A Master's Degree

by Margaret Hill McCarter

  "Trench was executed for manslaughter at two forty-five today. It's three o'clock now. Let's go." He lifted her to her feet and stooped to pick up her hat.

  "Do you really mind going with me, Victor?" Elinor asked.

  "Do I mind? I've been waiting two years for you to ask me to go." His voice was very deep and there was a soft light in his brown eyes.

  Elinor's pulse beat felt a thrill. A sudden sense of the sweetness of the day and of a joy unlike any other joy of her life possessed her.

  Down on the bridge they stopped to watch the sunlit waters of the Walnut rippling below them.

  "Are we the same two who crept up on this bridge, wet, and muddy and tired, and scared one stormy October night eighteen months ago?" Elinor asked.

  "I've had no reincarnation that I know of," Vic replied.

  "I have," Elinor declared, and Vic thought of Burgess.

  Up the narrow hidden glen they made their way, clambering about broken ledges, crossing and recrossing the little stream, hugging the dry footing under overhanging rock shelves, laughing at missteps and rejoicing in the springtime joy, until they came suddenly upon a grassy open space, cliff-walled and hidden, even from the rest of the glen. At the farther end was the low doorway-like entrance to the cave. The song-birds were twittering in the trees above them, the waters of the little stream gurgled at their feet, the woodsy odor of growing things was in the air, and all the little glen was restful and quiet.

  "Isn't it beautiful and romantic--and everything nice?" Elinor cried. "I don't mind this sentence to hard service. It is worth it. Do you mind the loss of time, Victor?"

  "I counted it gain to be here with you, even in the storm and terror. How can this be loss?" he answered her. His voice was low and musical.

  Elinor looked up quickly. And quickly as the thing had come to Victor Burleigh on the west bluff above the old Kickapoo Corral two Octobers ago, so to Elinor Wream came the vision of what the love of such a man would be to the woman who could win it.

  "Do you really mean it, Victor? Wasn't I a lump of lead? A dead weight to your strength that night? You have never once spoken of it."

  She looked up with shining eyes and put out her hand. What could he do but keep it in his own for a moment, firm-held, as something he would keep forever.

  "I have never once forgotten it," he murmured.

  The cave by daylight was as the lightning had shown it, a big chamber, rock-walled, rock-floored, rock-roofed, in the side of the bluff, but little below the level of the ground and easy of entrance. It was cool and damp, but, with the daylight through the doorway, it was merely shadowy inside. In the farther wall yawned the ragged opening to the black spaces leading off underground. Through this opening these two had crept once, feeling that behind the wall somebody was crouching with evil intent. They peered through the opening now, trying to see the miraculous way by which they had come into the cave from the rear. But they stared only into blackness and caught the breath of the damp underground air with a faint odor of wood smoke somewhere.

  "Elinor, it's a good thing we came through here in the night. It would have been maddening to be forced in here by daylight. We must have slipped down through a hole somewhere in our stumbles and hit a passage leading out of here only to the river, a sort of fire escape by way of the waters. You remember we couldn't get anywhere on the back track, except to the cliff above the Walnut. It's all very fine if the escaper gets out of the river before he reaches Lagonda's whirlpool."

  He was leaning far through the opening in the wall, gazing into the darkness and seeing nothing.

  "Somewhere back in there, while I was pawing around that night, I found something up in a chink that felt like the odd-shaped little silver pitcher my mother had once--an old family heirloom, lost or stolen some time ago. I came back and hunted for it later, but it was winter time and cold as the grave outside and darker in here, and I couldn't find anything, so I concluded maybe I was mistaken altogether about its being like that old pitcher of ours. It was a bad night for `seein' things'; it might have been for `feelin' things' as well. There's nothing here but damp air and darkness."

  And even while he was speaking close beside the wall, so near that a hand could have reached him, a man was crouching; the same man whose cruel eyes had stared through the bushes at Lloyd Fenneben as he sat by the river before Pigeon Place; the same man whose eyes had leered at Vic Burleigh in this same place eighteen months before; the same man whom little Bug Buler's innocent face had startled as he was about to seize the money box at the gateway to the Sunrise football field; and this same man was crouching now to spring at Vic Burleigh's throat in the darkness.

