Elinor declared, and Vic thought of Burgess.
Up the narrow hidden glen they made their way, clambering about broken ledges, crossing and recrossing the little stream, hugging the dry footing under overhanging rock shelves, laughing at missteps and rejoicing
"Isn't it beautiful and romantic—and everything nice?" Elinor cried. "I don't mind this sentence to hard service. It is worth it. Do you mind the loss of time, Victor?"
"I counted it gain to be here with you, even in the storm and terror. How can this be loss?" he answered her. His voice was low and musical.
Elinor looked up quickly. And quickly as the thing had come to Victor Burleigh on the west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral two Octobers ago, so to Elinor Wream came the vision of what the love of such a man would be to the woman who could win it.
"Do you really mean it, Victor? Wasn't I a lump of lead? A dead weight to your
She looked up with shining eyes and put out her hand. What could he do but keep it in his own for a moment, firm-held, as something he would keep forever.
"I have never once forgotten it," he murmured.
The cave by daylight was as the lightning had shown it, a big chamber, rock-walled, rock-floored, rock-roofed, in the side of the bluff, but little below the level of the ground and easy of entrance. It was cool and damp, but, with the daylight through the doorway, it was merely shadowy inside. In the farther wall yawned the ragged opening to the black spaces leading off underground. Through this opening these two had crept once, feeling that behind the wall somebody was crouching with evil intent. They peered through the opening now, trying to see the miraculous way by which they had come into the cave from the rear. But they stared only into blackness and caught the breath of the damp underground air with a faint odor of wood smoke somewhere.
"Elinor, it's a good thing we came through here in the night. It would have
He was leaning far through the opening in the wall, gazing into the darkness and seeing nothing.
"Somewhere back in there, while I was pawing around that night, I found something up in a chink that felt like the odd-shaped little silver pitcher my mother had once—an old family heirloom, lost or stolen some time ago. I came back and hunted for it later, but it was winter time and cold as the grave outside and darker in here, and I couldn't find anything, so I concluded maybe I was mistaken altogether about its being like that old pitcher of ours. It was a bad night for `seein' things'; it might have been for `feelin' things' as well. There's nothing here but damp air and darkness."
And even while he was speaking close
"It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while," Vic said, as he hastily withdrew his head and shoulders. "We get pretty close to the edge of things sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction."
"We were pretty close that night," Elinor replied.
"Shall we rest here a little while, or do your savage sorority sisters require you to do time in so many minutes?" Vic asked, as they left the cave and came again into the sunlight, and all the sweetness of the April woodland, and the rugged beauty of the glen.
"I'm glad to rest," Elinor said, dropping down on a stone. Her cheeks were blooming from the exercise of the tramp, and her pretty hair was in disorder.
Far away from the west prairie came the faint note of a child's voice in song.
"Victor," Elinor said, as they listened, "do you know that the Sunrise girls envy Bug Buler? They say you would have more time for the girls if it wasn't for him. What you spend for him you could spend on light refreshments for them, don't you see?"
"I know I'm a stingy cuss," Vic said, carelessly, but a deeper red touched his cheek.
"You know you are not," Elinor insisted, "and I've always thought it was a beautiful thing for a big grown man like you to care for a little orphan boy. All the girls think so, too."
Burleigh looked down at her gratefully.
"I thought once—in fact, I was told once—that my care for him was sufficient reason why I should let all the girls alone, most of all why I should not think of Elinor Wream."
"How strange!" Elinor's face had a
"You? I didn't know you had ever wanted anything you didn't get."
Victor had thought all things were due to her and came as duly. The womanly look on her face now was a revelation to him. But then he had not dared to study her face for months, and he did not yet realize what life in Dr. Fenneben's home must mean to her character-building.
"I'll tell you some time about something I ought to have had, a sacrifice I was forced to make; but not now, Tell me about Bug."
There was no bitterness in Elinor's tone, yet the idea of her having the capacity to endure gave her a newer charm to the man beside her.
"I have never known whose child Bug is," he began. "The way in which he came to me is full of terrible memories, and it all happened on the blackest day of my life—the hard life of a lonely boy on a Kansas claim. That's why I never speak of it and
Burleigh paused, and a sense of Elinor's interest brought a thrill of joy to him.
"Where was he?" she asked.
Vic slowly unfastened his cuff and slipped his coat sleeve up to his elbow.
"Do you remember that scar?" he asked. "It is not the only one I have. I fought with death for that baby boy and I shall always carry the scars of that day. Bug was alone in a lonely little deserted dugout. Somebody had left him there to perish. He was on a low chair, the only furniture in the room, and on the earth floor between him and me were five of the ugliest rattlesnakes that ever coiled for a deadly blow. Little Bug held out his arms to me, and I'll never forget his baby face—and—I killed them all and carried him away. It was a dangerous, hard job, but the boy I saved has been the blessing of my life ever since. I could not have endured the days that followed
A little! Could this be the big awkward freshman of a September day gone by? Then college culture is surely worth the cost.
