Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  Caro had recounted how shocked she was when she got to the farm and saw her cousin. Her aunt had written that Grace wasn’t bouncing back as quickly as they hoped, but Caro said the reality was far worse than she could have imagined. “She was skeletal, she wasn’t eating or sleeping well, and she would get agitated when anyone asked her questions. Particularly when her parents asked her if she expected to return to Berkeley for the next term. I think that my aunt and uncle were relying too heavily on the advice of old Doc Rachetter. He is an old fogey, with hopelessly outdated medical ideas. He told them that she was ill because she had been attending the university, that if they kept her home and quiet, she would be just fine.”

  Laura couldn’t help but be reminded of her sister-in-law, Violet, who, on more than one occasion, suggested the same thing, quoting this physician, Clarke, who had gained national fame a few years earlier writing a whole book that argued that higher education ruined a woman’s health. Something that Caro had mentioned suggested that her own mother had been sickly, dying when she was young. She wondered if that had any bearing on Caro’s determination to become a physician.

  Enthusiastic clapping drew Laura’s attention back to the present, as the glee club took their bows. Their second offering had been “My Grandfather’s Clock,” a popular song that Mrs. Stein, one of the O’Farrell Street boarders, got teary over whenever Mrs. Hewitt played it on the parlor piano. Maybe the fact that Laura had never known either of her grandfathers explained why she didn’t understand the sentimental appeal of the words. The old grandfather in the song had lived ninety years—a reason to celebrate—not to cry. But the singers had wrung as much pathos as possible from the song, and the audience was responding with gusto.

  Selim Franklin, the society president, was up next, and he gave a mercifully short introduction to the first of the three speakers scheduled for the first half of the program—a self-assured senior named Seth Adams who began to read an essay entitled “The Importance of Public Education.”

  Listening to Adams, Laura suddenly recalled what had happened at the last literary society meeting she attended, in November. Since this was the dedication of the clubhouse, with lots of people from campus and the town attending, Laura had been impressed to see that Grace was one of the student presenters. She was first up on the program, reading an original essay she’d written, something about the importance of ethical behavior in the public realm.

  While Laura thought Grace had looked a trifle nervous as she came up on stage that night, she started out strong, her voice carrying well. However, after the introductory paragraph, she faltered. Starting to shuffle through the sheets of paper in her hands, Grace had looked more and more bewildered, until she muttered some sort of apology and fled the room. The president of the Neolaean Society had hastily come up on stage and introduced the next speaker.

  At the time, Laura assumed that Grace had been overcome with what was known as “stage-fright.” Later, at the intermission, when Laura found Grace was no longer in the clubhouse, she decided she would try to catch the young woman between classes on Monday to assure her that this could have happened to anyone.

  But she’d not seen Grace that next Monday. In fact, she never saw her again after that night. In retrospect, she couldn’t help but wonder if what happened at the literary meeting wasn’t somehow connected to her friend’s decision to leave school.

  When the first speaker stepped down to polite applause, Laura leaned over and whispered to Caro, “I think Grace may have already been feeling ill more than week before she left for Nebraska. I will tell you the details during intermission.”

  She felt Caro’s impatience as they sat through the next two speakers. First came a nervous sophomore whose reading from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America was barely audible. The audience gave him polite but tepid applause. Next came another sophomore named Nellie Dryer, who strode up to the stage, clasped her hands behind her back, and proceeded to orate for a full ten minutes on the newly created federal holiday celebrating Washington’s Birthday. This performance garnered a much more enthusiastic response, even a little foot stomping. Then May Shepard, the society vice-president, announced there would a brief intermission before the second part of the program and suggested everyone return to the parlor across the hall to partake of some of the punch and cookies provided.

  As the audience began to file out, Caro asked, “Why do you believe that Grace was already ill before she left Berkeley? I thought I told you the train porter said she was fine when she got on the train at Ogden.”

  “That may be, but something happened at the special joint meeting of the Durant and Neolaean societies in November that makes me think otherwise. Did you know Grace was on that program, reading an essay she wrote?”

  “Yes, she felt it was quite an honor to be chosen, and she’d been working on the essay off and on since the beginning of the term.”

  “When was the last letter she wrote home dated?”

  “November seventeenth, a week after that meeting. Now that you mention it, I don’t think she said how her performance went in that letter.”

  “It went terribly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She read the opening introduction of the essay in a nice clear voice, but then she stopped, as if she had lost her place. After a few moments, she mumbled some sort of apology and ran off the stage. I assumed she’d just had gotten too nervous and couldn’t continue. Now I can’t help but wonder if she might have taken ill.”

  “Did you speak to her about this?”

  “I don’t think I saw her again after that night, so perhaps she was too ill to attend classes or complete her work for the term. That would explain why she decided to leave.”

  “But…”

  “I know you are going to tell me she didn’t mention feeling ill in that last letter she sent home. But I wouldn’t have told my mother, for fear of worrying her.”

  Caro looked past her at the rapidly emptying room and said, “Maybe you’re right. She might have felt unwell that night. And I don’t know that she would have written about this to her mother. After rereading her letters, I’ve come to the conclusion that Grace was hiding a good deal of what was going on this fall. But don’t you see, that’s why it is so important that you agree to assist me.”

