Dangerous and Unseemly

by K. B. Owen

  Miss Hamilton nodded in approval.

  Miss Bellini added, “Those dolls – they would take time to make, would they not? Perhaps other girls may have noticed a bit of the sewing, even if they did not understand the significance of it back then?”

  Miss Hamilton nodded again. “Very well. But I would suggest that we make it a casual, less intimidating sort of enquiry. Approach students with whom you have an established relationship of trust. We shall proceed from there.”

  The gathering broke up soon thereafter, with the decision to resume classes in the afternoon. The lady principal urged the faculty to stay vigilant. “Any violation of the ten o’clock rule should be swiftly dealt with.”

  Concordia put on her jacket and tried to slip out with the other teachers when Miss Hamilton called to her. “Miss Wells, a moment please.”

  Concordia, pausing, saw sympathetic glances cast her way as the others left.

  “Let us go to my office,” Miss Hamilton said, shrugging on a finely tailored jacket of antique gold, with bronze velvet facing on the lapels to match her skirt. It made Concordia’s own knobby blue wool, which she considered quite smart-looking when she bought it last year, seem dowdy by comparison.

  They stepped out the door to a temperate February day, especially welcome after the bone-chilling temperatures of last night. Concordia appreciatively breathed in the sharp scent of damp earth, a promise of spring to the winter-weary. The lady principal set a brisk and nimble pace. Concordia, more diminutive in build, struggled to keep up with her longer strides, and dodged the melting snow piles edging the path with considerably less grace. Her view more often than not was that of Miss Hamilton’s tall, straight back as she fell behind.

  They were approaching Founder’s Hall, a two-winged brick structure which housed the library, study rooms, a faculty lounge, and offices. Known simply on campus as “the Hall,” it was as old as the chapel and constructed in the same gabled, vaulted Gothic style. The college had quickly outgrown the Hall’s early purpose as a classroom building and had to construct another, as well as a badly needed larger dining hall. These buildings formed an open quadrangle that was the heart of the campus. There was a pond on the far side of the building cluster, a favorite for skating parties this time of year. Although perhaps not for long, she thought, glancing at the warning ropes strung across one section of the pond, where the ice had softened.

  Concordia loved the blend of old and new on the campus, the two-fold sense of legacy and progress. It was a small college by most standards, with three hundred current students, approximately half of whom lived in the six residential cottages, with the rest traveling daily from town by street rail. Yet the school boasted many of the same modern comforts as the larger women’s colleges in the region, such as upgraded electric lights and steam heat. The school also claimed a roster of esteemed professors among its faculty, particularly in the subjects of physics and moral philosophy. She was fortunate to be teaching here.

  Concordia was so preoccupied that she nearly collided with Miss Hamilton, who had finally stopped beside the door to the Hall. Fortunately, that lady seemed equally distracted, as she checked her watch.

  “Oh, dear, it’s later than I thought.” Miss Hamilton shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t have time today, Miss Wells, but there are matters that I wish to discuss at our earliest opportunity. I have a task in mind for you. You are finished with classes as of three o’clock tomorrow, I believe?”

  Concordia nodded. How the lady principal managed to keep the schedules of three dozen faculty members in mind was a feat she could not contemplate. There were times when she had difficulty remembering what day of the week it was.

  “Splendid. Three o’clock tomorrow, in my office, if you please,” Miss Hamilton said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”

  As Concordia watched her hurry inside, she wondered what the lady principal could possibly want her to do.

  Chapter 4

  Week 3, Instructor Calendar, February 1896

  “Composition books out, ladies.” Concordia turned to the large chalkboard behind her on the instructor’s platform, and wrote out the day’s assignment for her “Masters in English Poetry” students.

  With a rustle of skirts, satchel flaps, and a number of stifled groans, the sophomores began copying the essay question. A few squinted at the board; the weak daylight filtering through the leaded-glass windows of Moss Hall did little to brighten the room. Concordia switched on the electric lights along the walls. She caught a whiff of burnt filament as a bulb behind her flickered and went out. She suppressed a sigh. Third one today. Gas lamps are more reliable than this faddish invention.

