Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  She was also, to his mind, breathtakingly beautiful. Tall, slender, and elegant, with large expressive eyes, high cheekbones, and a determined chin. Her hair, piled in thick curls on the top of her head was, like her eyes, the dark brown of rich chocolate. And she had soft, full, rose-colored lips that he’d kissed once and dreamt about nightly.

  But he would never act on those dreams. He cared about her too much to risk exposing her to the dark places in his heart or his nightmares that could sweep away even the sweetest dreams. He’d seriously lost his temper once in her presence, and he’d almost lost any chance to ever see her again. He couldn’t stand it if the warmth he saw in her eyes when she looked at him ever turned to fear.

  As they came to the first of the bridges that crossed Strawberry Creek, Seth noticed Kitty looking at the six cottages sitting among a grove of Eucalyptus trees to their right. These, and two others further up the hill, had been built when the campus first opened to provide housing for students. Since then, with the university enrollment now over two hundred, a number of hotels and boardinghouses had sprung up to accommodate those students who didn’t live in Oakland or San Francisco. There were even two newly built fraternity houses for well-to-do students like Ned Goodwin.

  He knew that Laura worried about Ned’s decision to move into the Zeta Psi fraternity house. Personally, Seth welcomed the change. This morning’s hour-long trip, first on the ferry, then on the train, had been considerably more pleasant without Ned’s constant boasting and immature jokes.

  As the girls reached the second bridge, they turned onto a narrower path that went directly through a beautiful stand of ancient oaks on the way to the four buildings at the top of the hill. Seth paused to look back over his shoulder to the bay. On a clear morning like today, the hills of the city and the wide opening of the Golden Gate looked close enough to touch. He’d appreciated the three weeks between terms—a needed break from trying to balance his school work with the fifty hours he spent running a printing press.

  But it was good to be back on campus. He always felt he could breathe just a little easier when he got away from the noisy, crowded streets of San Francisco.

  Laura smiled encouragingly at Celia, who showed increasing signs of unease as they made their way through a beautiful stand of ancient oaks. She remembered how she had felt last August on the first day of classes. It hadn’t even helped when she told herself that attending the university wouldn’t be really any different from going to the San Jose Normal School. Yet the very idea of a university, where you could end up with a bachelor’s degree instead of a teaching certificate, simply seemed more intimidating. She could imagine how much more intimidating it was for Celia, who’d gotten her teaching certificate by taking normal classes at Girl’s High and had a whole term worth of classes to get caught up with to be prepared for the final exams in June.

  Coming out of the woods, Laura pointed to the four stately buildings dominating the top of the hill, their windows glittering in the morning sunlight, their roof-lines etched against the hills to the east.

  “See that building on the left, Celia? That’s North Hall, where all the classes we take this term are on the second floor. Faculty offices are on the third floor, and the administrative offices are on the first. In the basement is the student book co-operative. Kitty will take you there this afternoon to see if you can pick up some inexpensive Latin and Greek texts.”

  Celia paused and stared. “The building on the far right, is that South Hall? Ned said South Hall is where the library is, the temporary one.”

  “Yes, that’s where most of the science courses are taught, and the chemistry lab, so we won’t have classes there until we are sophomores. The Mining and Mechanical Arts building is that smaller building slightly behind North Hall, but the really fancy building is the new library and museum building. Did you notice, Kitty, they finished its clock tower over the break?”

  Suddenly a young man pushed past them on the path, saying with a sneer, “Oh look, some Freshie girls. Don’t stand gawping and let us through.”

  Celia gave a little yelp as several more young men passed by, one of them clucking like a chicken, the others laughing. Laura repressed a desire to say something about how rude they were being, but she’d learned last term that this would simply encourage them, so she held her tongue.

  Instead, she came up to Celia and said, “Never you pay any attention to those boys. They think it’s funny to refer to all of us women as hens. You can tell which graduating class they are in by what they have on their heads. The juniors wear those gray plug hats that they decorate with all sorts of stuff, like their fraternity insignia or their class number. See the big ’82 on that hat? Means he’s a junior and will graduate next year, in 1882. For some reason, juniors delight in sitting or stamping on their hats until they lose all their shape. Those two boys with decent black top hats are seniors, graduating class of ’81. And that one who is wearing a plain derby and swinging a cane is proclaiming his status as a sophomore. Freshmen who attempt to carry a cane or wear any kind of top hat can find themselves the object of severe hazing by the upperclassmen.”

  Kitty added, “You may have read stories in the Chronicle about this year’s cane rushes between the freshmen and sophomores. I understand these battles to capture each other’s class symbol go on every fall. I really don’t see the point. I mean, when the young men in my father’s construction company, volunteers for the city fire department, get into a fight with a rival fire company, the papers call it hooliganism.”

  “Yes, Ned told me all about the cane rushes. He seemed to think it was a lark that he got a black eye during one of them,” Celia replied. “He said it helped develop class spirit.”

  Celia and Kitty continued up the path as Laura waited for Seth to catch up. She said, “If you see Ned, could you tell him Kitty and I have taken Celia to the Recorder’s office to get her registered for classes?”

