Strange is the wind and the tide,
The heavens eternally wide;
Less fathomed, this life at my side.
—W. H. SIMPSON
THE Sunrise rotunda was ringing with a chorus from three hundred throats as three hundred students poured out of doors, and over-flowed the ridge and spilled down the broad steps, making a babel of musical tongues; while fitting itself to every catchy college air known to Sunrise came the noisy refrain:
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah! RAH! RAH!!!
Again it was repeated, swelling along the ridge and floating wide away over the Walnut Valley. Nor was there a climax of exuberance until the appearance of Dr. Lloyd Fenneben himself, with his tall figure and striking presence outlined against the gray stone columns of the veranda. All this because it was mid-October, a heaven-made autumn day in Kansas, with its gracious warmth and bracing breath; with the Indian summer haze in shimmering amethyst and gold overhanging the land; and the Walnut Valley, gorgeous in the glow of the October frost-fires, winding down between broad seas of rainbow-radiant prairies. And all this gladness and grandeur, by the decree of Dr. Fenneben, was given in fee simple to these three hundred young people for the hours of one perfect day—their annual autumn holiday. No wonder they filled the air with shouts. And before the singing had ceased the crowd broke into groups by natural selection, and the holiday was begun.
Whatever bounds of time Nature may give to the seed in which to become a plant, or to the grub to become a butterfly, there is no set limit wherein the country-bred boy may bloom into a full-fledged college student.
Seven weeks after Vic Burleigh had come alongside the Greek Professor into Sunrise, found the quick marvelous change from the timid, untrained, overgrown young giant into a leader of his clan, the pride of the Freshman, the terror of the Sophomores, the dramatic interest of the classroom, and the hope of Sunrise on the football gridiron. His store-made clothes had a jaunty carelessness of fit. The tan had left his cheek. His auburn hair had lost its sun-burn. His powerful physique, the charm of his deep voice, the singular beauty of his wide open golden-brown eyes, with their long black lashes lighting up his rugged face, gave to him an attractive personality.
Yet to Lloyd Fenneben, who saw below the surface, Victor Burleigh was only at the beginning of things. Something of the tiger light in the brown eyes, the pride in brute strength, the blunt justice lacking the finer sense of mercy, showed how wide yet was the distance between the man and the gentleman.
When Dr. Fenneben returned to his study after the hilarious demonstration he found Dennie Saxon busy with the little film of dust that comes in overnight. Old Bond Saxon, Dennie's father, had been one of the improvident of Lagonda Ledge who took a new lease on a livelihood with the advent of Sunrise. From being a dissipated old fellow drifting toward pauperism, he became the proprietor of a respectable boarding house for students, doing average well. At rare intervals, however, he lapsed into his old ways. During such occasions he kept to the river side of the town. Sober, he was good-natured and obliging; drunken, he was sullen, with a disposition to skulk out of sight and be alone. His daughter Dennie had her father's good-nature combined with a will power all her own.
As Dr. Fenneben watched her about her work this morning, he noted how comfortably she took hold of it. He noted, too, that her heavy yellow-brown hair was full of ripples just where ripples helped, that her arms were plump, that she was short and nothing willowy, and that she had a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.
“Why don't you take a holiday, Miss Dennie?” he asked, presently.
“I wanted this done so I wouldn't be seeing dusty books in my daydreams,” Dennie answered.
“Where do you do your dreaming today?”
“A crowd of us are going down the river to the Kickapoo Corral. I must make the cakes yet this morning,” she answered.
“Good enough Can't I do something for you? Do you need a chaperon?” the Dean queried, smilingly.
“Professor Burgess is to be our chaperon. He is all we can look after.” Dennie's gray eyes danced, but she was serious a moment later.
“Dr. Fenneben, you can do something, maybe, that's none of your business, nor mine.” Dennie wondered afterward how she could have had the courage to speak these words.
“That's generally the easy thing. What is it?” the Dean smiled.
The girl hung her feather brush in its place and sat down opposite to him.
“Do you know anything about Pigeon Place?” she began.
“The little place up the river where a queer, half-crazy woman lives alone with a fierce dog?” he asked.
“Yes, you never heard anything more?” Dennie queried.
“Only that the house is hidden from the road and has many pigeons about it, and that the woman sees few callers. I've never located the place. Tell me about it,” he replied.
