A Master's Degree | ||
SERVICE
If put upon you, make the judgment good that thought you worthy of it.
—SHAKESPEARE
11.
CHAPTER XI
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.
—LOWELL
IT was mid-December before Lloyd Fenneben saw Lagonda Ledge again. In the murderous attempt upon his life, he had been hurled, head-downward, upon the hidden rock-ledge with such force that even his strong nervous system could barely overcome the shock. Hours of unconsciousness were followed by a raging brain fever, and paralysis, insanity, and death strove together against him. His final complete recovery was slow, and he was wise enough to let nature have ample time for rebuilding what had been so cruelly wrenched out of line. It was this very patience and willingness to take life calmly, when most men would have been in a fever of anxiety about neglected business, that brought Lloyd Fenneben back to Lagonda Ledge in December, a perfectly
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah! RAH!! RAH!!!
It was twilight when the train pulled up to the station. The December evening was clear and crisp as southern Kansas Decembers usually are. The lights of the town were twinkling in the dusk. Out beyond the river a gorgeous purple and scarlet after-sunset
Several passengers left the train, but the company had eyes only for the Pullman car where Fenneben was riding. Nobody, except Bond Saxon, and a cab driver on the edge of the crowd, noticed a gray-haired woman who alighted so quietly and slipped to the cab so quickly that she was almost out to Pigeon Place before Fenneben had been able to clear the platform.
Behind the Dean was his niece, who halted on the car steps while her uncle went into the outstretched arms of Lagonda Ledge. At sight of her, the hats went high in air, as she stood there smiling above the crowd. It was Maytime when she went away. They had remembered her in dainty Maytime gowns. They were not prepared for her in her handsome traveling costume of golden brown, her brown beaver hat, and pretty furs. A beautiful girl can be so charming in her winter feathers. She had expected that Burgess would be first to meet her, and she was ready, she thought, to greet him, becomingly. But as the porter helped her to the platform, the crowd closed in,
"The thing is settled now," the young folks thought. But Dennie Saxon and Trench, who walked home together, knew that many things were hopelessly unsettled. By the law of natural fitness, Dennie and Trench should have fallen in love with each other. They were so alike in goodness of heart. But such mating of like with like, is rare, and under its ruling the world would
During Dr. Fenneben's absence, Professor Burgess was acting-dean. For a man who, two years before, had never heard of a Jayhawker, who hoped the barren prairies would furnish seclusion for profound research in his library, and whose interest in the student body lay in its material to furnish "types," Dean Burgess, on the outside, certainly measured up well toward the stature of the real Dean—broad-minded, beloved "Funnybone."
And as Vincent Burgess grew in breadth of view and human interest, his popularity increased and his opportunities multiplied. Sunrise forgot that it had ever regarded him as a walking Greek textbook in paper binding. Next to Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, his place at Sunrise would be the hardest to fill now; and withal, sometime in the near future, there was waiting for him the prettiest girl that ever climbed the steps from the lower campus to the Sunrise door. Burgess had never dreamed that life in Kansas could be so full of pleasure for him.
And all the while, on the inside, another
Burgess read this letter many times that night after he returned from dinner at the Fenneben home. And sometimes his fists were clinched and sometimes his blue eyes were full of tears. Then he remembered little Bug, who had declared once that "Don Fonnybone was dood for twoubleness."
"I can't take this to Fenneben," he mused, as he read Joshua Wream's letter for the tenth time. "Nor can I go to Saxon. He's never sure of himself and when he's drunk, he reverses himself and turns against his best friends. And who am I to turn to a man like Bond Saxon for my confidences?"
"What about Elinor?" came a voice from somewhere. "The woman you would make your wife should be the one to whose loving sympathy you could turn at any of life's angles, else that were no real marriage."
"Elinor, of all people in the world, the very last. She shall never know, never!" So he answered the inward questioner.
Dimly then rose up before him the picture of Victor Burleigh on the rainy May
Burgess had been unconsciously exultant over the boy's confession. It would put the confessor out of reach of any claim to Elinor's friendship when the truth was known about his poverty and his professional playing. And yet he had followed Bond Saxon's lead the more willingly that night that he was hating himself for rejoicing with himself.
