Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  Chapter 33

  Thursday morning, March 24, 1881

  Berkeley

  “Charter Day at Berkeley: In the afternoon dancing was indulged in by several hundred young people.” San Francisco Chronicle, March 24, 1880

  “You are saying Sanders plagiarized this poem by this female poet?” Caro sat back in shock. “Word for word?”

  “Not precisely word for word. I found at least sixteen places where the poems either used the same word or similar phrases, but it isn’t like a whole sentence or a whole stanza was identical. On the other hand, after I looked through the rest of Sanders’ poems, this one just felt different.”

  “Felt different, how?”

  “Hard to explain, but setting type, you get familiar with an author’s voice—the words they use, particular choices in terms of punctuation, even things like length of sentences. I think this is particularly true about poets. And this poem scanned differently than most of Sanders’ other works. In comparison, the poem that Alice Carey wrote was very consistent with her style in her other works.”

  “In other words, if copying was done, it was Sanders copying her work, not the other way around?”

  “Yes, that was my conclusion.”

  “But you didn’t find any other of Sanders’ poems that seemed to be inconsistent? Like he might have copied someone else?”

  “No, I didn’t. But this volume contains poems he wrote when he was young. I haven’t tried to track down his more recently published work.”

  Afraid that the more the two of them were seen together in public, the more likely Laura would become the focus of the fraternity harassment, Caro had asked Laura to come to her boarding house between classes. She also didn’t want Laura spending too much of her hard-earned money on fancy tea and pastries at the Golden Sheaf when Caro was able to provide her with a perfectly good pot of tea and supplement her lunch with the scones she’d picked up at the bakery early this morning.

  Pouring out the tea into two cups, Caro said, “Grace would be terribly upset if she thought that Sanders might have committed plagiarism. She really hated what she called cheats. You think she would have confronted him?”

  “The timing works,” Laura said, pouring cream into her tea. “The negative comments in her class notes start about the same time she started to do research on this topic in the library. About three weeks later, the hazing starts. What if she went to see Sanders and confronted him? Then he mobilized the students, hoping that, like Julia Beck, Grace would be so upset she would leave school. Julia said she only lasted a month before she fled home. Sanders might not have been involved with that campaign, but he could have been aware of what happened to Julia.”

  “But Grace was made of sterner stuff, wasn’t she?” Caro felt that dagger twist in her chest and put down the scone. “I guess I am having trouble accepting that a man like Sanders, the senior member of the English faculty, would see this discovery as such a threat. As you pointed out, the poem was one he wrote when he was young. He might find it embarrassing…” Caro shrugged.

  “I don’t know. My normal school professors went on and on about how plagiarism was stealing. How we needed to drill this into students. Maybe this would be enough to get him fired. I think it’s important enough for me to see how he reacts if I ask him if he happens to have known Alice Carey and her poetry.”

  “I should be the one to confront him.”

  “No, Caro, if you talked to him, it would be just that, a confrontation. You are the one who said we need to be careful how we move forward. Something I failed to do with Ned.”

  Caro sighed, recognizing that her natural inclination to go it alone wouldn’t work here. Grace had urged her to ask for Laura’s help for a reason. “I see what you mean. If Sanders is innocent of any involvement in what happened to Grace, you are more likely to get an honest response from him than I would. All right, you talk to him.”

  “Before I threw all this stuff about Sanders at you, you said you had something to share as well. Did something happen yesterday at Charter Day?”

  “Several things happened. First of all, your altercation with Ned Goodwin on Sunday resulted in a very enlightening conversation.”

  “Really? Did Ned say something to you? Celia said that she and Kitty sat with you and that you had Chad, that nice sophomore from your boarding house, in tow.”

  “Yes, I did mean to thank you for having them save us a seat. Harmon was filled to the rafters with people.”

  “And how were the speeches?”

  “About what you would expect. However, it was after the ceremony was over that things got…interesting.”

  She then told Laura all about her conversation with Miss Sephronia Sinclair.

  Eyes wide, Laura said, “She broke down crying? How embarrassing; what did you do?”

  “I didn’t have to do anything. Elliot Sinclair had arrived by this time and dragged his sister away. Although I must say, if looks could kill, she would have followed her dearest Willie to the great beyond.”

  “Elliot was angry at her, not you?”

  “I’m sure he wasn’t happy with me, but he seemed the most upset over the fact she’d talked to me about the camping trip and was making a scene in public.”

  “Then he’s probably equally unhappy with Ned, who had to be the source of the ‘rumors’ she’d heard about Willie committing suicide. I don’t imagine Elliot, Bart Keller, or any of the other fraternity brothers who were on the camping trip appreciated him discussing the details of that trip with anyone, much less me.”

  “That could very well explain the state Mr. Goodwin was in when he arrived at the dance.”

  “You were at the dance?”

  “Yes, Laura, I was. Is that so surprising?”

  Caro tried to look offended but finally relented as Laura got all tied up explaining why she’d been surprised and she said, “I hadn’t planned on going, but Chad, poor boy, really wanted to attend. After he and I and Kitty and Celia had lunch on the lawn, we returned to the gymnasium at one when the dance started. I was informed the band was well known, and Chad turned out to be a very competent dancer, first escorting Kitty, then Celia in a turn around the floor.”

