Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

  Laura shook her head, finding the whole idea far-fetched…particularly when she thought of Royce in this role. Much easier to see someone like Mrs. Sanders being involved…in order to protect her ability to buy her fancy dresses and pay for her little tea parties.

  “I’m glad to see you were able to make the meeting.”

  “Oh, Caro, you startled me.” Laura hadn’t seen her friend come up beside her.

  “I could tell you were deep in thought. The meeting doesn’t start for thirty minutes. Would you be amenable to a walk towards the gymnasium and back before we go in?”

  “If we can sit for a moment on one of the benches when we get up the hill. My feet are tired.”

  “Certainly. And here is one of my landlady’s doughnuts.” Caro unwrapped a handkerchief and offered Laura a warm, sugar-covered treat. “Dinner was some very over-done roast beef or I would have brought you a sandwich. But the doughnut is fresh.”

  Laura took the proffered dessert, thankful that she’d eaten her dinner on the train. She knew Mrs. Feltzer’s doughnuts could be deadly on an empty stomach. One of the unexpected benefits of Ian and Jamie, the two young boarders, selling the Evening Bulletin on Friday afternoons was that they came right by her workplace on their way to get their stack of newspapers. As a result, those Friday afternoons when Laura was planning on going back to campus, Mrs. O’Rourke had them drop off a sandwich and some fruit for her. And Mrs. O’Rourke’s meat was never overcooked.

  Caro said, “I found out more about Ruth Leverton, the student that Reverend Mason mentioned. They both worked as tutors for the Deaf and Blind Institute, and I looked her up in last year’s Blue and Gold and found that she was a junior last year.”

  “Ah, the notorious class of ’81.”

  “Yes, but when I asked Julia to point her out to me, she told me Ruth didn’t return to campus this past fall and that her name was no longer Ruth Leverton but Mrs. Foster Lawrence. She recently got married.”

  “Oh dear, then I guess she wouldn’t be able to tell us about what happened to Grace, unless they kept in contact. Do you think that is likely? Had Grace mentioned her to you?”

  “I went back and examined her letters from last year, and there were several references to someone with the initials R.L., but none for this fall. Seems likely that R.L. referred to Ruth Leverton, since Grace was always meeting R.L. for a meal before or after going to the Deaf and Blind Institute. Mason said Ruth and Grace both tutored there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Grace’s letters also mentioned R.L. accompanying her on some Sunday outings. According to Reverend Mason, Grace took one particular deaf student to church in Oakland a couple of Sundays a month. She would go to church with this student so she could sign the sermon to him, then she dropped him off to visit his aged grandmother. She would then stay in Oakland until it was time to return with him to Berkeley and take him back to the institute. It’s possible this Ruth might have come with her on some of these Sundays.”

  “What do you mean by signing?” Laura asked.

  “That’s what they call it when a person uses their hands to spell out letters and words for someone who is deaf. Grace had a friend in high school who was partially deaf. There was a manual the girl had, put out by a college for the deaf near the nation’s capital. Grace studied it so she could help her friend, who could read lips but had trouble speaking. I suspect that this is one of the reasons Reverend Mason got so excited when he met Grace on his missionary swing through Nebraska. I don’t imagine he’d found any other young women who had the intellectual capacity to do well at Berkeley, the strong moral commitment to be the force for good he was looking for, and the ability to use sign language.”

  They had just arrived at the bench outside the Harmon Gymnasium, and Laura gratefully sat down and looked out towards the bay, the sun still above the blanket of fog that was rolling in through the Golden Gate. This was going to be one of those nights when she was very happy that Celia and Kitty would be returning with her to the city, with Kitty’s coachman there to meet them when they got off the ferry. She loved a good San Francisco fog, when she was safely tucked away at home, sitting in front of a fire.

  She finished the doughnut, wiped her hands on the handkerchief, and said, “Did Julia have any idea if Grace would have kept in contact with this Ruth?”

