_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 goodby 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 sorry 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 gate, 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:
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
Rah for Funnybone!
_Rah!_ RAW RAH!!!
End of Project Gutenberg's A Master's Degree, by Margaret Hill McCarter