A Master's Degree

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 well man; and aside from the holiday given in honor of the event, aside from the display of flags and the big “Welcome” done in electric lights awaiting him at the railroad station, where all the portable population of Lagonda Ledge and most of the Walnut Valley, headed by the Sunrise contingent, en masse, seemed to be waiting also—aside from the demonstration and general hilarity and thanksgiving and rejoicing, there seemed no difference between the Dean of the days that followed and the Dean of the years before. His black hair was as long and heavy as ever. His black eyes had lost nothing of their keenness. His smile was just the same old, genial outbreak of good will, as he heard the wildly enthusiastic refrain:

 Rah for Funnybone!
 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 glow was filling the west with that magnificence of coloring only the hand of Nature dares to paint.

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, shutting him away momentarily, and a hand caught hers, a big, strong hand whose clasp, so close and warm, seemed to hold her hand by right of eternal possession. And Victor Burleigh's brown eyes full of a joyous light were looking down at her. It was all such a sweet, shadowy time that nobody crowding about them could see clearly how Elinor, with shining face, nestled involuntarily close to his arm for just one instant, and her low murmured words, “I am glad you were first,” were lost to all but the big fellow before her, and a bigger, vastly lazy fellow, Trench, just behind her. It was Trench's bulk that had blocked the way for the professor a moment before. Then she was swallowed in the jolly greetings of goodfellowship, and Vincent Burgess carried her away to the carriage where her uncle waited.

“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 grow so monotonously good, on the one hand, and bad, on the other, that life would be uninteresting.

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 was growing up who quarreled daily with this happy outer Burgess. This inner man it was who held the secret of Bond Saxon's awful crime; the man who knew the life story of the would-be assassin of Lloyd Fenneben, and who knew the tragedy that had turned a fair-faced girl to a gray-haired woman, yet young in years. He knew the tragedy, but the woman herself he had never seen, save in the darkness and rain of that awful night when she had held Lloyd Fenneben's head above the fast rising waters of the Walnut. He had never even heard her voice, for he had sustained the limp body of Dr. Fenneben while Saxon helped the woman from the river and as far as to her own gate. But these were secret things outside of his own conscience. Inside of his conscience the real battle was fought and won, and lost, only to be won and lost over and over. So long as Elinor Wream was away, he could stay execution on himself. The same train that brought her home to Lagonda Ledge, brought a letter to Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B. The letter heading bore as many of Dr. Joshua Wream's titles as space would permit, but the cramped, old-fashioned handwriting belonged to a man of more than fourscore years, and it was signed just “J. R.”

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 night when he stood beside little Bug Buler's bed—Victor Burleigh, with his white, sorrowful face, and burning brown eyes, telling in a voice like music the reason why he must renounce athletic honors in Sunrise.

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 Dr. Fenneben's study, found only Elinor there, looking out at the radiant beauty of the sunset sky beyond the homey shadows studded with the twinkling lights of Lagonda Ledge at the foot of the slope. The young man hesitated a little before entering. All day the school had been busy settling affairs for Professor Burgess and “Norrie, the beloved.” Gossip has swift feet and from surmise to fact is a short course. Twenty-four hours had quite completely “fixed things” for Elinor Wream and Vincent Burgess, so far as Sunrise and Lagonda Ledge were able to fix them. So Burleigh, whose strong face carried no hint of grief, held back a minute now, before entering the study.

“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 darkening softly to the twilight below them.

“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.

“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 basement 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 pass 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 would n'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 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 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.”