A Master's Degree

by Margaret Hill McCarter

  A shriek from the bank came to Bond Saxon's ears, and he looked up and saw the two reaching out vain hands to him.

  "Your oath, Vincent; your oath!" he cried in agonizing tones.

  Then Vincent Burgess put one arm about Dennie Saxon and drew her close to him and lifted up his right hand high above him in token to the drowning man of his promise, under heaven, to keep that oath forever.

  A look of joy swept over the old face in the water, his struggling ceased, and once more tribute was paid to the grim Chieftain of Lagonda's Pool.

  --------

  They said about town the next day that it was the peacefulest face ever seen below a coffin lid. And, remembering only his many acts of neighborly kindness, they forgave and forgot his weaknesses, while to the few who knew his life-tragedy came the assuring hope that the forgiving mercy of man is but a type of the boundless mercy of a forgiving God.

  CHAPTER XV

  THE MASTERY

  And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame,

  And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,

  But each for the joy of working, and each, in his separate star,

  Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are.

  --KIPLING

  JUNE time in the Walnut Valley, and commencement time at Sunrise on the limestone ridge! Nor pen nor brush can show the glory of the radiant prairies, and the deep blue of the "unscarred heavens," and the bright gleams from rippling waters. And at the end of a perfect day comes the silvery grandeur of a moonlit June night.

  It was late afternoon of the day before commencement. Victor Burleigh stood on the stone where four years ago the bull snake had stretched itself in the lazy sunshine. Only one more day at Sunrise for him, and the little heartache, unlike any other sorrow a life can ever know, was his, as he stood there. In the four years' battle he had come off conqueror until the symbol above the doorway no longer held any mystery for him. His character and culture now matched his voice. Before him was higher learning, an under-professorship at Harvard, and later on the pulpit for his life work. But now the heartache of parting was his, and a deeper pain than breaking school ties was his also. A year of jolly goodfellowship was ending, a happy year, with Elinor his most frequent companion. And often in this year he had wondered at Lloyd Fenneben's harsh judgment of her. Fondness of luxury seemed foreign to her, and womanly beauty of character made her always "Norrie the beloved." But Victor was true to Fenneben's demands and willing to try to live through the years after, if one year of happy association could be his now. Whatever claims Burgess might assert later, he could not take from another the claim to happy memories. But, today, there was the dull steady heartache that he knew had come to stay.

  Presently Elinor joined him.

  "May I come down tonight for a good-by stroll, Elinor? There's a full moon and after tomorrow there are to be no more moons, nor stars, nor suns, nor lands, nor seas, nor principalities, nor powers for us at Sunrise."

  "I wish you would come, Victor," Elinor said. "Come early. There's a crowd going out somewhere, and we can join the ranks of the great ungraduated for the last time."

  "Elinor, I'm not hunting a crowd tonight," Vic said in a low voice.

  "Well, come, anyway, and we'll hunt the solitude, if we can't hunt any other game." And they strolled homeward together.

  In the early evening Lloyd Fenneben and Elinor sat on the veranda watching the sunset through the trees beyond the river.

  "You are to graduate from Sunrise tomorrow," Dr. Fenneben was saying. "For a Wream that is the real beginning of life. I have your business matters entrusted to me, ready to close up as soon as you are `legally graduated' according to my brother's wishes, but you may as well know them now."

  He paused, and Elinor, thinking of the moonlight, maybe, waited in peaceful silence.

  "Norrie, when I finished at the university my brother put a small fortune into my hands and bade me go West and build a new Harvard. You know our family hold that that is the only legitimate use for money."

  Norrie smiled assent.

  "I did not ask whose money it was, for my brother handled many bequests, and I was a poor business man then. I came and invested it at last in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut. That was your mother's money, given by your father to Joshua, who gave it to me. Joshua did not tell me, and I supposed some good, old Boston philanthropist had bought an indulgence for his ignorant soul by endowing this thing so freely. I found it out on Joshua's deathbed, and only to pacify him would I consent to keep it until now. Henceforth, it must be yours. That is why I asked you a year ago to just be a college girl and drop all thought about marrying. I wanted you to come into possession of your own property before you bound yourself by any bonds you could not break."

  Elinor sat silent for a while, her dark eyes seeing only the low golden sunset. She understood now what had grooved that line of care in Lloyd Fenneben's face when he came home from the East. But he had conquered, aye, he had won the mastery.

  "And you and Sunrise?" she asked at length.

  "I can sell the college site and buildings to this new manufactory coming here in August. Added to this, I have acquired sufficient funds of my own to pay you the entire amount and a good rate of interest with it. My grief is that for all these years, I have kept you out of your own."

