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.”
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 sandpapered down,'” he mused. “Well, what corners I haven't knocked off myself have been knocked off for me and I've been sandpapered—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 glorious old world. I must hunt up Trench and then—”
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 I 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 the message inside. He insisted on not giving this in any hurry, and as my coming home has brought me a mass of things to consider, I have not been prompt about it.”
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,”' he said, slowly. “You're going up to the top of the dome right against thatAd Astra per Asperabusiness up there, and open the west window and look out at the world the Lord made to heal hurt souls by looking at. And you are going to stay up there until you have fought the thing out with yourself, and come down like Moses did with the ten Commandments cut deep on the tables of your stony old heart. If you don't, you'll not need to go to old Lagonda's pool. By the holy saints, I'll take you there myself and plunge you in just to rid the world of such a fool. You hear me! Now, go on! And remember in your tussle that that big S cut over the old Sunrise door out there stands for Service. That's what will make your name fit you yet, Victor.”
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 his face to the light, he wrestled with the black Apollyon of his soul. And every minute the temptation grew to keep the funds “in trust,” and to keep on caring for the boy he had cared for since babyhood. He clinched his white teeth and the tiger light was in his eyes again as the longing for Elinor's love overcame him. He pictured her as only one sunset ago she had looked up into his eyes, her face transfigured with love's sweetness, and he wished he might keep that picture forever. But, somehow, between that face and his own, came the picture of little Bug alone in the wretched dugout, reaching up baby arms to him for life and safety; on his baby face a pleading trustfulness.
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. Dr. Fenneben says they all enter into the winning of a Master's Degree. Shall I ever get mine earned, I wonder?”
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.
SUPREMACY
Make thyself free of Manhood's guild,Pull down thy barns and greater build,Pluck from the sunset's fruit of gold,Glean from the heavens and ocean old,From fireside lone and trampling streetLet thy life garner daily wheat,The epic of a man rehearse,Be something better than thy verse,And thou shalt hear the life-blood flowFrom farthest stars to grass-blades low.—LOWELL
ELINOR WREAM was standing at the gate as Victor Burleigh came striding up the street.
“Where are you going so fast, Victor?” she asked. “Everybody is in a rush this evening. We had a telegram from the East this afternoon. Uncle Joshua is very ill, and Uncle Lloyd had to get away on short notice. Old Bond Saxon went by just now, but,” lowering her voice, “he was awfully drunk and slipped along like a snake.”
“Have you seen Bug?” Victor asked. “Dennie says he left a little while ago to find his ball he lost out north this afternoon. He wouldn't tell where, because he had promised not to.”
“No, I have not seen him. But don't be uneasy about Bug. He never plays near the river, nor the railroad tracks, and he always comes in at the right time,” Elinor said, comfortingly.
“I know he always has before, but I want to find him, anyhow.” The affectionate tone told Elinor what a loving guardianship was given to the unknown orphan child.
“There was a man here to see Uncle Lloyd just after he left this evening. The same man that brought a little package for you the night we came home. I suppose he comes from your part of the state out West, for he seemed to know you and Bug. He asked me if Bug ever played along the river and if he was a shy child. He was a strange-looking man, and I thought he had the cruelest face I ever saw, but I am no expert on strange faces.”
Victor did not wait for another word.
“I must find Bug right away. You can't think what he is to me, Elinor,” and he hurried away.
At the bend in the Walnut Vic saw Bug's little scarlet stocking cap beside the flat stone. The twilight was almost gone, but the glistening river reflected on the torn bushes above the bank-full stream.
The crushing agony of the first minutes made them seem like hours. And then the college discipline put in its work. Vic stopped and reasoned.
“Bug isn't down there. He never goes near the river. That strange man is Tom Gresh. He killed my father and he's laid a trap for me. He doesn't want to kill Bug. He wants to keep him to workout vengeance and hate on me. He says he'll send me to my father if I go near him. Well, I'm going so near he'll not doubt who I am, and I'll have Bug unharmed if I have to send Gresh where my father could not go even with water to cool his tongue. A man may fight with a man as he would fight with a beast to save himself or something dearer than himself from beastly destruction, Fenneben says. That's the battle before me now, and it's to the death.”