  “Of course. He’s probably on the front steps with his fraternity brothers, bragging about how, despite all the cramming he did for finals, he still failed Latin.”

  A good proportion of the male student body spent their time between classes sitting on the right-hand steps leading to the first floor of North Hall, inexplicably leaving the left-hand steps free. They tended to sit closely packed together, smoking their pipes and cigarettes, making it hard for anyone to get up or down the stairs and hard to ignore their stares and occasional off-color comments. That was why most of the women and some of the men like Seth generally took the other stairs to get in or out of the building.

  She once asked Seth why he put up with their obnoxious behavior, particularly when she overheard one of them make some comment about him being a stupid cowpoke. He said they weren’t worth his time…just a bunch of children playing cock of the hill.

  He was right, of course, yet sometimes when she was late and didn’t want to take the time to go out of her way to get to class, Laura would brave these steps, swinging her leather satchel around with abandon and feeling a good deal of satisfaction when she forced them to let her through.

  Chapter 4

  Thursday afternoon, January 6, 1881,

  Berkeley

  “Berkeleyan—A scurrilous periodical.” College Slang Dictionary, 1881 Blue and Gold Yearbook

  Laura left campus by the southern exit and walked briskly down Dana, past the Chi Phi Fraternity house, ignoring the comments from the young men who sat on the front porch. She recognized that one of them was a freshman in her Latin class. She had half a mind to stop and ask him politely to repeat what he had said and watch him turn red with embarrassment.

  No, not worth the bother, and I don’t have that much time before I need to go catch my train to get to work.

  She was going to see if Grace Atherton, a junior who had befriended her last term, was home. Grace had loaned her a copy of Abbott’s How to Write Clearly, a standard text for first semester English classes. No longer needing the book, Laura wanted to return i
t, but she hadn’t seen Grace anywhere on campus this morning, so she had decided to see if she was at her boarding house.

  As she approached the house, she wondered again why Grace had chosen to live in such a ramshackle place. It was convenient to campus, just a few blocks from the southern entrance, and like most of the residential housing in the area, it was less than ten years old. Nevertheless, the two-storied house looked like it had been thrown up in a day and then left to rot. The paint on the cheap wooden siding was already peeling, there were missing shingles on the peaked roof, the stone steps leading up to a dinky porch were cracked, and there wasn’t a single cornice piece or other architectural detail to lend the house some style.

  It was certainly a far cry from her own boarding house back in San Francisco on O’Farrell Street, where she lived with her older brother Nate and his wife Annie. That house, despite being nearly thirty years old and located in a section of the city that had seen better days, had a graceful dignity to it. Annie had spent what little money she had refurbishing it, inside and out. There were comfortable chairs on the front porch, cheerful geraniums in the flower boxes in the first-floor windows, and the roof and siding had been neatly repaired and painted.

  Inside the house, Kathleen Hennessey, the live-in servant, and little Tilly, the Irish girl who worked part-time, kept the wooden furniture, floors, and wainscoting polished to a high gloss, the linens for table and bedrooms immaculate, and there was never a speck of dust or muddy footprint to be seen.

  Laura knew that Grace’s boarding house owner, Mrs. Feltzer, didn’t employ either a cook or parlormaid, just a “girl” who came in the afternoons to help with dinner. That’s why Grace had told her that visitors to the house were supposed to let themselves in.

  That’s what Laura did this afternoon, thinking how outraged both her sister-in-law and the servants would be by the grimy wallpaper, the dusty bannisters of the stairs she took to the second floor, and the grit on the narrow carpet under her feet.

  Grace had said the food was adequate, in amount and variation, but the one time she had accepted Grace’s invitation to have supper with her, Laura was sorely disappointed. The potatoes were unadorned by either butter or gravy, the chicken breasts sat forlornly on the platter with nary a hint of garnish, and the carrots and beans had been boiled so long they had practically lost their color. The landlady, a hatchet-faced woman in her sixties, cheeks flushed from her efforts in the kitchen, spent the meal scolding the serving girl for her slow service, while the girl slammed the plates down on the table in response.

  Laura shuddered at the memory.

  Grace said she roomed there because the rooms were cheap and there weren’t any of the rules that you might find in other houses—rules like curfews and no gentlemen callers allowed, even in the downstairs parlor. And Grace did have a gentleman caller, a junior named Willie Caulfield. Laura didn’t find this surprising, since Grace was a very beautiful girl, with golden hair the shade of rich honey, dark blue eyes framed by long lashes, and a very fetching figure that looked perfect in the current fashion of tight-fitting basques.

  She was also extraordinarily kind, encouraging Laura to join the Neolaean Literary Society and introducing her to the editor of the Berkeleyan, when she learned Laura was interested in submitting articles to the student newspaper. And Laura knew she also spent time tutoring students at the Deaf and Blind Institute a couple of blocks south of campus.

  What Grace didn’t seem to be was a rule-breaker, and Laura had said as much, causing her new friend to laugh. But she’d shared that the most important reason she’d chosen Mrs. Feltzer’s place was the space and privacy. Grace had the attic all to herself, with enough room for a bed, desk, easy chair, and shelves crammed with books, and even a little spirit stove where she could brew her own tea.

