Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  “Ah…and I bet he doesn’t want her to know until he’s made up his mind. Does he think she’ll be against the idea for some reason?”

  Nate shook his head as he sat back in his chair. “I don’t think Seth knows what she will think. But if I know Laura, whatever opinion she has, my little sister won’t be shy about expressing it.”

  Annie loved her sister-in-law…well…like the sister she never had. And she suspected that Nate and Seth, both of them more than ten years older than Laura, tended to view her forthrightness as a sign of her youth and naiveté. Not that they weren’t correct in some ways. Laura certainly didn’t always think before she spoke. However, Annie believed the passion that lay behind Laura’s desire to make the world she lived in a better place was not just a youthful stage, but an essential part of her nature.

  She also didn’t think Nate, or for that matter Seth, understood that some of Laura’s tendency to leap before she looked was because she thought of herself as timid and felt she had to push herself forward to counteract that timidity. What her husband saw as over-confidence in his sister, Annie recognized was lack of confidence, and she appreciated the bravery Laura showed every time she worked to overcome her fears, even when it got her into difficulties.

  Annie smiled, thinking about Laura’s newest cause—working out the puzzle of why her friend Grace had suddenly left campus last fall. The woman’s cousin, Miss Sutton, couldn’t have picked a better partner in her quest to find out the truth of what happened. She just hoped it didn’t interfere with Laura’s studies.

  She said, “Nate, do you think Laura would be upset that Seth is thinking of law as a career?”

  “No, I don’t. In fact, I’m not even sure she is still interested in law as a career…now that she’s had time to observe how unexciting most of the work I do is. Too boring.”

  “Oh, Nate, I don’t think that’s it. Laura strikes me as the kind of student who enjoys the pursuit of scholarship for its own sake…rather than worrying about the end product. I love hearing about all of her courses. She has what my father would call a ‘curious mind.’ She seems equally enthusiastic learning German grammar and algebraic formulas as studying the Greek plays and Shakespeare. And the other day she talked about looking forward to the chemistry class she will be taking next fall.”

  “What my father would say is ‘curiosity killed the cat.’ I wish she would pick one enthusiasm and stick with it.”

  “Just because you decided by the age of eighteen that you wanted to study law doesn’t mean everyone can or should be so single-minded. For that matter, I decided at that age I wanted to be married, and what a disaster that turned out to be.”

  Nate swiftly leaned over and took up her hand again, squeezing it gently. Annie knew he’d read the pain behind her last statement. That hasty decision to marry ten years ago had turned rapidly into a nightmare in which she lost her father, her fortune, and after her husband’s suicide, her independence…and for a long time, her own confidence. Maybe that was why she felt such a kinship with Laura and such a fierce desire to protect her young sister-in-law as she tested her wings.

  She squeezed Nate’s hand in return and consciously lightened her tone as she said, “And I think you will agree…that with a little experience under my belt, I made a much better choice in my second husband. So let’s be glad that Laura is taking her time and not rushing into either romance or a career.”

  At just a few minutes after five, Laura opened the door to Hank’s restaurant and looked eagerly towards the table near the back of the room that she’d started to think of as “their table.” Surprised, she saw it was empty, which was odd, because Seth usually got to the restaurant before her. She teased him that he arrived early so he could flirt with the pert, black-haired waitress named Rebecca. He said that it was to make sure they didn’t get stuck with a table by the front door where a sharp breeze hit you every time someone entered. Of course the fact that they met for dinner at such an unfashionably early time on a Saturday evening meant that this was unlikely to happen, and Laura suspected that Rebecca made sure to keep Seth’s favorite table free. The waitresses had been a bit stand-offish in her demeanor when Laura first started having dinner with Seth, but once she made it clear to the waitress that she and Seth weren’t a couple, just friends, the young woman had become nicer.

  Hank’s was a small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant located on Clay, in the middle of the block between Kearney and Montgomery, and only two blocks north of where Laura worked. It was also just two blocks west of the Niantic Building, where Seth ran the big Babcock press for the Rashers and Neppier Printing Company. Perfect place for them to meet and still have time to get a quick dinner in the hour between the end of her work day and the beginning of his night shift. The food was plain but wholesome and cheap, and as Seth always said, they had the best coffee around. Essential for someone who was about to start a ten-hour shift that ended at four in the morning. Laura also appreciated how it helped give her back some energy, something she needed after spending ten hours setting type.

  She nodded to the waitress as she headed to the table to sit down, briefly contemplating sitting where Seth usually sat, so she could watch for his entrance. But she didn’t, having noticed how uncomfortable he was unless he sat with his back to the wall, how he kept looking over his shoulder, jumping when someone behind him raised their voice or a plate clattered. She could tell it made him nervous not to be able to survey his surroundings. Same reason, she guessed, for his seating preferences in classrooms or the fact that he always seemed more at ease with her when they were outside, sitting under the apricot tree in the boarding house back yard.

  She’d commented on this once, and he’d said it was from years of riding the range…he didn’t like enclosed spaces. She thought it was more likely he’d chosen to ride the range because he didn’t like enclosed spaces, leaving her wondering what the Andersonville prison had been like.

