The Red Cross Girl Part 6

"Say it again," prompted Anita Flagg "Sister."

"I will not!" returned the young man firmly. "But I'll say this," he whispered: "I'll say you're the most wonderful, the most beautiful, and the finest woman who has ever lived!"

Anita Flagg's eyes left his quickly; and, with her head bent, she stared at the ba.s.s drum in the orchestra.

"I don't know," she said, "but that sounds just as good."

When the curtain was about to rise she told him to take her back to her box, so that he could meet her friends and go on with them to supper; but when they reached the rear of the house she halted.

"We can see this act," she said, "or--my car's in front of the theatre--we might go to the park and take a turn or two or three. Which would you prefer?"

"Don't make me laugh!" said Sam.

As they sat all together at supper with those of the box party, but paying no attention to them whatsoever, Anita Flagg sighed contentedly.

"There's only one thing," she said to Sam, "that is making me unhappy; and because it is such sad news I haven't told you. It is this: I am leaving America. I am going to spend the winter in London. I sail next Wednesday."

"My business is to gather news," said Sam, "but in all my life I never gathered such good news as that."

"Good news!" exclaimed Anita.

"Because," explained Sam, "I am leaving, America--am spending the winter in England. I am sailing on Wednesday. No; I also am unhappy; but that is not what makes me unhappy."

"Tell me," begged Anita.

"Some day," said Sam.

The day he chose to tell her was the first day they were at sea--as they leaned upon the rail, watching Fire Island disappear.

"This is my unhappiness," said Sam--and he pointed to a name on the pa.s.senger list. It was: "The Earl of Deptford, and valet." "And because he is on board!"

Anita Flagg gazed with interest at a pursuing sea-gull.

"He is not on board," she said. "He changed to another boat."

Sam felt that by a word from her a great weight might be lifted from his soul. He looked at her appealingly--hungrily.

"Why did he change?" he begged.

Anita Flagg shook her head in wonder. She smiled at him with amused despair.

"Is that all that is worrying you?" she said.

Chapter 2. THE GRAND CROSS OF THE CRESCENT

Of some college students it has been said that, in order to pa.s.s their examinations, they will deceive and cheat their kind professors. This may or may not be true. One only can shudder and pa.s.s hurriedly on. But whatever others may have done, when young Peter Hallowell in his senior year came up for those final examinations which, should he pa.s.s them even by a nose, would gain him his degree, he did not cheat. He may have been too honest, too confident, too lazy, but Peter did not cheat. It was the professors who cheated.

At Stillwater College, on each subject on which you are examined you can score a possible hundred. That means perfection, and in, the brief history of Stillwater, which is a very, new college, only one man has attained it. After graduating he "accepted a position" in an asylum for the insane, from which he was, promoted later to the poor-house, where he died. Many Stillwater undergraduates studied his career and, lest they also should attain perfection, were afraid to study anything else.

Among these Peter was by far the most afraid.

The marking system at Stillwater is as follows: If in all the subjects in which you have been examined your marks added together give you an average of ninety, you are pa.s.sed "with honors"; if of seventy-five, you pa.s.s "with distinction"; if Of fifty, You just "pa.s.s." It is not unlike the grocer's nice adjustment of fresh eggs, good eggs, and eggs. The whole college knew that if Peter got in among the eggs he would be lucky, but the professors and instructors of Stillwater 'were determined that, no matter what young Hallowell might do to prevent it, they would see that he pa.s.sed his examinations. And they const.i.tuted the jury of awards. Their interest in Peter was not because they loved him so much, but because each loved his own vine-covered cottage, his salary, and his dignified t.i.tle the more. And each knew that that one of the faculty who dared to flunk the son of old man Hallowell, who had endowed Stillwater, who supported Stillwater, and who might be expected to go on supporting Stillwater indefinitely, might also at the same time hand in his official resignation.

Chancellor Black, the head of Stillwater, was an up-to-date college president. If he did not actually run after money he went where money was, and it was not his habit to be downright rude to those who possessed it. And if any three-thousand-dollar-a-year professor, through a too strict respect for Stillwater's standards of learning, should lose to that inst.i.tution a half-million-dollar observatory, swimming-pool, or gymnasium, he was the sort of college president, who would see to it that the college lost also the services of that too conscientious instructor.

He did not put this in writing or in words, but just before the June examinations, when on, the campus he met one of the faculty, he would inquire with kindly interest as to the standing of young Hallowell.

"That is too bad!" he would exclaim, but, more in sorrow than in anger.

"Still, I hope the boy can pull through. He is his dear father's pride, and his father's heart is set upon his son's obtaining his degree. Let us hope he will pull through." For four years every professor had been pulling Peter through, and the conscience of each had become calloused.

They had only once more to shove him through and they would be free of him forever. And so, although they did not conspire together, each knew that of the firing squad that was to aim its rifles at, Peter, HIS rifle would hold the blank cartridge.

The only one of them who did not know this was Doctor Henry Gilman.