Elinor leaned forward, eagerly.
"Tell me about your father," she said.
"My father lost his life because he dared to tell the truth," Victor replied.
"Oh, glorious!" Elinor cried, earnestly.
"I have always loved my father's memory for his courage," Victor continued. "He was a believer in law enforcement and he was a terror to the bootleggers who carried whisky into our settlement. A man named Gresh was notorious for selling whisky to the claim holders. He gave it, Elinor, gave it, to a boy, a widow's son, made him drunk, robbed him, and left him to freeze to death in a blizzard. The boy lived long enough to tell my father who did it, and it was his testimony that helped to convict Gresh and start him to the penitentiary. He escaped from the sheriff on the way—and, so far as I know, there's one bad man still at large, a fugitive before the law. Whisky is the devil's own best tool, whether a man drinks it himself or gets other people to drink it."
"That's a bad name," Elinor said. "My grandfather adopted a boy named Gresh, who turned out bad. I think he was killed in a saloon row in Chicago. Did this Gresh ever trouble you again?"
Burleigh's face was grim as he answered:
"My father was waylaid and murdered with a club by this man. He escaped afterward into Indian Territory. He left his own name, Gresh, scrawled on a piece of
"Am I presentable for the supper at the Kickapoo Corral?" she asked, as she picked up her hat again.
"You suit me," Burleigh replied. "What are the Kickapoo requirements?"
"That Victor Burleigh shall be satisfied," she answered, roguishly. "Really, that's right. Four girls offered to substitute for me in this penitential pilgrimage and write some long translations for me beside."
"Four, individually or collectively?" he asked.
"Either way," she answered.
"Why didn't you let them do it?
"Which way?"
"Either way," he replied.
"Would you rather have had the four either way, than me?" she questioned, with pretty vanity.
"Much rather." His voice was stern.
"Why?" She was stung by the answer.
The glen was all a dreamy gray-green ruggedness of shelving rock with mossy crevices and ferny nooks. The sunlight filtering through the young leaves fell about them in a shadow-flecked softness. There was a crooning song of some bird on its nest, the murmur of waters rippling down the stony shallows, and a beautiful girl in a dainty pink dress with her fingers just touching her fluffy masses of hair.
"Why?"
With the question Elinor looked up and saw why. Saw in Victor Burleigh's golden-brown eyes a look she had never read in eyes before; saw the whole face, the rugged, manly face lighted with a man's overmastering love. And the joy of it thrilled her soul.
"Do you know why?
He leaned toward her ever so little. And Elinor Wream, forgetful of the Wream family rank, forgetful of her tacit consent to Uncle Joshua's wishes, forgetful of Vincent Burgess and his heritage of culture, beautiful Elinor Wream, with her starry eyes, and cheeks of peach-blossom pink, put out her hands to Victor Burleigh, who took them eagerly.
"Let me hold them a minute," he said, softly. "There are sixty years to remember, but only one hour like this."
Then, forgetful of the world and the demands of the world, keeping her hands in his, he bent and kissed her, as from the foundation of the world it was his right to do. And Love's Young Dream, not bought with pain, as mother love is bought, nor wrought out with prayer and sacrificial service, as love for all humanity is won, came again on this April day to the little, rock-sheltered glen beside the bright waters of the Walnut, and briefly there rebuilt in rainbow hues the old, old paradise of joy for these two alone.
And into the new Eden came the new serpent also for to destroy. Before Elinor and Victor was the sunlit valley. Behind
While Burleigh was speaking the caveman had reached the doorway and reared up just beside it in the shadow. Clutching a brutal-looking club in his hairy, rough hand, he stood listening to the story of the murder that had left Victor fatherless. The face of the listener made clear the need for guardian angels. One leap, one blow, and Victor Burleigh would carry only one more scar to his grave.
Suddenly a faint piping voice floated in upon the glen:
To the feet of Thwist, the Ting,
Have you neiver doubt nor fear
Or some twibute do you bwing?
And Bug Buler, flushed and splashed, and generally muddy and happy, came around
"I ist followed you, Vic," Bug said, clutching Vic's hand.
"This is n't a safe place to come, Bug. You must n't follow me here."
"Nen you must n't go into is n't safe places, so I won't follow. Little folks don't know," Bug said, with cunning gravity.
"He is right," Elinor said. "I think we'd better leave now."
They knew that henceforth this spot would be holy ground for them, but they did not dare to think further than that. They only wished that the moments
"I know a way out," Bug declared. Turn, I'll show you."
Then, with a child's sense of direction, he led away from the cave out to where the deep ravine headed in a rough mass of broken rock.
"Tlimb up that and you're out," Bug declared.
They climbed up to the high level prairie that sweeps westward from the Walnut bluffs.
"Doodby, folks. I want to Botany wiv urn over there. I turn wiv Limpy out here."
Bug pointed to a group of students wandering about in search of dogtooth violets and other botanical plunder from Nature's springtime treasury. Among the group was Bug's chum, the crippled student.
