A Master's Degree

by Margaret Hill McCarter

  "Professor, this outlaw got a hold on me once when I was drunk, drunk by his making. It would do no good to tell you about that. You couldn't help me, nor harm him. You'll trust me in this?"

  A picture of Dennie down in the Kickapoo Corral, with the flickering firelight on her rippling hair, the weird, shadowy woodland, and the old Indian legend all came back to the young man now, though why he could not say.

  "I certainly would never bring harm to you nor yours," he said kindly.

  "I can't inform on the scoundrel. I can only watch him. The woman he was in love with years ago, who wouldn't stand for his wild ways--that's the gray-haired woman at Pigeon Place. Her life's been one long tragedy, though she is not forty yet."

  The anguish on the old man's face was pitiful as he spoke.

  "She has a reason of her own for living here, and she is the soul of courage. On the night of the Fenneben accident, I was out her way--yes, running away from Bond Saxon. I knew if I stayed in town, I'd get drunk on a bottle left at my door. So I tore out in the rain and the dark to fight it out with the devil inside of me. And out at Pigeon Place I run onto this fiend. When I ordered him back to his hiding place, he vowed he'd get Fenneben and put him in the river. There's one or two human things about him still. One is his fear of little children, and one is his love for that woman. He really did adore her years ago. I tracked home after him, and you know the rest. He put up some story to the Dean to entice him out there."

  He hesitated, then ceased to speak.

  "Why the Dean?" Burgess asked.

  "Because Lloyd Fenneben's the man she loved years ago, and her folks wouldn't let her marry," Bond Saxon said sadly.

  Burgess felt as if the limestone ridge was giving way beneath him.

  "Where is she now?"

  She's gone, nobody knows where. I hope to heaven she will never come back," the old man replied.

  "And it was she who saved Dr. Fenneben's life? Does he know who she is?"

  "No, no. She's never let him know, and if she doesn't want him to know, whose business is it to tell him?" Saxon urged. "I have hung about and protected her when she never knew I was near. But when I'm drunk, I'm an idiot and my mind is bent against her. I'd die to save her, and yet I may kill her some day when I don't know it." Bond Saxon's head was drooping pitifully low.

  "But why live in such slavery? Why not tell all you know about this man and let the law protect a helpless woman?" Burgess urged.

  Old Bond Saxon looked up and uttered only one word--"Dennie!"

  Vincent Burgess turned away a moment. Dennie! Yes, there was Dennie.

  "This woman had a husband, you say?" he asked presently.

  Bond Saxon stared straight at him and slowly nodded his head.

  "What became of him? Do you know? Vincent questioned.

  Saxon leaned forward, and, clutching Vincent Burgess by the arm, whispered hoarsely, "He's dead. I killed him. But I was drunk when I did it. And this man knows it and holds me bound,"

  SERVICE

  If you were born to honor, show it now;

  If put upon you, make the judgment good that thought you worthy of it.

  --SHAKESPEARE

  CHAPTER XI

  THE SINS OF THE FATHERS

  They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin.

  --LOWELL

  IT was mid-December before Lloyd Fenneben saw Lagonda Ledge again. In the murderous attempt upon his life, he had been hurled, head-downward, upon the hidden rock-ledge with such force that even his strong nervous system could barely overcome the shock. Hours of unconsciousness were followed by a raging brain fever, and paralysis, insanity, and death strove together against him. His final complete recovery was slow, and he was wise enough to let nature have ample time for rebuilding what had been so cruelly wrenched out of line. It was this very patience and willingness to take life calmly, when most men would have been in a fever of anxiety about neglected business, that brought Lloyd Fenneben back to Lagonda Ledge in December, a perfectly well man; and aside from the holiday given in honor of the event, aside from the display of flags and the big "Welcome" done in electric lights awaiting him at the railroad station, where all the portable population of Lagonda Ledge and most of the Walnut Valley, headed by the Sunrise contingent, en masse, seemed to be waiting also--aside from the demonstration and general hilarity and thanksgiving and rejoicing, there seemed no difference between the Dean of the days that followed and the Dean of the years before. His black hair was as long and heavy as ever. His black eyes had lost nothing of their keenness. His smile was just the same old, genial outbreak of good will, as he heard the wildly enthusiastic refrain:

  Rah for Funnybone!

