A Master's Degree Part 23

"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 n.o.body." Bug b.u.t.toned up his lips for a sphinx-like secrecy. "n.o.body 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 cla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+elding 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"h.e.l.lo, Trench I he called as he reached the rotunda floor. I must see you a minute."

"h.e.l.lo, 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 ma.s.s 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.d 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. n.o.body will ever know but me. Don't hunt for me and I'll never tell. TOM GRESH."