_We cannot make bargains for blisses,
Nor catch them like fishes in nets,
And sometimes the thing our life misses
Helps more than the thing which it gets_.
--CARY
ELINOR WREAM spent the holidays in the East and was two weeks late
in entering school again. Then her Uncle Lloyd tightened the rules,
exacting full measure for lost time, until she bewailed to her girl
friends that she had no opportunity even to make fudge or wash her hair.
“Were you sorry to come back, then, Norrie?” her uncle asked one evening
when they were alone in their library, and Elinor was lamenting her hard
lot.
“No, I want to be with you, Uncle Lloyd.”
She was sitting on the arm of his morris chair, softly stroking his
heavy hair away from his forehead.
“Looks like it, the way you hurried back,” Dr. Fenneben said, smiling.
“But Uncle Joshua is n't well, although, to be honest, he didn't seem
a bit anxious to have me stay. He's so wrapped up in Sanscrit he has no
time to live in the present. Why didn't he ever marry?”
“You have just said why,” her uncle answered her.
“Why did n't you ever marry. Were you ever in love?”
The library lamp cast only a shaded light over Lloyd Fenneben lounging
comfortably in his chair. To a woman's eye he would have seemed the
picture of an ideal husband.
“Yes, I was in love once. I did n't marry because--because--I didn't.”
“How romantic! Was it unrequited, or money, or what?” Norrie asked,
eagerly.
“Or what,” he answered, and her finer sense made her change the subject.
“Say, Uncle Lloyd, Uncle Joshua says he wants me to marry.”
“What's he up to now? Tell me about it.”
Norrie was charming tonight in a dainty red evening gown that set off
her pretty face, crowned with beautiful dark hair. Somehow the sight of
her made deeper the void in Fenneben's life--since that love affair of
his own long ago.
“Well,” Norrie went on, “Uncle says I'm to marry rich, because my papa
expected me to. He said papa had money which was mamma's and he used it
for college endowments, because the Wreams love colleges best, and that
it was his wish, and it's Uncle Joshua's too, that I should marry well.
I knew I came honestly by my love of spending. I inherited it from my
mother. Aren't the Wreams all funny men to just see nothing in money,
but a cap and gown and a Master's Degree? But you are a human being,
Uncle Lloyd. You wouldn't leave a daughter dependent on her uncles and
use her money to endow colleges, would you?” The white arm stole round
his neck affectionately, as Elinor added softly, “I'm going to tell you
something else. Uncle Joshua wants me to marry Professor Burgess.”
“Do you want to marry him?” Fenneben asked.
“He hasn't asked me to yet. But he is such a gentleman and he has a
fortune in his own name, or in trust, or something like that. It would
please the Cambridge folks, and Uncle Joshua expects me to consent,
and I've never disobeyed uncle's wishes, so I couldn't refuse now. And,
well, if he'll wait till I'm ready, I guess it will suit me.”
“He'll wait all right, if he wants you, Norrie. He must wait until you
graduate,” the Dean declared.
“Oh, yes; a Wream without a college diploma is like a ship without a
compass, a mere derelict on life's sea. I'm in no hurry anyhow,” and she
began to talk of other things.
In the months that followed Trench had no need to watch Professor
Burgess in his relation to Dennie Saxon, for Burgess had no thought of
her other than of kindly sympathy. That is, Burgess thought he had no
thought. He knew he was in love with Elinor, knew that back in Cambridge
before he was graduated from the university. He had been told that
Elinor liked luxurious living, and he had money--he had told Fenneben as
much in their first interview. Everything seemed to be settled now, for
Joshua Wream had written Burgess the kind of letter only a very old man,
and an abstract scholar, and a bachelor would ever write, telling all
that he had said to Norrie. He made it obligatory that Fenneben should
first give his sanction to the union. He requested also that Burgess
would never mention this letter to his dear young niece, and he
expressly stipulated that Norrie should graduate at Sunrise first. He
ended with an old man's blessing and with the assurance that with Elinor
safely provided for his conscience (why his conscience?) would be at
rest, and he could die in peace. So there was smooth sailing at Sunrise
for many months. Elinor was always charming, and Dr. Fenneben seemed
oblivious to the situation, least of all to putting up any objection,
which, according to brother Joshua, would have blocked the game of love.