  “How so?”

  “Because, without your help, I wouldn’t have even known to ask questions about why she behaved so oddly at that meeting. Now I can ask my landlady if Grace mentioned anything about that night or if she appeared ill before or after this meeting. And you can ask one of the society officers if they know what happened without stirring up any suspicion. I can’t very well bring up the subject of Grace without revealing who I am.”

  “I still don’t understand why you want to keep your relationship a secret. Don’t you think that people would be even more forthcoming with you, as her cousin, than with me, some unknown freshman?”

  “Maybe so, if they had nothing to hide. But what if I am correct and something bad did happen to Grace, something worse than an attack of nerves or illness? Then wouldn’t the people involved be more likely to lie to me once they knew Grace was my cousin?”

  Laura flashed on how no one had believed her last year when she insisted that the death of Hattie, her own dearest friend from San Jose Normal School, wasn’t an accident. How awful it would have been if her sister-in-law Annie hadn’t been willing to investigate. She also had trouble seeing Grace Atherton as the kind of student who would run home in embarrassment if she made a fool of herself at a literary meeting.

  Laura made a swift decision and said, “All right, Miss Sutton…Caro…I will help. But I still don’t understand why you are trusting me with your secret when you won’t trust anyone else.”

  Caro pushed her glasses back up her nose, a mannerism that seemed designed to buy her a moment to think. She gave Laura a tight smile and said, “Because in one of her first letters to me this fall, she told me about this n
ew acquaintance she’d made. An intelligent brunette who was taking classes at the university while simultaneously working as a typesetter. She commented that you were very level-headed and that she was thinking about asking your opinion about something. Do you know what she was talking about?”

  Laura felt herself blush. “How nice of her, but I don’t remember her asking me anything of importance. I do remember she seemed intrigued by the fact that my brother supported his wife’s decision to continue to work after they married. I wonder if she was wondering if Willie Caulfield would do the same for her. You did say they were engaged?”

  “Yes, he proposed last spring, right before she came home for the summer. You seemed surprised to learn of that engagement.”

  “Not surprised that they were engaged, just surprised Grace never mentioned it. Although the few times I met Willie Caulfield, I didn’t think much of him. She may have sensed that. I’m not always very tactful. But Caro, couldn’t her relationship with Mr. Caulfield be the explanation of why she came home?”

  “Are you suggesting he jilted her?”

  Laura heard the outrage in Caro’s voice and said quickly, “Or maybe she was the one to end the engagement. In either case, isn’t it possible that she might be upset enough, particularly if she was already feeling ill, to wish for the comfort of her family around her, especially during the holidays?”

  Caro started to protest, and Laura rushed on, “All I am suggesting is that her reluctance to talk about why she came home might be that she’s not ready to reveal her feelings about the end of the engagement. Especially if she is having trouble regaining her health. It’s only been six weeks since she returned home. I’ve heard it can take that long to recover from a severe flu.”

  Caro shook her head vehemently. “First of all, this fall Grace already had begun to express doubts about Mr. Caulfield to me in her letters, even questioning whether or not she should break off the engagement. That’s why it is hard for me to accept that, even if there had been some sort of dramatic falling out between them, this would send her home. Her education is too important to her. Second, I refuse to believe that romantic disappointment, even if exacerbated by influenza, would explain why she was so upset that she would try to take her own life on Christmas Eve.”

  Chapter 8

  Sunday afternoon, January 9, 1881

  San Francisco

  “Dig—A hard student, a freak of nature rarely found.” College Slang Dictionary, 1881 Blue and Gold Yearbook

  “She told me Grace tried to kill herself!” Laura said to Seth, who sat next to her in the boarding house’s formal parlor.

  Seth, who hadn’t appeared to be very interested in her description of her interactions with Miss Sutton, stirred and said, “You are saying Miss Atherton tried to commit suicide?”

  “Miss Sutton woke up a little before midnight on Christmas Eve to discover that Grace was missing from her bed. When she got up, she found the family dog scratching frantically at the back door. Drawing on boots and a coat and lighting a lantern, she let the dog out, following him as he headed towards the woods to the north of the farm. It was snowing hard, so, despite the lantern, she couldn’t see if Grace had left any marks in the snow.

  “Thankfully, the dog had no difficulty tracking her cousin, eventually locating her face down in a snowbank, about a mile from the house. A couple of inches of thick snow already covered her. Miss Sutton said this may have kept her cousin from freezing to death, because the snow insulated her somewhat from the wind. As it was, they were worried for a few days that she might have contracted another lung infection, although she didn’t even end up with frostbite. A miracle, given she’d run out of the house in her nightgown and bare feet.”

  She glanced across the room where the boarders, Mr. Chapman, Barbara Hewitt, her son Jamie, and the new young boarder, Emmaline, were playing a card game, while Miss Minnie, the elderly dressmaker, was engaged in one of her usual monologues with her silent sister, Miss Millie. Laura wished she’d thought to ask Seth to accompany her on a walk so she could have some privacy for this conversation. She already felt guilty she was telling Seth what she’d learned; she certainly didn’t want any of the boarders to hear.