The tiger light was in the yellow eyes as never before and the stern jaw was set, as Victor Burleigh hurried away. And this was the man who, such a little while ago, was debating with himself over the quiet possession of Bug Buler's inheritance. Truly the Mastery comes very near to such as he.
It was with tiger-like step and instinct, too, that the young man went leaping up the dark, frost-coated glen. About the mouth of the cave the blackness was appalling. It seemed a place apart, cursed with the frown of Nature. Yet in the April time, the sweetest moments of Vic's young life had been spent in this very spot that now showed all the difference between Love and Hate.
As he neared the opening of the cavern he guarded his footsteps more carefully. The jungle beast was alert within him and the college training was giving way to the might of muscle backed by a will to win.
A dim light gleamed in the cave and he watched outside now, as Gresh on the April day had watched him inside. Down by a wood fire, whose smoke was twisting out through a crevice overhead somewhere, little Bug was sitting on Tom Gresh's big coat, the fire lighting up his tangle of red-brown curls. His big brown eyes looking up at the man crouching by the fire were eyes of innocent courage, and the expression on the sweet child-face was impenetrable.
“He's a Burleigh. He's not afraid,” Vic thought, exultingly. “That's half my battle. I had it out with the rattlesnakes. I'll do better here.”
At that moment the outlaw turned toward the door and leaped to his feet as Vic sprang inside.
Bug started up with outstretched arms.
“Keep out of the way, Bug,” Vic cried, as the two men clinched.
And the struggle began. They were evenly matched, and both had the sinews of giants. The outlaw had the advantage of an iron strength, hardened by years of out-door life. But the college that had softened the country boy somewhat gave in return the quick judgment and superior agility of the trained power that counts against weight before the battle is over. But withal, it was terrible. One fighter was a murderer by trade, his hand steady for the blackest deeds, and here was a man he had waited long months to destroy. The other fighter was in the struggle to save a life dear to him, a life that must vindicate his conscience and preserve his soul's peace.
Across the stone-floored cave they threshed in fury, until at the farther wall Gresh flung Vic from him against the jagged rock with a force that cut a gash across the boy's head. The blood splashed on both men's faces as they renewed the strife. Then with a quick twist Burleigh threw the outlaw to the floor and held him in a clutch that weighed him down like a ledge of rock; and it was pound for pound again.
Away from the mass of burning coals the blackness was horrible. Beyond that fire Bug sat, silent as the stone wall behind him. Gresh gained the mastery again, and with a grip on Vic's throat was about to thrust his head, face downward, into the burning embers. Vic understood and strove for his own life with a maniac's might, for he knew that one more wrench would end the thing.
“You first, and then the baby; I'll roast you both,” Gresh hissed, and Vic smelled the heat of the wood flame.
But who had counted on Bug? He had watched this fearful grapple, motionless and terror-stricken, and now with a child's vision he saw what Gresh meant to do. Springing up, he caught the heavy coat on which he had been sitting and flung it on the fire, smothering the embers and putting the cavern into complete darkness.
Vic gained the vantage by this unlooked for movement and the grip shifted. The fighters fell to the floor and then began the same kind of struggle by which Burleigh had out-generaled big, unconquerable Trench one day. The two had rolled and fought in college combat from the top of the limestone ridge to the lower campus and landed with Burleigh gripping Trench helpless to defend further. That battle was friend with friend. This battle was to the death. The blood of both men smeared the floor as they tore at each other like wild beasts, and no man could have told which oftenest had the vantage hold, nor how the strife would end. But it did end soon. The heavy coat, that had smothered the fire and saved Vic, smoldered a little, then flared into flame, lighting the whole cave, and throwing out black and awful shadows of the two fighters. They were close to the hole in the inner wall now. Gresh's face in that unsteady glare was horrible to see. He loosed his hold a second, then lunged at Vic with the fury of a mad brute. And Vic, who had fought the devil in himself to a standstill three hours ago, now caught the fiend outside of him for a finishing blow, and the strength of that last struggle was terrific.
