Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate

CHAPTER X. – AT THE ARMS

“Where is she, Jonas?” Marjorie raised a cautioning finger. She hardly breathed the question for fear of Miss Susanna’s proximity.

“She’s up in Mr. Brooke’s study, Miss Marjorie,” Jonas replied in equally guarded tones. Miss Susanna’s faithful retainer of years, the old man stood the center of the group of charming youthful visitors. He was smiling his vivid, crinkled smile as though he was thoroughly enjoying the invasion.

Contrary to expectation that Miss Susanna might be taking her accustomed stroll about the grounds after tea, the callers had reached the house without having seen sign of her. Jonas had answered their ring. He had come down the wide, thick-carpeted hall to the open door in his slow dignified fashion. His face had lighted beautifully at sight of the knot of bright-faced girls peering laughingly at him through the screen.

It was for Marjorie, however, that his smile was kindest. He shared Miss Susanna’s fondness for “our young lady.” The cordial handshake he gave her came straight from his worshiping heart.

“She’s in the study quite a bit of late. He would have liked that.” The old man nodded with conviction.

“I’m sure he would have, Jonas,” Marjorie heartily agreed. Her chums smiled concurrence. They still had much of the same reserve for the courtly, silver-haired retainer that they experienced toward Miss Susanna. “We’d love to steal in on her there,” she said with impulsive eagerness. “Do you think she’d care to be surprised in that way?”

“I know she would. Miss Marjorie.” Jonas seemed very sure of this point. A faintly mischievous expression had leaped into his keen blue eyes. He surveyed her smilingly, as though debating something in his mind.

“What is it, Jonas?” Marjorie was quick to catch the change of expression.

“There’s a sliding panel in Mr. Brooke’s study, Miss Marjorie. Miss Susanna sits in Mr. Brooke’s chair always when she’s up there. Her back is toward the panel. I can let you in that way, if you’d like it.”

“We’d love to.” Marjorie grew radiant. She consulted her chums with dancing eyes. They made genial signs of wholesale approval. “Are you sure we won’t startle her?” she asked as a prudent afterthought.

“She’s not one to be startled,” Jonas proudly assured. “She’ll see you as quick almost as you see her. She’s quick to see.”

“Suppose I were to steal up behind her and slip my hands over her eyes? Perhaps I’d better not do that.” Marjorie grew doubtful.

“Please do. She’d think it the best kind of fun,” Jonas insisted. It was as though Miss Susanna were a child for whom Jonas delighted to provide entertainment. “She always says she likes adventure. She feels as though she’d had a good many adventures since she’s known you and the young ladies here.”

“We have had some real ones,” Marjorie assured the old man. “All right, Jonas. We hereby appoint you as guide of this secret expedition. Lead on. We’ll do our best to give Miss Susanna a wee little adventure. Not so little, either. A secret panel; that sounds thrilling.”

“I’ll put it in the first play I write for Page and Dean this fall,” Kathie promised.

Led by Jonas the secret expedition tiptoed silently down the broad hall until they came to a lift. It was situated between the library and dining room and opened onto the second floor within a few feet of the study. It was seldom used by the energetic mistress of the Arms. Jonas opened its door without a sound and the five girls crowded into it, leaving him hardly enough space in which to operate it. At the second floor the man stopped the cage with a faint click and the adventurers stepped noiselessly, one after another, into the hall.

Jonas came last. He motioned the girls to follow him. Down the hall he walked, past the study and on to a small, railed-in balcony. The balcony adjoined the back wall of the study and formed a side of a little open square over the library after the fashion of a patio. Exactly in the middle of the balcony he stopped. The interested watchers saw him run a practiced hand up and down the severely beautiful wainscoting. Soundlessly, a smooth section of the wainscoting, between two raised edges, and fairly wide apart, slid to the left and disappeared from view. Its vanishment left an open space about three feet square.

