“I am sorry you didn’t go to his house instead. It might have made a difference. I can’t be sure that it would have,” she added honestly.
She was remembering President Matthews’ anger at the time of Leslie’s expulsion from Hamilton; not only because of the hazing affair in which she and Leslie had figured. There was also the recollection of the misunderstanding which Leslie had made between the president and his old friend, Miss Remson, the manager of Wayland Hall. Again there was the ugly fact of secret collusion between Leslie and Miss Sayres, the president’s secretary to be considered.
“Oh, it was too much to expect. I knew Prexy would frown me down without a hearing. But I’d promised myself, that, for my father’s sake, there’d be nothing I’d leave undone to make up for the disappointment I caused him,” Leslie said with regretful vehemence.
“You were very brave to do it, Leslie.” Marjorie’s hand tightened its clasp on Leslie’s.
“I was glad to try to make amends.” Leslie was silent for a moment. “You’ve never done anything to harm another person, Marjorie,” she burst forth. “You can’t possibly understand how my heart went down when my father said to me last spring that he had hoped some day to live at Carden Hedge, but that—he’d changed his mind. He never said once: ‘It’s all your fault.’ I wish he had. And I am the one who cheated him of happiness. He’d love to live at the Hedge—if I hadn’t made such a mess of things at Hamilton. That’s what I did to my father, the person I love best in the world. And all the time I thought I was doing smart things, and getting even with you.”
Leslie looked drearily away across the green fleeing landscape, her face bleak and somber.
“Don’t feel so crushed, Leslie. You are anxious to please your father. After a while you will find a way. To be willing is half the battle. First thing you know some good will come of it.”
“I wish I could make myself believe it.” Leslie still kept her head turned away. “The one thing I’d like most to do, I can’t do. That’s to try over again my senior year at Hamilton. If only Prexy had softened and said I might! After I had been graduated from Hamilton, the way would have been smooth for my father and me to live at the Hedge and be happy. After Prexy turned me down so frigidly I knew he’d never permit my name to be announced at chapel as the giver of the theatre. I’ll never put foot on the campus again, not even to see Doris Monroe. Would you?”
“No; not in the present circumstances,” Marjorie made frank reply. “There is no reason why you shouldn’t come to the Arms to see Miss Susanna and Jerry and me. We’ll welcome you.”
“I’ll come.” Leslie brightened. “Mrs. Gaylord and I will have our old apartment at the Hamilton House. There’s really no place else for us in Hamilton. I want to stay on there to watch the building of the theatre. My father will be off and away. There is nothing to keep him in a small place like Hamilton. If we lived at the Hedge, he’d be keen on gardening, and beautifying the estate. He’d enjoy the Hamilton links, and probably get up a polo team. He’s a wonder at polo.”