  When Seth didn’t say anything more, she added, “That’s why Caro felt she needed to come to the university, to find out what could have pushed her cousin to the point where she didn’t want to live anymore. She’s afraid Grace will try again, and her health is already so fragile.”

  “Why is Miss Sutton sure her cousin’s intent was suicide? Couldn’t she have been disoriented…as a result of her illness?”

  “That’s what Grace’s parents are saying. Insisting she had some sort of nightmare, perhaps was actually asleep when she left the house. But Caro said when she got to her cousin, Grace struggled against her and said, ‘Why didn’t you just let me go?’”

  “Not exactly definitive, is it?”

  “No, but what if Caro is right? And what if Grace tries again? Caro’s hope is that if she can find out what happened that upset her cousin so and can get her to talk about it, Grace will recover faster.” Laura stopped. This got a little too close to a sensitive topic with Seth. Laura knew that there were events from his past, like his wartime experiences, that still bothered him. A couple of times when he seemed in a decidedly black mood, she’d suggested that telling someone what was upsetting him might help. He had not responded well.

  “What does Miss Sutton expect you to do?” Seth asked.

  “She wants me to introduce her to people who knew Grace but keep her exact relationship secret…simply say she was disappointed to discover that Grace, a fellow Nebraskan, had left school.”

  “But why keep the exact relationship a secret?”

  “I didn’t understand at first, either. But she convinced me that if someone had purposefully done something to hurt Grace—say for example, her fiancé Willie Caulfield—that they would just clam up if they knew it was Grace’s cousin who was asking questions.”

  “If someone actually did something to Miss Atherton…I think it more than likely they will clam up if anyone asks about her.”

  Laura heard the skepticism in that comment, but since it echoed her own feelings, she didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, she said, “You’re probably right. However, the other reason she wants to keep her relationship a secret is that she doesn’t want people asking her about Grace. I can understand how uncomfortable she would feel if someone started quizzing her on why Grace disappeared before the end of the term. She doesn’t strike me as someone who is adept at lying.”

  “So she’s going to let you do the lying for her?”

  Laura hadn’t quite thought about it that way, but she shrugged and said, “Well, more of a lie of omission, since all I need to do is not mention that Caro and Grace are cousins when I introduce her to people.”

  A gale of laughter from across the room caught Laura’s attention, and she saw Jamie excitedly gathering all the cards on the table towards his chest in triumph. Dandy, his little black and white Boston terrier, was dancing on his hind legs, trying to see what was causing all the excitement.

  She looked at the clock on the fireplace mantel and saw that Celia and the others would be arriving soon. Celia had gone down to the Noe Valley early this morning to spend time with her family, but she was planning on returning to the boarding house this afternoon around three. This meant that for at least another hour Laura had Seth to herself. She thought maybe she would see if he would come across the hall to the study, where Annie had said she and her friends could work on Sunday afternoons.

  Seth moved restlessly beside her, stroking his mustache, and said, “Is Ned coming today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Seth shook his head and said, “I bet he’s too busy hobnobbing with his rich fraternity brothers to come.”

  “I’ll have you know, he spent all yesterday evening with Celia and Kitty, treating them to a nice dinner in Oakland, then escorting them to the N
eolaean meeting.”

  “Oh, then you can be sure he won’t come today. He won’t want to give his friends the impression he’s tied to any woman’s apron strings or is too interested in his studies. In any event, probably just as well if he doesn’t come. Celia will get more work done without him around.”

  Laura knew Seth was right about Ned’s tendency to spend more time making jokes than doing any hard work during their study sessions, so she changed the subject, saying, “I think I will look into the relative numbers and ratios of females and fraternity men in the Neolaean Literary Society and the Durant Rhetorical Society. Might be the basis for an interesting article for the student newspaper. When I was talking to Caro Sutton yesterday, I remembered that her cousin told me that the Durant Rhetorical Society, which used to publish the Berkeleyan, was seen as pro-fraternity and that this was the reason there were fewer women in that group.”

  “Didn’t the two literary societies hold joint meetings last fall?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t mean there might not be some old grievances. In fact, I can’t help but wonder if what you said about fraternity men teasing someone like Ned might not be true. I do know he said they scoff at anyone who spends too much time ‘digging,’ which as far as I can tell means anyone who studies hard. Caro Sutton said Grace thought that her fiancé, Willie Caulfield, had changed once he joined the Zeta Psi fraternity.”

  “That’s Ned’s fraternity, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. And, since they both live at the fraternity house over on College Avenue, it looks like they are becoming good friends. On Friday, during the society intermission, Willie came into the clubhouse with Ned, Celia, and Kitty. Evidently they all had dinner together. Willie was with a young lady I didn’t recognize. He introduced her as Sephronia Sinclair. Celia told me later that Sephronia is a student at Mills Female Academy. This gave me a chance to introduce Caro to Willie. He certainly wasn’t acting like he considered himself still engaged to Grace, given the way he was fawning over Miss Sinclair.”