  Discontented murmurs in the back corner of the room caught her attention.

  “Yes, Miss Landry; you have something to contribute on the subject of Mr. Wordsworth’s Preludes?” Miss Landry and her cohort, Miss Spencer, were a popular duo. Give them any latitude, Concordia had learned, and discipline in the classroom would quickly degrade.

  Miss Landry was a pretty, brown-haired girl, with a snub nose and a demeanor to match. The girl assumed an aggrieved air. “Oh, Miss Wells, Wordsworth is such a grind.”

  Several students nodded their agreement. Miss Spencer managed a pretty pout.

  “When are we going to study someone exciting—and radical,” she continued, “such as Lord Byron?”

  Concordia had been expecting some sort of mutiny from the girl; it had been weeks since she last staged a rebellious display.

  “One’s course of studies should not be determined by popularity, Miss Landry,” Concordia answered evenly. “Mr. Wordsworth shaped an important poetic tradition, and was England’s poet laureate, both of which you should know by this point.”

  More sighs.

  Concordia plowed on. “We cannot proceed to Lord Byron and his company until you and your fellows show mastery of today’s writing theme. Furthermore, I am expecting better work from the class than I have seen heretofore.”

  There was an uneasy shifting in seats.

  She drove her point home. “I cannot countenance sloppiness – neither sloppy thinking nor sloppy handwriting. This is not a ‘snap course,’ ladies.”

  After a pause she pointed to the question on the board.

  “You may begin writing.”

  As the students bent over their work, Concordia wondered if her rebuke had any effect upon Miss Landry and her set, each of them the product of long-established New England upper-society families. These particular girls were part of a new breed of privileged young ladies: those here for the “college experience.” It was the social life of the college, rather than the pursuit of higher learning or a vocation, that mattered to them.

  Such a phenomenon produced dismay among the older women professors. Concordia had listened to a number of lamentations on the subject in the professors’ lounge. Miss Cowles, who had an opinion on nearly everything, was particularly vocal.

  “These young things have no idea how the women before them have fought to get a college education,” Miss Cowles said, spectacles quivering down her thin nose in her agitation. “My poor mother, the good Lord rest her soul, lived in terror that I would return home from college a raving lunatic. She believed everything she read in Harper’s, especially the Clarke article – remember that one?—about the damage that academic study can produce in a young lady’s brain. Oh, the rows we had!”

  Concordia recalled her own struggles with her family when she wanted to attend college. Although she was younger than Miss Cowles, the early ideas about a woman’s “limited” intellect still lingered.

  Another teacher chimed in. “I agree with you, Jane. I find it exceedingly odd that now it is fashionable for these society girls to go to college, but, oh, not to study, mind you. If we are not careful, women’s colleges will be in danger of becoming social clubs.”

  Concordia didn’t believe the situation was quite so dire, but she had kept her opinion to herself. There wa
s no denying that, for at least some of these young ladies, college life was a round of teas, frolics, dances, clubs, and boys.

  And, lately of course, pranks. Concordia found her thoughts straying to yesterday’s incident, and Miss Hamilton. How did she feel about a knife being plunged into her effigy? Why hers, and no one else’s? Such overt hostility was perplexing. Concordia could think of nothing the woman had done to provoke such a response. The knife suggested spite, rather than harmless mischief.

  It had been a relief, at least, to find one matter resolved, upon President Richter’s return yesterday afternoon. According to the faculty gossip chain (Miss Bellini was an excellent source of information), Richter had little to say about the prank when it was reported to him, and had, in fact, been rather brusque in the face of Miss Hamilton’s questions. He had a meeting with the trustees, and that was the end of the subject. He did, however, express concern over the disappearance of Miss Lyman.

