Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate

“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.