“Bug Buler and I were up there after eggs this morning. Bug is Victor Burleigh's little boy. They board at our house,” Dennie explained. “Pigeon Place is a little cottage all covered with vines and with flowers everywhere. It's hidden away from the road just outside of town. Mrs. Marian isn't crazy nor queer, only she seldom leaves home, never goes to church, nor visits anywhere. She doesn't care for anybody, nor take any interest in Lagonda Ledge, and she keeps a Great Dane dog, as big as a calf, that is friendly to women and children, but won't let a man come near, unless Mrs. Marian says so.” Dennie paused.
“Very interesting, Miss Dennie, but what can I do?” Fenneben asked. “Shall I kill the dog and carry off the woman like the regulation grim ogre of the fairy tales?”
Dennie hesitated. Few girls would have come to a college president on such a mission as hers. But then few college presidents are like Lloyd Fenneben.
“Of course nobody likes Mrs. Marian, and my father—when he's not quite himself—says dreadful things if I mention her name.” Dennie's checks were crimson as she thought of her father. “It's none of my business, but I've felt sorry for Mrs. Marian ever since she came here. She seems like an innocent outcast.”
“That is very pitiful.” Lloyd Fenneben's voice was sympathetic.
“This morning,” continued Dennie, “Bug was playing with the dog outside, and I went into the house for the first time. Mrs. Marian is very pleasant. She asked me about my work here and I told her about Sunrise and you, and your niece, Miss Elinor, being here.”
“All the interesting features. Did you mention Professor Burgess?” The query was innocently meant, but it brought the color to Dennie Saxon's cheek.
“No, I didn't think he was in that class,” she replied, quickly. “But what surprised me was her interest in things. She is a pretty, refined, young-looking woman, with gray hair. When I was leaving I turned back to ask about some eggs for Saturday. She thought I was gone, and she had dropped her head on the table and was crying, so I slipped out without her knowing.” Dennie's gray eyes were full of tears now. “Dr. Fenneben, if talking about Sunrise made her do that, maybe you might do something for her. I pity her so. Nobody seems to care about her. My father is set against her when he is not responsible, and he might—” She stopped abruptly and did not finish the sentence.
The Dean looked out of the window at the purple mist melting along the horizon line. Down in the valley pigeons were circling above a wooded spot at a bend in the Walnut River. Fenneben remembered now that he had seen them there many times. He had a boyhood memory of a country home with pigeons flying about it.
“I wish, too, that I might do something,” he said at last. “You say she will not let men inside her gate now. I'll keep her in mind, though. The gate may open some time.”
It was mid-afternoon when Lloyd Fenneben left his study for a stroll. As he approached the Saxon House, he saw old Bond Saxon slipping out of the side gate and with uncertain steps skulk down the alley.
“Poor old sinner! What a slave and a fool whisky can make of a man!” he thought. Then he remembered Dennie's anxiety of the morning. “There must be some cause for his prejudice against this strange hermit woman when he is drunk. Bond Saxon is not a man to hate anybody when he is sober.”
“Is you Don Fonnybone?” Bug Buler's little piping voice from the doorstep haled the Dean. “I finked Vic would turn, and he don't turn, and I 's hungry for somebody. May I go wis you, Don Fonnybone?” The baby lips quivered.
Lloyd Fenneben held out his hand and Bug put his little fist into it.
“Where shall we go, Bug? I 'm hungry for somebody, too.”
“Let's do find the bunny the bid dod ist scared away this morning. Turn on!”
Lloyd Fenneben was hardly conscious that Bug was choosing their path as the two strolled away together. Everywhere there was the pathos of a waning autumn day, and a soft haze creeping out of the west was making a blood-red carbuncle of the sun, set as a jewel on the amber-veiled bosom of the sky. The air was soft, wooing the spirit to a still, sweet peace. The two were at the outskirts of Lagonda Ledge now. The last board walk was three blocks back, and the cinder-made way had dwindled to a bare hard path by the roadside. A bend in the river cutting close to the road shows a long vista of the Walnut bordered by vine-draped shrubbery and overhung with trees. A slab of limestone beside a huge elm tree had been placed at this bend to prevent the bank from breaking, or a chance misdriving into the water.
“I 's pitty tired,” Bug said as the two reached the stone. “Will we tum to the bunny's house pitty soon?”
“We'll rest here a while and maybe the bunny will come out to meet us,” Dr. Fenneben said, and they sat down on the broad stone.