Up to this time Vic had not spoken.
“I killed the other snakes. I'll kill you now,” he growled, as he held the outlaw at length in a conquering grip, his knees on Gresh's breast, his right hand on Gresh's throat.
In that weird light the conqueror's face was only a degree less brutal than the outlaw's face. And Burleigh meant every word, for murder was in his heart and in his clutching fingers. Beneath the weight of his strength Gresh slowly relaxed, struggling fiercely at first and groping blindly to escape. Then he began to whine for mercy, but his whining maddened his conqueror more than his blows had done. For such strife is no mere wrestling match. Every blow struck against a fellowman is as the smell of blood to the tiger, feeding a fiendish eagerness to kill. Beside, Burleigh had ample cause for vengeance. The creature under his grip was not only a bootlegger through whose evil influence men took other lives or lost their own; he had slain one innocent man, Vic's own father, and in the room where his dead mother lay had robbed Vic's home of every valuable thing. He had sworn vengeance on all who bore the name of Burleigh. What fate might await Bug, Vic dared not picture. One strangling grip now could finish the business forever, and his clutch tightened, as Gresh lay begging like a coward for his own worthless life.
“It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while. We get pretty close to the edge sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction,” Vic had said to Elinor in here on the April day.
It was not Vic's guardian angel, but little Bug whose white face was thrust between him and his victim, and the touch of a soft little hand and the pleading child-voice that cried:
“Don't kill him, Vic. He's frough of fighting now. Don't hurt him no more.”
Vic staid his hand at the words. The few minutes of this mad-beast duel had made him forget the sound of human voices. He half lifted himself from Gresh's body at Bug's cry. And Bug, wise beyond his years, quaint-minded little Bug, said, softly:
“Fordive us our debts as we fordive our debtors.”
Strange, loving words of the Man of Galilee, spoken on the mountain-side long, long ago, and echoed now by childish lips in the dying light of the cavern to these two men, drunk with brute-lust for human blood! For Vic the words struck like blows. All the years since his father's death he had waited for this hour. At last he had met and vanquished the man who had taken his father's life, and now, exultant in his victory, came this little child's voice.
The cave darkened. A mist, half blood, half blindness, came before his eyes, but clear to his ears there sounded the ringing words:
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay!”
It was the voice of Discipline calling to his better judgment, as Bug's innocent pleading spoke to the finer man within him.
Under his grip Gresh lay motionless, all power of resistance threshed out of him.
“Are you ready to quit?” Vic questioned, hoarsely, bending over the almost lifeless form.
The outlaw mumbled assent.
“Then I'll let you live, you miserable wretch, and the courts will take care of you.”
Burleigh himself was faint from strife and loss of blood. As he relaxed his vigilance the last atom of strength, the last hope of escape returned to Gresh. He sprang to his feet, staggered blindly then, quick as a panther, he leaped through the hole in the farther wall, wriggled swiftly into the blind crevices of the inner cave, and was gone.
It was Trench who dressed Vic's head that night and shielded him until his strength returned. But it was Bond Saxon who counseled patience.
“Don't squeal to the sheriff now,” he urged. “The scoundrel is gone, and it would make a nine days' hooray, and nothing would come of it. He was darned slick to take the time when Funnybone was away.”
“Why?” Vic asked.
But Bond would not tell why. And Vic never dreamed how much cause Bond Saxon had to dread the day when Tom Gresh should be brought into court, and his own great crime committed in his drunken hours would demand retribution. So Lagonda Ledge and Sunrise knew nothing of what had occurred. Burleigh had no recourse but to wait, while Bug buttoned up his lips, as he had done for Burgess out at Pigeon Place, and conveniently “fordot” what he chose not to tell. But he wandered no more alone about the pretty by-corners of Lagonda Ledge.