"Well, stay with them this time, you little wandering Jew," Vic admonished, nor dreamed how his guardian angel had come to him this day in the guise of this same little wanderer.
When Victor and Elinor had come at last to the west bluff above the Walnut River, the late afternoon was already casting long
They must go down soon and join in the hilarity. But a golden half hour yet hung in the west—and the going down meant the going back to all that had been.
"Look at the foam on the whirlpool, Elinor. See how deliberately it swings upstream. Isn't that a most deceiving bit of treachery?" Vic said as he watched the river.
Elinor looked thoughtfully at the slow-moving water.
"I cannot endure deceit," she said at last. "I like honesty in everything. I said I would tell you sometime about a sacrifice I was forced to make. I'll tell you now if you will not speak of what I say."
How delicious to have her confidence in anything. Vic smiled assent.
"My father had a fortune from my mother. When he died he left me to the care of my two uncles, and gave all his money to endow chairs in universities. He thought a woman could marry money, and that he was doing mankind a service in this
The time had come for them to join the jolly picnic crowd in the Corral. She would go back to Vincent Burgess in a little while, and this glorious day would be only a memory. And yet, down in the pretty glen, Victor had held her hands and kissed her red lips. And she had been glad down there. The void in his life seemed blacker than the blackness behind the cavern.
"Elinor," he asked, suddenly, "are you bound by any promise—has Professor Burgess—?" He hesitated.
"No," she answered, turning her face away.
"Pardon my rudeness. You know I am not well-bred," he said, gently.
"Victor Burleigh, you ill-bred, of all the gentle, manly fellows in Sunrise! You know you are not."
A great hope leaped to life now, as Vic recalled the query, "If Victor Burleigh had his corners knocked off and was sandpapered down and had money?"—and of Elinor's blushing confession that it would make a difference she could not help if these things were. The corners were knocked off now, and Dean Fenneben had gently but persistently applied the sandpaper. The money must be henceforth the one condition.
"Elinor." Vic's voice was sweet as low bars of music.
"Oh, Victor, there's something I can't prevent."
She was thinking of Uncle Joshua, whose money had supported her all these years and of her obligation to heed his wishes. It was all settled for her now. And all the while Victor was thinking of his own limited means as the rock that was wrecking him with her.
For all his life afterward he never forgot the sorrow of that moment. He looked into Elinor's face, and all the longing, all the heart-hunger of the days gone by, and of the days to come seemed to lie in those wide-open eyes shaded by long black lashes.
"Elinor, my father's cruel murder and my mother dying alone were one kind of grief. My fight with those deadly poison things to rescue little Bug was another kind. My days of hardship and poverty on the claim, with only Bug and me in that desolate loneliness, was still another. But none of these seem a sorrow beside what I must face henceforth. And yet I have one joy mine now. You did care down in the glen. May I keep that one gracious joy—mine always?"
"You have always won in every game. You will in this struggle. Don't forget the name your mother gave you." Her eyes were luminous with tears. "We must go down to the Corral now. Tomorrow will make things all right. I shall be proud of you and your success everywhere, for you will succeed."
"I may not be worthy of victory," he said, sadly.
"You have never been unworthy. Don't be now." She smiled bravely.
They turned from the west prairie and the sunset, and slowly they passed out of its passing radiance down to the darkening spaces of the old Kickapoo Corral.
And the day with its gladness and sorrow, whether for loss or gain, slipped into the shadowy beauty of an April twilight.
9.
CHAPTER IX
GAIN, OR LOSS?
E'en take it for a sacrifice, acceptable to Thee.
—KIPLING
THE ball game on Friday, the thirteenth, was a great event this year. The Sunrise football eleven had held the championship record with an uncrossed goal line in the autumn. The basket-ball team had had no defeat this year. Debating tests had given Sunrise the victory. That came through Trench and the crippled student. And the state oratorical struggle repeated the story, a conquest, all the greater because Victor Burleigh, the athlete, wore also the laurels of oratory. And why should he not, with that fine presence and magnificent voice? As Dr. Fenneben listened to his forceful logic he saw clearly the line for the boy's future, a line, he thought, that could end at last only in the pulpit.
One more battle to fight now and Lagonda Ledge and the whole Walnut Valley would
Vincent Burgess, A.B., Greek Professor from Boston, seemed to have forgotten entirely about types and geographical breadths and seclusion for profound research amid
But Vincent Burgess had not forgotten all of the motives that had pulled him Kansas-ward, although unknown to Dr. Fenneben, he had already refused to consider a position higher up in an eastern college. He was not quite ready to leave the West yet. Of course, not. Elinor Wream was only half through school and growing more popular as she was growing more womanly and more beautiful each year. His salvation lay in keeping on the grounds if he would hold his claim undisturbed.
Burgess had come to Kansas, he had told Fenneben, in order to know something of the state where his only sister had lived. He did not know yet all he wished to know about her life and death here. Her name was never spoken in his father's presence after she came West, so great was that father's anger over her leaving the East. And deep in Vincent's mind he fixed the
This was all his own business, however, and hidden deep, almost out of sight of himself, was a selfish motive that had not yet put a visible mark on the surface.