  “Miss, will Mr. Timmons be joining you?” the waitress asked, handing her a menu.

  “That was the plan. Oh, there he is,” Laura said as she glanced over her shoulder and saw him stride hurriedly into the restaurant.

  After good-naturedly smiling at the waitress’s admonition that he shouldn’t keep a lady waiting, Seth sat down and apologized for being late. The boarding house on Vallejo was only five blocks away, all downhill, so she assumed he’d just misjudged the time. She was about to comment on this when he asked her how her meeting with Caro Sutton had gone and if they’d found out anything from attending the weekly Neolaean society meeting.

  While they waited for their dinner to be served, she told him all about their interaction with Willie Caulfield. After Rebecca finally served them, Laura went on to say, “I’m hoping that Ned will come to our study session tomorrow. Celia said he promised he would. You know how upset she was when she discovered he’d failed Latin.”

  “I suppose this means you are still determined to ask him questions about Willie. How are you going to do that without taking Celia and Kitty into your confidence?”

  Laura had put some thought into this, so she said, “I’m going to tell Ned that I want to ask him some general questions about what it is like living in a fraternity house…for the news article that I am thinking about writing on student life on campus. Which is the honest truth. Then I’ll mention Willie and my surprise that he didn’t know why Grace left campus, given that it was my understanding that they were engaged. Naturally that will introduce the subject of the Mills Academy girl he was with at last week’s Neolaean meeting. Knowing Ned, he’ll be more than glad to fill me in on the details.”

  “Do you think he actually knows anything of value? Besides, didn’t you tell me that Miss Sutton doesn’t believe that a simple break-up would explain why her cousin returned home?”

  “But that’s why bringing up the article on fraternities is such a good ploy. When I asked May Shepard, who is the Neolaean society vice-president, if she knew why Willie Caulfield and
Grace had broken things off, she told me that some of the men in the Zeta Psi fraternity were pressuring Willie to end his engagement to Grace, saying cutting things about her…including that she was too much of a grind. I then alluded to Grace’s failure to finish reading her essay at the clubhouse dedication ceremony, and May told me Grace had written a short note apologizing, saying she’d become ill.”

  “Isn’t that what you suspected?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t fit with what the landlady, Mrs. Feltzer, said. When Caro asked if Grace had been showing any signs of illness before or after that meeting, the landlady was vehement that Grace hadn’t shown a single sign of sickness all term. Evidently, Mrs. Feltzer has a fear of infection. She said she would have made Grace take her meals in her room if there was any possibly that she was suffering from any sort of physical ailment. So why would Grace tell May Sheppard she was ill?”

  “Maybe Miss Atherton felt ill with nervousness. It does happen.”

  Laura said, “I guess so. But why would that explain why she went home? Grace never struck me as someone who would let one embarrassing event keep her from completing her classes.”

  “I can see that. Isn’t one of the purposes of these literary society meetings to give students practice in public speaking? I can’t imagine that she would be the first to falter, whatever the cause.”

  “Yes, you are quite right. You should have heard the last speaker of the evening on Friday. He was shaking so hard he kept dropping his notes. Poor young man. In any event, Caro is going to look through Grace’s things, see if she can find a copy of the paper Grace wrote for that night. She says she’s been postponing doing this because the room was such a mess when she got there, books, exams, class notes, and clothes scattered everywhere. She feels this is, in itself, significant, because Grace is usually very neat and organized. I can certainly attest to that from the one time I visited her in her rooms. Meanwhile, I’m hoping Ned can shed some light on whether May Shepard was right, that his Zeta brothers were pressuring Willie to break off the engagement, and if he knows exactly what broke them apart…and when it happened.”

  Seth said, “Well, lots of luck getting anything of importance from Ned. I think I might just skip tomorrow’s study session if you are going to spend most of the afternoon listening to Ned’s gossip.”

  Laura started to protest. Then it occurred to her that Ned would probably be much more forthcoming if Seth wasn’t there, radiating disapproval. She said, “I would hate to drive you away. But it is early in the term, and I suppose much of the work we will be doing is review, for both Celia and Ned’s sake. If I know you, you spent today getting all your recitations prepared and are already through next week’s reading. Is that why you were late to dinner? You couldn’t tear yourself away from your Greek and Latin?”

  Laura took a last bite of her slaw and then looked up, surprised that Seth hadn’t answered her. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, pushing around the few remaining bits of potato left on his plate and then taking a last sip of what must be very cold coffee.

  Maybe he felt hurt that she agreed so readily with his suggestion that he stay away tomorrow. Maybe he wanted her to protest and ask him to come. She would have sworn he really didn’t have any interest in Caro Sutton and what happened to her cousin. Yet, now that she thought about it, he’d been the one to bring up the subject of Caro and Grace tonight. Maybe he was more interested than he let on.

  Chapter 12

  Thursday afternoon, January 20, 1881

  Berkeley

  “We stopped at the foot of North Hall steps and waited for the boys, seated there, to move for us.” 920 O’Farrell Street, Harriet Lane Levy

  Caro reread the letter she’d gotten this morning from her aunt Jean. She’d returned to her boarding house after Professor Moses’ political economy lecture on “The Function of Money” because she knew that by then the first post of the day would have arrived.

