A Master's Degree Part 21

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 a.s.sault on Dr. Fenneben. Burgess and Dennie usually left the building together this year.

"Is n'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. Doors clicked faintly here and there. Somebody was singing softly in the bas.e.m.e.nt laboratory, and the sunset sky was exquisitely lovely above the quiet gray December prairies.

"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 pa.s.s out of the big front door, whistling low the while:

My sweetheart lives on the prairies wide 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 pa.s.sing 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, it would have been hard to read. And the picture of a fair-faced girl came back to his own hungry memory. He was trying to calculate the distance from the turret window to the ground when Trench wig-wagged a rescue signal.

"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 embarra.s.sment 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 men. I never shall know women." So he thought. Aloud he said: "I was detained, Burleigh, and I'll have to see you again. I have some matters to consider with you soon."

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 a.s.sociation 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 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 n.o.body 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 appet.i.te 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 a.s.sured, 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?