There was time now for profound research, the study of types, seclusion,
and the advantage of geographical breath which had brought the Professor
to Kansas, and which he heeded less and less with the passing days. For
he found himself more and more living in the lives of the students. He
had been ashamed, once, of having been Dennie Saxon's escort; and he
never knew when she came to be the one person in Lagonda Ledge to whom
he turned for confidence and aid in many things.
Meanwhile the big boy from the western claim was as surely going up the
rounds of culture as the Professor was coming down to the common needs
of common minds, and both were unconscious then that back of each was
Dr. Fenneben, “dear old Funnybone” to the student body, playing each
man for his king row in the great game of life fought out in
Sunrise-by-the-Walnut.
Toward Elinor, Victor Burleigh seemed utterly indifferent. Even Lloyd
Fenneben, who had caught an insight into things on the night of the
October storm, and had begun to read that new line in the boy's face,
failed to grasp what lay back of those innocent-looking, wide-open eyes,
whose tiger-golden gleam showed but rarely now. Vic was easily the
most popular fellow in his class, and the year at Sunrise had worked a
marvelous change in him.
“You are a darned smooth citizen,” Trench drawled, as he and Burleigh
stood in the shade by the campus gate on the closing day of their
freshman year.
A group of girls had been bidding the two good-bye for the summer. As
Elinor Wream, who was the last one of the company, offered her hand to
Vic there was a look of expectancy in her glance which found no response
in his own eyes. As he turned away with indifferent courtesy to Trench,
the big right guard stared hard at him.
“You are a--well, any kind of a smooth citizen, I say,” he repeated.
“What's troubling your liver now?” Vic asked.
Trench did not heed the question, but said, slowly: “And-the-big-noble-
hearted-young-fellow-walked-in-and-out-beside-how-the-touch-of-her-hand-
thrilled-his-every-pulse-beat,-and-how-her-smile-was-the-light-of-his-
soul. And-he-grew-handsomer-and-more-beloved-with-the-passing-manhood--”
A sudden clutch on Trench's arm, the blaze of the old-time fury in
burning eyes, as Vic's hoarse voice cried:
“For God's sake, Trench, get out of my sight!”
“I will,” drawled Trench. “The only friend you ever had. I'll carry my
troubles up to Big Chief Funnybone. Like as not he'll sentence me to
tumble you through the chapel door of the south turret down the 'road to
perdition.' No use though, you go that road every day. Better treat me
right and tell me all your troubles. If there is any cool handle to take
hold of Gehanna by next to Funnybone, I'm the one fellow in Sunrise to
grab onto it.”
But Vic was out of hearing.
And the days of a long, hot Kansas summer, a glorious autumn, and a
short, nippy winter swung by in their appointed seasons. And now the
springtime was unrolling in dainty beauty of tender green leaf, and
growing grass, and warm, sweet air, and trill of song bird. College
students philosophize little in the springtime of their sophomore year.
Having learned all that books can teach, and a little more, they seek
other pastime. Nobody in Sunrise except Dr. Fenneben took the time to
remember how stiff and ungenial Professor Burgess was when he first came
West; nor what an awkward gosling Victor Burleigh was the day he entered
Sunrise; nor that once it could have seemed just a little odd to invite
Dennie Saxon, a poor student, daughter of a half-reformed drunkard, to
the class parties; nor that even Elinor Wream, “Norrie the beloved,” was
not supposed to be engaged to Vincent Burgess. Supposed! And that, when
her senior year was well along, the engagement would be openly spoken of
as now in her sophomore year, it was quietly accepted, even if Professor
Burgess was often Dennie Saxon's escort. That was because he was such a
gentleman. Nor that with all these changes Trench had remained the same
old lazy Trench, the comfortable idol of the girls, for he was right
guard to all of them, and cared for none. And they never knew till
afterward that for all the four years he was faithful to a little
sweetheart out in the sandy Cimarron River country, to whom he took
back clean hands and a pure heart, when he went home after four years of
college life.