  Her aunt continued to maintain that every day saw an improvement in Grace’s health, measured in number of bites eaten at each meal and number of hours slept. But mention of the return of a bronchial cough and her aunt’s description of Grace being uncharacteristically moody didn’t sound positive to Caro.

  According to the letter, for some reason Grace was particularly out of sorts with the oldest of her three brothers, Bradley. At nineteen, he was closest to her in age and temperament. Normally they were the best of friends, but her aunt said Grace took the simplest comment from him as criticism. She also complained that Benny, her high-spirited ten-year-old brother, was too noisy, giving her headaches. The middle brother, the quiet sixteen-year-old Josh, seemed to be the only one she tolerated to be around her for any length of time. That was why they chose him to bunk down in the kitchen at night, in case Grace tried to leave the farmhouse again.

  Caro could tell that what disturbed her aunt the most was Grace’s refusal to attend church, even when the doctor said she had recovered enough to do so. While Caro didn’t share her cousin’s deep commitment to religion, she could understand why this change in behavior would be upsetting to her cousin’s devout parents. Grace never missed church when she was home, and Caro knew from her letters that she never missed going to Sunday services while she was at the university.

  Once again, she thought about going to see Reverend Mason. She’d looked him up in the local directory and saw he was the pastor at a church only a few blocks away. She knew Grace often attended his church, and she believed he was the one who got her involved in helping out with local deaf and blind students. Caro decided she would write him a letter, asking to meet with him.

  She felt her spirits lift with this notion. She’d been here nearly three weeks and really hadn’t learned anything besides the fact that something had happened to end Grace and Willie Caulfield’s engagement…and that her cousin hadn’t been able to finish reading her essay at the Neolaean Society meeting in November. Neither of these seemed sufficiently disastrous enough to explain her cousin’s subsequent behavior.

  Folding up her aunt’s letter, she hurried up the central North Hall stairway to the second-floor lecture room where she was taking German with the young instructor, Albin Putzker. Her understanding was that Putzker was Austrian. His accent was certainly different from that of her German professor at the University of Nebraska, as was his method of teaching. She rather liked Putzker, finding his focus on the linguistic roots of language interesting.

  Caro slipped into a seat next to Laura, saying, “I saw your friend, Mr. Goodwin, lounging on the front steps. Can we presume he’s angling for another tardy mark?”

  Laura sighed and said, “Probably. His fiancée, Celia, will be so disappointed. She seems to feel that somehow, since Ned and I are taking all the same courses, I should be able to get him to class on time.”

  “Did you get a chance to talk to him last weekend?”

  “Yes, I did. That’s why I haven’t been able to meet with you before or after class this week. I got behind on Sunday, talking to Ned, and then there was a crisis at work that required me to work extra hours, so I’ve been spending every extra minute in the library cramming for this week’s recitations.”

  Just then the bell announcing the start of class rang, and Caro whispered hurriedly, “I understand. Would it be possible for you to come to my boarding house tomorrow, after your ten o’clock class?”

  “Yes, I could do that. I wasn’t planning on coming back for the society meeting anyway, and since I’ve already worked enough overtime this week, my forewoman should be fine with me coming into work a little later tomorrow.”

  “Good, we can have some privacy and a little mid-morning tea as we share information. After this class, I have zoology, and I hope to invite one of the junior women in that class to meet me at the Golden Sheaf Bakery and Restaurant, see what she has to say about how Grace got along with her classmates.”

  Right after German, Caro had her zoology class over in South Hall, where all the science classes a
nd labs were held. She knew she would have to hurry if she wanted to get to class early, which was one of the reasons she found the group of men who monopolized the steps closest to South Hall so irritating. Either she had to go out of her way to take the other steps or she had to weave her way down through the crowd of male students, ignoring their muttered comments about stuck-up co-eds and grinds. Either way, she lost time.

  Of all the classes she was attending at Berkeley, zoology was the one she looked forward to the most, not having taken the subject at the University of Nebraska. This course also had the benefit of being required for all the juniors in the College of Sciences, including the lone female, Elvira Stokker, who was studying chemistry.

  Another junior, Julia Beck, had recommended she speak to Miss Stokker when Caro mentioned she was at the university to do some review work before applying to medical school. Julia said that it was her impression that Miss Stokker was friends with one or two of the women who attended the university’s medical school.

  Julia Beck boarded down the street from Caro, which meant they walked up to campus together every morning to attend the political science class. Caro had learned a good deal about the other women in Grace’s junior class from these morning walks. However, when the subject of Grace came up…Caro trotting out her Nebraska connection…Julia had gone strangely quiet.

  That had seemed odd…since Julia was from the small rural town of Watsonville, which should have given Grace and her a good deal in common, particularly when contrasted to the other women in the junior class who all seemed to come from San Francisco or Oakland, or in Julia’s words, from “big cities.”

  When Caro had expressed this sentiment, Julia blushed, mumbled something about “not wanting to get involved,” and then turned the conversation to Professor Moses, whom she thought was “frightfully clever” to have gotten a PhD.