BROOKE HAMILTON’S ANGELA
Marjorie looked from Miss Susanna to the portrait and back again. The
mistress of the Arms was eyeing the portrait, too, with an expression of
dark melancholy.
“There’s no use in my staying here to talk with you about this journal,
child. I’ve read it several times and almost cried my eyes out over it.
In fact, I don’t want to talk about it at all. I’m going. After you have
read it, I’ll have something else to say. Not until then.”
“Thank you, Miss Susanna,” Marjorie had only time to call after the
sturdy little woman as the latter hurried from the room, furtively
wiping her eyes with her hem-stitched handkerchief.
The young girl, who stood on the threshold of life and love, even as
Brooke Hamilton had once stood, was equally the stranger to love that he
had been. Marjorie regarded the black leather book with a glance of
timid fascination. Between the loose black covers, broken apart from
much handling, in that small space, was the record of a love which had
not been a happy one. Over a happy love idyl Miss Susanna would never
have “almost cried her eyes out.”
She understood that her remark at the breakfast table concerning her
lack of material for ‘Inspiration’ had set the question of the giving of
the journal to her going again in Miss Susanna’s mind. Marjorie felt as
though she stood on the brink of the unknown. The love story of Brooke
Hamilton could not but be different from that of any of which she had
read or heard.
She swept aside the pad of paper on which she had been writing and
carefully laid the journal on the table before her. Slowly she removed
the wide rubber band and opened the book to the first page. There in his
clear handwriting stood a foreword:
“May 1,” it began. “This is my birthday, though not even the servants
know it. Well, I have purchased myself a gift; this black book. It shall
not be a black book in an evil sense. It shall only record my doings
which I shall hope to make ever of purpose and right. Should I live to
be a very old man this journal will preserve for me facts which memory
will have long grown weary of holding. I shall call this book a present
from my mother. I do not approve of making presents to myself.”
Marjorie smiled at the final sentence of the foreword. It sounded so
like Miss Susanna. The little preamble was distinctly boyish, she
thought. It had the dignity, however, belonging to one brought up in
loneliness.
She turned the page. The next item was brief and dated three years
later, but again May 1, it stated:
“My birthday again. I found this book today in my desk. I had forgotten
its use until I opened it. I shall try once more to keep a record of
personal events. Three years between the two entries. How time passes.”
To her surprise the next entry was dated July tenth, eight years later.
It was humorously rueful.
“I appear to be most unsuccessful as a journalist. I have the will to
record my doings but not the execution. Tonight I am in an oddly
pleasant state of mind over the day’s events. The Vernons, of Vernon
Lodge, gave an archery meet this afternoon. They held the meet in honor
of a cousin, Miss Angela Vernon, who has come to make her home with
them. Miss Vernon is an orphan with a pleasing girlish face and soft
chestnut curls. Her voice is low and sweet and she has a merry fashion
of showing her small white teeth in laughing which is captivating. I
enjoyed her company, which I cannot state to be the truth of the
majority of young women whom I have met. I have no fault to find with
these except that they seem to be possessed of so little depth. What a
pretty name Angela is. I like it far better than Rachel, Maria, Abagail,
Betsy or other feminine names similarly plain and ugly.”
The Vernons’ archery meet had staged the opening incidents in Brooke
Hamilton’s love affair. After the entry of July tenth, followed others,
in somewhat scattered dating of the same year. Hardly one of these but
that made mention of Angela Vernon. The young, attentive Brooke Hamilton
had been horseback riding with Angela. He had escorted her to a lawn
party. He had danced repeatedly with her at the Hamilton country-side
ball. He wrote at some length in his journal of the pleasure he derived
from her company. Yet into his writing never crept the word love.
Marjorie read on and on, forgetful of all but the world the journal
conjured for her in which the author and Angela Vernon had once lived
and played their parts. Thus far she had experienced no desire toward
tears. Instead she was inclined to signal annoyance at Brooke Hamilton
for his attitude of complacency toward charming Angela Vernon. At first
she had been amused by his naive admissions to his journal, so utterly
devoid of sentimentality. She had not then specially sympathized with
Angela. From his written comments she could guess nothing of the young
girl’s mind toward him. An entry dated almost two years later than the
fateful archery meet brought an odd aching sadness to Marjorie’s heart.