Mutely peering into the study they saw Miss Susanna seated in Brooke Hamilton’s chair. At the left of her, on the massive table lay a goodly pile of papers, yellowish and time stained. In front of her reposed another pile of official-looking papers and opened letters. She was too deeply immersed in a study of them to be aware of anything outside of them.

Jonas touched Marjorie’s arm. He made a motion toward the aperture. She nodded in merry understanding. Stealthily she lifted first one foot, then the other, over the lower up-standing part of the wainscoting. Holding her breath she reached Miss Susanna’s chair in two noiseless steps. Two soft hands found the old lady’s eyes and closed over them.

“Who-o-o-o!” Miss Susanna cried out like a small tree owl. Like a flash her own sturdy hands readied up and caught Marjorie by the arm. “I know this game! I can guess who it is!” she cried out like a jubilant child.

“Guess, then,” growled Marjorie in as gruff a voice as she could muster.

“Marvelous Manager,” came with delighted certainty. This particular nickname for Marjorie seemed always most to amuse the old lady.

“Right-o! And who else?” Marjorie persisted, still keeping sight shut off from the chuckling victim.

“That’s easy,” boasted Miss Susanna. “Leila and Vera – yes – and Robin Page. Since you’re here, child, she must be here, too. And Kathie. She’s a fixture on the campus. Now drop those hands and let me have a look at you,” impatiently commanded the old lady.

CHAPTER XI. – OUT OF THE PAST

The prisoning hands fell away from Miss Hamilton’s eyes revealing five laughing girls clustered at one side of the historic chair in which the old lady sat, her expression one of keen enjoyment. She immediately held out her arms to Marjorie who slipped into them and kissed Miss Susanna on the forehead and on both cheeks.

“My dear, dear child. So you surprised me after all, though I have been on the watch for you. It was all Jonas’ fault. He fixed up this scheme.” Miss Susanna heartily returned Marjorie’s caress with every evidence of affection. Next she motioned each of the others to her and kissed her on the cheek, a mark of favor they had not expected from the matter-of-fact mistress of the Arms.

“You stole a march on me, and Jonas helped you!” she exclaimed when the first babel of greeting had subsided. “I’m glad you found me here. I’m going to do something for you now that I think you’ll like. Come, guess what. You made me guess.”

“Show us something of interest that was Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s,” Marjorie made instant guess.

“Um-m-m; partly right,” Miss Susanna put on a baffling expression.

“It’s a letter, or one of those papers,” hazarded Vera. “I mean what you are going to show us.”

“Right again, but not altogether right.” Miss Susanna was enjoying the moment of suspense.

“It’s tea I can read in your eye, and I’ll guess again it’s been put off till this time each night this week,” Leila slyly asserted. “Oh, I have a fine reasoning power.” Leila showed her white teeth affably, “though there are those who do not believe it.”

“Clever Leila!” Miss Susanna clapped her hands. “You’ve guessed the other half of my intention. I decided to have my tea late this week in case you girls dropped in on me. Kathie said that Marjorie would probably arrive when she came on the late afternoon train. I guessed the firm of Page and Dean would meet at the station,” she said with humor.

“We did,” Marjorie’s light tone grew serious. “Oh, Miss Susanna, we saw, coming to the campus. We hardly know how to begin to thank you for the help you’ve given us. It means so much to us, who wish the work on the dormitory to progress, but even more to the girls who will live in the dormitory when it is completed.” Marjorie had re-taken the old lady’s hands in hers, pressing them gratefully.

Her friends and Jonas stood looking on at the fond little scene between the once crabbed mistress of the Arms and the gentle girl whose high principles and unfailing courtesy had won her the friendship of the difficult, embittered last of the Hamiltons.

“Never mind about that dormitory business now!” Miss Susanna held up an imperious hand. “I’ll talk with you of it some other day – perhaps.” She broke into a smile. “Jonas,” she turned to the old man, “bring the tea up here.”