  "It's a good thing a fellow has a guardian angel once in a while," Vic said, as he hastily withdrew his head and shoulders. "We get pretty close to the edge of things sometimes and never know how near we are to destruction."

  "We were pretty close that night," Elinor replied.

  "Shall we rest here a little while, or do your savage sorority sisters require you to do time in so many minutes?" Vic asked, as they left the cave and came again into the sunlight, and all the sweetness of the April woodland, and the rugged beauty of the glen.

  "I'm glad to rest," Elinor said, dropping down on a stone. Her cheeks were blooming from the exercise of the tramp, and her pretty hair was in disorder.

  Far away from the west prairie came the faint note of a child's voice in song.

  "Victor," Elinor said, as they listened, "do you know that the Sunrise girls envy Bug Buler? They say you would have more time for the girls if it wasn't for him. What you spend for him you could spend on light refreshments for them, don't you see?"

  "I know I'm a stingy cuss," Vic said, carelessly, but a deeper red touched his cheek.

  "You know you are not," Elinor insisted, "and I've always thought it was a beautiful thing for a big grown man like you to care for a little orphan boy. All the girls think so, too."

  Burleigh looked down at her gratefully.

  "I thought once--in fact, I was told once--that my care for him was sufficient reason why I should let all the girls alone, most of all why I should not think of Elinor Wream."

  "How strange!" Elinor's face had a womanly expression. "I've never had a little child to love me. I've been brought up with only Æneas's small son Ascanius, and other classical children, on Uncle Joshua's Dead Language book shelves. I feel sometimes as if I'd been robbed."

  "You? I didn't know you had ever wanted anything you didn't get."

  Victor had thought all things were due to her and came as duly. The womanly look on her face now was a revelation to him. But then he had not dared to study her face for months, and he did not yet realize what life in Dr. Fenneben's home must mean to her character-building.

  "I'll tell you some time about something I ought to have had, a sacrifice I was forced to make; but not now, Tell me about Bug."

  There was no bitterness in Elinor's tone, yet the idea of her having the capacity to endure gave her a newer charm to the man beside her.

  "I have never known whose child Bug is," he began. "The way in which he came to me is full of terrible memories, and it all happened on the blackest day of my life--the hard life of a lonely boy on a Kansas claim. That's why I never speak of it and try always to forget it. I found him by mere accident, helpless and in awful danger. He was about two years old then and all he could say was `bad man' and his name, `Bug Buler.' I've wondered if Bug is his name, or if he could not speak his real name plainly then."

  Burleigh paused, and a sense of Elinor's interest brought a thrill of joy to him.

  "Where was he?" she asked.

  Vic slowly unfastened his cuff and slipped his coat sleeve up to his elbow.

  "Do you remember that scar?" he asked. "It is not the only one I have. I fought with death for that baby boy and I shall always carry the scars of that day. Bug was alone in a lonely little deserted dugout. Somebody had left him there to perish. He was on a low chair, the only furniture
in the room, and on the earth floor between him and me were five of the ugliest rattlesnakes that ever coiled for a deadly blow. Little Bug held out his arms to me, and I'll never forget his baby face--and--I killed them all and carried him away. It was a dangerous, hard job, but the boy I saved has been the blessing of my life ever since. I could not have endured the days that followed without his need for care and his love and innocence. He's kept me good, Elinor. When I got back home with him my mother, who had been very sick, was dead, and our house had been robbed of every valuable by some thief--a wayside tragedy of western Kansas. That was the day the pitcher was stolen. A note was left warning me not to follow nor try to find out who had done the stealing, but I thought I knew anyhow. That's why I killed that bull snake the first day I came to Sunrise and that's why I must have looked like a bulldog to you, soft-sheltered Cambridge folks. Life has been mostly a fist fight for me, but Dr. Fenneben has taught me that there are other powers beside physical strength. That the knock-down game doesn't bring the real victory always. I hope I've learned a little here."

  A little! Could this be the big awkward freshman of a September day gone by? Then college culture is surely worth the cost.

  Elinor leaned forward, eagerly.