I dimly guess from blessings knownOf greater out of sight,And, with the chastened Psalmist, ownHis judgments, too, are right.I know not what the future hathOf marvel or surprise,Assured alone that life and deathHis mercy underlies.—WHITTIER
IT was early spring before Dr. Fenneben returned to Lagonda Ledge. Everybody thought the new line on his face was put there by the death of his brother. To those who loved him most—that is, to all Lagonda Ledge—he was growing handsomer every year, and even with this new expression his countenance wore a more kindly grace than ever before.
“Norrie, your uncle was a strange man,” Fenneben declared, as he and Elinor sat in the library on the evening of his return. “Naturally, I am unlike my stepbrothers, but I have not even understood them. There were many things I learned at Joshua's bedside that I never knew of the family before. There were some things for you to know, but not now.”
“I can trust you, Uncle Lloyd, to do just the right thing,” Norrie declared.
The new line of sadness deepened in Lloyd Fenneben's face.
“That is a hard thing to do sometimes. Your trust will help me wonderfully, however,” he replied. “My brother in his last hours made urgent requests of me and pled with me until I pledged my word to carry out his wishes. Here's where I need your trust most.”
Elinor bent over her uncle and softly stroked the heavy black hair from his forehead.
“Here's where I help you most, then,” she said, gently.
“I have some funds, Elinor, to be yours at your graduation—not before. Believe me, dear girl, I begged of Joshua to let me turn them over to you now, but he staid obstinate to the last.”
“And I don't want a thing different till I get my diploma. Not even till I get my Master's Degree for that matter,” Elinor said, playfully.
“And meantime, Norrie, will you just be a college girl and drop all thought of this marrying business until you are through school?” Fenneben was hesitating a little now. “A year hence will be time enough for that.”
“Most gladly,” Elinor assured him.
“Then that's all for my brother's sake. Now for mine, Norrie, or for yours, rather, if my little girl has her mind all set about things after school days, I hope she will not be a flirt. Sometimes the words and acts cut deeper into other lives than we ever dream. Norrie, I know this out of the years of my own lonely life.”
Elinor's eyes were dewy with tears and she bent her head until her hair touched his cheek.
“I'll try to be good 'fornever,' as Bug Buler says,” she murmured.
Over in the Saxon House on this same evening Vincent Burgess had come in to see Dennie about some books.
“I took your advice, Dennie,” he said. “I have been a man to the extent of making myself square with Victor Burleigh, and I've felt like a free man ever since.”
The look of joy and pride in Dennie's eyes thrilled him with a keen pleasure. Her eyes were of such a soft gray and her pretty wavy hair was so lustrous tonight.
“Dennie, I am going to be even more of a man than you asked me to be.”
Dennie did not look up. The pink of her cheek, her long lashes over her downcast eyes, the sunny curls above her forehead, all were fair to Vincent Burgess. As he looked at her he began to understand, blind bat that he had been all this time, he, Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B., Instructor in Greek from Harvard University.
“I must be going now. Good-night, Dennie.”
He shook hands and hurried away, but to the girl who was earning her college education there was something in his handclasp, denied before.
The next day there was a settling of affairs at Sunrise, and the character-building put into Lloyd Fenneben's hand, as clay for the potter's wheel, seemed to him to be shaping somewhat to its destined uses.
Again, Vincent Burgess sat in the chair by the west study window, acting-dean, now seeking neither types, nor geographical breadth, nor seclusion amid barren prairie lands for profound research in preparing for a Master's Degree.
With no effort to conceal matters, except the fact that the trust funds had first belonged to his own sister and brother-in-law, he explained to Fenneben the line of events connecting him with Victor Burleigh.
“And, Dr. Fenneben, I must speak of a matter I have never touched upon with you before. It was agreed between Dr. Wream and myself that I should become his nephew by marriage. I want to go to Miss Elinor and ask her to release me. You will pardon my frankness, for I cannot honorably continue in this relationship since I have restored the property to Victor Burleigh.”