“I used to have tea here occasionally with Uncle Brooke when I was a young girl,” she told her interested guests. “He had tea promptly at half-past four every afternoon when he was at home, and usually in the study.”

The Travelers listened almost breathlessly for her to continue. They were “positively greedy” for even scraps of information concerning the founder of Hamilton.

“All the tea he used was shipped to him from China. He never ate anything for tea except a few small, sweet English crackers. But how he liked tea! He would drink three cups, always. When I had tea with him he would have Jonas bring me the choicest marmalade and conserves, and little fancy rolls and sweet cakes. He would make an occasion of our tea drinking.” Miss Susanna’s face softened. She smiled reminiscently.

A pleasant silence ensued, broken only by the slight rustling of the papers on the table which Miss Hamilton was turning over. She drew from among the stack a long sheet of yellowed fine paper. It was spread open and written closely on one side.

“While we are waiting for Jonas to bring the tea,” she said, an absent look in her eyes, “I will keep my promise and read you a letter that Uncle Brooke intended for the Marquis de Lafayette.”

A sighing breath went up from the listeners who were now seated about the library table.

“It seems so strange; to know some one who knew someone else who knew Lafayette,” Robin said wonderingly.

“So it does, until one stops to consider how long it was after the war of the Revolution before Lafayette came back to visit America. He came here in the year of 1824. Uncle Brooke was a very young man then. He was my great uncle, you must bear in mind. Lafayette was about sixty-six years of age when he made the American visit. He died ten years afterward. He and Uncle Brooke corresponded regularly during the last years of Lafayette’s life. The letter I shall read to you is, I imagine, the draft of a letter he composed to Lafayette. It is neither finished nor signed.”

With this explanation Miss Susanna began in her concise utterance:

“My Dear Friend:

“How swiftly time passes! I can scarcely realize that almost two years have elapsed since you visited the United States. I had hoped to come to you in France, not later than next autumn, but a peculiar, and what I trust may be a fortunate, turn in my affairs makes it necessary for me to sail for China next month. It is my expectation to remain in China for at least a year and embark upon what promises to be a successful business venture.

“I am greatly concerned in thinking of you and of the future of my country. How little I gave you mentally and spiritually in comparison with all you gave me – the true essence of lofty patriotism; the counsel of a mind among minds. I shall ever keep before me your nobility of spirit; your boundless generosity to America; your unfailing consideration toward me. I am of the opinion that my best effort to please you must lie in helping my country. What does our United States need that I can give? My life? Always at call. Yet how else may I perform my patriotic part?

“Only to you can I confide an idea, recurring often to me since the death of my mother, which occurred when I was a boy of fifteen. She was an exceptional woman who, with her two brothers, had been educated by a tutor in England. She was a staunch advocate of the higher education for young women. I have never since known her equal. She, herself, being the strongest proof of her belief. Having known her can I, therefore, be less convinced of the grace and necessity of the higher education for young America’s daughters as well as her sons.

“In loving memory of my mother I shall some day found a college for young women after my own heart. I have not much faith in polite female academies. My mind leans toward colleges for young women, conducted in precisely the same manner as are colleges for young men. Nor does it seem to me that the faculty of such institutions of learning should needs be composed entirely of women. The professors in our colleges for young men are far more proficient in learning than the majority of the women engaged to teach girls in the few seminaries and academies of the United States.

“In these painful, formative days of our republic young women should receive the same educational advantages as young men. Let us train them so that they in their turn may become competent instructors. Let not their budget of learning consist of a few polite ologies, lightly learned, to be as lightly forgotten. I believe men have better brains than women. Yet they lack in intuition. Women are keener of perception. Thus it would appear – ”

Miss Susanna looked up from the paper. “That’s all,” she said abruptly. “I suppose he made a copy of this letter, finished it and sent it to the Marquis. I wished to read it to you because, in looking among his papers and letters, this is the first mention he made of his dream of building a college for women.”