  This afternoon, knocking on the door that led to this attic, Laura thought that for a dedicated student like Grace, this room must be a little bit of heaven. She also wondered if she was going to regret taking Celia in as a roommate, since she’d never had to share a room before.

  “Yes? May I help you?”

  Laura stepped back, startled by the fact that the person who opened the door was a stranger and that her tone of voice was quite belligerent.

  She stammered, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was looking for Miss Atherton. Is she here?”

  “No, she’s not,” the woman replied, frowning behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses that magnified her blue eyes and pale lashes.

  “Do you expect her back soon? I have a book I would like to return.”

  This woman appeared to be in her mid twenties, and Laura wondered if financial difficulties had forced Grace to share her precious attic space with another student.

  With visible irritation, the woman adjusted a light blue shawl around her shoulders and said, “Grace Atherton hasn’t returned this term.” Then she started to shut the door in Laura’s face.

  “She’s left school? What happened?” Laura reached out to keep the door from closing.

  The woman frowned again and said, “I have no idea.”

  “But you are living here now? Are you saying you don’t know Grace…Miss Atherton?”

  “Why should I?”

  Laura suddenly realized why the short, stout, round-faced woman standing in front of her seemed familiar. She’d been in her German class this afternoon.

  Not trying to hide her anger, she said, “If you don’t know Grace Atherton, then perhaps you would tell me why you are wearing her shawl? You can see her initials embroidered right there, along the edge.”

  The woman looked down to where Laura pointed, then she pushed her spectacles back up her nose and stared at her for a moment. Finally, she said, “You’re in my German class, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, my name is Laura Dawson, and, if I remember correctly, you introduced yourself as Miss Sutton. So, Miss Sutton, I believe you owe me an explanation.”

  The woman gave a small sigh. “I don’t know that I owe you any explanation. However, I can tell that you are not the sort to leave things be. Perhaps you should come upstairs with me since I do not intend on discussing my business in a common hallway.”

  Chapter 5

  Thursday Evening, January 6, 1881

  O’Farrell Street Boarding House, San Francisco

  “Infants’ Basket, covered with Swiss over colored Selisia, trimmed with ribbon and lace. $3.75” Bloomingdale’s Illustrated 1886 Catalog

  “Annie, her name is Caro Sutton, and she’s come here to study German. Something about possibly studying at one of the medical schools in Germany.” Laura took off her coat and hat and tossed them on a chair. “There was definitely something very odd about her.”

  Laura had just gotten off work and had found her sister-in-law sitting in the smaller of the two downstairs parlors in the O’Farrell Street boarding house. This room was where Annie used to meet clients as the pretend clairvoyant Madam Sibyl. However, now that Annie was able to make a living providing financial and accounting advice that was based on her education and training under her late father, rather than having to pretend to get her information from the stars or her client’s palms, she had turned the room into a kind of office. There was even a second desk and file drawers so that Laura’s brother Nate could do his legal work here in the evenings.

  Laura said, “Isn’t Nate back yet? If I’d known he was working late, I would have stopped by the law offices and dragged him home.”

  “We’re both trying to get caught up after the holidays, and he just learned that a divorce case that had been postponed was suddenly put on tomorrow’s court docket. Goodness knows when he will be done.” Annie stood up from her desk and stretched.

  Laura thought her sister-in-law looked tired but refrained from saying so, having heard the irritation in Annie’s voice this morning when she responded to questions about whether or not she’d slept well from the boarding house cook, Mrs. O’Rourke. The motherly woman had always been very watchful of the heal
th of her young mistress, but now that Annie was pregnant, Laura noticed that Mrs. O’Rourke had taken her concern to a whole different level.

  Moving over to stand in front of the fire, Laura said, “Another divorce case? If he doesn’t watch out, that might become his specialty. He is representing the wife, isn’t he?”

  “Oh yes, the word has certainly gone around that he’s been successful in getting women custody of their children and that he charges reasonable fees. But tell me more about this Miss Sutton. You say she’s the cousin of another student who was too ill to return this spring?”

  “Yes, Grace Atherton. I’m sure I told you about her. Last fall, we got to chatting at the book co-operative in the basement of North Hall the first day of classes. I was looking for used copies of textbooks. When I mentioned that I worked for Mrs. Richmond and the Women’s Co-operative Printers Union as a typesetter, she was quite interested.”

  “Isn’t she the one who invited you to attend that literary society…what its name?”

  “The Neolaean Society. I’ve been thinking about writing some articles for the student paper. When I mentioned that to Grace, she said that showing up at the society meetings would be a way of getting noticed by the Berkeleyan editors, some of whom are members.”

  Laura’s year spent as a typesetter for the WCPU, a company that was founded to provide jobs for women in the printing industry, had sparked her interest in journalism as a possible career. She hadn’t told anyone, yet, having been so vehement about wanting to study law the year before. She knew her brother Nate would tease her about changing her mind.