Burgess wanted to marry Norrie Wream, and he wanted her to have all the good things of life which in her simple rearing had been denied her. The heritage from his father's estate included certain trust funds ambiguously bestowed by an eccentric English ancestor upon someone who had come West not long before his death. These funds Vincent held by his father's will—to which will Joshua Wream was witness—on condition that no heir to these funds was living. If there were such person or persons living—but Burgess knew there were none. Joshua Wream had made sure of that for him before he left Cambridge. And yet it might be well to stay in Kansas for a year or two—much better to settle any possible difficulty here than to have anything follow him East later. For Burgess had his eye on Dr. Wream's chair in Harvard when the old man should give it up. That was a part
In the weeks before the big ball game, Victor Burleigh seemed to have forgotten the glen and the west bluff above the Kickapoo Corral. The girls who would have substituted for Elinor in the afternoon ramble took up much of the big sophomore's time, and he never seemed more gay nor care free. And Elinor, if she had a heartache, did not show it in her happy manner.
On the afternoon before the ball game, a May thunderstorm swept the Walnut Valley and the darkness fell early. As Dennie
"I must be nervous," Professor Burgess said, trying to manage Dennie's umbrella and catching it in her hair. "I had a letter today that worried me."
"Too bad!" Dennie said sympathetically.
"I'll tell you all about it sometime."
He was trying to loose the wire rib-joint from Dennie's hair, which the dampness was rolling in soft little ringlets about her forehead and neck. Half-consciously, he remembered the same outline of rippling hair, as it had looked in the glow of the October camp fire down in the Kickapoo Corral when she was telling the old legend of Swift Elk and The Fawn of the Morning Light. She smiled up at him consolingly. Dennie was level-headed, and life was always worth living where she was.
"I'll be your rain beau." He took her arm to assist her down the steps.
So courteous was his action, she might have been a lady of rank instead of old Bond Saxon's daughter carrying her own weight of a sorrow greater than Lagonda Ledge dreamed of. As the two walked slowly homeward under the dripping shelter of the trees, Vincent Burgess felt a sense of comfort and pleasure out of all keeping for a man in love elsewhere. Victor Burleigh watched them from the shadow of the portico column.
"I believe Trench is right. He insists that Burgess likes Dennie, or that he is mean enough to deceive Dennie into liking him. A man like that ought to be killed—a scholar, and a rich man, and Dennie such a brave little poor girl with a kind, weak-kneed, old father on her heart. Norrie ought to know this, but who am I to say a word?"
"Victor Burleigh, won't you release the fair princess from the tower?" a girl's voice called.
Vic turned to see Elinor framed in the half-way window of the south turret. And in that dripping shadowy light, no frame could want a rarer picture.
"I've fallen into the pit and am far on
"If you'll let up on perishing for half a minute, Rapunzel, I'll to the rescue," Vic cried, "if I have to climb the dome and knock the per aspera out of the State Seal and come down through the hole, per astra ad aspera." And then he rushed off to find an unlocked exit to the building.
From the Chapel end of the circular stairs, he called presently.
"Curfew must not ring for a couple of seconds. Rise to the surface, fair mermaid."
Elinor came up the winding stair into the dimly lighted chapel at his call. The two had avoided each other since the April day in the glen. They were not to blame for this chance meeting now.
"When you are in trouble and the nights are dark and rainy, call me, Elinor," Vic said as they were crossing the rotunda.
"If I show you sometimes how to look up and find the light, as you showed me the
A level ray from a momentary cloudrift in the western sky smote the stained glass of the dome, lighting its gleaming inscription with a fleeting radiance.
"But the light comes rarely and is so far away, and between times, only the cave, and the dark ways behind it leading to the river," he said gravely. The sorrow of hopelessness was his tone.
"Not unless one chooses to burrow downward," she replied softly. "Let's hurry home. Tomorrow you will be `Victor the Famous' again. I hope this shower won't spoil the ball game."
As night deepened, the rain fell steadily. Up in Victor Burleigh's room Bug Buler grew drowsy early.
"I want to say my pwayers now, Vic," he said.
The big fellow put down his book and took the child in his arms. Bug had a genius for praying briefly and for others rather than for himself. Tonight he merely
"Dear Dod, please ist make Vic dood as folks finks he is, for Thwist's sake. Amen-n-n."
When he fell asleep, Victor sat a long while staring at the window where the May rain was beating heavily. At length, he bent over little Bug and pushed back the curls from his brow. Bug smiled up drowsily and went on sleeping.
"As good as folks think I am, Bug!" he mused. "You have gotten between me and the rattlesnakes that were after my soul a good many times, little brother-of-mine. As good as folks think I am! Do you know what it costs to be that good?"
Ten minutes later he sat in Lloyd Fenneben's library.
"I have come for help," he said in reply to the Dean's questioning face.
"I hope I can give it," Fenneben responded.
