Marjorie Dean at Hamilton Arms

“When I saw those fellows I had tried to do well by over on the other lot I knew there was only one thing had taken them there. They’d been offered a good deal more money than we were paying them. I knew Thorne & Foster hadn’t offered it to them.” The builder smiled, a quiet, scornful smile. “They are niggards.

“I decided to go over and have a talk with Pedro Tomasi, one of the older men of the quarter. He had always seemed very well disposed toward me. I went only as far as the edge of the garage excavation.” He laughed, but in his laugh he showed his deep-lying indignation. “I was ordered off the lot by Thorne & Foster’s foreman. What construction would you place on such an act on their part after what I just remarked of them.” He looked levelly from Marjorie to Robin.

“There is only one can be placed upon it,” Marjorie said tranquilly. “They are simply obeying Miss Cairns’s orders and pocketing more of her money.”

“That’s it,” nodded Peter Graham. “It will cost her a pretty penny before she is through with the affair. I’d like to know how long this business was brewing before it came to a head. Neither Thorne or Foster have been in town for weeks. Conlon, their foreman, is hated by the workmen, especially the Italians. What I can’t understand is the smooth quietness of the whole outrage. They walked out of our employ and into that of Miss Cairns’s like a carefully organized body of strikers. If Miss Cairns managed the walk-out she must have a certain amount of unscrupulous cleverness,” he ended with grudging honestness.

“I haven’t the least doubt but that she managed it,” Robin made indignant assertion. “She has been known to go to great pains to gain her own way. On the campus, when she was a student here, she had a reputation for that sort of thing.” Robin’s information was meant to be impersonal. It was Peter Graham’s right to know Leslie Cairns’ measure as a mischievous force.

Marjorie had listened to Robin and the builder, her mind weighing every word she heard. As Robin finished with an angry little sputtered: “Oh, will we ever be free of that Jonah?” the gravity of Marjorie’s beautiful face changed to meditative resolution.

“Mr. Graham,” she said, “when first you told me of this I was really dismayed for a few minutes. I can understand how you feel in the matter. It is far harder on you than on us. Still, you know, and Page and Dean know, that nothing is going to stop us from finishing the dormitory outside God’s will. I am sure we have that. We are building toward good, not evil. I suppose we couldn’t get these men we’ve lost back again, no matter how hard we tried. They’ve gone the way of more money. We paid them all we can afford or will pay in future. We must not needlessly increase the dormitory obligation for the Travelers who come after our chapter.”

“I wouldn’t advise taking back any of these men at a cent more than we have been paying them. We have given them better wages than they ever before received,” broke in the builder, defensive of the Travelers’ rights. “I am glad we are of the same mind, Miss Dean. And you, Miss Page?” He turned to Robin, relief written large on his strong features.

“What is Page without Dean,” laughed Robin. “What are we both without Graham?” She made a charming gesture of deference which pleased and heartened the white-haired builder.

“Whatever you think wise for us to do, we will do. We rest our case with you, Mr. Graham,” Marjorie’s voice rang with fine loyalty.

“Thank you both for your support,” was the grateful response. “Our case will have to rest,” he continued, his face wonderfully brighter, “until I can secure other workmen to take the places of those gone. It may be a long time before I can collect another force like the one we had. They were able fellows, and knew their business. I warn you, the dormitory cannot be completed in time for the re-opening of college next fall unless we should have the good fortune to find a new crew of men at once. That is the situation.”

“We accept it with good grace.” Marjorie’s kindly cheeriness did much to lighten the secret dejection of the builder. “Don’t worry over it, Mr. Graham. We sha’n’t. We have had trouble with Leslie Cairns before. On each occasion she has been a loser. We have gone on, the stronger for experience. We shall rise above this vicissitude, just as we have risen above the others. Leslie Cairns never seems even to do wrong successfully.”

CHAPTER XXII

GUISEPPE BARETTI’S THEORY

Regardless of her optimistic assertion to Robin and Peter Graham that right must triumph in the end, Marjorie found it hard to resign herself to watchful inaction in regard to the dormitory. The winter days came and went with no change in the situation save perhaps the addition of a dozen men to Peter Graham’s working force. It consisted of himself and his quartette of carpenters. He scoured the region extending for twenty-five miles about Hamilton for men. Labor happened to be scarce. Workmen invariably demanded twice as much money for their services as he would pay. The affair of the walk-out had been circulated far and wide in that section. The numbers of workmen he talked with demanded as much as “the Thorne and Foster crew” were receiving.