For a moment no one spoke. The spell of the unfinished letter of long ago gripped the hearers. The generous, purposeful personality of its writer made itself felt across the years.

Jonas, trundling a tea wagon into the study, brought them out of the historic past.

“How I wish we knew the rest of it,” Marjorie said, her brown eyes childishly wistful.

“I wish you knew, but you never will,” was Miss Susanna’s crisp reply. “I’ve hunted for what might be a continuation of that letter on another, similar sheet of paper, but have never found it.”

“It’s a glorious letter, even if it isn’t complete. It is full of hope and courage and resolve and conviction!” Katherine’s tones rang with admiration.

“How beautifully he wrote of his mother,” supplemented Vera.

“How well he wrote it all,” was Leila’s sweeping praise. “Too well not to have – ” She paused. Carried away by impulse she had forgotten for the time the reason why the world could not have the history of a great man and his great work.

The sudden scarlet which flew to her own cheeks was no brighter than that which sprang into Miss Hamilton’s.

“I know what you meant, Leila. Even a few months ago I would have been so cross with you for having said what you were thinking.” Miss Susanna looked up from her arranging of the tea set on the library table and met Leila’s eyes squarely. “I’m not – now. You may finish what you started to say.” The permission was more like a half defiant command. It was as though the old lady had a sneaking desire to hear it.

“Too well not to have the world read it,” Leila repeated. “It’s of him I was thinking, Miss Susanna. He has a right to the high place he made for himself.”

“I wish the world knew him as I knew him – but not Hamilton College!” the old lady cried out in petulant vexation. “I should be happy to publish his biography if I had not the college to hold me back. The Board is only too eager for information concerning Uncle Brooke. The moment the world received it, they would receive it, too. The members of that miserable Board would merely laugh at me because they had gained their point through me in a roundabout way. Whatever concessions I have made have been made recently, and only to please you girls. Most of all, to please Marjorie. My reasons for turning against the Board of Hamilton College were sound. Still, I know that in the same circumstances Uncle Brooke would have made allowance for their despicable behavior. But I am I, Susanna Hamilton, stubborn as a mule, so my father sometimes said. I can revere Uncle Brooke with all my heart, but I can’t be like him.”

CHAPTER XII. – IN LINE FOR TROUBLE

“Truly, Leslie Cairns, you make me tired!” Natalie Weyman clasped her bare arms behind her head with a jerk so petulant as to plainly convey her complete dissatisfaction. She surveyed Leslie, who lay stretched at ease on a brocaded chaise longue, with cold, displeased eyes.

“So you’ve often said,” was the laconic return. Leslie did not even trouble to look toward Natalie. She was not in the least concerned at the ungracious opinion of her chum. – “Well, I mean it,” scolded Natalie. “Why must you go running off to Hamilton in the very middle of the summer when we’re having a good time here at Newport?”

“Glad you hail it as a good time,” Leslie’s plain, roughly hewed features relaxed from the stoical expression she carefully cultivated to a half satiric grin. “I think Newport’s a dead burg this summer. Never saw such a collection of stupids gathered in one village before.”

“You only say that,” derided Natalie. “You’ve simply taken a notion to go to Hamilton. Goodness knows why. You’re the most stubborn, obdurate girl!”

“I haven’t asked you to go there with me, have I?” The questioned bordered on a sneer.

“I wouldn’t go if you were to beg me to,” Natalie flashed back.

“You’d go if I made a point of it,” Leslie contradicted with assured insolence. She raised herself from the couch on one elbow and eyed her friend disdainfully.

“No, Leslie, I would not.” Natalie seemed very certain on this point. “I’d not go within fifty miles of Hamilton College again after the way we left it. I really wonder at your nerve in doing it.”

“Going to weep over one small flivver?” Leslie grew more ironical. “Forget it. You know how much I love to talk of it.”