On this December night, with Elinor once more in Lagonda Ledge, Victor Burleigh must come again to trouble him. What a price that boy must have paid for his honesty! But he paid it, aye, he paid it! And then the rains put out the game and nobody knew except Burleigh and himself. Burgess almost resented the kindness of Fate to the heroic boy. But all this solved no problems for Vincent Burgess, except the realization that here was one fellow who had a soul of courage. Could he confide in Burleigh? Not in a thousand years!
In utter loneliness, Vincent Burgess put out his light and stared at the window. The street lamps glowed in lonely fashion, for it was very late, and nobody was abroad. Up on the limestone ridge, the Sunrise beacon shone bravely. Down in town beside the campus gate—he could just catch a glimpse of one steady beam. It was the faithful old lamp in the hallway of the Saxon House, and beyond that unwavering light was Dennie.
"Dennie! Why have I not thought of her? The only one in the world whom I can fully trust. That ought to be a man's sweetheart, I suppose, but she is not mine. She is just Dennie. Heaven bless her! I've sworn to care for her. She must help me now." And with the comforting thought, he fell asleep beside the window.
The December sunset was superb in a glory of endless purple mists and rose-tinted splendor of far-reaching skies. The evening drops down early at this season and the lights were gleaming here and there in the town where the shadows fall soonest before the day's work is finished up in Sunrise.
Victor Burleigh, who had been called to
"I beg your pardon, Elinor. Dr. Fenneben sent for me."
Somehow the deep musical voice and her name pronounced as nobody else ever could pronounce it, and the big manly form and brave face, all seemed to complete the spell of the sunset hour. Elinor did not speak, but with a smile made room for him beside her at the window, and the two looked long at the deepening grandeur of the heavens and the misty shadows of heliotrope and silver
"And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day," Victor said at last.
"Your voice grows richer with the passing years, Victor," Elinor said softly. "I wanted to hear it again the first time I heard you speak out there one September day."
"It is well to grow rich in something," Victor said, half-earnestly, half-carelessly.
Before Elinor could say more, they caught sight of Professor Burgess and Dennie Saxon, leaving the front portico as they had done on the May evening before the assault on Dr. Fenneben. Burgess and Dennie usually left the building together this year.
"Isn't Dennie a darling? Elinor said calmly.
"I guess so," he replied. "I don't just know what makes a girl a darling to another girl. I only know"—he was on thin ice now—"and I don't even know that very well."
They turned to the landscape again. The whole building was growing quiet. Footsteps were fading away down the halls.
"It is too beautiful to last," Elinor said, turning to the young man beside her. "The joy of it is too deep for us to hold."
She did not mean to stay a moment longer, for all the scene could be hers forever in memory—imperishable!—and Victor did not mean to detain her. But her face as she turned from the window, the hallowed setting of time and opportunity, and a heart-love hungering through hopeless, slow-dragging months, all had their own way with him. He put out his arms to her and she nestled within them, lifting a face to his own transfigured with love's sweetness. And he bent and kissed her red lips, holding her close in his arms. And in the shadowy twilight, with the faintly roseate banners of the sunset's after-glow trailing through it, for just one minute, heaven and earth came very near together for these two. And then they remembered, and Elinor put her hand in Victor's, who held it in his without a word.
Out in the hall, Trench with soft lazy step had just come to the study door in time to see and turn away unseen, and slowly pass out of the big front door, whistling low the while:
By the sandy Cimarron,
In a day to come she will be my bride,
By the sandy Cimarron.
Out by the big stone pillars of the portico, he looked toward the south turret and saw Dr. Fenneben as Vic had seen Elinor on the evening of the May storm. He did not call, but with a twist of the fingers as of unlocking a door, he dodged back into the building and up to the chapel end of the turret stairs to release the Dean.
Dr. Fenneben had started down to the study by the same old "road to perdition" stairs and paused at the window as Dennie and Burgess were passing out, unconscious of three pairs of eyes on them. Then the Dean saw down through the half-open study door the two young people by the window, and he knew he was not needed there. What that look in his black eyes meant, as he turned to the half-way window of the turret,
"You are a brick, Trench," he said, as the upper stairway door swung open to release him.