Doctor Gilman was the professor of ancient and modern history at Stillwater, and greatly respected and loved. He also was the author of those well-known text-books, "The Founders of Islam," and "The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire." This latter work, in five volumes, had been not unfavorably compared to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The original newspaper comment, dated some thirty years back, the doctor had preserved, and would produce it, now somewhat frayed and worn, and read it to visitors. He knew it by heart, but to him it always possessed a contemporary and news interest.

"Here is a review of the history," he would say--he always referred to it as "the" history--"that I came across in my TRANSCRIPT."

In the eyes of Doctor Gilman thirty years was so brief a period that it was as though the clipping had been printed the previous after-noon.

The members of his cla.s.s who were examined on the "Rise and Fall," and who invariably came to grief over it, referred to it briefly as the "Fall," sometimes feelingly as "the.... Fall." The history began when Constantinople was Byzantium, skipped lightly over six centuries to Constantine, and in the last two Volumes finished up the Mohammeds with the downfall of the fourth one and the coming of Suleiman. Since Suleiman, Doctor Gilman did not recognize Turkey as being on the map.

When his history said the Turkish Empire had fallen, then the Turkish Empire fell. Once Chancellor Black suggested that he add a sixth volume that would cover the last three centuries.

"In a history of Turkey issued as a text-book," said the chancellor, "I think the Russian-Turkish War should be included."

Doctor Gilman, from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, gazed at him in mild reproach. "The war in the Crimea!" he exclaimed. "Why, I was alive at the time. I know about it. That is not history."

Accordingly, it followed that to a man who since the seventeenth century knew of no event, of interest, Cyrus Hallowell, of the meat-packers'

trust, was not an imposing figure. And such a man the son of Cyrus Hallowell was but an ignorant young savage, to whom "the" history certainly had been a closed book. And so when Peter returned his examination paper in a condition almost as spotless as that in which he had received it, Doctor Gilman carefully and conscientiously, with malice toward none and, with no thought of the morrow, marked "five."

Each of the other professors and instructors had marked Peter fifty.

In their fear of Chancellor Black they dared not give the boy less, but they refused to be slaves to the extent of crediting him with a single point higher than was necessary to pa.s.s him. But Doctor Gilman's five completely knocked out the required average of fifty, and young Peter was "found" and could not graduate. It was an awful business! The only son of the only Hallowell refused a degree in his father's own private college--the son of the man who had built the Hallowell Memorial, the new Laboratory, the Anna Hallowell Chapel, the Hallowell Dormitory, and the Hallowell Athletic Field. When on the bulletin board of the dim hall of the Memorial to his departed grandfather Peter read of his own disgrace and downfall, the light the stained-gla.s.s window cast upon his nose was of no sicklier a green than was the nose itself. Not that Peter wanted an A.M. or an A.B., not that he desired laurels he had not won, but because the young man was afraid of his father. And he had cause to be. Father arrived at Stillwater the next morning. The interviews that followed made Stillwater history.

"My son is not an a.s.s!" is what Hallowell senior is said to have said to Doctor Black. "And if in four years you and your faculty cannot give him the rudiments of an education, I will send him to a college that can.

And I'll send my money where I send Peter."

In reply Chancellor Black could have said that it was the fault of the son and not of the college; he could have said that where three men had failed to graduate one hundred and eighty had not. But did he say that? Oh, no, he did not say that! He was not that sort of, a college president. Instead, he remained calm and sympathetic, and like a conspirator in a comic opera glanced apprehensively round his, study. He lowered his voice.

"There has been contemptible work here," he whispered--"spite and a mean spirit of reprisal. I have been making a secret investigation, and I find that this blow at your son and you, and at the good name of our college was struck by one man, a man with a grievance--Doctor Gilman.

Doctor Gilman has repeatedly desired me to raise his salary." This did not happen to be true, but in such a crisis Doctor Black could not afford to be too particular.

"I have seen no reason for raising his salary--and there you have the explanation. In revenge he has made this attack. But he overshot his mark. In causing us temporary embarra.s.sment he has brought about his own downfall. I have already asked for his resignation."

Every day in the week Hallowell was a fair, sane man, but on this particular day he was wounded, his spirit was hurt, his self-esteem humiliated. He was in a state of mind to believe anything rather than that his son was an idiot.

"I don't want the man discharged," he protested, "just because Peter is lazy. But if Doctor Gilman was moved by personal considerations, if he sacrificed my Peter in order to get even...."

"That," exclaimed Black in a horrified whisper, "is exactly what he did!

Your generosity to the college is well known. You are recognized all over America as its patron. And he believed that when I refused him an increase in salary it was really you who refused it--and he struck at you through your son. Everybody thinks so. The college is on fire with indignation. And look at the mark he gave Peter! Five! That in itself shows the malice. Five is not a mark, it is an insult! No one, certainly not your brilliant son--look how brilliantly he managed the glee-club and foot-ball tour--is stupid enough to deserve five. No, Doctor Gilman went too far. And he has been justly punished!"