  "Tell me about your father," she said.

  "My father lost his life because he dared to tell the truth," Victor replied.

  "Oh, glorious!" Elinor cried, earnestly.

  "I have always loved my father's memory for his courage," Victor continued. "He was a believer in law enforcement and he was a terror to the bootleggers who carried whisky into our settlement. A man named Gresh was notorious for selling whisky to the claim holders. He gave it, Elinor, gave it, to a boy, a widow's son, made him drunk, robbed him, and left him to freeze to death in a blizzard. The boy lived long enough to tell my father who did it, and it was his testimony that helped to convict Gresh and start him to the penitentiary. He escaped from the sheriff on the way--and, so far as I know, there's one bad man still at large, a fugitive before the law. Whisky is the devil's own best tool, whether a man drinks it himself or gets other people to drink it."

  "That's a bad name," Elinor said. "My grandfather adopted a boy named Gresh, who turned out bad. I think he was killed in a saloon row in Chicago. Did this Gresh ever trouble you again?"

  Burleigh's face was grim as he answered:

  "My father was waylaid and murdered with a club by this man. He escaped afterward into Indian Territory. He left his own name, Gresh, scrawled on a piece of paper pinned to my father's coat to show whose revenge was worked out. He was a volcano of human hate--that man Gresh. After my father's name was written--`The same club for every Burleigh who ever crosses my path.' I expect to cross his path some day, and if I ever lay my eyes on that fiend it will go hard with one of us." The yellow glow burned again in Victor Burleigh's eyes and his fists clinched involuntarily. They were silent a while, until the sweetness of the day and the joy of being together wooed them to happier thoughts. Then Elinor remembered her disordered hair and, throwing aside her hat, she deftly put it into place.

  "Am I presentable for the supper at the Kickapoo Corral?" she asked, as she picked up her hat again.

  "You suit me," Burleigh replied. "What are the Kickapoo requirements?"

  "That Victor Burleigh shall be satisfied," she answered, roguishly. "Really, that's right. Four girls offered to substitute for me in this penitential pilgrimage and write some long translations for me beside."

  "Four, individually or collectively?" he asked.

  "Either way," she answered.

  "Why didn't you let them do it?

  "Which way?"

  "Either way," he replied.

  "Would you rather have had the four either way, than me?" she questioned, with pretty vanity.

  "Much rather." His voice was stern.

  "Why?" She was stung by the answer.

  The glen was all a dreamy gray-green ruggedness of shelving rock with mossy crevices and ferny nooks. The sunlight filtering through the young leaves fell about them in a shadow-flecked softness. There was a crooning song of some bird on its nest, the murmur of waters rippling down the stony shallows, and a beautiful girl in a dainty pink dress with her fingers just touching her fluffy masses of hair.

  "Why?"

  With the question Elinor looked up and saw why. Saw in Victor Burleigh's golden-brown eyes a look she had never read in eyes before; saw the whole face, the rugged, manly face lighted with a man's overmastering love. And the joy of it thrilled her soul.

  "Do you know why?

  He leaned toward her ever so little. And Elinor Wream, forgetful of the Wream family rank, forgetful of her tacit consent to Uncle Joshua's wishes, forgetful of Vincent Burgess and his heritage of culture, beautiful Elinor Wream, with her starry eyes, and cheeks of peach-blossom pink, put out her hands to Victor Burleigh, who took them eagerly.

  "Let me hold them a minute," he said, softly. "There are sixty years to remember, but only one hour like this."

  Then, forgetful of the world and the demands of the world, keeping her hands in his, he bent and kissed her, as from the foundation of the world it was his right to do. And Love's Young Dream, not bought with pain, as mother love is bought, nor wrought out with prayer and sacrificial service, as love for all humanity is won, came again on this April day to the little, rock-sheltered glen beside the bright waters of the Walnut, and briefly there rebuilt in rainbow hues the old, old paradise of joy for these two alone.