"You've the whole chimney," Trench responded, as he swung himself away.
Dr. Fenneben met Elinor in the rotunda.
"Wait a minute, Norrie, and I'll walk home with you."
In the study he met Burleigh, whose stern face was tender with a pathetic sadness, but there was no embarrassment in his glance. And Fenneben, being a man himself, knew what power for sacrifice lay back of those beautiful eyes.
"I can't give him the message I meant to give now. The man said there was no hurry. A veritable tramp he looked to be. I hope there is no harm to the boy in it. Why should a girl like Norrie love the pocketbook, and the things of the pocketbook, when a heart like Victor Burleigh's calls to her? I know
And Burleigh wondered much what "some matters" might be.
When Professor Burgess left Dennie he said, lightly:
"Miss Dennie, I need a little help in my work. Would you let me call this evening and talk it over with you? I don't believe anybody else would get hold of it quite so well."
Dennie had supposed this first evening after Elinor's return would find her lover making use of it. Why should Dennie not feel a thrill of pleasure that her services out-weighed everything else? Poor Dennie! She was no flirt, but much association with Vincent Burgess had given her insight to know that Norrie Wream would never understand him.
When Burgess returned to the Saxon House later in the evening, he met Bond Saxon at the door.
"Say, Professor, the devil will be to pay again. That Mrs. Marian is back. Got
"Saxon, I'm in no mood for all this tonight," Burgess said, "but for your daughter's sake keep away from the man's bottle now."
"Yes, for Dennie's sake—" Bond looked imploringly at Burgess.
"Yes, yes, I'll do my duty as I promised. But why not do it yourself toward her? Why not be a man and a father?"
"Me! A criminal! Do you know what that kind of slavery is?" Saxon whispered.
"Almost," Burgess answered, but the old man did not catch his meaning.
Dennie was waiting in the parlor, a cosy little room but without the luxurious appointments of Norrie Wream's home. Yet
"Dennie," he said, plunging into his purpose at once. "I come to you because I need a friend and you are tempered steel."
Tonight Dennie's gray eyes were dark and shining. The rippling waves of yellow brown hair gave a sort of Madonna outline to her face, and there was about her something indefinably pleasant.
"What can I do for you, Professor Burgess?" she asked.
"Listen to me, Dennie, and then advise me."
Was this the acting-dean of Sunrise, a second Fenneben, already declared? His face was full of pathos, yet even in his feverish grief it seemed a better face to Dennie than the cold scholarly countenance of two years ago.
"My troubles go back a long way. My father was given to greed. He sold himself and my sister's happiness and mine for money. You think your father is a slave, Dennie, because he has a craving for whisky. Less than half a dozen times a year the demon inside gets him down."
Dennie looked up with a sorrowful face.
"Yes, but think of what he might do. You don't know what dreadful things he has done—"
"Yes, I do. He told me himself the very worst. I'll never betray him, Dennie. His punishment is heavy enough."
Burgess laid his hand on her dimpled hand in token of sincerity.
"But that's only rarely, little girl. My father every day in the year gave himself to an appetite for money till he cared for nothing else. My sister, who died believing that I also had turned against her, was forced to marry a man she did not love because he had money. I never knew the man she did love. It was a romance of her girlhood. I was away from home the most of my boyhood years, and she never mentioned his name after the affair was broken off. All I know is that she was deceived and made to believe some cruel story against him. She and her husband came West, where they died. My father never forgave them for going West, nor permitted me to speak her name to him. I never knew why until yesterday. My sister's husband had a brother out here with
Burgess paused. Dennie's interest and sympathy made her silent company a comfort.
"I was heir to my father's estate, and heir also to some funds he held in trust. I was a scholar with ambition for honors—a Master's Degree and a high professional place in a great university. I trusted my whole life plans to the man who knew my father best—Dr. Joshua Wream."
Dennie looked up, questioningly.
"Yes, to Elinor's uncle, as unlike Dr. Fenneben as night and day."
"Do not blame me, Dennie, if two men have helped to misshape my life. My father believed that money is absolute. Dr. Wream holds scholarly achievement as the greatest life work. It has been Dr. Fenneben's part to show me the danger and the power in each."
