A Master's Degree Part 28

And the two went away in the early twilight of this rare June evening.

Out at Pigeon Place, when Dr. Fenneben and little Bug walked up the gra.s.sy way to the vine-covered porch in the misty twilight, Mrs. Marian sat in the shadow, unaware of their coming until they stood before her.

Lloyd Fenneben lifted his hat, and little Bug imitated him.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Marian. This little boy wanted to tell you of something that was troubling him. I think he trespa.s.sed on your property unknowingly."

The gray-haired woman stood motionless in the shadow still. Her fair face less haggard than of yore, as if some dread had left it, and only loneliness remained.

"I was here, and you was away, and I peeked in the window. It was rude and I never did see you to tell you, and I'm sorry and I won't for--never do it again. Dennie told me to come tonight, and bring Don Fonnybone." Bug had his part well in hand.

Even as she smiled at him, Dr. Fenneben noticed how her hand on the lattice shook.

"And I want to thank you, Mrs. Marian, for your bravery and goodness on the night I was a.s.saulted here." Fenneben was a gentleman to the core and his courtesy was charming. "I meant to find you long ago, but my brother's death, with my own long illness, and your absence, and my many duties--" He paused with a smile.

"Oh, Lloyd, Lloyd, on an evening like this, why do you come here?"

The woman stood in the light now, a tragic figure of sorrow. And she was not yet forty.

Dr. Fenneben caught his breath and the light seemed to go out before him.

"Marian, oh, Marian! After all these years, do I find you here? They said you were dead." He caught her in his arms and held her close to his breast.

"Lots of folks spoons round the Saxon House, so I went away and lef 'em," Bug explained to Vic once afterward.

And that accounted for little Bug sitting lonely on the flat stone by the bend in the river where Dennie and Burgess found him later.

"So you have stood between me and that a.s.sa.s.sin all these years, even when the lies against me made you doubt my love. Oh, Marian, the strength of a woman's heart!" Fenneben declared, as, side by side, black hair and the gray near together, these long-separated lovers rebuilt their world.

"And this little child brought you here at last. 'A little child shall lead them,'" the woman murmured.

"Yes, Bug is a gift of G.o.d." Lloyd Fenneben was bending over her. "He is Victor Burleigh's nephew, who found him in a deserted place--"

A shriek cut the evening air and she who had been known as Mrs. Marian lay in a faint at Fenneben's feet.

"Tell me, Marian, what this means."

Lloyd Fenneben had restored her to consciousness and she was resting, white and trembling, in his arms.

"My little Bug, my baby, Burgess!" she sobbed. "Bond Saxon, in a drunken fit, killed his father. Then Tom Gresh carried him away to save him from Bond, too, so Tom declared, but I did not believe him. Bond never harmed a little child. Tom said he meant no harm and that Bug was stolen from where he had left him. It was then that my hair turned white. Tom tried once, a year ago in December, to make me believe he could bring Bug back to me if I would care for him--for that wicked murderer! Oh, Lloyd!"

She nestled close in Dr. Fenneben's protecting arms, and s.h.i.+vered at the thought.

"And you named him Burgess for your own name. Does Vincent know?"

Fenneben questioned, tenderly smoothing the white hair as Norrie had so often smoothed his own.

"Is this Vincent my own brother? Will he really own me as his sister?

I've tried to meet him many times. I left his picture on my table that he might see it if he should ever come. My father separated us years ago. After we came West he sent me just one letter in which he said Vincent would never speak to me nor claim me as his sister again. A brother--a lover--and my baby boy!"

And the lonely woman, overcome with joy, sat white and still beneath the white moonbeams.

Joy does not kill any more than sorrow. Vincent Burgess and Dennie Saxon, who came just at the right time, told how they had waited with Bug at the slab of stone by the bend in the river until they should be needed.

"It was Dennie who planned it all," Vincent said, "and did not even let me know. Bug told her my picture was on the table in there. But so long as her father lived, she kept her counsel."

"I tried four years ago to get Dr. Fenneben to come out here," Dennie said. And the Dean remembered the autumn holiday and Dennie's solicitude for an unknown woman.

But the joy of this night, crowning all other joys in the Walnut Valley, was in that sacred moment when Bug Buler walked slowly up to Marian Burleigh, sister to Vincent Burgess, lost love of Lloyd Fenneben's youth--slowly, and with big brown eyes glowing with a strange new love light, and, putting up both his chubby hands to her cheeks, he murmured softly:

"Is you my own mother? Then, I'll love you fornever."

Meantime, on this last moonlit June night, Elinor and Vic were strolling down the new south cement walk, a favorite place for the young people now.

At the farther end, Vic said:

"Norrie, let's go down across the shallows to the west bluff again. Can you climb it, or shall we join the crowd down in the Kickapoo Corral?"

"I can climb where you can, Victor," Elinor declared.

"Dennie will never want to come here again. Poor Dennie!"

Vic was helping Elinor across the shallows as he spoke. Up in the Corral a happy crowd of young people were finis.h.i.+ng their last "picnic spread"

for the year. Below the shallows the whirlpool was glistening all treacherously smooth and level under the moonbeams.

"Why 'poor Dennie,' Victor? Her father had nothing more for him, here, except disgrace. The tribute paid him at his funeral would have been forever withheld, if he had lived a day longer, and he died sure of Dennie's future." Elinor spoke gently.

"Who told you all this, Elinor?" Victor asked.

"Professor Burgess, when he showed me the diamond ring Dennie is to wear tomorrow."

"Dennie, a diamond! I'm glad for Dennie. Diamonds are fine to have," Vic declared.

They had climbed to the top of the west bluff. The silvery prairie and silver river and mist-wreathed valley, and overhead, the clear, calm sky, where the moon sailed in magnificent grandeur, were a setting to make the evening a perfect one. And in this setting was Elinor, herself the jewel, beautiful, winsome, womanly.

"I have some good news." She turned to the young man beside her. "You know the Wreams have made a life business of endowing colleges. Well, I am a Wream by blood, and tomorrow, oh, Victor, tomorrow, I, too, have the opportunity of a lifetime. I'm going to endow Sunrise."

He looked at her in amazement.

"Oh, it's clear enough," she exclaimed. "It was my money that built Sunrise. It shall stay here, and Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, Dean of Sunrise, and acting-Dean Vincent Burgess, A.B., Professor of Greek, and Victor Burleigh, Valedictorian, who goes East to a professors.h.i.+p in Harvard, and to the ministry of the gospel later on--all you mighty men of valor will know how little Norrie Wream cares for money, except as it can make the world better and happier. I haven't lived in Lloyd Fenneben's home these four years without learning something of what is required for a Master's Degree."

"Norrie!" All the music of a soul poured into the music of the deep voice.

"Victor! There is no sacrifice in it. I wish there were, that I might wear the honors you wear so modestly."

"I, Elinor?"