  Rah for Funnybone!

  Rah for Funnybone!

  Rah! RAH!! RAH!!!

  It was twilight when the train pulled up to the station. The December evening was clear and crisp as southern Kansas Decembers usually are. The lights of the town were twinkling in the dusk. Out beyond the river a gorgeous purple and scarlet after-sunset glow was filling the west with that magnificence of coloring only the hand of Nature dares to paint.

  Several passengers left the train, but the company had eyes only for the Pullman car where Fenneben was riding. Nobody, except Bond Saxon, and a cab driver on the edge of the crowd, noticed a gray-haired woman who alighted so quietly and slipped to the cab so quickly that she was almost out to Pigeon Place before Fenneben had been able to clear the platform.

  Behind the Dean was his niece, who halted on the car steps while her uncle went into the outstretched arms of Lagonda Ledge. At sight of her, the hats went high in air, as she stood there smiling above the crowd. It was Maytime when she went away. They had remembered her in dainty Maytime gowns. They were not prepared for her in her handsome traveling costume of golden brown, her brown beaver hat, and pretty furs. A beautiful girl can be so charming in her winter feathers. She had expected that Burgess would be first to meet her, and she was ready, she thought, to greet him, becomingly. But as the porter helped her to the platform, the crowd closed in, shutting him away momentarily, and a hand caught hers, a big, strong hand whose clasp, so close and warm, seemed to hold her hand by right of eternal possession. And Victor Burleigh's brown eyes full of a joyous light were looking down at her. It was all such a sweet, shadowy time that nobody crowding about them could see clearly how Elinor, with shining face, nestled involuntarily close to his arm for just one instant, and her low murmured words, "I am glad you were first," were lost to all but the big fellow before her, and a bigger, vastly lazy fellow, Trench, just behind her. It was Trench's bulk that had blocked the way for the professor a moment before. Then she was swallowed in the jolly greetings of goodfellowship, and Vincent Burgess carried her away to the carriage where her uncle waited.

  "The thing is settled now," the young folks thought. But Dennie Saxon and Trench, who walked home together, knew that many things were hopelessly unsettled. By the law of natural fitness, Dennie and Trench should have fallen in love with each other. They were so alike in goodness of heart. But such mating of like with like, is rare, and under its ruling the world would grow so monotonously good, on the one hand, and bad, on the other, that life would be uninteresting.

  During Dr. Fenneben's absence, Professor Burgess was acting-dean. For a man who, two years before, had never heard of a Jayhawker, who hoped the barren prairies would furnish seclusion for profound research in his library, and whose interest in the student body lay in its material to furnish "types," Dean Burgess, on the outside, certainly measured up well toward the stature of the real Dean--broad-minded, beloved "Funnybone."

  And as Vincent Burgess grew in breadth of view and human interest, his popularity increased and his opportunities multiplied. Sunrise forgot that it had ever regarded him as a walking Greek textbook in paper binding. Next to Dr. Lloyd Fenneben, his place at Sunrise would be the hardest to fill now; and withal, sometime in the near future, there was waiting for him the prettiest girl that
ever climbed the steps from the lower campus to the Sunrise door. Burgess had never dreamed that life in Kansas could be so full of pleasure for him.

  And all the while, on the inside, another Burgess was growing up who quarreled daily with this happy outer Burgess. This inner man it was who held the secret of Bond Saxon's awful crime; the man who knew the life story of the would-be assassin of Lloyd Fenneben, and who knew the tragedy that had turned a fair-faced girl to a gray-haired woman, yet young in years. He knew the tragedy, but the woman herself he had never seen, save in the darkness and rain of that awful night when she had held Lloyd Fenneben's head above the fast rising waters of the Walnut. He had never even heard her voice, for he had sustained the limp body of Dr. Fenneben while Saxon helped the woman from the river and as far as to her own gate. But these were secret things outside of his own conscience. Inside of his conscience the real battle was fought and won, and lost, only to be won and lost over and over. So long as Elinor Wream was away, he could stay execution on himself. The same train that brought her home to Lagonda Ledge, brought a letter to Professor Vincent Burgess, A.B. The letter heading bore as many of Dr. Joshua Wream's titles as space would permit, but the cramped, old-fashioned handwriting belonged to a man of more than fourscore years, and it was signed just "J. R."

