A Master's Degree

by Margaret Hill McCarter

  The time had come for them to join the jolly picnic crowd in the Corral. She would go back to Vincent Burgess in a little while, and this glorious day would be only a memory. And yet, down in the pretty glen, Victor had held her hands and kissed her red lips. And she had been glad down there. The void in his life seemed blacker than the blackness behind the cavern.

  "Elinor," he asked, suddenly, "are you bound by any promise--has Professor Burgess--?" He hesitated.

  "No," she answered, turning her face away.

  "Pardon my rudeness. You know I am not well-bred," he said, gently.

  "Victor Burleigh, you ill-bred, of all the gentle, manly fellows in Sunrise! You know you are not."

  A great hope leaped to life now, as Vic recalled the query, "If Victor Burleigh had his corners knocked off and was sandpapered down and had money?"--and of Elinor's blushing confession that it would make a difference she could not help if these things were. The corners were knocked off now, and Dean Fenneben had gently but persistently applied the sandpaper. The money must be henceforth the one condition.

  "Elinor." Vic's voice was sweet as low bars of music.

  "Oh, Victor, there's something I can't prevent."

  She was thinking of Uncle Joshua, whose money had supported her all these years and of her obligation to heed his wishes. It was all settled for her now. And all the while Victor was thinking of his own limited means as the rock that was wrecking him with her.

  For all his life afterward he never forgot the sorrow of that moment. He looked into Elinor's face, and all the longing, all the heart-hunger of the days gone by, and of the days to come seemed to lie in those wide-open eyes shaded by long black lashes.

  "Elinor, my father's cruel murder and my mother dying alone were one kind of grief. My fight with those deadly poison things to rescue little Bug was another kind. My days of hardship and poverty on the claim, with only Bug and me in that desolate loneliness, was still another. But none of these seem a sorrow beside what I must face henceforth. And yet I have one joy mine now. You did care down in the glen. May I keep that one gracious joy--mine always?"

  "You have always won in every game. You will in this struggle. Don't forget the name your mother gave you." Her eyes were luminous with tears. "We must go down to the Corral now. Tomorrow will make things all right. I shall be proud of you and your success everywhere, for you will succeed."

  "I may not be worthy of victory," he said, sadly.

  "You have never been unworthy. Don't be now." She smiled bravely.

  They turned from the west prairie and the sunset, and slowly they passed out of its passing radiance down to the darkening spaces of the old Kickapoo Corral.

  And the day with its gladness and sorrow, whether for loss or gain, slipped into the shadowy beauty of an April twilight.

  CHAPTER IX

  GAIN, OR LOSS?

  Ye know how hard an Idol dies, an' what that meant to me--

  E'en take it for a sacrifice, acceptable to Thee.

  --KIPLING

  THE ball game on Friday, the thirteenth, was a great event this year. The Sunrise football eleven had held the championship record with an uncrossed goal line in the autumn. The basket-ball team had had no defeat this year. Debating tests had given Sunrise the victory. That came through Trench and the crippled student. And the state oratorical struggle repeated the story, a conquest, all the greater because Victor Burleigh, the athlete, wore also the laurels of oratory. And why should he not, with that fine presence and magnificent voice? As Dr. Fenneben listened to his forceful logic he saw clearly the line for the boy's future, a line, he thought, that could end at last only in the pulpit.

  One more battle to fight now and Lagonda Ledge and the whole Walnut Valley would go down in history as famous soil. It was a banner year for Sunrise, and enthusiasm was at fever pitch, which in college is the only healthy temperature. In this last battle Sunrise turned again to Victor Burleigh as its highest hope. Although this was his first game for the season, he had never failed to bring victory to the Sunrise banners, and in all his base-ball practice he was as unerring as he was speedy. And then success was his habit anyhow. So "Burleigh at the bat" was the slogan now from the summit of the college ridge to the farthest corners of Lagonda Ledge; and idol worship were insignificant compared to the adulation poured out on him. And Burleigh, being young and very human, had all the pleasure the adoration of a community can bring to its local hero. For truly, few triumphs in life's later years can be fraught with half the keen joy these school day victories bring. And the applause of listening senates means less than good old comrades' yells.