  “I asked. She said she didn’t know, although since she had been out of school last year, when the friendship between Ruth and Grace seems to have developed, I don’t know why she would know. Her description of Ruth did make her sound like someone Grace would have liked. She said Ruth was a dedicated student. Not exactly brilliant, but that she worked hard at her studies and was especially good at math. Julia added that Ruth’s father is a wealthy grain merchant based in San Francisco and Portland and that she had once confided that her father wasn’t at all happy about her decision to attend the university.”

  “A grain merchant? Name of Leverton, I presume? My sister-in-law, Annie, might be able to tell me more about the family. While she now works primarily for women who run charitable organizations or have their own private wealth to manage, she has also had a number of quite prominent male clients. And one of the other boarders, Mr. Stein, seems to know every merchant in the city. I will ask them both about the Levertons. Actually, Mrs. Stein might be the better source for that. If Ruth’s wedding had any social prominence, she would know about it.”

  “It would be helpful if you could at least find out where Ruth is now living, if she is even in the city. I suppose it might be worthwhile for me to write and ask if she would mind me visiting to talk to her about Grace.”

  Caro pushed up her glasses and said, “This is probably a dead end. But one of the problems we have faced is that Grace didn’t seem to be very close to her fellow female students, besides you, of course. Ruth seems like she might be an exception.”

  Laura thought for a moment, then said, “You know, I’d been assuming that Grace’s invitation to dinner that one time was simply her being kind to a freshman, not the prelude to a deep friendship. I sort of assumed that was the reason she never invited me to stop by again. Frankly, I really didn’t think much about it since I was so busy just surviving the first term, content to pass a pleasant word with her now and again when we passed in the halls or found ourselves in the library at the same time. Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if she was afraid to pursue a friendship, afraid I could become a target for harassment as well.”

  Caro turned and said, “Laura, if that’s true, then it really is worth trying to track Ruth down. Who better for Grace to confide in than a woman who was no longer still attending the university?”

  The meeting had been a little sparse in attendance, as Laura had predicted. Maybe it was the program, which seemed particularly uninspiring this evening. She suspected that a good number of the essays were papers that had been originally written for high school English classes—where there were a set number of topics that teachers were supposed to assign. Or maybe it was the fact that the end of the term was fast approaching. Thank goodness for the glee club, which was closing out the evening with a stirring rendition of “What Wondrous Love is This.”

  Celia and Kitty hadn’t appeared at intermission, although this morning they told her that Ned planned to take them to a French restaurant in Oakland tonight and that might mean they wouldn’t get to the meeting at all. However, they did promise that Ned would bring them by the clubhouse by nine so they could go down to the train station together. Julia Beck and Alice Pratt had come to the meeting, so Caro would walk home with them. Laura was glad Caro wasn’t going to be heading home alone, even though she said that the harassment hadn’t picked up again.

  Laura feared that this was because the fraternity boys had decided to shift to targeting her instead. She hadn’t told Caro about her suspicions yet because she thought it was possible she was seeing conspiracies where there were none. For one thing, Bart had been behind almost everything that happened to her, and given his usual irr
itating behavior, she couldn’t be sure she was always the intended victim. It might have been a coincidence that all this week he’d just happened to be lingering at the door to the German classroom as she entered, so that she, or whomever she was with, had to ask him to move. And even if he did knock his books off his desk on Tuesday, right in the middle of her recitation, she’d seen him do this when other students were speaking as well.

  On the other hand, there was what happened Monday, when she went to work in the library in her hour between classes. As soon as she got there, she put her satchel down on the seat of the chair she liked to use in her favorite alcove, draping her shawl over it. Then she went to look for a book that her math instructor had recommended for those students who were having some trouble with their algebraic formulas. When she got back, the shawl was on the floor. She hadn’t thought anything about this at first, assuming it had slipped off accidentally. Until she noticed that the latch to her satchel was open, even though she’d remembered closing it. She couldn’t imagine what a thief would find of interest in the satchel, given that her change was safely in the little pocket sewed into her skirts. All the thief would have found was her math textbook, her Latin grammar, and her notebook.

