OF course, there came a day of reckoning for Victor Burleigh, now the idol of the Walnut Valley football fans, the pride of Lagonda Ledge, the hero of Sunrise. But the reckoning was not brought to him; he brought himself deliberately to it.
The jollification following the game threatened to wreck the chapel and crack the limestone ledge beneath it.
“Dust off your halo and wrap it up in cotton till next fall, Vic,” Trench whispered in the closing minutes. “We've got to face the real thing now. We're civilians in citizens' clothes, amenable to law henceforth; not a lot of athletic brigands, privileged outlaws, whose glory dazzles all common sense. Quit bumping your head against the Kansas motto up in the dome, get your hob-nailers down on the sod, and trot off and tackle your Greek verbs awhile. And say, Vic, tackle yourself first and forget the pretty girl who covered you with roses down yonder five days ago. It was n't you, it was just the day's hero. She'd have decorated old Bond Saxon just the same if he had waddled across the last goal line then. You're a plug and she's a lady born, and as good as engaged to Burgess besides. I had that straight from Dennie Saxon, and you know Dennie's no gossip. They were far gone before they came West—the Wream-Burgess folk were—stiffen up, Burleigh. You look like a dead man.”
“I was never more alive in my life.” Vic's voice and eyes were alive enough.
“By heck! I believe it,” Trench exclaimed. “Say, you got away with Burgess about the game. If you want the girl, go after her, too. But gently, Sweet Afton, go gently. Most girls want to do the pursuing themselves, I believe. I'll block the interference, if necessary, and you'll be the sought-after yet, not the seeking, dear child.”
A circular stairway winds from the Sunrise chapel down the south turret to Dean Fenneben's study, intended originally as a sort of fire escape. Some enterprising janitor later fixed a spring lock on the upper door to this stairway (surprises had been sprung through this door upon the chapel stage by prankish students at inopportune moments), so that now it was only an exit, and was called by the students “the road to perdition,” easy to descend but barred from retreat.
In the confusion following the chapel exercises Vic slipped into the south turret, and the lock clicked behind him as he hurried down “the road to perdition.”
The door to Dean Fenneben's study was slightly open and Vic heard his own name spoken as he reached it. He hesitated, for a group of girls was surrounding Elinor Wream, discussing him. There was no escape. The upper door was locked, and he would rather have met that unknown villainous face in the dark cave than to face this group of pretty girls. So he waited.
“Oh, Elinor, you mercenary creature!”
“What if he is a bit crude?”