Miss Susanna Hamilton sputtered volubly to Jonas, Peter Graham and Marjorie at the dire situation. She sent for Marjorie, Robin and the builder on an average of once in every three or four days to discuss the situation. She was at first for bringing in a crew of workmen from one of the large cities and paying them their own price within a certain limit to hurry the completion of the dormitory. She offered to pay the sum needed to do this from her own resources. To this neither Page and Dean nor Peter Graham would hear. In the end they won her over to their way of thinking.

Marjorie’s chief private disappointment lay in the fact that she could not conscientiously begin the compilation of Brooke Hamilton’s papers, prior to writing his biography, until the dormitory question was settled and off her mind. This had been the chief reason for Miss Susanna’s generous proposal.

“I want you and Jerry to come to the Arms in March, sure and certain,” she said more than once to Marjorie. “You are such a conscientious child! You will not humor me at all. Suppose Peter should have to cripple along all spring with a handful of men? Then you and Jerry will miss the dawn of spring at the Arms. Let me tell you you will miss something.”

“Miss Susanna, I’ve made up my mind to come to the Arms the first of March, whether or not the dormitory business is settled.” Marjorie finally made this concession one February afternoon while taking tea with the old lady.

“You are my own Marvelous Manager, and a dear child.” Miss Susanna unexpectedly left her chair, walked around the tea table to Marjorie and hugged her.

“And you are the dearest of dears. I ought to come here by the first of March. I feel it as my duty. And I shall love to be with you. The girls are resigned to Jerry’s and my move. They’ll be here about half the time. I give you warning beforehand. I’ve nothing but chemistry on my list since the beginning of the semester. I only devote a few hours a week to it now. I do wish something would happen to bring some more workmen to the dormitory,” Marjorie ended wistfully.

“Yes, so do I. I could take that Cairns girl and treat her to a good shaking with my own strength of arm.” Miss Susanna resentfully straightened up from her embrace of Marjorie and vengefully worked her arms. “And to think, I’ve never seen her except once, and at a distance.” Miss Susanna resumed her chair and continued: “It is too bad Baretti can do nothing with those Italians at the quarter. It’s the old story. Money changes the color of everything.”

“I was hopeful of Signor Baretti,” Marjorie said, faint disappointment in her reply. “He went over to the quarter several times. He said some one besides Leslie Cairns herself had been influencing the Italians. He thought she might have hired someone. The Italians swore that only Thorne and Foster were responsible for the walk-out. They told Signor Baretti the bosses had offered much money to have the work done quickly. He says they are not telling the truth, but he can’t get at the truth among them. I had a talk with him yesterday. Robin and I stopped at the inn for ice cream. He says he will try again after a while to make the Italians tell him the truth.”

“He is a fine little man,” Miss Susanna said, nodding approval of the odd, whole-souled Italian. “He won’t forget that promise, either.”

Guiseppe Baretti had no intention of forgetting the, to him, solemn promise he had made Page and Dean. The nearly perfect management of his restaurant to which he had long since attained left him a good deal of time to spend as he pleased. Usually he pleased to be busy in the inn where he had achieved affluence. It was his workshop, and he loved it. Now that the “dorm,” also grown into his peculiar affection, was in difficulties it behoved him to become a knight errant.

Imbued with this high purpose he went again and again to the Italian quarter, a patient, open-eared watchful little questioner or listener, as the case might be. February was almost ended when he at last learned something of importance. He came one evening upon Pedro Tomaso and Francisco Vesseli engaged in heated argument. He gathered from the torrent of angry words each hurled at the other the information he was seeking. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter, it seemed. He had arranged the new scale of wages. Baretti heard over and over again the name “Ravenzo.” When he left the quarter it was with four points fixed in his mind. There had been a “Maestro” at the quarter. His name was Ravenzo. He had come from New York. Then had come the desertion of the “dorm” by the workmen.

What Baretti entertained as a positive belief, the Italians knew nothing of. This was Leslie Cairns’s part in the dormitory trouble. They placed the odium on Thorne and Foster. The long-headed Italian inn keeper laid the primary blame upon Miss “Car-rins.” He firmly believed if “that one” were made to “behave good” the troubles of the dorm would end. He had gleaned here and there enough of Leslie’s past history to know that she was the only child of Peter Cairns, a well-known financier, and that her home was in New York.