  “How nice of him. Kitty said she hoped she would get a chance to make good use of her years of dance lessons.”

  “Oh, she got lots of practice. As soon as Chad brought her back to where Celia and I were standing, a whole crowd of young men gathered around to ask her dance, and she wasn’t without a partner for the rest of the afternoon. Even that handsome professor she is taking French lessons from got a chance with her.”

  “Proctor? There were professors at the dance?”

  “Oh yes, including Sanders and his very young wife.”

  Laura laughed. “I’ve never met her, although Ned has frequently mentioned her in admiring tones.”

  “She’s got to be at least twenty years her husband’s junior. And Mrs. Shepard confided to me that she’d heard that she had been one of Sanders’ high school students back east.”

  “I’d never heard that. Maybe that explains why he was the professor that the authors of the scurrilous publication, the Scylla, decided to feature in their story of a love triangle with two students. And Mrs. Shepard told you about her? The mother of the Neolaean Society vice president?”

  “Yes, while Celia and Kitty were off dancing, I found myself sitting next to her. She was a fount of information.”

  “A gossip?”

  Caro smiled, thinking about the motherly woman’s ceaseless flow of information. “Let’s say that she is a very frank and uninhibited conversationalist and a widow who’s determined to help her children get college degrees. To that end, she’s been running a series of boarding houses for other students. Somehow, this year she got the university administration to rent her one of the two upper cottages.”

  “The one next to Professor Sanders’ cottage?”

  “Precisely. Both Mrs. Shepard’s daughter, May, and her son, Edwa
rd, live with her. Edward graduated last year but has stayed on to work on his doctorate. She has four other boarders, including another recent graduate, Lemuel Cheney, and his younger brother William, who will start at the university next fall. Lem Cheney is in his last year studying law at Hastings in the city, and Mrs. Shepard confided that she expected him to soon become engaged to May.”

  “I can’t believe she told you all that!”

  “Oh, that’s not the most interesting thing she told me. After enumerating all the benefits of the cottage, including recent repairs to the roof and plumbing and the fact that the university is only charging her $30 a month in rent, she said the one drawback was how close it was to the Sanders’ cottage. ‘Cheek by jowl,’ is the term she used. She said that her own bedroom was just a few steps away from the Sanders’ front door, which tends to squeak very loudly, so she is awakened every time someone comes in or out of the cottage at night.”

  “She’s saying that Sanders and his wife have a lot of late-night visitors?”

  “No, what she said was that she supposed that Mrs. Sanders got lonely those weekends when her husband went camping up in the hills.” Caro saw the light dawn in Laura’s eyes and waited for her response.

  “Oh, Caro! Do you mean to say that it isn’t Professor Sanders who might be having some sort of illicit affair, but his wife? What if Grace discovered this, somehow, and told Sanders? Afraid she would tell someone else and create a scandal, he could have decided to drive her out of town.”

  “Or, what if Mrs. Sanders, or whoever her lover is, discovered Grace knew about their affair?”

  Laura nodded her head vigorously. “That actually makes more sense. Did Mrs. Shepard hint at who this late-night visitor was?”

  “Not directly, but she did say that Mrs. Sanders seemed to be a favorite of some of the younger instructors and the ‘fraternity boys’ on campus. Said that she was always hosting little tea parties for them, even occasionally inviting some of the women students. Mrs. Shepard reported that her son Edward, who is a Zeta Psi alumnus and who has attended some of these events, says that while these gatherings are theoretically being hosted by Professor Sanders, Sanders often leaves to attend to some business back on campus. Her son seemed to think Sanders found these gatherings boring and, since there were often some other junior faculty members there, didn’t hesitate to turn hosting duties over to them.”

  “How odd. But you indicated that there is some connection with these parties and the late-night visitors.”

  “That’s what I got from Mrs. Shepard.”

  “So you are saying that Mrs. Shepard suggested that someone like Elliot or, heaven forbid, Bart Keller, could be the person who is showing up when Sanders is out of the way?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Shepard is very good at not directly suggesting anything. She just drops these little tidbits of information. One tidbit she shared was that Mrs. Sanders clearly took her responsibilities as a professor’s wife seriously, since she not only hosted these tea parties but she wrote out all the invitations to any event Sanders sponsored.”

  Laura frowned, then clapped her hands. “All the invitations? Like even those to the Philosophy Club meeting? That would mean she was the person who could have changed the time on Grace’s invitation. And, of course, if anyone discovered this, she could just say she made a mistake. But would she be doing this because Grace knew something about her, or could she be simply doing it on behalf of someone else, like this mysterious late-night visitor?”

  “It is also possible she did this on behalf of her husband. She would not be the first wife who was willing to do almost anything to help her husband if she thought he was being threatened.”

  “So, if she thought Grace’s discovery of Sanders’ plagiarism might get him fired, which would have a negative effect on her financial security, she might try to drive Grace away. Or, the squeaking door could simply be the result of her husband coming home late from his office, which wouldn’t be nearly as interesting a story for Mrs. Shepard to tell.”