  And into the new Eden came the new serpent also for to destroy. Before Elinor and Victor was the sunlit valley. Behind them was the cave's mouth with its shadowy gloom deepening back to dense darkness. And creeping stealthily through that blackness, like a serpent warming its venom and writhing slowly toward the light, a human form was slowly, stealthily crawling outward, with head upreared and cruel eyes alert. The brutal face was void of pity, as if the conscience behind it had long been bound and gagged to human sympathy.

  While Burleigh was speaking the caveman had reached the doorway and reared up just beside it in the shadow. Clutching a brutal-looking club in his hairy, rough hand, he stood listening to the story of the murder that had left Victor fatherless. The face of the listener made clear the need for guardian angels. One leap, one blow, and Victor Burleigh would carry only one more scar to his grave.

  Suddenly a faint piping voice floated in upon the glen:

  Little childwen pwessing near

  To the feet of Thwist, the Ting,

  Have you neiver doubt nor fear

  Or some twibute do you bwing?

  And Bug Buler, flushed and splashed, and generally muddy and happy, came around the fallen ledges and debauched into the grassy sunshiny space before the cavern. Only a tiny, tumbled-up, joyous child, with no power in his pudgy little arm; and Victor Burleigh, tall, muscular and agile. Against this man of tremendous strength the caveman's club was lifted. But with the sound of the child's voice and the sight of the innocent face the club fell harmless. A look of fright, deepening to a maniac's terror, seized the creature, and noiselessly and swiftly as a serpent would escape he crawled back into the darkness and burrowed deep from the eyes of men. So strength that day was ruled by weakness.

  "I ist followed you, Vic," Bug said, clutching Vic's hand.

  "This is n't a safe place to come, Bug. You must n't follow me here."

  "Nen you must n't go into is n't safe places, so I won't follow. Little folks don't know," Bug said, with cunning gravity.

  "He is right," Elinor said. "I think we'd better leave now."

  They knew that henceforth this spot would be holy ground for them, but they did not dare to think further than that. They only wished that the moments would stay, that the sun would loiter slowly down the afternoon sky.

  "I know a way out," Bug declared. Turn, I'll show you."

  Then, with a child's sense of direction, he led away from the cave out to where the deep ravine headed in a rough mass of broken rock.


  "Tlimb up that and you're out," Bug declared.

  They climbed up to the high level prairie that sweeps westward from the Walnut bluffs.

  "Doodby, folks. I want to Botany wiv urn over there. I turn wiv Limpy out here."

  Bug pointed to a group of students wandering about in search of dogtooth violets and other botanical plunder from Nature's springtime treasury. Among the group was Bug's chum, the crippled student.

  "Well, stay with them this time, you little wandering Jew," Vic admonished, nor dreamed how his guardian angel had come to him this day in the guise of this same little wanderer.

  When Victor and Elinor had come at last to the west bluff above the Walnut River, the late afternoon was already casting long shadows across the grassy level of the old Kickapoo Corral. And again the camp fires were glowing where a Sorority "spread" was merrily in the making.

  They must go down soon and join in the hilarity. But a golden half hour yet hung in the west--and the going down meant the going back to all that had been.

  "Look at the foam on the whirlpool, Elinor. See how deliberately it swings upstream. Isn't that a most deceiving bit of treachery?" Vic said as he watched the river.

  Elinor looked thoughtfully at the slow-moving water.

  "I cannot endure deceit," she said at last. "I like honesty in everything. I said I would tell you sometime about a sacrifice I was forced to make. I'll tell you now if you will not speak of what I say."

  How delicious to have her confidence in anything. Vic smiled assent.

  "My father had a fortune from my mother. When he died he left me to the care of my two uncles, and gave all his money to endow chairs in universities. He thought a woman could marry money, and that he was doing mankind a service in this endowment. Maybe he was, but I've always rebelled against being dependent. I've always wanted my own. Uncle Joshua thinks I am frivolous, and he has told Uncle Lloyd that it's just my love of spending and extravagant notions that makes me rebel against conditions. It is n't. It's the sense of being robbed, as it were. It was n't right and honest toward me, even in a great cause, to leave me dependent. Uncle Lloyd would never have done it. I hope he does n't think I'm as bad as Uncle Joshua does. You won't mind my telling you this, nor think me ungrateful to my relatives for their care of me. Nobody quite understands me but you."