  Vincent Burgess, A.B., Greek Professor from Boston, seemed to have forgotten entirely about types and geographical breadths and seclusion for profound research amid barren prairies. He was faculty member on the Athletic board now and enthusiastic about all college sports. Sunrise had done this much for him anyhow. In addition, the young educator was taking on a little roundness, suggestive of a stout form in middle life.

  But Vincent Burgess had not forgotten all of the motives that had pulled him Kansas-ward, although unknown to Dr. Fenneben, he had already refused to consider a position higher up in an eastern college. He was not quite ready to leave the West yet. Of course, not. Elinor Wream was only half through school and growing more popular as she was growing more womanly and more beautiful each year. His salvation lay in keeping on the grounds if he would hold his claim undisturbed.

  Burgess had come to Kansas, he had told Fenneben, in order to know something of the state where his only sister had lived. He did not know yet all he wished to know about her life and death here. Her name was never spoken in his father's presence after she came West, so great was that father's anger over her leaving the East. And deep in Vincent's mind he fixed the impression that his daughter had died as unreconciled to her brother as to her father himself.

  This was all his own business, however, and hidden deep, almost out of sight of himself, was a selfish motive that had not yet put a visible mark on the surface.

  Burgess wanted to marry Norrie Wream, and he wanted her to have all the good things of life which in her simple rearing had been denied her. The heritage from his father's estate included certain trust funds ambiguously bestowed by an eccentric English ancestor upon someone who had come West not long before his death. These funds Vincent held by his father's will--to which will Joshua Wream was witness--on condition that no heir to these funds was living. If there were such person or persons living--but Burgess knew there were none. Joshua Wream had made sure of that for him before he left Cambridge. And yet it might be well to stay in Kansas for a year or two--much better to settle any possible difficulty here than to have anything follow him East later. For Burgess had his eye on Dr. Wream's chair in Harvard when the old man should give it up. That was a part of the contract between the two men, the old doctor and the young professor. Until the night when Bond Saxon forced him to take an unwilling oath, Burgess had had a comfortable conscience, sure that his financial future was settled, and confident that this assured him the hand of Elinor Wream when the time was ripe. With that October night, however, a weight of anxiety began that increased with the passing days. For as he grew nearer to the student life and took on flesh and good will and a broader knowledge of the worth of humanity, so he grew nearer to this smoothly hidden inner care. And, outside and in, he wanted to stay in Kansas for the time.

  In the weeks before the big ball game, Victor Burleigh seemed to have forgotten the glen and the west bluff above the Kickapoo Corral. The girls who would have substituted for Elinor in the afternoon ramble took up much of the big sophomore's time, and he never seemed more gay nor care free. And Elinor, if she had a heartache, did not show it in her happy manner.

  On the afternoon before the ball game, a May thunderstorm swept the Walnut Valley and the darkness fell early. As Dennie Saxon waited on the Sunrise portico before starting out in the rain, Professor Burgess locked the front door and joined her
. Victor Burleigh was also waiting beside a stone column for the shower to lighten. Burgess did not see him in the darkening twilight and Burleigh never spoke to the young instructor when it was not necessary.

  "I must be nervous," Professor Burgess said, trying to manage Dennie's umbrella and catching it in her hair. "I had a letter today that worried me."

  "Too bad!" Dennie said sympathetically.

  "I'll tell you all about it sometime."

  He was trying to loose the wire rib-joint from Dennie's hair, which the dampness was rolling in soft little ringlets about her forehead and neck. Half-consciously, he remembered the same outline of rippling hair, as it had looked in the glow of the October camp fire down in the Kickapoo Corral when she was telling the old legend of Swift Elk and The Fawn of the Morning Light. She smiled up at him consolingly. Dennie was level-headed, and life was always worth living where she was.

  "I'll be your rain beau." He took her arm to assist her down the steps.

