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.”