  Tuesday, she hadn’t gone back to the library because she’d spent the two hours between her classes at Caro’s boarding house, hearing what she’d learned from her visit with Reverend Mason. Then on Wednesday, she left just her shawl on her chair when she went downstairs to use the facilities in the Ladies Lounge. When she got back, the shawl was on the floor and Bart Keller was sitting in her seat, giving her a wide, self-satisfied grin. She picked up the shawl, told him to grow up, and looked for a different chair.

  However, Monday’s open satchel suddenly seemed more sinister, and she took the time to go through her textbooks, half expecting to find some nasty note from him. She didn’t, which might have meant she’d come back too quickly on Monday. Or that her imagination was getting the better of her.

  Later Wednesday afternoon, as she walked down the path exiting campus, the Zeta sophomore, Brick, galloped past her, hitting her shoulder a glancing blow. However, he had stopped, turned bright red, and apologized profusely. Just an accident? On the other hand, he kept looking back up the path, as if to see if his actions were being observed. That struck her as odd, and even stranger, as she got to the western entrance of campus, she passed Brick trudging back up the path. Where had he been going in such a hurry?

  On Thursday, she decided to study in the Ladies Lounge instead of the library, but when she got to German class, Bart was once again hanging out by the classroom door. As she pushed past him, she trod on his foot. He swore, and she said in a loud tone that she was ever so sorry. A couple of the boys sitting in the back row laughed. Bart, clearly miffed, was especially obnoxious throughout the class, making comments under his breath, rolling his eyes whenever anyone raised their hand to recite, and babbling some old German nursery rhyme when Putzker called on him.

  Now that she thought about it, maybe Bart had been the reason Instructor Putzker was so out of sorts yesterday.

  And Bart being obnoxious, even if she seemed to be experiencing more than her fair share of his rude behavior this week, didn’t mean this had anything to do with her role in investigating what happened to Grace. It was possible that Bart was giving her a hard time for a completely different reason.

  Like the fact that she wouldn’t let Ned, and by extension his fraternity brother, Bart, crib from her notes for the coming German exam. Monday, after her math class, Ned came running up and asked to borrow her German notebook—which contained all her translations. He said that all he was going to do was to make sure he’d done the assignment for that day correctly. She told him what she had before, that she would go over his work on Sundays, but that she was done with letting him look at her work. Ned had repeated his earlier jibe that if she didn’t watch out, she was going to get a reputation as a “grind and a moralizing prig,” just like Grace. Then he stalked off in a huff, and she couldn’t help but notice that he went right over and sat down next to Bart on the North Hall stairs, showing him his empty hands.

  Laura sighed. She knew she was working so hard to dismiss what had been going on as anything important because she didn’t want to acknowledge that the incidents this week started right after she had her conversation with Sanders. Something Caro would no doubt point out when she did tell her what was going on.

  She couldn’t have been that wrong about Sanders and his innocence in regard to the fraternity hazing, could she?

  “Laura, I wish you could have seen it. The waiter was French, and Kitty gave him her order as if she’d been born speaking the language,” Celia said. “Ned insisted that if we had chosen to go to Bachman’s, he would have been able to do an equally good job ordering in German.”

  Kitty laughed and said, “Theodore then asked him a question in German, and Ned wasn’t able to understand a word of what he said. I think the only German he knows is how to order beer.”

  Kitty and Celia arrived about ten minutes after the Neolaean program ended, when most of the people in attendance had already left, and they blithely explained that both Ned and Instructor Proctor had urgent business elsewhere, which was why neither had waited around to escort the three of them all the way to the train station.

  Laura’s first thought was how rude it was for the two men to abandon Celia and Kitty. Her second thought was, when did Kitty start referring to her French tutor as Theodore? Her third thought was, given how dark the path was, Ned Goodwin, in an inebriated state, would have been more hindrance than help in getting them to the train in safety.

