A Master's Degree Part 27

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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.suring hope that the forgiving mercy of man is but a type of the boundless mercy of a forgiving G.o.d.

CHAPTER XV. THE MASTERY

_And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame, And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame, But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star, Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the G.o.d of Things as They Are_.

--KIPLING

JUNE time in the Walnut Valley, and commencement time at Sunrise on the limestone ridge! Nor pen nor brush can show the glory of the radiant prairies, and the deep blue of the "unscarred heavens," and the bright gleams from rippling waters. And at the end of a perfect day comes the silvery grandeur of a moonlit June night.

It was late afternoon of the day before commencement. Victor Burleigh stood on the stone where four years ago the bull snake had stretched itself in the lazy sunshine. Only one more day at Sunrise for him, and the little heartache, unlike any other sorrow a life can ever know, was his, as he stood there. In the four years' battle he had come off conqueror until the symbol above the doorway no longer held any mystery for him. His character and culture now matched his voice. Before him was higher learning, an under-professorship at Harvard, and later on the pulpit for his life work. But now the heartache of parting was his, and a deeper pain than breaking school ties was his also. A year of jolly goodfellowship was ending, a happy year, with Elinor his most frequent companion. And often in this year he had wondered at Lloyd Fenneben's harsh judgment of her. Fondness of luxury seemed foreign to her, and womanly beauty of character made her always "Norrie the beloved." But Victor was true to Fenneben's demands and willing to try to live through the years after, if one year of happy a.s.sociation could be his now.

Whatever claims Burgess might a.s.sert later, he could not take from another the claim to happy memories. But, today, there was the dull steady heartache that he knew had come to stay.

Presently Elinor joined him.

"May I come down tonight for a goodby stroll, Elinor? There's a full moon and after tomorrow there are to be no more moons, nor stars, nor suns, nor lands, nor seas, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor powers for us at Sunrise."

"I wish you would come, Victor," Elinor said. "Come early. There's a crowd going out somewhere, and we can join the ranks of the great ungraduated for the last time."

"Elinor, I'm not hunting a crowd tonight," Vic said in a low voice.

"Well, come, anyway, and we'll hunt the solitude, if we can't hunt any other game." And they strolled homeward together.

In the early evening Lloyd Fenneben and Elinor sat on the veranda watching the sunset through the trees beyond the river.

"You are to graduate from Sunrise tomorrow," Dr. Fenneben was saying.

"For a Wream that is the real beginning of life. I have your business matters entrusted to me, ready to close up as soon as you are 'legally graduated' according to my brother's wishes, but you may as well know them now."

He paused, and Elinor, thinking of the moonlight, maybe, waited in peaceful silence.

"Norrie, when I finished at the university my brother put a small fortune into my hands and bade me go West and build a new Harvard. You know our family hold that that is the only legitimate use for money."

Norrie smiled a.s.sent.

"I did not ask whose money it was, for my brother handled many bequests, and I was a poor business man then. I came and invested it at last in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut. That was your mother's money, given by your father to Joshua, who gave it to me. Joshua did not tell me, and I supposed some good, old Boston philanthropist had bought an indulgence for his ignorant soul by endowing this thing so freely. I found it out on Joshua's deathbed, and only to pacify him would I consent to keep it until now. Henceforth, it must be yours. That is why I asked you a year ago to just be a college girl and drop all thought about marrying. I wanted you to come into possession of your own property before you bound yourself by any bonds you could not break."

Elinor sat silent for a while, her dark eyes seeing only the low golden sunset. She understood now what had grooved that line of care in Lloyd Fenneben's face when he came home from the East. But he had conquered, aye, he had won the mastery.

"And you and Sunrise?" she asked at length.

"I can sell the college site and buildings to this new manufactory coming here in August. Added to this, I have acquired sufficient funds of my own to pay you the entire amount and a good rate of interest with it. My grief is that for all these years, I have kept you out of your own."

Elinor rose up, white and cold, and put her hand on her uncle's hand.

"Let me think a little, Uncle Lloyd. It is not easy to realize one's fortune in a minute." Then she left him.

"It makes little difference what pa.s.sion possesses a man's soul, if it possesses him he will wrong his fellowmen," Fenneben said to himself.

"In Joshua Wream's craving to endow college claims he robbed this girl of her inheritance and sent her to me, telling me she was shallow-minded and wholly given to a love of luxuries, that I might not see his plans; while Norrie, never knowing, has proved over and over how false these charges were. And at last, to still his noisy conscience, he would marry her, willing or unwilling, to Vincent Burgess. But with all this, his last hours were full of sorrowful confession. What do these Masters'

Degrees my brother bore avail a man if he have not the mastery within?

Meanwhile, my labors here must end."

Lonely and crushed, with his life work taken from him, he sat and faced the sunset. Presently, he saw Elinor and Victor Burleigh strolling away in the soft evening light. At the corner, Elinor turned and waved a good-by to him. Then the memory of his own commencement day came back to him, and of the happy night before. Oh, that night before! Can a man ever forget! And now, tonight!

"Don Fonnybone," Bug Buler piped, as he came trudging around the corner.

"I want to confessing."

He came to Fenneben's side and looked up confidently in his face.

"Well, confessing. I've just finished doing that myself," Fenneben said.

"I did a bad, long ago. I want to go and confessing. Will you go with me?"

"Where shall we go to be shriven, Bug?

"To Pigeon Place," Bug responded. "The Pigeon woman is there now. I saw her coming, and I must go right away and confessing."

"I'll go with you, Bug. I want to see that woman, anyhow," Fenneben said.