"Yes, I"ll meet you on any grounds. And if you ever try to coerce a professor here again, I"ll meet you anyhow, and we"ll have it out."
Fenneben was stern now.
"I wouldn"t want to sc.r.a.p with you, Dr. Fenneben," Vic stammered.
"Why not?"
"I am too much of a gentleman for that."
"When I fight, I fight men. You are in my cla.s.s," Fenneben quoted with a smile in his eyes, which faded away with the next words.
"You are right, Burleigh. A gentleman does n"t want to use his strength like a beast to destroy. The only legitimate battle is when a man must fight with a man as he would fight with a beast, to save himself, or something dearer to him than himself, from beastly destruction. Get into the bigger game, my boy, where the strife is for larger scores, and add to a proud athletic record, the prouder record of self-control. The prairies have given you a n.o.ble heritage, but culture comes most from contact with cultured men. Don"t take on airs because you have more red blood than our Harvard man. The influence of the great universities, directly or indirectly, on a life like yours is essential to your usefulness and power. You may educate your conscience to choose the right before the wrong, but, remember, an educated conscience does not always save a man from being a fool now and then. He needs an educated brain sometimes by which to save his soul. Meantime, settle with your conscience, if you owe it anything. It is a troublesome creditor. I"ll leave you now to square yourself with that fellow you must live with every day--Victor Burleigh. We"ll drop everything else henceforth and face toward tomorrow, not yesterday."
Lloyd Fenneben grasped the boy"s hand in a firm, a.s.suring grip and left him.
"If Sunrise means Strife, I"ll face it," Vic said to himself. "As to money, I have only my two hands and that old mortgaged quadrangle of prairie sod out West. But if culture like Fenneben"s might win Elinor Wream, G.o.d help me to win it."
Up in the library a week later Professor Burgess came in while Dennie Saxon was putting the books in order. Burgess was often to be found where Dennie was, but Burgess himself had not noted it, and n.o.body else knew it, except Trench. Trench was a lazy fellow, who always lived in the middle of his pasture, where the feeding was good. That gave him time to study mankind as it worried about the outer edges.
"Don"t you get tired sometimes, Miss Dennie?" the Professor asked. He was not happy himself for many reasons, and two of them were Elinor and Vic, who separately, and differently, seemed to wear out his energy.
Dennie Saxon never wore on anybody"s nerves.
"Yes, I do, often," Dennie answered.
"Why do you do this?" he queried.
"To get my college education." Dennie smiled, hopefully. "I like the nice things and nice ways of life. So I"m working for them."
"Elinor has all these without working for them," Vincent thought.
Then for no reason at all his mind leaped to Dennie"s father and his own vow on the stormy night in October.
"What would you do if your father were taken from you, Miss Dennie?" he asked.
"I"ve always had to depend on myself somewhat. I would keep on, I suppose." Dennie looked up bravely. Her father was her joy and her shame.
Well, what had Burgess expected? That she would depend on him? He was in love with Elinor Wream. Why should he feel disappointed? And why should his eye follow the soft little ripples of her sunny hair, giving a pretty outline to her face and neck.
"Could you really take care of yourself? He was talking at random.
"I might do like that woman out at Pigeon Place." Burgess did n"t catch the pathos in Dennie"s tone. He was only a man.
"How"s that?" he asked.
"Oh, live alone and keep a big dog, and sell chickens. That"s what Mrs.
Marian does. By the way, she looks just a little bit like you."
"Thank you!"
"She was at the game on Thanksgiving Day, strange to say, for she seldom leaves home. Did you see a pretty white-haired woman, right south of where we were?"
"Is that how I look? No, I didn"t see her. I was n"t at the game."
"You weren"t? Why not? You missed a wonderful thing."
And Burgess told her the whole story from his viewpoint, of course. What he was too proud to mention to Dr. Fenneben or Elinor he spoke of freely to Dennie, and he felt as if the weight of the limestone ledge was lifted from him with the telling.
"Don"t you think the young ruffian was pretty hard on me?" he asked.
"No, I don"t," Dennie said, frankly. "I think you were pretty hard on him."
A sudden resolve seized Burgess. He came around to Dennie"s side of the table.
"Miss Dennie, I want to tell you something, unimportant in itself, but better shared than kept. On the night of our picnic in October your father, who was not quite himself--"
"Yes, I understand," Dennie said, with downcast eyes.
"Pardon me, Dennie, I would not hurt your feelings." His voice was very gentle, and Dennie looked up gratefully. "On that night your father made me promise--made me hold up my hand and swear--I"m easily forced, you will think--to look after you if he were taken away. I did it to pacify him, not to ever embarra.s.s you. He also told me enough about young Burleigh to make me wish, in the office of protector, to warn you."
"Was my father quite himself then?" Dennie asked.
"Not quite," Burgess replied.
"Listen to him some day when he is. He is another man then. But," she added, "I know you mean well."
In spite of her courage her eyes were full of tears, and for the first time in his sheltered pleasant life the real spirit of sympathy woke in the soul of Vincent Burgess.
"You are a brave, good girl, Dennie. If I can ever serve you in any way, it will be a privilege to me to do it."
Ten minutes after they had left the library Trench, who had been stationary in the north alcove, slowly came to life. He had been posing as a statue, Winged Victory with a head on, he declared afterward to Vic Burleigh, to whom he told the whole story.
"Let me sing my swan song," he declared. "Then me for Lagonda"s whirlpool. I"m not fit to live in a decent community, a blithering idiot and rascally villain, who lies in wait to hear and see like a fool.
I thought Dennie knew I was there and would be in to dust me out in a minute. And when it was too late I turned to a pillar of salt and waited. But I believe I"ll change my mind, after all. I"ll live; and if Professor Burgess, A.B. of Cambridge-by-the-bean-patch, dares to make love to Dennie Saxon--on the side--he"ll go head foremost into the whirlpool to feed Lagonda"s rapacious spirit. I"ve said it."
CHAPTER VIII. LOSS, OR GAIN?
_We cannot make bargains for blisses, Nor catch them like fishes in nets, And sometimes the thing our life misses Helps more than the thing which it gets_.
--CARY
ELINOR WREAM spent the holidays in the East and was two weeks late in entering school again. Then her Uncle Lloyd tightened the rules, exacting full measure for lost time, until she bewailed to her girl friends that she had no opportunity even to make fudge or wash her hair.
"Were you sorry to come back, then, Norrie?" her uncle asked one evening when they were alone in their library, and Elinor was lamenting her hard lot.
"No, I want to be with you, Uncle Lloyd."
She was sitting on the arm of his morris chair, softly stroking his heavy hair away from his forehead.