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.”