"It's about tomorrow's game. There are sure to be some professional players on the other team. I want Sunrise to win. I want to win myself." Vic's voice was harsh tonight. And the Dean caught the hard tone.
"I want Sunrise to win. I want you to win. There will probably be some professionals to play against, but we have no way of proving this," Fenneben said.
"What do you think of such playing, Doctor?" Vic asked.
"I think the rule about professionalism is often a strained piece of foolishness. It is violated persistently and persistently winked at, but so long as it is the rule there is only one square thing to do, and that is to live up to the law. You should not dread any professionalism in the game tomorrow, however. You'll bring us through anyhow, and keep the Sunrise name and fame untarnished." The Dean smiled genially.
Burleigh's face was very pale and a strange fire burned in his eyes.
"Dr. Fenneben"—his musical voice rang clear—"I'm only a poor devil from the short-grass country where life each year depends on that year's crop. Three years out of four, the wind and drouth bring only failure at harvest time. Then we starve our bodies and grip onto hope and determination with our souls till seedtime comes again. I want a college education. Last summer burned us out as usual within a
The words were shot out like bullets.
"What shall you do?" Lloyd Fenneben's black eyes held Burleigh. "There is only one thing to do. When you ranked high in grades with only the trivial matter of excusable absence against you—no broken law—you took Professor Burgess gently by the throat and told him you meant to play anyhow. You stood your ground like a man, for your own sake and for the honor of Sunrise. Stand like a man for your own sake and the honor of Sunrise, now. Go to Professor Burgess and take him gently—by the hand, this time—and tell him you do not mean to play, and why you cannot."
Burleigh sat still as stone, his face white
"But our proud record—the glorious honor of this college," he said at length, and back of his words was the thought of Victor Burleigh, the idol of Sunrise, dethroned, where he had been adored.
"There is no honor for a college like the honesty of its students. There is no prouder record than the record of daring to do the right. You could get into the game once by a brute's strength. Get out of it now by a gentleman's honor."
Behind the speech was Lloyd Fenneben himself, sympathetic, firm, upright, before whom the harshness of Victor Burleigh's face slowly gave place to an expression of sorrow.
"My boy," Fenneben said gently, "Nature gave us the Walnut Valley with its limestone ledges and fine forest trees. But before our Sunrise could be builded the ledge had to be shapen into the hewn stone, the green tree to the seasoned lumber, quarter-sawed oak—quarter-sawed, mind you. Mill, forge and try-pit, ax and saw and chisel, with cleft and blow and furnace heat, shaped them all for Service. Over our doorway
Burleigh rose, silent still, and the two went out together. At the doorway, he turned to Fenneben, who grasped his hand without a word. And once again, the firm hand clasp of the Dean of Sunrise seemed to bind the country boy to the finer things of life. It had done the same on that day after the Thanksgiving game when he sat in Fenneben's study, and understood for the first time what gives the right to pride in brawny arm and steel-spring nerve.
After Burleigh left him, Lloyd Fenneben stood for a long time on his veranda in the light of the doorway watching the steady downpour of the warm May rain. As he turned at length to enter the house a rough-looking man with rain-soaked clothing and slouched hat, sprang out of the shadows.
"Stranger," he called hastily. "There's a little child fell in the river round the bend, and his mother got hold of him, but she can't pull him out, and can't hold on much
An empty sleeve was flapping in the rain, and Fenneben did not notice then that the man kept that side of himself all the time in the shadows. Fenneben had only one thought as he hurried away in the darkness, to save the woman and child. His companion said little, directing the course toward the bend in the river before the gateway of Pigeon Place. As they pushed on with all speed through rain and mud, Fenneben was hardly conscious that Dennie Saxon's words about the lonely gray-haired hermit woman were recurring curiously to his mind.
"If talking about Sunrise made her cry like that, maybe you might do something for her," Dennie had said. He had never tried to do anything for her. Somehow she seemed to be the woman who was in peril now, and he was half-consciously blaming himself that he had never tried to help her, had not even thought of her for months. Women were not in his line, except the kindly impersonal interest he felt for all the Sunrise girls, and his sense of responsibility
All this in a semi-conscious fleetness swept across his mind, that was bent on reaching the river, and on that woman holding a drowning child. At the bend in the river, the man halted suddenly.
"Look out! There's a stone; don't stumble!" he said hoarsely, dodging back as he spoke.
Then Fenneben was conscious of his own feet striking the slab of stone by the roadside, of a sudden shove from somebody behind him, a two-armed man it must have been, of stumbling blindly, trying to catch at the elm tree that stood there, of falling through the underbrush, headforemost, into the river, even of striking the water. As he fell, he was very faintly conscious of a sense of pity for Victor Burleigh fighting out a battle with his own honor tonight, and then he must have heard a dog's fierce yelp, and a woman's scream. Somehow, it seemed to come through distance of time, as out of past years, and not through length of space—and then of a brutal laugh and an oath with the words:
"Now for Josh Wream, and—"
But Fenneben's head had struck the stone ledge against which the Walnut ripples at low tide, and for a long time he knew no more.
