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 finishing 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account