  Burgess read this letter many times that night after he returned from dinner at the Fenneben home. And sometimes his fists were clinched and sometimes his blue eyes were full of tears. Then he remembered little Bug, who had declared once that "Don Fonnybone was dood for twoubleness."

  "I can't take this to Fenneben," he mused, as he read Joshua Wream's letter for the tenth time. "Nor can I go to Saxon. He's never sure of himself and when he's drunk, he reverses himself and turns against his best friends. And who am I to turn to a man like Bond Saxon for my confidences?"

  "What about Elinor?" came a voice from somewhere. "The woman you would make your wife should be the one to whose loving sympathy you could turn at any of life's angles, else that were no real marriage."

  "Elinor, of all people in the world, the very last. She shall never know, never!" So he answered the inward questioner.

  Dimly then rose up before him the picture of Victor Burleigh on the rainy May night when he stood beside little Bug Buler's bed--Victor Burleigh, with his white, sorrowful face, and burning brown eyes, telling in a voice like music the reason why he must renounce athletic honors in Sunrise.

  Burgess had been unconsciously exultant over the boy's confession. It would put the confessor out of reach of any claim to Elinor's friendship when the truth was known about his poverty and his professional playing. And yet he had followed Bond Saxon's lead the more willingly that night that he was hating himself for rejoicing with himself.

  On this December night, with Elinor once more in Lagonda Ledge, Victor Burleigh must come again to trouble him. What a price that boy must have paid for his honesty! But he paid it, aye, he paid it! And then the rains put out the game and nobody knew except Burleigh and himself. Burgess almost resented the kindness of Fate to the heroic boy. But all this solved no problems for Vincent Burgess, except the realization that here was one fellow who had a soul of courage. Could he confide in Burleigh? Not in a thousand years!

  In utter loneliness, Vincent Burgess put out his light and stared at the window. The street lamps glowed in lonely fashion, for it was very late, and nobody was abroad. Up on the limestone ridge, the Sunrise beacon shone bravely. Down in town beside the campus gate--he could just catch a glimpse of one steady beam. It was the faithful old lamp in the hallway of the Saxon House, and beyond that unwavering light was Dennie.

  "Dennie! Why have I not thought of her? The only one in the world whom I can fully trust. That ought to be a man's sweetheart, I suppose, but she is not mine. She is just Dennie. Heaven bless her! I've sworn to care for her. She must help me now." And with the comforting thought, he fell asleep beside the window.

  The December sunset was superb in a glory of endless purple mists and rose-tinted splendor of far-reaching skies. The evening drops down early at this season and the lights were gleaming here and there in the town where the shadows fall soonest before the day's work is finished up in Sunrise.

  Victor Burleigh, who had been called to Dr. Fenneben's study, found only Elinor there, looking out at the radiant beauty of the sunset sky beyond the homey shadows studded with the twinkling lights of Lagonda Ledge at the foot of the slope. The young man hesitated a little before entering. All day the school had been busy settling affairs for Professor Burgess and "Norrie, the beloved." Gossip has swift feet and from surmise to fact is a short course. Twenty-four hours had quite completely "fixed things" for Elinor Wream and Vincent Burgess, so far as Sunrise and Lagonda Ledge were able to fix them. So Burleigh, whose strong face carried no hint of grief, held back a minute now, before entering the study.

  "I beg your pardon, Elinor. Dr. Fenneben sent for me."

  Somehow the deep musical voice and her name pronounced as nobody else ever could pronounce it, and the big manly form and brave face, all seemed to complete the spell of the sunset hour. Elinor did not speak, but with a smile made room for him beside her at the window, and the two looked long at the deepening grandeur of the heavens and the misty shadows of heliotrope and silver darkening softly to the twilight below them.

  "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day," Victor said at last.