None of these things were noted especially, save by Dr. Lloyd Fenneben,
and he wasn't a sophomore nor a professor in love with a pretty girl; a
professor learning for the first time that sympathy has also its culture
value, as well as perfectly translated Horace, and that the growth of
a human soul means something as beautiful as the growth of a complete
conjugation on an old Greek stem from an older Greek root. Fenneben had
learned all this while he was chasing about the Kansas prairies with a
college in his vest pocket.
There were some unchanged things, however, which Fenneben only guessed
at. Victor Burleigh had never apologized to Professor Burgess for his
rude attack, unless a certain strained dignified courtesy be the mark of
a tacit apology. And Burgess could give only cold recognition to the big
fellow who had choked him into submission and had gone unpunished by the
college authorities.
Between these two Fenneben guessed there was no change. But he did not
grieve deeply. There must be a personal phase in this grudge that no
third person could handle. It might be a girl--but the face of the
returns indicated otherwise. Meanwhile the college was doing its perfect
work for Burleigh, whose strength of mind, and self-control, and growing
graciousness of manner betokened the splendid manhood that should rest
on this foundation. While the spirit of the prairie sod, the benediction
of the broad-sweeping air of heaven, and the sturdy, wholesome life
of the sons and daughters of freedom-loving, broad-spirited men and
women--all were giving to Vincent Burgess a new happiness in his work
unlike any pleasure he had ever known before.
Little Bug Buler, now four years of age, had changed least of all among
changing things about Lagonda Ledge. A sweet-faced, quaint little fellow
he was, with big appealing eyes, a baby lisp to his words, and innocent
ways. He was a sturdy, pudgy, self-reliant youngster, however, who took
long rambles alone and turned up safe at the right moment. All Lagonda
Ledge petted him, even to Burgess, who never forgot the day in the
rotunda when Bug's pitying voice had broken Burleigh's grip on his neck.
Bond Saxon had not changed, nor the white-haired woman of Pigeon
Place--nor the reputation of the ravines and rocky coverts for hiding
law breakers across the Walnut River. And Fenneben noted often the
slender blue smoke rising where nobody had a house.
It was an April day in the Walnut Valley, with all the freshness of the
earth just washed and perfumed by April showers. The sunshine was pale
gold. There was a gray-green filmy light from budding trees, and the
old-time miracle of the grass was wrought out once more before the eyes
of men. The orchards along the Walnut were faintly pink, and the eggs in
the robin's nest, the south winds purring through the wooded spaces, the
odor of far-plowed furrows on the prairie farms, all gave assurance
of the year's gladdest days. From the Sunrise ledge the beauty of the
landscape was exquisite. There was no haze overhanging the earth now,
and the Walnut Valley was a picture beyond a Master's dream. Victor
Burleigh sat on the top of the flight of steps leading from the lower
campus, looking lazily out with dreamy eyes on all that the earth had to
give on this sweet April afternoon.
Presently Elinor Wream came around the north angle of the building,
hesitated a little, then walked straight to the steps.
“Good afternoon, Victor,” she said.
Burleigh looked up, glad then of his months of discipline and
self-control. A sight good for anybody on a day like this was this
college girl with beautiful dark hair and laughing dark eyes, a satiny
pink and white complexion, and a slender form, clad just now in dainty
pink gingham with faint little edgings of white and pale green, all
stylishly put together to reveal rounded arms, and white neck, and
dimpled chin.
“Hello, Elinor,” Vic said, calmly, making room for her on the stone
steps. “Take a seat.”
Elinor sat down beside him, throwing her hat on the ground.
“Whither away?” Vic asked.
“I'll tell you presently. I want to get over my stage fright first.”
“All right, look at this view. I'll give it to you if you like it.”
Vic had turned to the west again and was looking away toward the dreamy
prairies beyond the valley.
Elinor recalled the September day when the bull snake lay sunning itself
on this very stone. How shy and awkward he seemed then, with only a deep
sweet voice to attract favorable attention. And now, big, and graceful,
and handsome, and reserved--any girl might be proud to have his regard.
Of course, for herself, there was Vincent Burgess in the pleasant
inevitable sometime. She gave little thought to that. She was living in
the present. And in the wooing spirit of the April afternoon Elinor was
glad to sit here beside Victor Burleigh.
“What time next month do we have the big baseball game?” she asked. “The
game that is to make Sunrise the champion college in Kansas, and you our
college champion?” Vic's lips suddenly grew gray.