  No one knew where the bursar could possibly be. She wasn’t in her office, or her faculty quarters; she had not been seen by anyone, nor had she left word about a family emergency requiring her to leave campus. By all accounts, she had seemed upset lately, so perhaps a family crisis was to blame. But why depart without notice of any kind?

  Word spread throughout campus that the lady principal had sent telegrams to Miss Lyman’s immediate family this morning, inquiring as to her whereabouts. President Richter, reluctant though he was to contact the police and invite negative publicity for the college, pledged to do so if the bursar had not been heard from today.

  Concordia suppressed a sigh and, checking her watch, brought her attention back to the task at hand.

  “Pass your papers forward, please.”

  She continued with the lesson as she collected them.

  “Perhaps you would find Mr. Wordsworth more interesting if you had made yourselves better acquainted with his biography. You would have learned that he was quite the radical in his youth, and supported the cause of the French Revolution.”

  She suppressed a smile as the students leaned forward more attentively. Wordsworth, a revolutionary? Perhaps he was not such a grind, after all.

  “He and his fellow activists,” Concordia continued, “William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Paine, among others, dreamed of a society of equals, with a government run by the consent of the people, for the common good. But Wordsworth found, to his horror, that the Revolution had turned their dream for France into a bloody nightmare.” Concordia quoted from memory:

  Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks,

  Head after head, and never heads enough

  For those who bade them fall….

  “Some of you may recognize Wordsworth’s allusion to the guillotine. Turn to Book Ten of The Prelude, beginning with line 307,” she directed.

  As the students flipped through pages, Concordia turned her attention to the instigator.

  “Miss Landry, you may begin reading aloud.”

  Miss Landry, momentarily bested, stood and smoothed her skirt, and began.

  A shriek from outside stopped the recitation and sent Concordia and the girls rushing to the windows.

  The disturbance came from the pond, just below. With a quick glance at the sight of hand-wringing girls crouched at the pond’s edge, Concordia snatched her jacket.

  “Fetch the custodian and tell him to bring a long pole. Quickly!”

  Open-mouthed, Concordia’s students watched her dash out of the room.

  Chapter 5

  Week 3, Instructor Calendar, February 1896

  Concordia half ran, half slid down the snowy hill to the pond, gloveless and jacket flapping, hands and feet already chilled by the time she reached the scene.

  It was a skating party of four girls, half of whom had fallen through the ice and were flailing in the water in the middle of the pond, the other half flailing just as ineffectually on dry land.

  “Stop that caterwauling at once, or so help me, I shall push you in to join your companions,” Concordia snapped.

  Her threat—or the fact that she had flung a clump of snow at their heads for good measure—served to quickly settle the girls down.

  “You—go get more help—and blankets.” One young lady scurried off.

  Concordia looked across the ice to where the other two, Miss Dellawan and Miss Patterson, had fallen through. Miss Dellawan had by now managed to pull herself out of the water and lay in an exhausted, shuddering heap. She was in no condition to help her companion, still struggling in the water. Concordia could see Miss Patterson trying for a hand-hold along the slick edge of the ice, breaking off fragile bits, which only widened the hole she was in. The girl would go under soon, from sheer exhaustion and the weight of her skirts.

  “Pass me the end of that rope,” Concordia directed Miss Gerald, pointing to the caution rope which had sectioned off the thinning ice. The heedless girls had obviously taken it down in order to skate. One end was still tied around a tree trunk.

  Wrapping the free end of the rope around her arm, Concordia cautiously stretched out on her stomach along the ice, as she had seen a cousin once do when rescuing the family’s sheepdog at Aunt Florence’s farm. “It distributes your weight, so you’re less likely to fall through,” he’d explained.

  Let’s hope this works. She pushed herself forward across the ice, testing to see where the surface would hold her weight. Her progress seemed agonizingly slow, and the ice made alarming creaking noises. Once, a section caved beneath her torso a few inches, soaking her breathless in icy water.

  Concordia looked over at Miss Patterson. Her head was still above water, thank goodness, but she was barely moving.

