THE JOURNAL
“That settles things for me, Jeremiah. For the first time since I
entered Hamilton I’m not going home for the Easter vacation. General
can’t come home for a month from that Canadian trip. So Captain’s coming
here for Easter. Oh, joy! Tra, la, la, la, too, roo, re, lay!” Marjorie
whisked up and down her’s and Jerry’s quarters at the Arms in frisky
delight. A letter from her captain had furnished impetus for the dance.
“It’s a good thing for us that Irma has changed the date of her wedding
from Easter until the last week in June. That lets us completely out of
going home. Not that I don’t want to see the Macy family. I do; I do.
But I must stick to you, Bean, till all is over. Then the Macys will
have the pleasure of seeing Jeremiah for the rest of their lives. I feel
a jingle beginning to sprout. Aha!” Jerry turned an imaginary crank on
one side of her head and recited:
“Oh, let us sing, like anything,
And warble, too, re, lay.
No Feejee queen compares with Bean;
With Bean I choose to stay.”
“You are a loyal Jeremiah as I’ve told you in the past, seven thousand
times, more or less.” Marjorie stopped her frisky prance to pat Jerry on
the head. “Have you stopped to consider the feelings of the Macy family?
They may strongly object to an Easter without Jeremiah.”
“They’ll have to bear it. It’ll be the first long vacation for Jeremiah
away from Macyville.”
“And my first one away from Castle Dean. I promised Captain all the long
Hamilton vacations before ever I entered college. I’ve kept my word. I
would have this one, too,” Marjorie declared earnestly. “Now Captain’s
coming to the Arms, and everything is more celostrous than ever.”
“So it is, Bean; so it is,” Jerry assured in what she liked to term her
“most middle-aged, gentlemanly” voice.
“I should have felt like a shirker about going home at Easter. Leila,
Vera, Robin, Ronny and Lucy say they can’t spare the time away from the
campus. It would have broken up my work on the biography a little, and
I’d have hated to leave Miss Susanna. Still I would have gone. Captain
first, you know.” Marjorie lovingly patted her mother’s letter.
“I’d have gone home with you and risked being called a shirker by the
gang. I’d have borne it. I’m as noble as you are, noble Bean. Here is a
copy of my latest jingle.” Jerry tendered Marjorie a sheet of paper. “I
caught it while you were busy praising me.”
“Thoughtful bard,” Marjorie commended, flourishingly accepting the
paper. “May I inquire what you intend to do today?”
“I’m going over to the campus right after breakfast. Leila and I are
going to make Norse helmets for Norse warriors of buckram and silver
paper. With the help of our fertile brains and a little invincible glue
we shall win. What are you going to do to while the day away?” Jerry
inquired innocently.
“Oh, nothing special,” Marjorie waved an airy hand. “That’s the way it
seems sometimes,” she added, her face sobering, “when I write all day
and then find at evening that I haven’t done more than a page of good
work. I’ve divided the material for the biography into two parts. I wish
to call the first part ‘Inspiration.’ The second part will be
‘Realization.’”
“It sounds good to me.” Jerry waited breathlessly to hear more. It was
the first time Marjorie had volunteered her any information on the
subject of her own writing. Jerry watched her as she might have a rare
song bird, which had poised itself near her and was ready to take flight
at the tiniest movement on her part.
“‘Inspiration’ is to be the story of his youth, hopes and dreams.
‘Realization’ is to be the story of the man, Brooke Hamilton, and his
achievement.”
“Does Miss Susanna know what you’ve just told me? You have such
clam-like tendencies, Bean.” Jerry smirked at her chum.
“Yes, I told her about it several days ago. I only thought of it one day
last week. I like the idea.” Marjorie’s accompanying smile was utterly
without vanity. “If I could write as well as Kathie, or Leila, or you,
Jeremiah, I’d be happy. Really, I have to dig out almost every sentence
I write.”
“Hooh!” derided Jerry. “I can’t write. You’re simply trying to be polite
to present company. So deceitful!” She raised a hand in shocked
reproach.
“I never allow anyone to call me deceitful.” Marjorie charged upon
Jerry, who nimbly eluded her and ran for the door. She whisked out into
the hall and down the broad staircase with her vengeful pursuer close
behind her.
The pair breezed around the corner of the newel post just in time to
crash into Jonas, who was coming through the hall with a large feather
duster which one of the maids had accidentally left on the hall rack.
“Mercy on us!” Jonas raised a startled arm. He poked the duster full
into Jerry’s face, to Marjorie’s noisy delight.
“Ker-choo! I’m not the hall rack, Jonas, and I don’t think I resemble
the newel post, either,” Jerry reproved.
“No, you don’t quite look like either of ’em,” Jonas agreed, chuckling.
“Excuse me for dusting you,” taking a leaf from Jerry’s own book of
etiquette he slyly added, “and blame yourself.”
“Fine, Jonas, you’re learning,” Jerry heartily encouraged.
The frolicsome pair lingered in the hall for a little exchanging of
merry repartee with Jonas. He now looked forward to such lively
encounters as a part of his day’s program.