“He thinks she will not care for him now,” Fenneben said to himself. Aloud he said:
“Have you ever spoken directly to Elinor on this matter?”
“N-no. It was an understanding between her and her uncle and between him and me,” Burgess replied.
“Well, I don't pretend to know girls very well, being a confirmed bachelor”—the Dean's eyes were smiling—“but my advice at this distance is not to ask Norrie to release you from what she herself has never yet bound you. I'll vouch for her peace of mind; and your sense of honor is fully vindicated now. To be equally frank with you, Burgess, now that Norrie is entirely in my charge, I have put this sort of thing for her absolutely into the after-commencement years. The best wife is not always the girl who wears a diamond ring through three or four years of her college life. I want my niece to be a girl now, not a bride-in-waiting.”
As Burgess rose to go his eye caught sight of the pigeons above the bend in the river.
“By the way, Doctor, have you ever found out anything about the woman who used to live in that deserted place up north?”
“Nothing yet,” Fenneben replied. “But, remember, I have not spent a week—that is, a sane week—in Lagonda Ledge since the night you, and she, and Saxon, and the dog saved my life. I shall take up her case soon.”
“She is gone away and nobody knows where, Saxon tells me,” Burgess said. “For many reasons I wish we could find her, but she has dropped out of sight.”
Lloyd Fenneben wondered at the sorrowful expression on the younger man's face when he said this.
As he left the study Victor Burleigh came in.
“Sit down, Burleigh. What can I do for you?” Fenneben asked.
Something like his own magnetism of presence was in the young man before him.
“I want to tell you something,” Vic responded.
“Let me tell you something. I knew you had good blood in your veins even when I saw you kill that bull snake. Burgess has just been in. He has told me his side of your story. Noble fellow he is to free himself of a life-long slavery to somebody else's dollars. However much a man may try to hide the fetters of unlawful gains, they clank in his own ears till he hates himself. Now Burgess is a freeman.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, Dr. Fenneben. It makes my own freedom sweeter,” Vic declared.
“Yes,” Fenneben replied. “Your added means will bring you life's best gift—opportunity.”
“I have no added means, Doctor. I have funds in trust for Bug Buler, and I come to ask you to take his legal guardianship for me.” And then he told his own life story.
“So the heroism shifts to you as well. I can picture the cost to a man like yourself,” the Dean said. “Have you no record of Bug's father and mother?”
“None but the record given by Dr. Wream. They are dead,” Burleigh replied. “His father may have met the same fate that my father did.”
“Why don't you take the guardianship yourself, Burleigh? The boy is yours in love and blood. He ought to be in law.”
Victor Burleigh stood up to his full height, a magnificent product of Nature's handiwork. But the mind and soul “Dean Funnybone” had helped to shape.
“I will be honest with you, Dr. Fenneben,” Burleigh said, and his voice was deep and sweetly resonant. “If I keep the money in charge I may not be proof against the temptation to use it for myself. As strong as my strong arms are my hates and loves, and for some reasons I would do almost anything to gain riches. I might not resist the tempter.”
Lloyd Fenneben's black eyes blazed at the words.
“I understand perfectly what you mean, but no woman who exacts this price is worth the cost.” Then, in a gentler tone, he continued: “Burleigh, will you take my advice? I have always had your welfare on my heart. Finish your college work first. Get the best of the classroom, the library, the athletic field, and the 'picnic spread.' Is that the right term? But fit yourself for manhood before you undertake a man's duties. Meantime, He who has given you the mastery in the years behind you is leading you toward the larger places before you, teaching you all the meanings of Strife, and Sacrifice, and Service symbolized above our doorway in our proud College initial letter. The Supremacy is yet to come. Will you follow my counsel? I'll take care of Bug, and we will keep Burgess out of this for a while.”
Burleigh thought he understood, and the silent hand clasp pledged the faith of the country boy to the teacher's wishes.