  “I’m c-c-coming!” Concordia called. “Float on your back if you c-can!” It was surprisingly difficult to shout while lying on one’s stomach. She could barely get a breath between her chattering teeth, and her midsection had gone numb. But she was nearly there.

  “Miss Wells!” a voice shouted.

  She turned on her side to glance back to shore, where her class had now gathered, along with Mr. Drew, the custodian. He gestured to a ladder that he had tied to another rope. “This shud do better for ye!” Carefully, he slid it out ahead of him on the ice as he crawled towards Concordia, who continued to edge cautiously toward Miss Patterson.

  By this point she was in arm’s-reach of the girl, who was fading in and out of consciousness. Sliding as close as she dared to the hole, Concordia lunged and grabbed the young lady’s collar, gasping as her own face and chest were doused.

  Despite the girl’s sodden skirts, she was buoyant enough for Concordia to pass the rope under her shoulders and tie a clumsy knot. Her fingers were too numb for anything better. She hoped it held.

  “Pull!” she called to the growing crowd on shore. Several sets of hands smoothly pulled the rope. Soon Miss Patterson, revived and sobbing in relief, was safe in a cocoon of blankets.

  Mr. Drew and the ladder had reached Miss Dellawan, who was shaking uncontrollably. Concordia slid over to them, took off her damp jacket and wrapped it around her. “Lay f-f-flat on the l-l-ladder,” she told the girl.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get to ye sooner, miss,” the custodian said, helping her with Miss Dellawan. “I knew it was a ladder ye really needed—better’n a pole—but somebody’d moved it from the Hall’s back shed. Took a bit o’ time to find.”

  Concordia could only nod stiffly. She felt as if she would never get warm again. And she must be a sight. Her hair had come out of its pins, she had lost a boot somewhere, and her wet skirts clung to her legs.

  At last, they all reached safety to a chorus of cheers, and more helpfully, blankets. Amid the profusion of thanks, tears and embraces, all Concordia wanted was to go back to the cottage to change into dry clothing.

  “Miss Wells.”

  That stern tone could only belong to one person.

  Sure enough, there stood the lady principal, wearing an expression colder than the pond water tha
t saturated Concordia and the miscreants. The crowd dispersed, suddenly recalling engagements elsewhere. Only Concordia, Mr. Drew, and the soon-to-be-disciplined band of four remained.

  Concordia suppressed a groan. She remembered, now, that her appointment with Miss Hamilton was—now.

  Miss Hamilton had turned her attention to the girls. “Can you walk? Good. Go directly to the infirmary and wait for me there. And count your blessings that we have quick-thinking staff to keep you from killing yourselves.”

  Dripping, sniffling, and trailing the ends of their blankets along the ground, the offenders shuffled off to the infirmary. Concordia was tempted to sniffle and shuffle off, too. Instead, she wrapped her blanket—and what remained of her dignity—more firmly around her.

  “I know I’ve missed our appointment, Miss Hamilton, but if I c-c-ould just ch-ch-change—” Drat. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Let’s get you back to your cottage, Miss Wells, before you catch your death. We’ll discuss this” —she gestured vaguely at the pond, ropes, ladder, and Concordia’s stockinged foot— “later.” She picked up a muddy boot lying on the ground and held it out. “I believe this is yours.”

  As Concordia sat on the ground to put her boot back on and the custodian cleaned up the discarded rope, Miss Hamilton looked out over the pond.

  “We should prohibit skating here the rest of the season. These girls have no sense. Mr. Drew, could you—” She broke off in mid-sentence, as she caught sight of something on the far side of the pond, partly obscured by low-hanging tree limbs. She paled.

  Concordia followed her gaze, and caught her breath. Directly below the tree’s shadow, amid another break in the ice, was a rounded, clothed hump.

  “Mr. Drew.” Miss Hamilton’s voice held just a hint of a quaver. “Fetch the president. And the police. We have found Miss Lyman.”