CHAPTER I

THE UNREWARDED QUEST

A failure!

Rudy Bronson sat looking down at the puncture pattern on the tips of his shoes, his mouth twisted in a grim, unhappy line. He was a slim, apparently sensitive boy, with a crest of waving blond hair and eyes in which the spirit of the dreamer was fused with that of the romantic. With the late afternoon sun profiling his head and shoulders, casting a nimbus of warm light about his tousled hair and lighting up the clean lines of his features, a stranger might have found difficulty in understanding the phrase that came so harshly from his tense lips: "A failure!"

And what else was he? A whole year here at the State University, enjoying its every detail in his own quiet way, and then what? He kicked at a crumpled slip of paper on the worn carpet of the dormitory floor. He knew every brief line of its message, its succinct and banishing message: _The Registrar wishes to inform you that, due to an insufficiency of passing grades, it will not be permissible for you to register in the University for the fall semester._

Flunked out! Like a dumb athlete. And for what? His eyes traveled mechanically across the room to where a tarnished and battered saxophone rested on a small table. Just because he had spent so much time practicing in an effort to make the school band that his studies naturally had suffered.

Nor was that all. The bandmaster had listened sourly to his try-out, and then dismissed him with the curt information that his playing was "just a little worse than rotten." He closed his eyes, as if seeking by the physical gesture to shut out a mental image which but stood clearer in the darkness.

It all returned with a rush. The full muster of the University's musically inclined had met on the bare stage of the auditorium. Brasses, woodwinds, string instruments, drums--each had been called in turn. Detained by a late class, Rudy had appeared at the end of the rehearsal, and been forced to make his attempt under the critical eyes of the other aspirants.

But despite them, relieved that their own trials were over and ready to laugh at the first false note, he had taken his place and started on his best piece... His hands clenched at the memory of the ensuing fiasco. Of course something had been wrong with his instrument. But no one was prepared for explanations or excuses. Their laughter had drowned him out before he had played two cracked bars, and the director had waved him down with the same condescending manner he might have used toward a half-wit.

It had all been terrible and humiliating past the understanding of one not so sensitive as Rudy Bronson. Yet it was but the next to the last failure of a collegiate career filled with failures. He kicked again at the paper on the floor. There was the last failure.

How different it all had turned out from his great expectations! Back home, with all the longing for distant places encouraged by life in a small town, he had looked forward to the State University as the end of the rainbow, a sort of dwelling place of dreams come true. He knew that his father had embarrassed himself financially in order to get him even this one year of higher schooling--and he had repaid the old gentleman by failing at everything he had attempted.

Too slender for football, not fast enough for baseball or basketball, he had been dropped from the freshman squads of those sports within a week of their inception. Distressed by his lack of athletic prowess, his natural shyness had deepened, and he had been overlooked in the rush for fraternity material. And with that failure to be pledged (he had felt) had departed his best chance of meeting Jean Whitehall.

As always, his heart quavered at the mere thought of her name. Jean Whitehall, the acknowledged queen of the campus, whose casual passing was enough to fill an unnoticed freshman's whole day with sunlight! How he had thought of her, dreamed of her, hoped to meet her! Now in his hour of defeat he honestly acknowledged to himself that his attempts to make the freshman teams had been prompted more by the desire to bring himself to Jean's notice than to win athletic glory.

The same wish had encouraged him to try and win recognition in the musical circles of the school. Seeing that he was not destined for a sporting career, he had turned a natural inclination toward music into a devout study of the instrument that might win him a welcome on Sorority Row--the saxophone.

Everyone knew that a good saxophonist was always in demand at the University dances. And if he couldn't be invited as a guest to Jean's exclusive organization--well, he might appear in the humble but willing role of musician. Being near her, having the chance to rest his eyes on her youthful loveliness was all he asked... And he had been denied even that.

"Just a little worse than rotten," the band-master had said--and put the mark of disapproval on his last, and therefore most desperately hoped for, attempt to bring himself above the level of the school's colorless and characterless nonentities. He had failed. Failed!

A brisk rap on the door punctuated his mental tirade. He looked up in surprise. He had few callers, and these ordinarily failed to knock. "Come in," he called.

The door opened immediately, and around it peered a fresh, roguish face decorated by an enormous pair of horn-rimmed glasses. For a moment Rudy had difficulty in recognizing Sport O'Malley. "Ah, there," greeted the newcomer. "Saw you sitting in the window and thought I would run up to ask how the saxophone lessons were progressing?"

Rudy smiled. He was fond of Sport O'Malley. The careless laughing youth was his one contact with the gayer side of the University; and though Rudy did not now see as much of him as he had when they had been together in high school back home, he nevertheless considered Sport to be his best friend in the institution.

"Not so good, Sport. The course calls for twenty lessons, and I've only got to the seventh. I was only on the fourth when I had my try-out for the school band. That's why I didn't do better. Why, I bet even Ted Grant couldn't have gotten by with only three lessons!"

"Probably not. But don't forget that musicians are born and not made. There's the chance that Ted Grant didn't take a lesson in his life. You've got to have something besides practice to become the greatest saxophonist in the world."