It was dimly dawning on Burgess that the presence of Dennie, good, sensible Dennie, was a blessing outside of these things that could go far toward making life
"Dr. Wream and I made a compact before I came West. It seemed fair to me then. By its terms I was assured, first, of my right to certain funds my father held in trust. It was Wream who secured these rights for me. Second, I was to succeed to his chair in Harvard if I proved worthy in Sunrise. In return I promised to marry Elinor Wream and to provide for her comfort and luxury with these trust funds my father and Wream had somehow been manipulating."
Oh, yes! Dennie was level-headed. And because she did not look up nor cry out Vincent Burgess did not see nor guess anything. His life had been a sheltered one. How could he measure Dennie's life-discipline in self-control and loving bravery?
"Elinor was heavy on Wream's conscience," Vincent went on, "because he and her father, Dr. Nathan Wream, took the fortune to endow colleges and university chairs that should have been hers from her mother's estate. You see, Dennie, there was no wrong in the plan. Elinor would be provided for by me. I would get up in my
"Yes, who wouldn't?" Dennie looked up with a smile. And if there were tears in her eyes Burgess knew they were born of Dennie's sweet spirit of sympathy.
"What is wrong, then?" she asked. "Is Elinor unwilling?"
"Elinor and I are bound by promises to each other, although no word has ever been spoken between us. It is impossible to make any change now. We are very happy, of course."
"Of course," Dennie echoed.
"I had a letter from Dr. Wream last night. A pitiful letter, for he's getting near the brink. Dennie—these funds I hold—I have never quite understood, but I had felt sure there was no other claimant. There was a clause in the strangely-worded bequest: `for V. B. and his heirs. Failing in that, to the nearest related V. B.' It was a thing for lawyers, not Greek professors, to settle, and I came to be the nearest related
"Well?" Dennie's mind was jumping to the end.
"My sister married a Victor Burleigh, who came to Kansas to find his brother. Both men are dead now. The only one of the two families living is this brother's son, young Victor Burleigh, junior in Sunrise College. He knows nothing of his Uncle Victor, my brother-in-law—nor of money that he might claim. He belongs to the soil out here. Nobody has any claims on him, nor has he any ambition for a chair in Harvard, nor any promise to marry and provide for a beautiful girl who looks upon him as her future guardian."
Vincent Burgess suddenly ceased speaking and looked at Dennie.
"I cannot break an old man's heart. He implores me not to reveal all this, but I had to tell somebody, and you are the best friend a man could ever have, Dennie Saxon, so I come to you," he added presently.
"When did this Dr. Wream find out about Vic?" Dennie asked.
"A month ago. Some strange-looking tramp of a fellow brought him proofs that are incontestable," Burgess replied.
"And it is for an old man's peace you would keep this secret?" Dennie questioned.
"For him and for Elinor—and for myself. Don't hate me, Dennie. Elinor looks upon me as her future husband. I have promised to provide for her with the comforts denied her by her father, and I have lived in the ambition of holding that Harvard chair—Oh, it is all a hopeless tangle. I could never go to Victor Burleigh now. He would not believe that I had been ignorant of his claim all this time. He was never wrapped up in the pursuit of a career —Oh, Dennie, Dennie, what shall I do?"
He rose to his feet and Dennie stood up before him. He gently rested his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her.
"What shall you do?" Dennie repeated, slowly. "Whisky, Money, Ambition—the appetite that destroys! Vincent Burgess, if you want to win a Master's Degree, win to the Mastery of Manhood first. The sins of the fathers, yours and mine, we cannot undo. But you can be a man."
She had put her dimpled hands on his
"I cannot play in tomorrow's game and be a man."
12.
CHAPTER XII
THE SILVER PITCHER
A mother starved for her brood—
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood.
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight hard pathway trod—
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.
—WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH
"DR. FENNEBEN, I should like much to dismiss my classes for the afternoon," Professor Burgess said to the Dean in his study the next day.
"Very well, Professor, I am afraid you are overworked with all my duties added to yours here. But you don't look it," Fenneben said, smiling.
Burgess was growing almost stalwart in this gracious climate.
"I am very well, Doctor. What a beautiful view this is." He was looking intently now at the Empire that had failed to interest him once.