“It was somewhere here the bunny runned.” Little Bug studied the roadside with a quaint puzzled face. “Is you 'faid of snakes?”
“Not very much.” The Dean's eyes were on the graceful flight of pigeons circling about the trees beyond the bend.
“Vic isn't 'faid. He killed bid one, two, five, free wattle, wattle snakes—” Bug caught his breath suddenly—“He told me not to tell that. I fordot. I don't 'member. He didn't do it—he didn't killed no snakes fornever.”
Dr. Fenneben gave little heed to this prattle. His eyes were on the pigeons cleaving the air with short, graceful flights. Presently he felt the soft touch of baby curls against his hand, and little Bug had fallen asleep with his drooping head on Fenneben's lap.
The Dean gently placed the tired little one in an easy position, and rested his shoulder against the tree.
“That must be Pigeon Place,” he mused. “Every town has its odd characters. This is one of Lagonda Ledge's little mysteries. Dennie finds it a pathetic one. How graceful those pigeons are!” And his thoughts drifted to a far New England homestead where pigeons used to sweep about an old barn roof.
A fuzzy gray rabbit flashed across the road, followed by a Great Dane dog in hot chase.
“Bug's bunny! I hope the big murderer will miss it,” Fenneben thought.
The roadside bushes half hid him. As the crashing sound of the huge dog through the underbrush ceased he noticed a woman coming leisurely toward him. Her arms were full of bitter-sweet berries and flaming autumn leaves. She wore no hat and Fenneben saw that her gray hair was wound like a coronal about her head. Before he could catch sight of her face a heavy staggering step was beside him, and old Bond Saxon, muttering and shaking his clenched fists, passed beyond him toward the woman. Lloyd Fenneben's own fists clenched, but he sat stone still. The woman seemed to melt into the bushes and obliterate herself entirely, while the drunken man stalked unsteadily on toward where she had been. Then shaking his fists vehemently at the pigeons, he skulked around the bend in the road.
As soon as he was out of sight the woman emerged from the bushes, with autumn leaves hiding her crown of hair. She hastened a few rods toward the man watching her, then disappeared through a vine-covered gateway into a wilderness of shrubbery, beyond which the pigeons were cooing about their cotes.
As she closed the gate, she caught sight of Lloyd Fenneben, leaning motionless against the gray bole of the elm tree. But she was looking through a tangle of purple oak leaves and twining bitter-sweet branches, and Fenneben was unconscious of being discovered.
“A woman never could whistle,” he smiled, as he listened, “but that call seems to do for the dog, all right.”
The Great Dane was tearing across lots in answer to the trill of a woman's voice.
“She is safe now. But what does it all mean? Is there a wayside tragedy here that calls for my unraveling?”
Attracted by some subtle force beyond his power to check, he turned toward the river and looked steadily at the still overhanging shrubbery. Just below him, where the current turns, the quiet waters were lapping about a ledge of rock. Between that ledge and himself a tangle of bushes clutched the steep bank. He looked straight into the tangle, just plain twig and brown leaf, giving place as he stared, for two still black human eyes looking balefully at him as a snake at its prey. Lloyd Fenneben could not withdraw his gaze. The two eyes—no other human token visible—just two cruel human eyes full of human hate were fixed on him. And the fascination of the thing was paralyzing, horrible. He could not move nor utter a sound. Bug Buler woke with a little cry. The bushes by the riverside just rippled—one quiver of motion—and the eyes were not there. Then Fenneben knew that his heart, which had been still for an age, had begun to beat again. Bug stared up into his face, dazed from sleep.
“Where's my Vic? Who's dot me?” he cried.
“We came to hunt the bunny. He's gone away again. Shall we go back home?” The gentle voice and strong hand soothed the little one.
“It's dettin' told. Let's wun home.” Bug cuddled against Fenneben's side and hugged his hand. “I love you lots,” he said, looking up with eyes of innocent trust.
“Yes, let's run home. There is a storm in the air and the sun is hidden from the valley.” He stooped and kissed the little upturned face. “Thank heaven for children!” he murmured. “Amid skulking, drunken men and strange, lonely women, and cruel eyes of unknown beings, they lead us loving-wise back home again.”
Behind the vine-covered gate a gray-haired, fair-faced woman watched the two as they disappeared down the road.
And the blood-red sun out on the west prairie sank swiftly into a blue cloudbank, presaging the coming of a storm.
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