"I'll say you do," Rudy admitted. He said the words readily enough, but his tone was spiritless and disheartened. Sport was quick to change his manner.

"Don't take it that way! Gee, we can't all be Ted Grants--or else look how many orchestras would be cutting each other's throats! And look how many of us hopefuls would be blowing fish-horns instead of brasses."

"Oh, I don't mean to seem down, Sport. But it's tough. I put every possible hour into studying that sax, trying to get a break, trying to win a place on the band with the rest of you fellows--and all I got was the razzberry."

"That wasn't given you by the regulars," Sport was quick to say. "It was just those mutts who think that if they give the other guy the bird, they'll have a better chance themselves."

"It's all right," Rudy said wearily. "Whoever it was, I deserved it. I was rotten. I missed my chance. And now look." He pointed at the offending notice on the floor.

Sport whistled. It was apparent that from both experience and the color of the paper, he knew the significance of that communication. "Flunk?"

Rudy nodded. "Flat! No make-ups. No chance to register next year. No nothing!"

"Wam--that's tough! But I won't feel too sorry for you just yet a while. I haven't been over to my own diggings yet. I forgot that those little pals were coming out to-day. And there'll probably be one there to make me wish I'd not been reminded."

"Well, if there is," Rudy laughed, "we can hold each others heads on the train going home. What are you doing this summer, Sport?"

"Going to try and get up an orchestra and play at some of the hotels. You know, travel around like a special attraction. Those fellows with the puppet show from Yale have been cleaning up for several summers. People fall for that 'college' line in your billing. I think a hot band ought to go good."

"It should," Rudy agreed enthusiastically. "And if you should want a good saxophonist, you needn't look any farther than here."

Sport looked away, uncomfortable before the other's eagerness. "Gee, Rudy; you put me in sort of a tough spot. I know you're practicing hard on your instrument, and all--but you've only got to the seventh lesson, and I don't imagine that Ted Grant himself was much of a saxophonist at his seventh lesson."

"But you forget--great musicians are born, not made." Rudy laughed to cover the discomfort which they both felt; but he was stung by the abrupt dismissal of his offer to help. Was it going to be that way all his life--no chance to prove that he really had the stuff, just simply ticketed as incompetent and given no consideration at all? Why was it? Why was it?

He crossed the room, holding his head slightly averted so that Sport could not see his face. But Sport, with the keen perception granted to warm-hearted people, saw that he had hurt the shy, reserved boy whom he had known for years without really knowing him at all. He instantly sought some means of assuaging Rudy's injured pride.

"But why worry about all that? It isn't time to start fretting over summer jobs just yet a while--what concerns us just now are these failure slips. I think they deserve a party. And by the great god Whoopee, that's what they're going to have. A party in honor of the fact that the quietest boy in the whole University got shipped! That's a record that ought to stand for lo! these many years."

"What kind of a party?" Rudy asked. "Do you mean here, or up at your place?"

"Neither!" Sport cried. "We'll get the gang and go out to The Magic Lantern."

"The Magic Lantern!" How often Rudy had heard this rendezvous of the campus' more ardent spirits mentioned in jocular tones. Sport looked at him curiously. "Never been out there, Rudy?" He paused, smiling. "Say, I guess you haven't had a very good time here, all in all. Well, this is going to be one time that you'll have a good time!"

"That's mighty nice of you, Sport. No, I haven't had a particularly good time, socially. I've--been so busy with other things. Trying to make the teams, and practising on Ted Grant's correspondence course for the saxophone----"

"And you've gone to no dances? Parties? Had no heavy dates with the campus hot numbers?" As Rudy shook his head, Sport whistled shrilly. "My hat! You are a strange one, Rudy. But that's enough of that! I'll fix you up a party that they'll remember as long as one of the old school's stones stands upon another."

"How," said Rudy thoughtfully, "about girls? I'm not very well acquainted down on Sorority Row."

"Easily fixed," Sport assured him expansively. "The girls will all be crazy to come to _this_ affair. Is there any baby that you'd like particularly? Just name her and she's yours!"

"I'd like Jean Whitehall," Rudy told him quietly.

Sport's jaw dropped. "I said you were strange," he gasped. "Boy, you're nuts! Why, she's the classiest number on the campus. She only goes out with varsity captains, when she isn't with the student body president or the manager of the welfare board!"

Rudy shrugged. "You asked me who I wanted," Rudy answered, "and I told you. And if you can't fix it, nobody else will do. I accept no substitutes."

"What a man!" Sport breathed. "Here I had you tagged as aching to step out with the janes--and you calmly tell me that if you can't have the best looker in the University for a partner, you won't have any. Why, Rudy," he added, "much as I hate to admit that being a sophomore keeps me from anything in this noble institution, I've got to break down and confess that the high and mighty Miss Jean Whitehall, girl-friend of our more ritzy seniors, doesn't even know I'm on earth."

"Then," said Rudy decisively, "our party will be a stag."

Sport touched him lightly on the arm. "You're too subtle for a roughneck like me, Rudy Bronson. But you're there. And I like you; damn it, I like you!"