  So courteous was his action, she might have been a lady of rank instead of old Bond Saxon's daughter carrying her own weight of a sorrow greater than Lagonda Ledge dreamed of. As the two walked slowly homeward under the dripping shelter of the trees, Vincent Burgess felt a sense of comfort and pleasure out of all keeping for a man in love elsewhere. Victor Burleigh watched them from the shadow of the portico column.

  "I believe Trench is right. He insists that Burgess likes Dennie, or that he is mean enough to deceive Dennie into liking him. A man like that ought to be killed--a scholar, and a rich man, and Dennie such a brave little poor girl with a kind, weak-kneed, old father on her heart. Norrie ought to know this, but who am I to say a word?"

  "Victor Burleigh, won't you release the fair princess from the tower?" a girl's voice called.

  Vic turned to see Elinor framed in the half-way window of the south turret. And in that dripping shadowy light, no frame could want a rarer picture.

  "I've fallen into the pit and am far on the road to perdition," Elinor said. "I hurried down this way from choir practice and Uncle Lloyd's gone and left the lower door locked. It thundered so, and Dennie didn't come into the study, and nobody heard my screams. But if I perish, I perish," she added with mock resignation.

  "If you'll let up on perishing for half a minute, Rapunzel, I'll to the rescue," Vic cried, "if I have to climb the dome and knock the per aspera out of the State Seal and come down through the hole, per astra ad aspera." And then he rushed off to find an unlocked exit to the building.

  From the Chapel end of the circular stairs, he called presently.

  "Curfew must not ring for a couple of seconds. Rise to the surface, fair mermaid."

  Elinor came up the winding stair into the dimly lighted chapel at his call. The two had avoided each other since the April day in the glen. They were not to blame for this chance meeting now.

  "When you are in trouble and the nights are dark and rainy, call me, Elinor," Vic said as they were crossing the rotunda.

  "If I show you sometimes how to look up and find the light, as you showed me the Sunrise beacon on the night of the storm out on West Bluff, you may be glad you heard me. See that glow on the dome! You would have missed that down in Lagonda Ledge."

  A level ray from a momentary cloudrift in the western sky smote the stained glass of the dome, lighting its gleaming inscription with a fleeting radiance.

  "But the light comes rarely and is so far away, and between times, only the cave, and the dark ways behind it leading to the river," he said gravely. The sorrow of hopelessness was his tone.

  "Not unless one chooses to burrow downward," she replied softly. "Let's hurry home. Tomorrow you will be `Victor the Famous' again. I hope this shower won't spoil the ball game."

  As night deepened, the rain fell steadily. Up in Victor Burleigh's room Bug Buler grew drowsy early.

  "I want to say my pwayers now, Vic," he said.

  The big fellow put down his book and took the child in his arms. Bug had a genius for praying briefly and for others rather than for himself. Tonight he merely clasped his chubby hands and said, reverently:

  "Dear Dod, please ist make Vic dood as folks finks he is, for Thwist's sake. Amen-n-n."

  When he fell asleep, Victor sat a long while staring at the window where the May rain was beating heavily. At length, he bent over little Bug and pushed back the curls from his brow. Bug smiled up drowsily and went on sleeping.

  "As good as folks think I am, Bug!" he mused. "You have gotten between me and the rattlesnakes that were after my soul a good many times, little brother-of-mine. As good as folks think I am! Do you know what it costs to be that good?"

  Ten minutes later he sat in Lloyd Fenneben's library.

  "I have come for help," he said in reply to the Dean's questioning face.

  "I hope I can give it," Fenneben responded.

  "It's about tomorrow's game. There are sure to be some professional players on the other team. I want Sunrise to win. I want to win myself." Vic's voice was harsh tonight. And the Dean caught the hard tone.

  "I want Sunrise to win. I want you to win. There will probably be some professionals to play against, but we have no way of proving this," Fenneben said.

  "What do you think of such playing, Doctor?" Vic asked.