It was raining still when Victor Burleigh reached the Saxon House. At the door he met Professor Burgess, who was just leaving. Strangely enough, the memory of their first meeting at the campus gate on a September day flashed into the mind of each as they came face to face now. They never spoke to each other except when it was necessary. And yet tonight, something made them greet each other courteously.
"Professor, will you be kind enough to come up to my room a few minutes?" Burleigh asked, lifting his cap to his instructor with the words.
"Certainly," Vincent Burgess said with equal grace.
Bug Buler had kicked off the bed covering and lay fast asleep on his little cot with his stubby arms bare, and his little fat hands, dimpled in each knuckle, thrown wide apart.
"I saw a picture like this once for the sign of the cross," Vic said as he drew the covering over the little form. "Bug has
Professor Burgess wondered again, why a boy like Burleigh should have been given a voice of such rare charm.
"I will not keep you long," Vic said, turning from Bug. "I cannot play in tomorrow's game, and be a man."
Then, briefly, he explained the reason.
"It is raining still. Take my umbrella," he said at the close of his simply told story. "But tomorrow's sunshine will dry the field for the game, all right. Good night."
"Good night," Vincent Burgess said hoarsely, and plunged into the darkness and the rain.
Ten steps from the Saxon House, he came plump into Bond Saxon, who staggered a little to avoid him.
"My luck on rainy nights," Vincent thought. "The old fellow's sprees seem to run with the storms. He hasn't been `off' for a long time."
But Bond Saxon was never more sober in his life, and he clutched the young man's arm eagerly.
"Professor Burgess, won't you help me!" he cried.
"What do you want to do on a night like this?" Burgess asked, remembering the vow he had been forced to make, by this same man.
"Come help me save a man's life!" Bond urged.
"Look here, Saxon. You've got some wild notion out of a boot-legger's bottle. Straighten up now. It's an infamous thing in a college town like Lagonda Ledge, where neither a saloon nor a joint would be allowed, that some imp of Satan should forever be bringing you whisky. Who does it, anyhow?"
"I'm not drunk and haven't been for six months. Come on, for God's sake, and help me to save a life, maybe two lives, from the very man that's done the boot-leggin' and robbin' in this town for months and months." Saxon's words were convincing enough.
"What can I do?" Burgess asked. "I'm not a policeman."
"Come on! Come on!" Saxon urged, tugging at the professor's arm. "It 's a life, I tell you."
Vincent yielded unwillingly, the night, the beating rain, the man who asked it of him, the purpose, his own unfitness—all
"Say, Professor, do you remember the night I asked you to take care of Dennie if anything should happen to me?"
"Do you remember it?" Burgess responded. "You didn't ask; you demanded."
"I was drunk then. I'm sober now. Burgess, if anything should happen to me now, would you still be willing?" Bond Saxon asked in tense anxiety.
"I've already taken oath," Burgess said. "I think your daughter may need somebody's care before anything happens if you keep up this gait."
They hurried on through the rain until they had left the board walk and the town lights, and were staggering along the cinder-made path, when Burgess halted.
"Saxon, who's the man, or two men, you want to save? I believe you are drunk."
Bond Saxon grasped his arm, and said hoarsely:
"Don't shriek here. We are in danger, now. It's not two men. It's a man and a woman, maybe. It's Dean Funnybone. Come on!"
10.
CHAPTER X
THE THIEF IN THE MOUTH
O, thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no,
name to be known by, let us call thee, devil!
—SHAKESPEARE
WHEN Lloyd Fenneben could think again, the waters had receded, the rock ledge had turned to a pillow under his head, the river bank was a straight white hospital wall, sunlight and sweet air for the darkness and the rain, and Norrie Wream was beside him instead of the brutal stranger. His heavy black hair was shorn away and his head was bound with much soft cotton stuffs. His left arm was full of prickles, as if the blood had just resumed circulation.
"And meantime?" he said, looking up at Elinor.
"Yes, meantime, it's June time," Elinor replied.
"Well, and what of Sunrise? Did we—"
"Oh, yes, we did. The college first. The ruling passion, strong in the hospital. When a Wream gets to kingdom-come, he always
Under her gentle ministrations, Dr. Fenneben could picture what comfort might be in store for Vincent Burgess in a day, doubtless only two years away. He resented Joshua Wream's estimate of Elinor. Surely Joshua had never seen her in the place of nurse.
"Now, meantime, Uncle Lloyd," Elinor was saying, "commencement passed off beautifully under Acting-Dean Burgess, considering how sad and heavy-hearted everybody was. The trustees want to raise Professor Burgess's salary next year—he's so competent.
Lloyd Fenneben's eyes were not bandaged, and as he looked at Elinor he wondered at her utter lack of reserve and sentiment, when she spoke of Burgess in such a frank, matter-of-fact way. When he was in
"The arrangements for next year are all looked after. Everything will be done exactly as you would have it done. There's not one thing to put a worry into that cotton round your head."
"Good! Now, tell me of `beforehand.' " His smile was as charming as ever.