After his fruitful visit to the quarter he sat down in his tiny private office at the inn and wrote a long letter in Italian to a countryman of his in New York connected with an Italian confidential agency. The purpose of the letter was to establish the identity and business of one, Ravenzo.

When he had finished the letter he sat very still for a long time and thought about Leslie Cairns. Ever since he had first seen her as a freshman at Hamilton, he had detested her. Now he put her through a mental revue which did not redound to her credit. He wondered how her father could allow her to “boss herself all wrong.” Perhaps her father did not know half she did. There were many such cases. He reflected with old-world wisdom that. “A father don’ want his childr’n do wrong.” He was also of the conviction that, “A father, he can’t punish his childr’n they do wrong, he don’ know they do it.” Guiseppe Baretti was sure that Mr. Car-rins “don’ know much ’bout what his daughter do.”

His knowledge of Italian nature told him that if the scale of wages on the Cairns’s garage was dropped to what it had been when begun by Thorne and Foster, the men of the quarter as well as the American and Irish workman would be glad to go back to the fair employ of Page and Dean under the management of Peter Graham. If Miss Car-rins’s father knew her as she really was perhaps he would come and take her away from Hamilton. Miss Car-rins was of age, but a father was a father. Her father was a “big” man. He probably would have ways to make his daughter behave.

Such was Baretti’s view of the problem he was trying to solve. The next day he sat down and went over the same train of thought with the same deliberation. On the third day thereafter he resigned himself to the composition of a letter in Italian. It was a very long letter and the first draft of it did not please him. For several days he kept patiently at it, re-writing and re-vising. Finally he gave it into the keeping of his Italian manager who was also a high school graduate. Two days afterward the manager returned a neatly typed, well-phrased letter in polite English to the little proprietor. Guiseppe had the pleasure of addressing an envelope to Peter Cairns at his New York offices. Baretti’s last thought in sending the letter was one of consideration for Leslie’s father. He wrote on the lower, left-hand side of the envelope: “For Peter Cairns only.”

CHAPTER XXIII

MOVING DAY

“Today’s moving day, Jeremiah! We’d better pack before noon so that the man can come for our trunks soon after lunch. I shall pack for keeps. Truly, Jerry, we don’t know whether we’ll be back here again this year or not.” Marjorie turned from a yawning trunk which she had pulled into the middle of the room and surveyed Jerry solemnly.

“Well, if not this spring, then next fall,” Jerry said quickly. “Don’t weep, Bean. You will make me weep, too. I want to go to the Arms, though, and you have to go. Would you go if you weren’t going to write the biography?”

“For a little while, but not for more than that,” Marjorie said very honestly. “I’m going to miss the girls terribly, and so will you. We’ll see them often, but this is a kind of break in the good old democrat’s platform.”

“‘For larger hopes and graver fears,’” Jerry quoted. “That’s the way things are. We have to go on, you know. Life hates loiterers.”

“You’re just as melancholy over this change as I am, Jeremiah Macy!” Marjorie cried out. “It’s not fair to Miss Susanna.”

“She’ll never know it,” was Jerry’s consoling rejoinder.

“Indeed, she never shall,” Marjorie vowed energetically. “I am still a tiny bit blue about the dormitory trouble. I wish it had come to an end before we started our stay at the Arms. Mr. Graham feels worse about it than either Robin or I. I don’t allow myself to dwell on the subject of Leslie Cairns. I feel like joining Miss Susanna in giving the Hob-goblin a good shaking.”

“Your temper is certainly going to lead you to violence some day, Bean. That’s the first time I ever heard you address the Hob-goblin by her household name. It shows rising ire on your part. Let me calm you by reciting a few Bean Jingles. Ahem!

“Oh, do not rave, then long you’ll wave;Or with the goblin fight:Just keep serene, beloved Bean,You will come out all right.I am your friend, unto the end,I’ll stick to you like glueOn me just lean, entrancing BeanAnd I will see you through.”

“Thank you, oh, thank you!” was Marjorie’s grateful reception of Jerry’s improvised tribute. “I’d love to have a book of Bean Jingles.”

“You’ll have to take them down as they are ground out, then, Bean. I never can remember them afterward. ‘I consider them rather sweet little things.’ Now I must stop entertaining you and get busy. If you hear blood-curdling wails outside the door today, don’t collapse. Leila says she may give a farewell exhibition of true grief in the hall.”