  "I think the rule about professionalism is often a strained piece of foolishness. It is violated persistently and persistently winked at, but so long as it is the rule there is only one square thing to do, and that is to live up to the law. You should not dread any professionalism in the game tomorrow, however. You'll bring us through anyhow, and keep the Sunrise name and fame untarnished." The Dean smiled genially.

  Burleigh's face was very pale and a strange fire burned in his eyes.

  "Dr. Fenneben"--his musical voice rang clear--"I'm only a poor devil from the short-grass country where life each year depends on that year's crop. Three years out of four, the wind and drouth bring only failure at harvest time. Then we starve our bodies and grip onto hope and determination with our souls till seedtime comes again. I want a college education. Last summer burned us out as usual within a month of harvest. Then the mortgage got in its work on my claim and I had to give it up. I had barely enough to get through here at pauper rates this year--but I couldn't do it and keep Bug, too. I went into Colorado and played baseball for pay, so I could come here and bring him with me. That's why I can out-bat our team, and could win dead easy for Sunrise tomorrow. Nobody in Kansas knows it. Now, what shall I do?"

  The words were shot out like bullets.

  "What shall you do?" Lloyd Fenneben's black eyes held Burleigh. "There is only one thing to do. When you ranked high in grades with only the trivial matter of excusable absence against you--no broken law--you took Professor Burgess gently by the throat and told him you meant to play anyhow. You stood your ground like a man, for your own sake and for the honor of Sunrise. Stand like a man for your own sake and the honor of Sunrise, now. Go to Professor Burgess and take him gently--by the hand, this time--and tell him you do not mean to play, and why you cannot."

  Burleigh sat still as stone, his face white as marble, his wide-open eyes under his black brows seeing nothing.

  "But our proud record--the glorious honor of this college," he said at length, and back of his words was the thought of Victor Burleigh, the idol of Sunrise, dethroned, where he had been adored.

  "There is no honor for a college like the honesty of its students. There is no prouder record than the record of daring to do the right. You could get into the game once by a brute's strength. Get out of it now by a gentleman's honor."

  Behind the speech was Lloyd Fenneben himself, sympathetic, firm, upright, before whom the harshness of Victor Burleigh's face slowly gave place to an expression of sorrow.

  "My boy," Fenneben said gently, "Nature gave us the Walnut Valley with its limestone ledges and fine forest trees. But before our Sunrise could be builded the ledge had to be shapen into the hewn stone, the green tree to the seasoned lumber, quarter
-sawed oak--quarter-sawed, mind you. Mill, forge and try-pit, ax and saw and chisel, with cleft and blow and furnace heat, shaped them all for Service. Over our doorway is the Sunrise initial. It stands also for Strife, part of which you know already; but it stands for Sacrifice as well. You are in the shaping. God grant you may be turned out a man fitted by Sacrifice for Service when the shaping is done."

  Burleigh rose, silent still, and the two went out together. At the doorway, he turned to Fenneben, who grasped his hand without a word. And once again, the firm hand clasp of the Dean of Sunrise seemed to bind the country boy to the finer things of life. It had done the same on that day after the Thanksgiving game when he sat in Fenneben's study, and understood for the first time what gives the right to pride in brawny arm and steel-spring nerve.

  After Burleigh left him, Lloyd Fenneben stood for a long time on his veranda in the light of the doorway watching the steady downpour of the warm May rain. As he turned at length to enter the house a rough-looking man with rain-soaked clothing and slouched hat, sprang out of the shadows.

  "Stranger," he called hastily. "There's a little child fell in the river round the bend, and his mother got hold of him, but she can't pull him out, and can't hold on much longer. Will you come help me, quick? I've only got one arm or I wouldn't have had to ask for help."

  An empty sleeve was flapping in the rain, and Fenneben did not notice then that the man kept that side of himself all the time in the shadows. Fenneben had only one thought as he hurried away in the darkness, to save the woman and child. His companion said little, directing the course toward the bend in the river before the gateway of Pigeon Place. As they pushed on with all speed through rain and mud, Fenneben was hardly conscious that Dennie Saxon's words about the lonely gray-haired hermit woman were recurring curiously to his mind.