"In your fever you've been telling us about a one-armed man who had two arms to push people into the river, of his wanting you to save some child's life, and of your stumbling over the stone. That's all we know about that. Bond Saxon and Professor Burgess found you in the water at the north bend in the Walnut close to that hermit woman's house. Either you fell in, or somebody pushed you down the bank, headforemost, and you struck a ledge of rock." Elinor's eyes were full of tears now. "You would have been drowned, if that white-haired woman had n't jumped in and held your head above water while she clung to the bushes with one hand. Her dog helped, too, like a real hero. It stood on the bank and held to her shawl that she had fastened round you to hold you. And the river was
She bent over him and softly caressed his hand.
"Where is that woman now? Dennie Saxon asked me once to do something for her in her loneliness. She got ahead of my negligence and did something for me, it seems."
"She left Lagonda Ledge the very day they rushed us up here to the hospital. Is n't she strange? And she is so gentle and sweet, but so sad. I never saw such apathetic face as hers, Uncle Lloyd."
"When did you see her?" Fenneben asked.
"She came to ask after you. Nobody thought you would get over it." Elinor's voice trembled. "The fever was burning
"And the one-armed man I seemed to remember?"
"I don't know. I've been too busy to ask many questions. Lagonda Ledge is in mourning for you. It will run up the flag above half-mast when I write how much better you are. Bond Saxon has a theory that some thief wanted to rob you and decoyed you away on pretense of helping somebody out of the river. You are an easy mark, Uncle."
"Why should Bond Saxon have a theory? And how did he know where to find me? And how did that gray-haired woman and her dog happen in on the scene just then? This is a grim sort of dime novel business, Norrie. Things don't fall out this way in real life unless there is some reason back of them. I think I'll bear investigating."
"I think so myself—you or your romantic rescuing squad. You might call the dog to the witness stand first, for he was the first on the scene. I forgot though that the dog
"Tell me about the ball game," Fenneben said next.
"Oh, it rained for hours and hours, and there wasn't any train service for Lagonda Ledge for a week, and all the Inter-Collegiate Athletic events for the season were called off for Sun rise-by-the-Walnut."
"And the students, generally?" Dr. Fenneben questioned.
"Mr. Trench will be back," Elinor exclaimed, "and folks have just found out that it's old Trench who's keeping that crippled boy in school, the one they call `Limpy.' Trench rustles jobs for him and divides his own income for college expenses with the boy for the rest of the cost. I don't know how the story got out, but I asked him about it when he was up here to see you. He just grinned and drawled lazily, `I can save a little on shoe leather, that some fellows wear out hurrying so, and I don't burst up so many hats with a swelled head as some do. So I keep a little extra change on these accounts. We're going down to Oklahoma
"Oh, yes; Trench is a hero and I've known about that whole thing for a long while," the Dean asserted. "And Victor Burleigh?"
A shadow in the beautiful dark eyes, a half-tone lowering of the voice, and a general indifference of manner, as Elinor answered:
"I'm sure I don't know anything about him, except that he's coming back next year."
Dr. Fenneben read the whole story in the words and manner of the answer, and he smiled grimly as he thought of Burgess and of the conflict of Wream against Wream if Elinor and his brother Joshua ever came to the clash of arms. But he was too weak now to direct matters.
And meantime, while Lagonda Ledge was holding its breath in anxiety and dread,
To the school and the town Dr. Fenneben's recovery was the only thing asked for. There was as yet no clew regarding the cause of the assault. Bond Saxon had avoided Burgess since the event, so the young man himself made occasion to get Bond up into Dr. Fenneben's study one June day just before commencement.
"Saxon," he said gravely, "you are a man of sense, and you know that there's something wrong about this Fenneben assault. You've put up some smooth stories about our happening to be out at the bend of the river that night, so I guess suspicion will be turned from us all right when Lagonda Ledge gets time to think about causes; but I must be let into the truth now." Burgess was adamant now.
For a little while the old man looked away through the study window at the prairie empire to be found for the looking.
"Do you see that little twist of blue smoke over west?" he queried presently.
"What of it?" Burgess asked.
"Nothing, only the man huddlin' down round the fire makin' that smoke way down where it's cold and dark, that's the man who—say, Professor!"
Old Bond looked up appealingly, and the pitiful face touched Burgess' heart.
"What is it, Saxon? Be frank now, but be fair, too. Sooner or later, this thing must be run down. Fenneben will do it himself, anyhow, as soon as he's well enough."
"Professor, I have asked you twice if you'd be good to Dennie—"
"Yes, yes; you always come back to that. Anybody would be good to her, and she's a capable girl who doesn't need anybody's care, anyhow. Now, go on."
"I will"—it seemed an heroic resolve— "I asked this for Dennie, because my own life is never safe."
"So you have said. Why not?" Burgess insisted. There was no way to evade the question now.
"That's my own business—just a little longer," Bond answered slowly. "One thing more; I want your promise not to tell what
"Oh, I'll help you all I can." Burgess's kindly patience now was strangely unlike the aristocratic, resentful man to whom old Bond Saxon had appealed one stormy October night.