“I don’t mention it very often,” Natalie said bitterly.

“The less often, the better. If I hadn’t business of my own to attend to I’d go after Dulcie Vale’s scalp. Venomous little traitor!” A deep scowl did not add to Leslie’s appearance.

“She’s in Europe. She crossed on the same steamer with Joan Myers. She tried to talk to Joan, but Joan couldn’t see her for a minute. I had a letter from Joan from Paris.” Natalie volunteered this information.

“Hm-m. Looks as though she’d keep her scalp for awhile,” Leslie observed with grim humor. “I’ll catch her sometime – coming or going. What I’d rather do is hang around dear old Hamilton,” Leslie put mocking sarcasm into the last three words, “and see what I can put over on Bean.”

“What do you mean?” Natalie looked mystified. “What could you do now? Bean has a home, I believe. One would naturally suppose she’d go to it after having been graduated with honors at Hamilton.” The bitterness of Natalie’s tone indicated the jealous envy which mention of Marjorie Dean had aroused afresh.

“That’s as much as you know about it. I happen to know that Bean will be in Hamilton and on the campus soon, if she’s not there already.”

“How do you happen to know it?” Natalie’s face registered incredulity, then curiosity. Second thought caused her to remember that Leslie had ways of her own of finding out things.

“Never mind how.” Leslie turned tantalizing. “‘Nuff’ said.”

“I can’t think of anything you could do to spite Bean. You tried your last trick when you bought that property you thought she wanted for her precious dormitory. What happened?” was the sarcastic retaliation.

“You’ll never be celebrated as a great thinker, Nat,” Leslie drawled, ignoring her companion’s displeasing question. “Leave it to me to make matters hum for Bean. I’m going to Hamilton on the six-thirty train in the morning. I’ll have something to tell you, you’d better believe when I come back.”

“Oh, yes, ‘Leave it to me,’” mimicked Natalie, an angry light in her gray-blue eyes. “You’re crazy, Leslie Cairns,” was her added scathing opinion.

“I’m not so much of a nut. What?” Leslie took no more umbrage at Natalie’s rudeness than she would have at the buzzing of a fly. “Try to get it across your brain that I’m a business shark now, Nat. Will you?” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’ve sixty thousand dollars tied in a hard knot in that bunch of rickety shacks just off the campus. Those ancient corn cribs have to come down. What about my garage?”

“That for your garage.” Natalie snapped contemptuous fingers. Leslie’s insinuation that she was “thick” was the final drain on her patience. “You’ll never make a go of it. It’s too far from the campus,” was her wet blanket prediction.

Leslie merely threw back her head and laughed in the noiseless, hobgoblin fashion for which she was noted among her few friends. Her silent, insolent merriment stung Natalie far more deeply than a retort could have done.

“Well it is.” Natalie repeated, determined to hold her own.

The laughter died out of the other girl’s face to be replaced by a lowering, bullying scowl.

“I tell you it is not,” she emphasized in tones intended to forbid further contradiction. “Because it isn’t in the same vicinity as the other garages is no sign it won’t pay me to put up a garage on my new property. I’m going to build the kind of garage the Hamilton gang will cry for. I may run it myself.”

“Wha-t-t!” In her astonishment Natalie half rose from her chair. She sat down again and gave Leslie a long-suffering glance, as if she could not credit what she had just heard.

Leslie was enjoying her chum’s amazement. Of the eighteen girls who had composed the San Soucians, the club of girls who had been expelled from Hamilton College during their senior year, Natalie Weyman was the only one who had remained friendly with Leslie Cairns. The other members of the Sans, though betrayed into expulsion by the treachery of Dulcie Vale, chose to place the major share of the blame upon Leslie’s shoulders. If Leslie had not arraigned Dulcie and ousted her from the Sans in their assembled presence, Dulcie would not have betrayed them. Or thus they argued. Leslie, who had been their leader, became a detested stranger.