It is only in story books that events leap out as pages are turned, events that take days on days of real life to compass. In the swing of one brief year Lagonda Ledge knew little change. New cement walks were built south almost to the Kickapoo Corral. A new manufacturing concern had bonds voted for it at an exciting election, and a squabble for a suitable site was in process. Vincent Burgess and Victor Burleigh, two strong men, were growing actually chummy, and Trench declared he was glad they had decided to quit playing marbles for keeps and hiding each other's caps.
And now the springtime of the year was on the beautiful Walnut Valley. Elinor and Dennie, Trench, “Limpy,” the crippled student, and Victor Burleigh were all on the home-stretch of their senior year. One more June Commencement day and Sunrise would know them no more. Beyond all this there was nothing new at Lagonda Ledge until suddenly the white-haired woman was up at Pigeon Place, again, a fact known only to old Bond Saxon and little Bug, who saw her leave the train. The little blue smoke-twist was again rising lazily in the warm May air, and somebody was systematically robbing houses in town, and Bond Saxon was often drunk and hiding away from sight. A May storm sent the Walnut booming down the valley, bank full, cutting off traffic at the town bridge, but the days that followed were a joy. A tenderly green world it was now, all blossom-decked, and blown across by the gentle May zephyrs, with nothing harsh nor cruel in it, unless the rushing river down below the shallows might seem so. The Kickapoo Corral, luxuriant with flowers, and springing grass, and May green foliage, told nothing of the old-time siege and sorrow of Swift Elk and the Fawn of the Morning Light.
On the night after the storm Professor Burgess stopped at the Saxon House.
“Where is your father, Dennie?” he asked.
“He went up north to help somebody out of the mud and water, I suppose,” Dennie replied. “He is the kindest neighbor, and he has been trying to—to keep straight. He told me when he left that this night's work was to be a work of redemption for him. He may get stronger some time.”
In his heart Burgess knew better. He had no faith in the old man's will power, and the burden of a hidden crime he knew would but increase its weight with time, and drag Bond down at last. But Dennie need not suffer now.
“Will you go with me down to the old Corral tomorrow afternoon, Dennie? I want some plants that grow there. I'm studying nature along with Greek,” he said, smiling.
“Of course, if it is fair,” Dennie replied, the pretty color blooming deeper in her cheeks.
“Oh, we go fair or foul. You remember we fought it out coming home from there once.”
Meanwhile Bond Saxon was hurrying north on his work of redemption. At the bend in the river he found Tom Gresh sitting on the flat stone slab. The light was gleaming through the shrubbery of the little cottage, and the homey sounds of evening and the twitter of late-coming birds were in the air.
“What are you here for, Gresh?” Bond asked, hoarsely. “I thought you had left for good.”
The villainous-looking outlaw drew a flask from his pocket.
“Have a drink, Saxon. Take the whole bottle,” and he thrust it into the old man's hands.
Bond wavered a moment, then flung it far into the foamy floods of the Walnut.
“Not any more. You shall not get me drunk again while you rob and kill.”
“You did the killing for me once. Won't you do it again?” Gresh snarled.
Bond clinched his fists but did not strike.
“What are you after now?” he asked. “You are through with the Burleighs; Vic settled you and you know it.”
Even with the words the clutch of Vic's fingers on the outlaw's throat seemed to choke him now.
“If my last Burleigh is gone,” he growled with an oath, “I'm not done yet. There's Elinor Wream. Don't forget that her mother was my adopted sister. Don't forget that my old foster father cut me off without a cent and gave her all his money. That's why Nathan Wream married her. He wanted her money for colleges.” The sneer on the man's face was diabolical. “I can hit the old man through Elinor, and I'll do it some time, and that's not the only blow that I can strike here, and I am going to finish this thing now.” He pointed toward the cottage where the unprotected woman sat alone. “Twice I've nerved myself to do it and been fooled each time. One October day you were here drunk. I could have laid it on you easy, and maybe fixed Fenneben too, if a little child's voice hadn't scared me stiff. And the day of the big football game you wouldn't get drunk and she must go down to that game just to look once at Lloyd Fenneben. I meant to finish her that day. This is the third and last time now. There is not even a dog to protect her.”