“May 10. Life has moved very agreeably for me in my ancestral home
during the years of my adolescence. Since my meeting with the Marquis de
Lafayette, however, all within me is changed. There was a time to dance,
to play, to be irresponsibly youthful. That time has past. I am facing
the great problem of how one day to carry out my dream of founding a
democratic college for young women in loving memory of my mother. In
order to do this I shall require great riches. These I have not, though
my father is not counted less than rich. I have a plan by which I may
attain wealth in time. It must needs carry me far from home. So be it. I
am a free spirit. I am bound by no pledge of love or duty.
“I am well satisfied that Angela and I are not more than friends.
Sometimes I wonder if we are even such. She seems often cold, restrained
in my presence where formerly she was invariably light and cordially
gay. I confess I do not always understand young women. I shall soon be
without her comradely company. She is going to Philadelphia to visit the
Vernons there and dance at the Assembly Ball. She is very charming. She
says she will never marry. Such a statement is not to be taken
seriously. I have frequently assured her that she will no doubt wed a
man high in the affairs of the United States. She is fitted for
diplomatic society.”
Followed other entries of a similar nature. Marjorie could not but
marvel at the blindness of young Brooke Hamilton to Angela Vernon’s love
for him. Unversed in the ways of young women the very comments he wrote
concerning her variable moods toward him Marjorie translated as the
attempts of a girl in love to hide her unrequited affection from its
indifferent object of worship.
Then came an entry made on shipboard on the day when the founder of
Hamilton had embarked from New York on his first voyage to China. Her
eyes misted with sudden tears as she read:
“Out at sea, the world before me! When I wonder shall I see the Arms
again? Not, I am resolved until the battle’s won, my fortune made, my
dream become a reality. I have brought with me my black book, a link
between me and my younger, lighter hours of life. ‘When I became a man,
I put away childish things.’ So it is with me now. I must strive and
accomplish in the world of deeds. Its only creed is action, and still
more action. I shall keep my book now as the path back to youth’s
pleasant orchard.
“Angela gave me a utility case of dark blue silk which she herself made.
She also gave me a small daguerrotype of herself. I was greatly touched
by her remembrance of me. She rode down to the little station on her
pony to wish me ‘_bon voyage_.’ It was hardly more than dawn. Hers was
the last face I saw among the home friends. She had been crying. She
said so quite frankly. I had no idea she cared for me so fondly. She has
flouted me roundly at times. God knows when we shall meet again. It
appears strange that my friendliest comrade should have been a young
woman rather than a young man. Angela has been such to me. I said to her
in jest: ‘You will have perhaps married and forgotten me, Angela, by the
time I return to my country and the Arms.’ She said: ‘I shall never
forget you, and I shall never marry.’ So she thinks, but time creates
many changes. I am weary of the pitching of the ship. I have not yet
felt any indication of seasickness. I shall close you, black book, and
seek my rest. You must be my comrade hereafter.”
The part of the journal immediately following Brooke Hamilton’s
embarkation to the Orient continued with brief notes on the voyage. From
that point on the entries dealt with the young fortune-seeker’s life in
China. These entries in themselves Marjorie found valuable as aids in
completing the somewhat sparse data she already had regarding the young
man’s Oriental enterprise. Among them she found odd bits of Chinese
wisdom which he quoted as the sayings of the several Chinese
philosophers who had become his intimate friends. These original twists
of mind, together with the numerous stories of her kinsman’s life in
China which Miss Susanna had dictated to her would beautifully round out
the earlier chapters of “Realization.”
Marjorie was presently surprised to find that the China entries covered
a period of over ten years. Brooke Hamilton had evidently proved himself
as irregular a journalist abroad as at home. While the entries were
fuller than the earlier vaguer comments of youth, a year in time was
often covered by three or four entries.
She read steadily through the record of commercial achievement which had
brought him not only immense wealth but honor and distinction among a
philosophical, far-seeing race rarely understood by Europeans or
Americans. The Chinese had liked him for his truth and honesty. Because
they had liked him they had helped him to his goal of attainment.
There was very little of Angela in this part of the record. Now and
again her name would appear in, “I received a letter last week from
Angela. It has been many weeks on the way to me, judging from the date
of writing,” or, “Angela writes that she believes I may never go back to
America. How little a girl understands a man’s high aspirations. My
absence from home is merely a necessary part of my great plan. I shall
try to make Angela understand. Hers is a fine mind. She should not lend
it to such trivial conjectures. My return to America, God sparing my
life, is certain.”