  "Your voice grows richer with the passing years, Victor," Elinor said softly. "I wanted to hear it again the first time I heard you speak out there one September day."

  "It is well to grow rich in something," Victor said, half-earnestly, half-carelessly.

  Before Elinor could say more, they caught sight of Professor Burgess and Dennie Saxon, leaving the front portico as they had done on the May evening before the assault on Dr. Fenneben. Burgess and Dennie usually left the building together this year.

  "Isn't Dennie a darling? Elinor said calmly.

  "I guess so," he replied. "I don't just know what makes a girl a darling to another girl. I only know"--he was on thin ice now--"and I don't even know that very well."

  They turned to the landscape again. The whole building was growing quiet. Footsteps were fading away down the halls. Doors clicked faintly here and there. Somebody was singing softly in the basement laboratory, and the sunset sky was exquisitely lovely above the quiet gray December prairies.

  "It is too beautiful to last," Elinor said, turning to the young man beside her. "The joy of it is too deep for us to hold."

  She did not mean to stay a moment longer, for all the scene could be hers forever in memory--imperishable!--and Victor did not mean to detain her. But her face as she turned from the window, the hallowed setting of time and opportunity, and a heart-love hungering through hopeless, slow-dragging months, all had their own way with him. He put out his arms to her and she nestled within them, lifting a face to his own transfigured with love's sweetness. And he bent and kissed her red lips, holding her close in his arms. And in the shadowy twilight, with the faintly roseate banners of the sunset's after-glow trailing through it, for just one minute, heaven and earth came very near together for these two. And then they remembered, and Elinor put her hand in Victor's, who held it in his without a word.

  Out in the hall, Trench with soft lazy step had just come to the study door in time to see and turn away unseen, and slowly pass out of the big front door, whistling low the while:

  My sweetheart lives on the prairies wide

  By the sandy Cimarron,

  In a day to come she will be my bride,

  By the sandy Cimarron.

  Out by the big stone pillars of the portico, he looked toward the south turret and saw Dr. Fenneben as Vic had seen Elinor on the evening of the May storm. He did not call, but with a twist of the fingers as of unlocking a door, he dodged back into the building and up to the chapel end of the turret stairs to release the Dean.

  Dr. Fenneben had started d
own to the study by the same old "road to perdition" stairs and paused at the window as Dennie and Burgess were passing out, unconscious of three pairs of eyes on them. Then the Dean saw down through the half-open study door the two young people by the window, and he knew he was not needed there. What that look in his black eyes meant, as he turned to the half-way window of the turret, it would have been hard to read. And the picture of a fair-faced girl came back to his own hungry memory. He was trying to calculate the distance from the turret window to the ground when Trench wig-wagged a rescue signal.

  "You are a brick, Trench," he said, as the upper stairway door swung open to release him.

  "You've the whole chimney," Trench responded, as he swung himself away.

  Dr. Fenneben met Elinor in the rotunda.

  "Wait a minute, Norrie, and I'll walk home with you."

  In the study he met Burleigh, whose stern face was tender with a pathetic sadness, but there was no embarrassment in his glance. And Fenneben, being a man himself, knew what power for sacrifice lay back of those beautiful eyes.

  "I can't give him the message I meant to give now. The man said there was no hurry. A veritable tramp he looked to be. I hope there is no harm to the boy in it. Why should a girl like Norrie love the pocketbook, and the things of the pocketbook, when a heart like Victor Burleigh's calls to her? I know men. I never shall know women." So he thought. Aloud he said: "I was detained, Burleigh, and I'll have to see you again. I have some matters to consider with you soon."

  And Burleigh wondered much what "some matters" might be.

  When Professor Burgess left Dennie he said, lightly:

  "Miss Dennie, I need a little help in my work. Would you let me call this evening and talk it over with you? I don't believe anybody else would get hold of it quite so well."

  Dennie had supposed this first evening after Elinor's return would find her lover making use of it. Why should Dennie not feel a thrill of pleasure that her services out-weighed everything else? Poor Dennie! She was no flirt, but much association with Vincent Burgess had given her insight to know that Norrie Wream would never understand him.