"Yes; it is my inspiration. `Each man's chimney is his golden milestone,' " Fenneben quoted. "I've watched the smoke from many chimneys up and down the Walnut Valley during my years here, and later I've hunted out the people of each hearthstone and made friends with them. So when I look away from my work here I see friendly tokens of those I know out there." He waved his hand toward the whole valley. "And maybe, when they look up here and see the dome by day, or catch our beacon light by night, they think of `Funnybone,' too. It is well to live close to the folks of your valley always."
"You are a wonderful man, Doctor," Burgess said.
"There are two `milestones' I've never reached," the Doctor went on. "One is that place by the bend in the river. See the pigeons rising above it now. I wonder if that strange white-haired woman ever came back again. Elinor said she left Lagonda Ledge last summer."
"Where's the other place?" Burgess would change the subject.
"It i's a little shaft of blue smoke from a wood fire rising above those rocky places
Burgess offered no comment in response. He could not see that the time had come to tell Fenneben what Bond Saxon had confided to him about the man below the smoke. So he left the hilltop and went down to the Saxon House. He wanted to see Dennie, but found her father instead.
"That woman's left Pigeon Place again," Saxon said. "Went early this morning. It's freedom for me when I don't have to think of them two. Thinking of myself is slavery enough."
Burgess loitered aimlessly about the doorway for a while. It was a mild afternoon, with no hint of winter, nor Christmas glitter of ice and snow about it. Just a glorious finishing of an idyllic Kansas autumn rounding out in the beauty of a sunshiny mid-December day. But to the man who stood there, waiting for nothing at all, the day was a mockery. Behind the fine scholarly face a storm was raging and there
"Let's go walking, you and me!"
Bug Buler put up one hand to Burgess, while he clutched a little red ball in the other. Bug had an irresistible child voice and child touch, and Burgess yielded to their leading. He had not realized until now how lonely he was, and Bug was companionable by intuition and a stanch little stroller.
North of town the river lay glistening between its vine-draped banks. The two paused at the bend where Fenneben had been hurled almost to his doom, and Burgess remembered the darkness, and the rain, and the limp body he had held. He thought Fenneben was dead then, and even in that moment he had felt a sense of disloyalty to Dennie as he realized that he must think of Elinor entirely now. But why not? He had come to Kansas for this very thinking. It must be his life purpose now.
Today Burgess began to wonder why Elinor must have a life of ease provided for her and Dennie Saxon ask for nothing. Why should Joshua Wream's conscience be his burden, too? Then he hated himself a little
"Let's we go see the pigeons," Bug suggested, tossing his ball in his hands.
Burgess remembered what Bond had said of the woman's leaving. There could be no harm in going inside, he thought. The leafless trees and shrubbery revealed the neat little home that the summer foliage concealed. Bug ran forward with childish curiosity and tiptoed up to a low window, dropping his little red ball in his eagerness.
"Oh, tum! tum!" he cried. "Such a pretty picture frame and vase on the table."
He was nearly five years old now, but in his excitement he still used baby language, as he pulled eagerly at Vincent Burgess' coat.
"It isn't nice to peep, Bug," Burgess insisted, but he shaded his eyes and glanced in to please the boy. He did not note the pretty gilt frame nor the vase beside it on the table. But the face looking out of that frame made him turn almost as cold and limp as Fenneben had been when he was dragged from the river. Catching the little one by the hand he hurried away.
At the gateway he lifted Bug in his arms.
He was not yet at ease with children.
"I dropped my ball," Bug said. "Let me det it."
"Oh, no; I'll get you another one. Don't go back," Burgess urged. "Do you know it is very rude to look into windows. Let's never tell anybody we did it; nor ever, ever do it again. Will you remember?"
"Umph humph! I mean, yes, sir! I won't fornever do it again, nor tell nobody." Bug buttoned up his lips for a sphinx-like secrecy. "Nobody but Dennie. And I may fordet it for her."
"Yes, forget it, and we'll go away up the river and see other things. Bug, what do you say when you want to keep from doing wrong?"
Bug looked up confidingly.
"I ist say, `Dod, be merciless to me, a sinner'."