Bond Saxon had been a huge fellow in his best days, and now he summoned all the powers nature had left to him.
“Tom Gresh,” he cried, “in my infernal weakness you made me a drunken beast, who took the life of an innocent man you wanted out of your way. You thought, you fool, that she might care for you then. I've carried the curse of that deed on my soul night and day. I'll wipe it partly away now by saving her life from you. So surely as tonight, tomorrow, or ever you try to harm her, I'll not show you the mercy Vic Burleigh showed you once.”
Strange forms the guardian angel takes!
Hence we entertain it unawares.
Of all Lagonda Ledge, old Bond Saxon, standing between a woman and the peril of her life, looked least angelic. Gresh understood him and turned first in fawning and tempting trickery to his adversary. But Saxon stood his ground. Then the outlaw raged in fury, not daring to strike now, because he knew Bond's strength. And still the old man was unmoved. A life saved for the life he had taken was steeling his soul to courage.
At last in the dim light, Gresh stood motionless a minute, then he struck his parting blow.
“All right, Bond Saxon, play protector all you want to, but it's a short game for you. The sheriff is out of town tonight, but tomorrow afternoon he will get back to Lagonda Ledge. Tomorrow afternoon I go with all my proofs—Oh, I've got 'em. And you, Bond Saxon, will be behind the bars for your crime, done not so many years ago, and your honorable daughter, disgraced forever by you, can shift for herself. I've nothing to lose; why should I protect you?”
He leaped down the bank into the swiftly flowing river, and, swimming easily to the farther side, he disappeared in the underbrush.
The next afternoon, somebody remembered that Bond Saxon had crossed the bridge and plunged into the overflow of the river around the west end. But Bond had been drunk much of late and nobody approached him when he was drunk. How could Lagonda Ledge know the agony of the old man's soul as he splashed across the Walnut waters and floundered up the narrow glen to the cave? Or how, for Dennie's sake, he had begged on his knees for mercy that should save his daughter's name? Or how harder than the stone of the ledges, that the trickling water through slow-dragging centuries has worn away, was the stony heart of the creature who denied him? And only Victor Burleigh had power to picture the struggle that must have followed in that cavern, and beyond the wall into the blind black passages leading at last to the bluff above the river, where, clinched in deadly combat, the two men, fighting still, fell headlong into the Walnut floods.
Down at the shallows Professor Burgess and Dennie had found the waters too deep to reach the Kickapoo Corral, so they strolled along the bluff watching the river rippling merrily in the fall of the afternoon sunshine. And brightly, too, the sunshine fell on Dennie Saxon's rippling hair, recalling to Vincent Burgess' memory the woodland camp fire and the old legend told in the October twilight and the flickering flames lighting Dennie's face and the wavy folds of her sunny hair.
But even as he remembered, a cry up stream came faintly, once and no more, while, grappling still, two forms were borne down by the swift current to the bend above the whirlpool. Dennie and Vincent sprang to the very edge of the bluff, powerless to save, as Tom Gresh and Bond Saxon were swept around the curve below the Corral. Across the shallows they struggled for a footing, but the undertow carried them on toward the fatal pool.
A shriek from the bank came to Bond Saxon's ears, and he looked up and saw the two reaching out vain hands to him.
“Your oath, Vincent; your oath!” he cried in agonizing tones.
Then Vincent Burgess put one arm about Dennie Saxon and drew her close to him and lifted up his right hand high above him in token to the drowning man of his promise, under heaven, to keep that oath forever.
A look of joy swept over the old face in the water, his struggling ceased, and once more tribute was paid to the grim Chieftain of Lagonda's Pool.————
They said about town the next day that it was the peacefulest face ever seen below a coffin lid. And, remembering only his many acts of neighborly kindness, they forgave and forgot his weaknesses, while to the few who knew his life-tragedy came the assuring hope that the forgiving mercy of man is but a type of the boundless mercy of a forgiving God.