Marjorie’s sympathies were now firmly enlisted toward Angela. She
marveled that a man possessed of Brooke Hamilton’s fine spirit and high
ideals should have so blindly passed by an unswerving devotion like
Angela’s. He had not loved her, and had been honestly unaware that she
loved him. He had been too completely centered in the giant labor he had
set himself to perform to stop by the way for flower gathering.
The last entry of the China group inspired Marjorie with somber
consternation. It had been penned only a few months before the
successful man of affairs had returned to America and Hamilton Arms.
“I nearly lost Angela, my little comrade.” Followed a blank; as though
the writer had paused in horror of his own words. “She has been near
death of pneumonia. I am shocked beyond expression. I cannot image home
without her to welcome me. Since receiving the bad news in a letter from
her cousin, Adele Vernon, I have thought of Angela night and day. I
shall leave my business interests here in Woo Fah’s hands and sail on
the next mail steamer. It is three months since Adele’s letter was
written. God knows what may have happened to my little girl.”
Marjorie cast a sorrowful upward glance at the portrait. She thought she
knew the tragic end of the blue-eyed man’s love idyl. Nothing but the
rustle of the notebook’s leaf as she turned it broke the hush pervading
the study. Her eyes met that which wrung from her a little cry of
gladness.
“I have found love. I know its meaning now. I have come from the other
side of the world to learn the wonder of all wonders. It is not the
wonder of deeds. It is the wonder of a woman’s love, changeless in its
white glory. I walked in darkness, without knowing. Now I have come into
the light. She always loved me, from the first day. How could I have
been so blind? There was a woman, my mother, who loved me. There is a
woman, Angela, who loves me now. I know only these two.
“We shall be married at Easter. That time seems far off. Angela tells me
it is only five months away. From November until April I shall endeavor
to lavish upon her the devotion she says she feared might never be hers.
I chose achievement instead of love. Yet love did not forsake me. I have
been magnificently favored by God.”
The lovely, changeful face of the absorbed reader lightened a little
over the cheerful turn in the story. Her faint smile died with the stark
remembrance that Brooke Hamilton had not married. She continued reading
with a sigh:
“Christmas Eve, eleven o’clock. I have just returned from Vernon Lodge.
Early this evening I heard my favorite carol, ‘God Rest You Merry
Gentlemen’ coming sweetly from the sitting room bow window. Angela,
Adele and Bobby Vernon were the carolers. Angela’s high, entrancing
soprano voice still lingers in my ears. I think I shall never wish to
hear a truer, sweeter voice singing the carol my mother so greatly
loved.
“Of course I caught them, brought them into the house, kissed Angela’s
lips, under the mistletoe, kissed Adele’s hand and shook hands with
Bobby. I would have entertained them at the Arms but they marched me off
to Vernon Lodge. There we had one more divinely happy evening together.
Angela is always so full of life, so brimming over with charm. I tell
her sometimes she is too charming for her strength. She is rather frail
still from the ravages of pneumonia. When we are married we shall go
overseas on a long honeymoon voyage. This I believe will restore her to
her former strength of constitution.”
Marjorie hastily turned the leaf. She was prepared for disaster, but it
came with a relentlessness which made her heart ache:
“May first. My birthday. I am alone. It is two months since Angela died.
Is that a long, or a short space of time? I do not know. I know only she
is gone. She complained of being weary in the evening. Next morning they
found her asleep, her dear little crinkling smile on her lips. Pneumonia
had weakened her heart. Even she did not know to what extent. This
afternoon I gathered quantities of the double, fragrant purple violets
for which the Arms has been famed since my grandmother’s day. I took
them all to the Vernon vault, my offering to love. Angela was not there,
naturally. Her radiant spirit had long since transcended earth.
“I, Brooke Hamilton, a strong man, remain here. If only I had earlier
understood love. I might have, had I not been so closely wrapped in my
own dreams of achievement. What even greater things I might have
accomplished with her by my side. Great love is the impetus to noble
achievement. I know it now. Dear Angela! I bruised her tender heart with
my selfish indifference to her love for me. God in mercy willed that I
should not break it. Out of long years, four months! Forgive me, sweet.
I shall never write in this book again.”
Marjorie put her curly head down on the table and cried. She had lived
and suffered that balmy spring morning with Brooke Hamilton. She had a
sad impression that she had forever passed out of the comfortable state
of disinterest with which she had formerly looked upon love. Nothing
would ever be the same again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------