The very prospect of Leila’s wails set the two girls to laughing. In spite of the coming separation from their close friends the both felt lighter of spirit as a result of Jerry’s nonsense.

As the morning sped toward noon, one by one, Ronny, Muriel, Lucy, Leila and Vera sought Room 15, the headquarters of all their college years. They were invited to the Arms to dinner that night in honor of Jerry’s and Marjorie’s arrival. Now they hovered about Marjorie and Jerry, trying to be cheerful at the blow that had fallen. They had agreed among themselves not to flivver in the slightest particular. “But after they’re gone,” Leila had said somberly to Vera, “I shall howl my Irish head off.” Anna Towne and Verna Burkett had been invited to take up their abode at Wayland Hall in Room 15 until either college closed or the two Travelers came back again to the Hall.

“Robin wanted me to have lunch with her today at Baretti’s, but I told her I’d meet her there afterward,” Marjorie commented to her chum audience as she continued to pack. “She forgot for a minute that this would be Jerry’s and my last luncheon at the Hall for awhile. I say that, but I’ll probably be over for dinner or lunch about day after tomorrow.” Marjorie straightened up and viewed her friends with a smile so full of sunshiny good-will Ronny exclaimed rather shakily:

“How silly in us to let ourselves be sad about losing you, Marjorie Dean. We sit here looking like a set of sad sentimental old geese. I will not do so. Here, let’s dance.” She pirouetted to the middle of the floor in her inimitable fashion and began one of the utterly original, graceful dances for which she was famed on the campus. Soon she had swept the others into it and they were all romping like children.

“If we’re reported for this racket it won’t do the reporter any good. We’re vacating today. I suppose the Phonograph, the Prime Minister and the Ice Queen will be so pleased to know we’ve vamoosed.” Jerry smirked derisively in the direction of Julia Peyton’s room.

Marjorie’s face shadowed slightly at mention of Doris Monroe. Muriel was still in the dark regarding Doris’s sudden change from gracious to hostile. Since her Christmas trip to New York with Leslie Cairns, Doris had been associating constantly with Leslie. More than once when driving with one or another of her chums Marjorie had seen the white car flash past them with Doris at the wheel and Leslie beside her. She sometimes wondered half scornfully whether Doris had not a very fair understanding of Leslie and her unfair methods. Then she would quickly reproach herself as having been suspicious and mean-spirited.

After lunch Jerry promised to see the trunks safely into the keeping of an expressman, leaving Marjorie free to meet Robin at Baretti’s.

“I cut dessert at the Hall today,” was Robin’s salutatory remark as Marjorie presently breezed into the restaurant, her cheeks pure carnation pink from the sharp winter air. “I thought I’d like to have it here with you. I want some Nesselrode pudding. You know my weakness for it. Have some? What will you have?”

“I ought to say nothing, but I’ll eat an apricot ice with you. Thank you, Page, for your invitation.” Marjorie sat down opposite Robin at the table the latter had chosen. “I finished my packing before lunch. It seems queer to be going to Hamilton Arms to live for a while. None of us dared say much about it at the Hall today. A flood was in the offing. But no one flivvered after all. We smiled at each other at lunch like a whole collection of Cheshire pusses.”

“The girls will miss you so dreadfully, Marjorie,” Robin said with sudden soberness. She looked across the table at her partner and wondered if there could ever be anyone more likeable than Marjorie.

“I’ll miss them, Robin. Jerry and I were ready to cry this morning until Jerry fell back on Bean Jingles and we laughed instead. Here comes Signor Baretti.” Marjorie held out a gracious hand.

“What have you hear about the dorm?” was the Italian’s first question after he had accepted the partners’s united invitation to sit.

“Nothing encouraging,” Robin answered with a dejected little shrug. “We are going over there today to try to keep Mr. Graham in good spirits. He has such frightful fits of the blues over this miserable set-back to the dormitory.”

“Yes; the dorm has a verra bad time. I feel verra sorry. I have try to help you in some ways, Miss Page, Miss Dean. Maybe one thing I do have good after while. I don’ know.” The Italian did not offer to explain his somewhat mysterious reference.

“We know you are always ready to help us,” Marjorie said with grateful earnestness. “Would you like to go over to the dormitory with us today, Signor Baretti? I am sure Mr. Graham would be pleased to see you. You know Robin and I would enjoy your company?”