  There she was, being a moralizing prig, she supposed. Since both Kitty and Celia were Irish Catholics, and actually used wine for communion, they might not be bothered if their escorts had a glass or two of wine at a French restaurant. And it would have been slightly hypocritical if Kitty, whose father made his first fortune as a saloon keeper and still owned several breweries, complained about an older man like Proctor drinking alcohol.

  Laura, on the other hand, had been brought up listening to Protestant sermons on the evils of drinking to excess, and she tended to agree with Grace Atherton’s letter to the Oestrus that argued that a temperance society on campus would be a positive contribution to the university. She wasn’t sure she supported the idea of complete abstinence, but she was relieved when Nate stopped drinking hard liquor after he started courting Annie. And, as far as she knew, Seth Timmons didn’t drink at all. She suddenly wished he was by her side, so she could take his steady arm and chase away the dark shadows on the path.

  “Well, if it’s not three little female freshies, taking a midnight stroll.”

  Celia let out a little scream as Bart Keller loomed into their path and stopped, standing no more than three feet away. He unsteadily rocked back and forth on his toes, his battered grey top hat pushed back on his forehead, his suit coat unbuttoned, and his tie askew. The stench of alcohol was overpowering.

  Laura moved forward a step and told him firmly to get out of their way.

  “Isn’t that just like you, Miss vinegar-tongued Dawson? Expecting a man to get out of your way. Won’t be happy, will you, until the university is filled with old, dried-up spinsters?”

  Kitty moved up beside Laura and said softly, “Mr. Keller, please. Do be a gentleman. We need to get to our train.”

  “What would you know about a true gentleman?” Bart spat at their feet, and Kitty gasped.

  Laura put her arm around Kitty and whispered, “Pay him no mind. While I distract him, you and Celia turn off the path and go around him. We are only a few steps from the carriage road, and it should be easy for you to run on down to the campus entrance and town. If he doesn’t let me by, I’ll go back to the clubhouse and get someone to escort me to the station and meet you there.”

  Kitty whispered, “Are you sure?”

  Laura nodded sharply, and as Kitty moved behind her, she snapped her finger
s at Bart to focus his attention on her and said, “What is this all about, Mr. Keller? Afraid you’re going to fail German if you can’t crib from my notes? Upset because you couldn’t get any of the dried-up old maids to dance with you at Charter Day?”

  She heard Kitty quietly asking Celia, who was sobbing, to hush, then saw them move off to the right.

  Bart sneered and said, “Like I need your help. Old Putzker wouldn’t dare touch me. Not if he knows what’s good for him. Stupid foreigner, don’t even talk right. Ought to be a law against them. Why would I want to dance with some jumped-up Irish whore like Kitty Blaine and a country mouse like Miss Beale?” He then looked confused and said, “Where did those two potato-eaters go?”

  “Never you mind. Why don’t you go on back to your Zeta brothers? Maybe they enjoy conversing with a drunken sot.”

  Bart growled a curse and lunged towards her. She tried to back away, but he got her in a bear-hug, his hot, stomach-turning breath blanketing her face. He pulled away enough to begin fumbling under her cloak, trying to unbutton her bodice as he muttered, “Maybe not so dried up, after all, are you? Just need…little taste of what a…what a real man can offer. Not some lily-livered hick like Timmons.”

  Laura pushed hard against his chest, and at the same time, she kicked out, connecting with what felt like a shin bone. He shouted and staggered back. She gave him another shove, and as she ran past him, she saw him stumble and start to fall. As she ran down the path, she heard his curses, but she didn’t hear any sounds that he suggested he was following her.

  Her heart pounding, she flew down the path, heading for the glow of a lantern some yards away. When she got there, the path opened up into the carriage road, and with relief, she saw Kitty and Celia waiting for her.

  Chapter 38

  Sunday afternoon, April 10, 1881