“Friday, the thirteenth--auspicious date!” he answered. “But I may not
play in it. I might fail.”
“Oh, we must win this game, anyhow, and you never do fail. Don't forget
the name your mother gave you. Do you remember when you told me that?”
“A couple of thousand years ago, wasn't it?” Vic asked, smiling down
on her. “If I don't play Sunrise needn't fail, even for Friday, the
thirteenth.”
“But it will fail without you. You pulled us to victory a year ago
at the Thanksgiving game, and last fall the Sunrise goal line wasn't
crossed the whole season with 'Burleigh! Burly! Burlee!' for a slogan.
We must win this year. Then it will be a complete championship:
football, basket-ball, and baseball. We won't do it though unless we
have 'Burleigh at the bat'.”
A shadow crossed his face and he looked away to where a tiny film of
blue smoke was rising above the rough ledges beyond the river.
“I'm getting over my stage fright now,” Elinor said, the pink deepening
on her fair cheek, “and I'll tell you what I want.”
“Command me!” he said, gallantly.
“Well, it's awful, and the girls are too mean to live. But they are
getting even with me, they say, for something I did last fall.”
“All right.” Vic was waiting, graciously.
“A lot of us have broken some of the rules of the Sorority and it's
decreed that I must go over the route we came home by on the night of
the storm down in the Kickapoo Corral. They are having a 'spread' down
there at five o'clock and we are to get there in time for it, going
by the west side of the river, and they'll bring us home. They said I
should ask you to go with me, and if you would n't go for me to ask Mr.
Trench to go. They are too silly for anything.”
“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? Was n'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 AEneas'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 did n'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 did n'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.”
The time had come for them to join the jolly picnic crowd in the
Corral. She would go back to Vincent Burgess in a little while, and this
glorious day would be only a memory. And yet, down in the pretty glen,
Victor had held her hands and kissed her red lips. And she had been
glad down there. The void in his life seemed blacker than the blackness
behind the cavern.
“Elinor,” he asked, suddenly, “are you bound by any promise--has
Professor Burgess--?” He hesitated.
“No,” she answered, turning her face away.
“Pardon my rudeness. You know I am not well-bred,” he said, gently.
“Victor Burleigh, you ill-bred, of all the gentle, manly fellows in
Sunrise! You know you are not.”
A great hope leaped to life now, as Vic recalled the query, “If Victor
Burleigh had his corners knocked off and was sandpapered down and
had money?”--and of Elinor's blushing confession that it would make a
difference she could not help if these things were. The corners were
knocked off now, and Dean Fenneben had gently but persistently applied
the sandpaper. The money must be henceforth the one condition.
“Elinor.” Vic's voice was sweet as low bars of music.
“Oh, Victor, there's something I can't prevent.”
She was thinking of Uncle Joshua, whose money had supported her all
these years and of her obligation to heed his wishes. It was all settled
for her now. And all the while Victor was thinking of his own limited
means as the rock that was wrecking him with her.
For all his life afterward he never forgot the sorrow of that moment. He
looked into Elinor's face, and all the longing, all the heart-hunger
of the days gone by, and of the days to come seemed to lie in those
wide-open eyes shaded by long black lashes.
“Elinor, my father's cruel murder and my mother dying alone were one
kind of grief. My fight with those deadly poison things to rescue little
Bug was another kind. My days of hardship and poverty on the claim, with
only Bug and me in that desolate loneliness, was still another. But none
of these seem a sorrow beside what I must face henceforth. And yet I
have one joy mine now. You did care down in the glen. May I keep that
one gracious joy--mine always?”
“You have always won in every game. You will in this struggle. Don't
forget the name your mother gave you.” Her eyes were luminous with
tears. “We must go down to the Corral now. Tomorrow will make things all
right. I shall be proud of you and your success everywhere, for you will
succeed.”
“I may not be worthy of victory,” he said, sadly.
“You have never been unworthy. Don't be now.” She smiled bravely.
They turned from the west prairie and the sunset, and slowly they passed
out of its passing radiance down to the darkening spaces of the old
Kickapoo Corral.
And the day with its gladness and sorrow, whether for loss or gain,
slipped into the shadowy beauty of an April twilight.