"Why not merciful, Bug?"
"Tause! If He's merciful it's too easy and I'm no dooder," Bug said, wisely.
"Who told you the difference?" Burgess asked.
"Vic. He knows a lot. I wish I had my ball, but let's go up the river."
"Out of the mouths of babes," Burgess
Victor Burleigh was in the little balcony of the dome late that afternoon fixing a defective wiring. Through the open windows he could see the skyline in every direction. The far-reaching gray prairie, overhung by its dome of amethyst bordered round with opal and rimmed with jasper, seemed in every blending tint and tone to call him back to Norrie. The west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral in the autumn, the glen full of shadow-flecked light under the tender young April leaves, the December landscape as it lay beyond Dr. Fenneben's study windows—these belonged to Elinor. And all of them were blended in this vision of inexpressible grandeur, unfolded to him now from the dome's high vantage place.
"Twice Norrie has let me hold her in my arms and kiss her," he mused. "When I do that the third time it must be when there will be no remorse to hound me afterward." He looked down the winding Walnut toward the whirlpool. "I'd rather swim that water than flounder here."
The sound of footsteps on the rotunda stairs made him turn to see Vincent Burgess just reaching the little balcony of the dome.
"I've come to have a word with you up here," he said. "We met once before in this rotunda."
"Yes, down there in the arena," Vic replied, recalling how like a beast he had felt then. "I was a young hyena that day. Bug Buler came just in time to save both of us. There is a comfort in feeling we can learn something. I've needed books and college professors to temper me to courtesy."
It was the only apology Vic had ever offered to Burgess, who accepted it as all that he deserved.
"We learn more from men than from books sometimes. I've learned from them how courageous a man may be when the need for sacrifice comes. Sit down, Burleigh, and let me tell you something."
They sat down on the low seat beside the dome windows. Overhead gleamed the message of high courage, Ad Astra Per Aspera. Below was the artistic beauty of the rotunda, where the evening shadows were deepening.
"We are higher than we were that other
"The only place to fight a man is in a cave, anyhow," Burleigh replied, looking at his brawny arms, nor dreaming how prophetic his words might be.
"We don't belong to that class of men now, whatever our far off ancestors may have been, but we are the sons of our fathers, Burleigh, and it is left to the living to right the wrongs the dead have begun."
Then, briefly, Vincent Burgess, A.B., Greek Professor from Harvard, told to Vic Burleigh from a prairie claim out beyond the Walnut, a part of what he had already told to Dennie Saxon, of the funds withheld from him so long. Told it in general terms, however, not shielding his father at all, but giving no hint that the first Victor Burleigh was his own brother-in-law. And of the compact with Joshua Wream and of Norrie he told nothing.
"Three days ago I did not know that you could be heir to this property," he concluded. "I've been interested in books and have left legal matters to those who controlled them for me."
He rose hastily, for Burleigh, saying
"I can restore your property to you. I cannot change the past. You have all the future in which to use it better than my father did, or I might have done. Goodnight."
He turned away and passed slowly down the rotunda stairs.
When he was gone Victor Burleigh turned to the open window of the dome. He was not to blame that the beautiful earth under a magnificent December sunset sky seemed all his own now.
" `If big, handsome Victor Burleigh had his corners knocked off and was sand-papered down,' " he mused. "Well, what corners I haven't knocked off myself have been knocked off for me and I've been sand-papered—Lord, I've been sandpapered down all right. I'm at home on a carpet now. `And if he had money'." Vic's face was triumphant. "It has come at last—the money. And what of Elinor?"
The sacred memories of brief fleeting moments with her told him "what of Elinor."
"The barriers are down now. It is a
He closed the dome window, looked a moment at the brave Kansas motto, radiant in the sunset light, and then, picking up his tools, he went downstairs.
"Hello, Trench!" he called as he reached the rotunda floor. I must see you a minute."
"Hello, you Angel-face! Case of necessity. Well, look a minute," Trench drawled. "But that's the limit, and twice as long as I'd care to see you, although, I was hunting you. Funnybone wants to see you in there."
Victor's eyes were glowing with a golden light as he entered Fenneben's study, and the Dean noted the wonderful change from the big, awkward fellow with a bulldog countenance to this self-poised gentleman whose fine face it was a joy to see.