"I'm a failure, Professor. I've spoiled my life by my infernal weak will and appetite for whisky. I know it as well as you do. But I'm not meant for a bad man." There was unspeakable pathos in Saxon's face and words.
"Nobody would call you bad. You are a lovable man when you—keep straight," Burgess declared cordially.
"I graduated from the university back in the sixties," Bond went on.
"You!" Burgess exclaimed.
"Yes, I'm one of your alumni brothers from Harvard. It takes more 'n a college diploma to make a man sometimes, although this would mighty soon get to be a cheap, destructible nation, if we should pull the colleges out of it. The boys I've seen Sunrise make into men does an old man's heart good to think about! But there's more than book-learning in a Master's Degree. There must
Saxon paused, and the professor waited.
"The man that sets the cussed trap for me is a law breaker, an escaped convict, and a murderer. That's what drinking did for him; drinking and injustice in money matters together."
Burgess started and his face grew pale.
"Oh, it's a fact, Professor. There are several roads to ruin. One by the route I've taken. One may be too much love of money, of women, or of having your own way. You can ruin your soul by getting it set on one thing above everything else. Education, for instance, like the Wreams back there in Cambridge."
"The Wreams!" Burgess exclaimed.
"Yes, old Joshua Wream sold himself to an appetite for musty old Sanscrit till he'd sacrifice anybody's comfort and joy for it, same as I sold out to a fool's craving for
"Go on!" Vincent's voice was hardly audible.
"This outlaw, boot-legger, thief, and murderer was a respectable fellow once, the adopted son of a wealthy family back East, who began by spoiling him, lavished money on him, and let him have his own way in everything. He was a gay youngster on the side, given to drinking and fast company. He fell in love with a pretty girl, but when she found him out, she cut him. Then he went to the dogs, blaming her because she had sense enough to throw him over where he belonged. She fell in love—the right kind of love—with another man. And this young fool who had no claim on her at all, swore vengeance. Her family wanted her to marry the young sport because he had money. They were long on money—her father was, anyhow. But she wouldn't do it."
"Did she marry the one she really cared for?" Burgess asked eagerly.
"No; but that's another story. Meantime
Saxon paused and looked once more at the tiny wavering smoke column, hardly visible now.
"He's over yonder hiding away from the light of day under the bluffs by the fire that sends that curl of smoke up through the crevices in the rock, an outlaw thief."
Saxon gazed long at the landscape beyond the Walnut. When he spoke again, it was with an effort.
"Professor, this outlaw got a hold on me once when I was drunk, drunk by his making. It would do no good to tell you about that. You couldn't help me, nor harm him. You'll trust me in this?"
A picture of Dennie down in the Kickapoo Corral, with the flickering firelight on her rippling hair, the weird, shadowy woodland, and the old Indian legend all came back to the young man now, though why he could not say.
"I certainly would never bring harm to you nor yours," he said kindly.
"I can't inform on the scoundrel. I can
The anguish on the old man's face was pitiful as he spoke.
"She has a reason of her own for living here, and she is the soul of courage. On the night of the Fenneben accident, I was out her way—yes, running away from Bond Saxon. I knew if I stayed in town, I'd get drunk on a bottle left at my door. So I tore out in the rain and the dark to fight it out with the devil inside of me. And out at Pigeon Place I run onto this fiend. When I ordered him back to his hiding place, he vowed he'd get Fenneben and put him in the river. There's one or two human things about him still. One is his fear of little children, and one is his love for that woman. He really did adore her years ago. I tracked home after him, and you know the rest. He put up some story to the Dean to entice him out there."
He hesitated, then ceased to speak.
"Why the Dean?" Burgess asked.
"Because Lloyd Fenneben's the man she
Burgess felt as if the limestone ridge was giving way beneath him.
"Where is she now?"
She's gone, nobody knows where. I hope to heaven she will never come back," the old man replied.
"And it was she who saved Dr. Fenneben's life? Does he know who she is?"
"No, no. She's never let him know, and if she doesn't want him to know, whose business is it to tell him?" Saxon urged. "I have hung about and protected her when she never knew I was near. But when I'm drunk, I'm an idiot and my mind is bent against her. I'd die to save her, and yet I may kill her some day when I don't know it." Bond Saxon's head was drooping pitifully low.
"But why live in such slavery? Why not tell all you know about this man and let the law protect a helpless woman?" Burgess urged.
Old Bond Saxon looked up and uttered only one word—"Dennie!"
Vincent Burgess turned away a moment. Dennie! Yes, there was Dennie.
"This woman had a husband, you say?" he asked presently.
Bond Saxon stared straight at him and slowly nodded his head.
"What became of him? Do you know? Vincent questioned.
Saxon leaned forward, and, clutching Vincent Burgess by the arm, whispered hoarsely, "He's dead. I killed him. But I was drunk when I did it. And this man knows it and holds me bound,"
A Master's Degree | ||