“I did not believe a word he said. I told him so. I went straight to the Arms and wrote to Doctor Burns.” The old lady paused. She brought one small hand down over the other with a sharp little smack. “I never received an answer to that letter. I wrote him two others. One I sent to him at this office.” She glanced about the large pleasant room. “The other I sent by Jonas to his campus residence. He was away at the time, but his secretary, a young man, promised to give it to him as soon as he returned.
“When I had been ignored by him a third time, I closed my heart against Hamilton College, forever, as I thought. I could not conceive of how a man like Doctor Burns could be in sympathy with Carden’s cheap villainy. Still, I had given him an opportunity to clear himself and he had made no sign. He was therefore not the one to write Uncle Brooke’s biography, and I knew no one else whom I considered qualified to do so. It was not until years afterward, quite by accident, that I learned that Alec Carden’s nephew was Doctor Burns’ secretary at that time. Then it was too late. The years had passed, and Doctor Burns with them. I believe now that he never received the letters I wrote him.”
“I am sure he did not,” Doctor Matthews said quickly. “I am convinced that he had no knowledge of such a calumnious pamphlet as Mr. Carden threatened to have published. He attributed your failure to bring forward the data for the biography as the result of your having had an altercation with the Board. He was not in sympathy with the Board. You had asked him to write the biography of your great uncle. He preferred to await your pleasure.”
“He died not more than a year before Alec Carden.” Miss Susanna’s usually crisp tones were tinged with melancholy. “And he never knew!”
Marjorie had sat listening to the last of the Hamilton’s story, a lovely, absorbed figure. Her vivid imagination had visualized Miss Susanna as she had probably been in girlhood. Across her brain flashed the dramatic scenes which had occurred between Miss Susanna and the hated Alec Carden. Here was a real story infinitely more fascinating than one which was the product of imagination.
“I think I never knew of a more deplorable misunderstanding.” There was poignant regret in Doctor Matthews’ assertion. “We have, however one thing for which to give thanks. No calumnious word was ever published against the memory of Brooke Hamilton. Yet, if you had found the opportunity to talk with Doctor Burns, he would have advised you to go boldly ahead with the biography. I would say the same today in a similar situation.”
“Ah, that is precisely the point for which I blame myself!” the old lady cried out regretfully. “I should never have given up until I had seen the doctor. I have read Uncle Brooke’s letters and journals, over and over. They are the essence of truth. No slanderous reports could live beside them. I know that now. But I was young then, and alone in a great empty castle. I was more or less bewildered by the responsibility which had become mine. I despised Alec Carden, and I was full to the brim of Hamilton pride. I had never talked with Uncle Brooke about the biography. It was an issue that came to the fore after his passing. When I had been rebuffed, as I thought, three times, I retreated into my shell and stayed there.”
“But you are out of it, forever, and ever!” Marjorie exclaimed, her brown eyes beaming luminous warmth on the wistful old face of the mistress of the Arms. “You’ve been out of it a good many times in the past two years, too. All the years you were tucked away in it you were true to the trust Mr. Brooke Hamilton placed in you. You felt that you hated his college, but you guarded its welfare just as faithfully as though you had loved it. You are the most amazing person in the whole world, Miss Susanna. You’re the real guardian of Hamilton.”