“I think I go with you.” The little proprietor accepted with a dash of pleased red in his brown cheeks. “I have bought the new roadster. I like you to ride in it, Miss Page, Miss Dean.”

“Thank you for suggesting such a dandy way to escape the wind,” smiled Marjorie. “The first day of March, and a real March wind. Miss Macy and I are going to Hamilton Arms today to stay all spring, Signor Baretti. You remember I told you before Christmas that I was going there in the spring.”

“Yes, yes! I remem’er. You are to write somethin’ ’bout this Brooke Hamilton. He is name for the college. Miss Macy – she make another write ’bout him, too?”

“No; she is going to the Arms with me because she is my roommate. I couldn’t leave her behind. Miss Susanna wished both of us to come.”

“I think your friends in the house you live on the campus verra sorry you go,” commented the Italian.

“Thank you very much.” Marjorie made him an arch little bow.

“You are the quite welcome.” The solemn little man beamed happily upon her. Her merry graciousness put him at his ease.

He showed not a little curiosity regarding the biography of Brooke Hamilton. He asked a number of questions about the founder of Hamilton College and listened eagerly as Marjorie explained as lucidly as she could regarding the biography of the great man which she was to write.

When the partners had finished their ices Baretti escorted them, with proud lights in his black eyes, to his roadster, parked in front of the restaurant in shining newness. It was only a short run from the inn to the dormitory. The cutting sharpness of the east wind, however, made riding preferable to walking. Seated in the tonneau of the car Robin and Marjorie had hardly exchanged a dozen sentences when the car had reached the dormitory site and was slowing down for a stop.

“Look, Robin! What can the matter be?” Marjorie cried in an alarmed tone. Glancing out from the glassed door nearest to her she beheld a good-sized crowd of men collected in front of the dormitory building.

Before Robin could reply, Baretti brought the car to a stop and was out of it and at the door of the tonneau to assist them.

“What happen, I wonder?” he asked excitedly. “Mebbe is Mr. Graham or one his men hurt. You stay here. I go an’ see. You don’ go up there till I come tell you all is right. Mebbe is the fight.”

“We will wait for you here,” Marjorie cast concerned eyes toward the crowd of men in an endeavor to pick out Peter Graham in their midst.

As her gaze grew more searching she picked out the builder at the back of the crowd. He seemed to be the main object of attention. His hat was off and his thick white hair was being fluffed out on his head by the wind. He was waving an arm and wagging his head as though making a speech. Far from fighting, the gathering of dark-faced men was orderly. They were evidently listening to Peter Graham in an almost complete silence.

“Marjorie, is it – do you suppose Mr. Graham has been able to gather that crowd of men to work for him? I hardly dare believe it, but, oh, gracious, if it should be true – .” Robin clasped her hands.

“If it should be,” Marjorie repeated, hope flashing into her anxious face. “They are Italians – mostly.” She added the last word as she made the discovery that a sprinkling of the crowd were American. Simultaneous with it she made another discovery. The tall Italian at the edge of the group was Pedro Tomaso. She began to recognize others among that attentive throng who had formerly been Peter Graham’s men.

“They’re not new men, Robin!” she exclaimed. “They are the same ones who went over to Leslie Cairns’s lot.”

“There certainly doesn’t appear to be any one left over at the garage.” As Marjorie called out her discovery Robin had directed her attention toward the garage foundation which had risen since Page and Dean’s workmen had gone over to the other enterprise. Only a few days before it had been humming with activity. Now the silence of a tomb hovered over it. Not a man was to be seen nearer to it than those who made up the crowd in front of the dormitory.

“If Signor Baretti doesn’t come back this minute we’ll simply have to join the crowd.” Marjorie’s voice was freighted with eagerness. “Something’s gone wrong over at the garage and these men have fallen back on Mr. Graham. It must be that. See how respectful they are. Ah-h, here he comes.”

“Oh, Miss Page; Miss Dean; you see there!” The inn keeper pointed joyously to the crowd. “They are the ones to leave Mr. Gra’m. Now it is good enough for them. They have no job atall. Come a man this morning early. Fire these Italianos, fire the Americans, fire these men, Thorne an’ Foster. Mebbe fire Miss Car-rins, too, she was here.” He vented a funny little chuckle on the last remark.