At breakfast that morning Mrs. Dean’s letter formed the main topic of
conversation. Marjorie was bubbling over with happiness at the highly
agreeable way in which her affairs had worked out.
“I’m the person fortune has singled out for attention,” Miss Susanna
crisply asserted. “All I need do is stay quietly at home and watch my
friends gravitate to the Arms. Last Easter you girls all went away from
Hamilton and left poor Susanna without a single playmate. This year
Susanna has them all, and with one more to come from another land.”
“It’s wonderful to know that Captain will soon be here.” Marjorie’s
voice was full of tender expectation. “Her presence will furnish me with
oceans of fresh literary impetus. I shall need it for ‘Realization,’ the
second part of the biography. It will be a good deal longer than the
first part. I wish they might have been of equal length.”
“The inspiration to build Hamilton College was his life. At least he
made it that,” Miss Susanna said rather absently. She appeared to be
immersed in thought far remote from her spoken words.
“That’s precisely why the first part of the biography will be so much
shorter than the second,” Marjorie cried, her forehead puckering in
faint disapproval. “His very interesting years in China, the building of
Hamilton, all his work belongs in ‘Realization.’ He had begun to work,
then, you see, entirely toward realizing his splendid plans. I’d love to
have more data about his youth. There is a great deal of the China data
which would have been lost if you hadn’t written down the stories he
told you of his life in the Orient,” she nodded gratefully to Miss
Susanna.
“There may be some earlier data that I can let you have for that first
part,” was Miss Hamilton’s vague promise. “I’ll see what I can find for
you.”
Marjorie presently went to the study wondering not a little as to what
the data might be which Miss Hamilton had promised. She surmised from
the old lady’s preoccupied air during the remainder of the meal that
Miss Susanna was mentally trying to decide whether or not to give her
for the biography certain incidents in the life of Brooke Hamilton which
she had thus far withheld.
“I wish you could really speak and tell me something about yourself,”
she said fancifully to Brooke Hamilton’s portrait. “What were your
favorite sports when you were a very young man? Riding, of course, and
probably swimming. Did you—let me think”—she stared reflectively at the
portrait—“did you ever win a hundred yard dash, or—a yacht race?” She
colored self-consciously at her own question. Her thoughts had veered
suddenly from Brooke Hamilton to Hal Macy.
Thought of Hal next reminded her that she would not see Hal at Easter.
That would be best for them both. Still she visualized Hal’s
disappointment, not only at not seeing her—he would miss Jerry’s
comradely companionship. It would be of no use to tell Jerry she ought
to go to Sanford for Easter on Hal’s account. Jerry would hoot at the
idea. Marjorie decided that she would write Hal a particularly cordial
Easter letter to try to make up for her absence.
She brought her mind summarily back to the subject of Brooke Hamilton.
What was it Miss Susanna had once said of him concerning love? And when
was it she had said it? An instant, and Marjorie recalled the occasion.
It was the only time the mistress of the Arms had ever mentioned Brooke
Hamilton as having loved. She had said on the occasion of Marjorie’s
introduction to the portrait of her kinsman in the study that Brooke
Hamilton had believed in the romance of deeds; not the romance of love.
She had also said that he had “found after all that love was love. That
the romance of men and women—”
Miss Susanna had stopped at this juncture and had never again renewed
the subject. Marjorie grew inwardly vexed with herself for having
permitted her thoughts to run toward love. Because, unfortunately, Hal
had fallen in love with her, the thought of Hal must ever bring reminder
of the unwelcome fact. She was glad that Brooke Hamilton’s history was
one of deeds. In the mass of data she had handled there had been
personal mention made of only his mother, Faith Gretney Hamilton, and
Miss Susanna.
“I’ve been mooning,” she informed the handsome, blue-eyed man in the
gilt frame. “Now I am going to work hard. I must leave you in July for
two whole months. I wish you would come down from the wall and finish
writing your own story before I come back. Wouldn’t that be a lovely
magic surprise for Marjorie?”
A light tap on the study door sent her scurrying to open it. Miss
Susanna walked into the study an odd look on her small shrewd features.
In her hands she carried a rosewood box. It was perhaps eight by ten
inches and not more than three inches deep. It was a lock box with a
beautifully executed leaf border and a simple, artistically carved
monogram on the shining surface of the lid.
“Marjorie, I have brought you Uncle Brooke’s journal,” Miss Susanna
began without preamble. “I hadn’t intended to let you or anyone else
ever see it, much less permit a line of it to be published. Since you
have been at the Arms I have wondered several times whether I was doing
right in keeping it from you. How can you acquire a true conception of
him unless you know him as his journal reveals him?”
As she talked Miss Susanna busied herself with the turning of a tiny key
in the lock. She set the box on the study table, opened it. Inside it
lay an oblong notebook bound in black leather. It was not very thick.
Around it was a wide black rubber band.
“Here it is.” The old lady lifted it from the box with a sadly reverent
air; handed it to Marjorie. She accepted it, saying nothing. “It is a
love story you are going to read in this old black book, Marvelous
Manager; the love story of your friend, Brooke Hamilton. He was a
marvelous manager, too, child. There was only one thing he did not know
how to manage. That was his heart.”
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