"I have a message for you, Burleigh. No hurry about it I was told, but I am called away on important business and I must get it out of my mind. An odd-looking fellow called at my door on the night I came home and left a package for you. He said he had tried to find you and failed, that he was a stranger here, and that you would understand
Fenneben put a small package into Burleigh's hands.
"Examine it here, if you care to. You can fasten the door when you leave. Goodby!" and he was gone.
Victor sat down and opened the package. Inside was a quaint little silver pitcher, much ornamented, with the initial B embossed on the smooth side.
"The lost pitcher—stolen the day my mother died—and I was warned never to try to find who stole it." He turned to the light of the west window.
"It is the very thing I found in the cave that night. The man who took it may have been over there." He glanced out of the window and saw a thin twist of blue smoke rising above the ledges across the river.
"Who can have had it all this time, and why return it now?" he questioned. As he turned the pitcher in his hands a paper fell out.
"The message inside!" He spread out the paper and read "the message inside."
Well for him that Dr. Fenneben had left him alone. The shining face and eyes aglow changed suddenly to a white, hard countenance as he read this message inside. It ran:
"Victor Burleigh. First, don't ever try to follow me. The day you do I'll send you where I sent your father. No Burleigh can stay near me and live. Now be wise.
"Second. You saved the baby I left in the old dugout. Before God I never meant to kill it then. The thought of it has cursed my soul night and day till I found out you had saved him.
"Third. The girl you want to marry—go and marry. Do anything, good or bad, to destroy Burgess.
"Fourth. The money Burgess had is yours, only because I'm giving it to you. It belongs to Bug Buler. He couldn't talk plain when you saved him. He's not Bug Buler; he's Bug Burleigh, son of Victor Burleigh, heir to V. B.'s money in the law. I've got all the proofs. You see why you can have that money. Nobody will ever know but me. Don't hunt for me and I'll never tell. TOM GRESH."
The paper fell from Victor Burleigh's hands. The world, that ten minutes ago was a rose-hued sunset land, was a dreary midnight waste now. The one barrier between himself and Elinor had fallen only to rise up again.
Then came Satan into the game. "Nobody knew this but Gresh! Who had saved Bug's life? Who had cared for him and would always care for him? Why should Bug, little, loving Bug, come now to spoil his hopes? If Bug knew he would be first to give it all to his beloved Vic."
And then came Satan's ten strike. "No need to settle things now. Wait and think it over." And Vic decided in a blind way to think it over.
In the rotunda he met Trench, old Trench, slow of step but a lightning calculator.
"Where are you going?" he exclaimed, as he saw Vic's face.
"I'm going to the whirlpool before I'm through," Vic said, hoarsely.
Trench caught him in a powerful grip and shoved him to the foot of the rotunda stairs.
"No,-you're-not-going-to-the-whirlpool,"'
Vic slowly climbed up to where an hour ago the sudden opportunity for the fruition of his young life and hope had been brought to him. Lost now, unless—Nobody would ever know and Bug could lose nothing. He opened the west window and looked out at the Walnut Valley, dim and shadowy now, and the silver prairies beyond it and the gorgeous crimson tinted sky wherefrom the sun had slipped. And then and there, with
Victor unbuttoned his cuff and slipped up his sleeve to the scar on his arm.
"Anybody can see the scar I put there when I cut out the poison," he said to himself, at last. "Nobody will see the scar on my soul, but I'll cut out the poison just the same. I did not save that baby boy from the rattlesnakes only to let him be crushed by the serpent in me. Trench was right, the S over the doorway down there stands for Service as well as for Sacrifice and Strife.
He looked once more at the west, all a soft purple, gray-veiled with misty shadows, save over the place where the sun went out one shaft of deepest rose hue tipped with golden flame was cleaving its way toward the darkening zenith. Then he closed the window and went downstairs and out into the beautiful December twilight.
In all Kansas in that evening hour no man breathed deeper of the sweet, pure air, nor walked with firmer stride, than the man who had gone out under the carved symbol of the college doorway, Victor Burleigh of the junior class at Sunrise.
A Master's Degree | ||