  Laura stared at her cup of tea for a moment and then drained what was left, giving a little shudder. “Do you think that Mrs. Shepard was giving you all this information on purpose?”

  “I believe so. You see, at the last Neolaean meeting, when you left to catch the train, I helped May Shepard clean up the refreshments. She asked me how I was handling Grace’s passing, saying how much she had admired her. Turns out my cousin was the one who encouraged May to run for vice-president of the society this year, even though she is only a sophomore. She also said that she hated that Grace seemed to be having such a difficult time last term and had wondered if there had been anything she could have done to help.”

  “Sounds like she might have been aware of the harassment.”

  “That is what I thought, which makes sense since her brother is a Zeta alumnus. If he knew that May considered Grace a friend, he’d probably told her that some of the men on campus were going out of their way to give Grace a hard time. Like Julia Beck, May could be feeling guilty that she didn’t do anything to help out.”

  “And you think she discussed this with her mother, who decided to pass all this information on to you?”

  Caro nodded. “More importantly, Mrs. Shepard did it in a way that also made it clear that she would prefer that I not ask her daughter anything more about Grace.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I think that Mrs. Shepard is quite as clever as her daughter and has probably already learned that I seem to be the new target of fraternity hazing. And, as any good mother would, she wants to make sure her daughter doesn’t become the next target. I certainly don’t want that to happen either.”

  Caro looked at the clock and saw they only had a half an hour before they had to head back to campus. “I do think that, given this new information, you should have your meeting with Sanders as soon as possible. See if this whole poetry issue is relevant or not. Meanwhile, I finally heard back from Reverend Mason, and I have a meeting scheduled with him.”

  Laura ate the last bit of her sandwich and reached for a scone, saying, “Yes, I will see if I can talk to Sanders tomorrow before class to schedule a meeting. But you never told me about Ned. You said something about the state he was in when he got to the dance. What did you mean?”

  “I don’t know if Celia told you, but Mr. Goodwin sat with his father during the ceremony. Then, instead of picnicking with us, he went out with his fraternity brothers to Bachman’s for lunch. He was supposed to join us at the dance, but he didn’t show up until the band was playing the last song.”

  “Oh, poor Celia, she was looking forward to the dance.”

  “Actually, Chad did a good job of entertaining her, introducing her to a couple of his sophomore friends. As a result, she was kept as busy as Kitty on the dance floor. However, when Mr. Goodwin did arrive, he and his friends were clearly inebriated and started to disrupt the dance. They talked loudly, made fun of the band, cut in between couples who were on the dance floor, and made fun of those of us on the sidelines. Sanders and Proctor tried to get them to behave.”

  “Were any of the boys with Ned ones who’ve been making your life difficult?”

  “Only Bart Keller. Chad seemed to think the rest were all freshmen and sophomores. I am wondering if Mr. Keller isn’t acting a pied piper to the younger fraternity members.”

  “That would fit Ned’s description of him being the leader in terms of the recruitment and subsequent hazing rituals that seem to be part of fraternity life. Was Elliot Sinclair there?”

  “Yes, without his little sister. He studiously avoided me, but I noticed that he and a couple of other seniors were helping Sanders and Proctor get Bart and the other boys with him under control. As president of the Zetas, I imagine he realizes this is very much the kind of behavior that gives the fraternities a bad name…particularly since there were still a good number of students’ parents and town dignitaries at the dance.”

  “Celia wouldn’t have been best p
leased to see Ned in this condition.”

  “That’s an understatement. To make things worse, when Mr. Goodwin noticed that Celia was on the dance floor with Chad, he staggered over, pushed Chad away, and started dragging Celia off the floor, all the time berating her. She started to cry. As a crowd gathered, he got embarrassed, threw up his hands, and joined his friends, who were being ushered out of the building by Colonel Edwards, you know, the instructor in charge of the military drills on campus.”

  “How awful for Celia.”

  “Yes, although Mrs. Shepard took her in charge, inviting Kitty and Celia to come back with them to their cottage for a little supper. Chad and I were invited as well, but I thought we should head home before it got dark. Mrs. Shepard assured me that her son and Professor Proctor, whom she’d invited to supper as well, would escort Kitty and Celia to the train when it was time for them to head home.”

  Laura said, “Celia didn’t arrive back at the boarding house until about eight, and I assumed that she and Kitty and Ned went out to dinner in Oakland, which was the original plan. When she got home, she said she had a headache and needed to retire early, so she didn’t give me any details about the day. I didn’t think anything of it, since I thought she was still punishing me for Sunday. No wonder Ned missed Royce’s class this morning, although he wasn’t the only absent one. I suspect a good number will show up on Monday with parental letters saying their dear boys were ill. Ned must be embarrassed about his behavior, although I won’t be surprised if he finds some way to blame me for what happened, or that Celia will agree with him.”

  Chapter 34

  Friday morning, April 1, 1881

  Berkeley

  “But the tombstones of the old martyrs sharpened the share of the plough.” Alice Carey, The Female Poets of America, 1849