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 here on the same train Funnybone came on. And," lowering his voice, "he will be over there again," pointing toward the west bluffs. "He'll hound Funnybone to his doom yet. And she--she'll stand between 'em to the last. I told you one of the two human traits left in that beast is his fool fondness for that woman who wouldn't let him set foot on her ground if she knew it. It's a grim tragedy being played out here with nobody knowing but you and me."
"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 tonight Dennie seemed beautiful to Burgess, and this quiet little room, a haven of safety.
"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 whom he meant to divide some possessions he had inherited. That settled him with my father forever. There was no division of property in his creed."
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 successful. But he did not grasp it clearly yet.
"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 chosen profession. Nobody was robbed or defrauded. Joshua Wream's last years would be peaceful with his conscience at rest regarding Elinor's property. And, Dennie, who wouldn't want to marry Elinor Wream?"
"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 V. B., Vincent Burgess, for I find the money belonged to my sister's husband, and I thought he left no heirs and I am the nearest related V. B. by marriage, you see?"
"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 gen
tly 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 arms as they stood there, and the brave courage of her upturned face called back again the rainy May night, and the face of Victor Burleigh beside Bug Buler's cot, and his low voice as he said:
"I cannot play in tomorrow's game and be a man."
CHAPTER XII
THE SILVER PITCHER
A picket frozen on duty--
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 across the river. I've seen it so often, at irregular times, that I've grown interested in it, but I have missed it since I came back. It's like losing a friend. Every man has his vagaries. One of mine is this friendship with the symbols of human homes."
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 was only one friend whom he could trust--Dennie.
"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 more than ever, and duty and manly honor began their wrestle within him again.
"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 murmured and hugged the little one close to him.
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 day. We care less for fighting as we get farther up, maybe," Burgess said, pleasantly.
"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 nothing, was looking at him with wide-open brown eyes that seemed to look straight into his soul.
"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."
A Master's Degree Page 13