  Elinor rose up, white and cold, and put her hand on her uncle's hand.

  "Let me think a little, Uncle Lloyd. It is not easy to realize one's fortune in a minute." Then she left him.

  "It makes little difference what passion possesses a man's soul, if it possesses him he will wrong his fellowmen," Fenneben said to himself. "In Joshua Wream's craving to endow college claims he robbed this girl of her inheritance and sent her to me, telling me she was shallow-minded and wholly given to a love of luxuries, that I might not see his plans; while Norrie, never knowing, has proved over and over how false these charges were. And at last, to still his noisy conscience, he would marry her, willing or unwilling, to Vincent Burgess. But with all this, his last hours were full of sorrowful confession. What do these Masters' Degrees my brother bore avail a man if he have not the mastery within? Meanwhile, my labors here must end."

  Lonely and crushed, with his life work taken from him, he sat and faced the sunset. Presently, he saw Elinor and Victor Burleigh strolling away in the soft evening light. At the corner, Elinor turned and waved a good-by to him. Then the memory of his own commencement day came back to him, and of the happy night before. Oh, that night before! Can a man ever forget! And now, tonight!

  "Don Fonnybone," Bug Buler piped, as he came trudging around the corner. "I want to confessing."

  He came to Fenneben's side and looked up confidently in his face.

  "Well, confessing. I've just finished doing that myself," Fenneben said.

  "I did a bad, long ago. I want to go and confessing. Will you go with me?"

  "Where shall we go to be shriven, Bug?

  "To Pigeon Place," Bug responded. "The Pigeon woman is there now. I saw her coming, and I must go right away and confessing."

  "I'll go with you, Bug. I want to see that woman, anyhow," Fenneben said.

  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 grassy 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 trespassed 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 sor
ry 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 assaulted 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 assassin 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 God." 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 shivered 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 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.

  "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 professorship 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?"

  "I know the whole story. Dennie told me when you had that awful fight, and Trenchie told me long ago, that you thought I must have money to make me happy. Why I, more than Dennie, or you, who gave Bug his claim?"

  Elinor put up her hands to Victor, who took them both in his, as he drew her to him and kissed her sweet red lips. And there was a new heaven and a new earth created that night in the soft silvery moonlight of the Walnut Valley.

  "I'd rather be here with you than over the river with anybody else. I feel safer here," she murmured, remembering when they had striven in the darkness and the storm to reach this very height.

  But Victor Burleigh could not speak. The mastery for which he had striven seemed to bring meed of reward too great for him to grasp with words.

  THE PARTING

  . . . There is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

  When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!

  --KIPLING

  COMMENCEMENT day at Sunrise was just one golden Kansas June day, when

  The heart is so full that a drop overfills it.

  Victor Burleigh, late of a claim out beyond the Walnut, Professor-to-be in Harvard University, and Vincent Burgess, acting-Dean of Sunrise, only a degree less beloved than Dean Fenneben himself, met on the morning of commencement day at the campus g
ate, one to go to the East, the other to stay in the West. Side by side they walked up the long avenue to the foot of the slope, together they climbed the broad flight of steps leading up to the imposing doorway of Sunrise with the big letter S carved in relief above it. And after pausing a moment to take in the matchless wonder of the landscape over which old Sunrise keeps watch, the college portal swung open and the two entered at the same time. Inside the doorway, under the halo of light from the stained glass dome with its Kansas motto, wrought in dainty coloring. Elinor Wream, niece of the Dean of Sunrise, and Dennie Saxon, old Bond Saxon's daughter, who had earned her college tuition, stood side by side, awaiting them. And beyond these, on the rotunda stairs, Dr. Lloyd Fenneben was looking down at the four with keen black eyes. Beside him on the broad stairway was Marian Burgess Burleigh, the white-haired, young-faced woman of Pigeon Place, and Bug Buler--everybody's child.

  The barriers were down at last: the value of common life, the power of Strife and Sacrifice and Service, the joy of Supremacy, the conflict of rich red blood with the thinner blue, the force of culture against mere physical strength, the power of character over wealth--these things had been wrought out under the gracious influence of Dr. Lloyd Fenneben in Sunrise-by-the-Walnut.

  "Come up, come up; there is room up here," the Dean called to the group in the rotunda. "There's an A.B. for all who have conquered the Course of Study, and a Master's Degree for everyone who has conquered himself."

  The common level so impossible on a September day four years ago, came now to two strong men when the commencement exercises were ended, and Sunrise became to the outgoing class only a hallowed memory.

  The hour is high noon, the good-bys are given, and from the crest of the limestone ridge the ringing chorus, led by good old Trench, sounds far and far away along the Walnut Valley: