Laura shrugged. “The truth is, Kitty and Celia are better suited to be close friends. They have the same academic interests, they share similar backgrounds—including the fact they both lost their mothers and have difficult fathers.”
“Is any of that your fault?”
“No, but it is my fault that I expected Celia, and Kitty for that matter, to take my side against Ned. I know Kitty is upset with Ned’s behavior as well, but she keeps her mouth shut and just listens to Celia. As a result, Celia probably feels safe talking to her about him.”
“And so, that is the one thing you can start to do differently with Celia. I can’t promise that it will heal this breach, but I can promise that you will feel better.”
Annie sat and stroked Laura’s hair. After a moment, she said, “But that’s not all that is bothering you, is it?”
“Why didn’t Seth tell me that he’d started working as a clerk in Nate’s office? You did know, didn’t you? Why all the secrecy? I mean, even Celia and Kitty knew. Why keep it a secret just from me?” Laura looked over at her, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Oh Laura, I’m sorry. I should never have agreed to Nate’s request to let Seth tell you himself. The explanation Nate gave me was that Seth was worried that you would be upset that he was thinking about switching to law as a potential career. As a result, Seth didn’t want to say anything until he had done the job for a while and was more confident in his choice. It never occurred to me that he wouldn’t tell you after the arrangement became permanent. Frankly, I sort of hoped he had told you but that it was such trivial issue that you hadn’t mentioned it. I see that was wishful thinking on my part.”
“I just don’t understand. I thought we were best friends. I know I haven’t had as much time for him since Caro came back, but then he hasn’t had as much time for me either—and now I know why—he’s working two jobs.”
“You’re going to have to ask him about why he didn’t tell you. But don’t go into that conversation assuming you know the answer. That’s something I’ve had to learn with Nate. We both get into trouble when we make unwarranted assumptions about what the other one is thinking.”
“You mean, the way Seth thought I would be upset with him switching to law? And how I keep making the assumption he’s siding with Celia against me?”
“Yes, like that.”
“It’s so hard with Seth; he never wants to talk about things. Tell me what he’s feeling. He keeps everything bottled up inside. I don’t even know if he wants to be friends. Maybe he sees me as some sort of responsibility. That’s what Celia implied, that I was making life difficult for him, because Nate would be upset with him if anything happened to me.”
“Oh, dear, that was unkind of her. I can assure you that Seth has not been making reports about you to Nate. And why do you think he doesn’t want to be friends?”
“Well, you know that when he started coming to visit me when I was teaching at that rural school, it was only because Hattie asked him to look out after me.”
Annie laughed and said, “And you think that all the Saturday dinners, all the Sunday study sessions, he was still obeying that directive?”
Laura hung her head and said, “No, you’re right. I’m being silly.” She sat up. “Yet this term has been different. Not just because we have had less time together. But even when we are together, I don’t know, there’s something getting in the way. Instead of growing closer, we seem to be growing apart. I can see why that happened with Kitty and Celia, but I don’t understand why it’s happening with Seth.”
“Again, you need to ask him. But before you do, you need to think about what you want from him. If you want complete honesty from him, about his feelings, you need to make sure you are being completely honest with him…and sometimes that means being more honest with yourself. What do you want out of the relationship with Seth?”
“I don’t know, Annie. I only know I want more than what we have right now. I miss him. I know I see him every day of the week, but it’s not been like it was this past fall, and I just plain miss him.”
As Annie awkwardly moved to put both of her arms around Laura, who was crying softly into her shoulder, she told herself she knew exactly how her sister-in-law felt. She missed Nate, even though he was just downstairs, working. She missed spending time with him, sharing jokes, telling him about her work, hearing about his. She missed going to sleep with his arms around her, waking up and having that quiet twenty minutes or so in the morning before Kathleen would arrive with their morning tea. Nowadays, she was well asleep before he retired, he rose before the crack of dawn, and when he was here, he was so preoccupied with work she didn’t believe he heard half of what she said to him.
She needed to take her own advice about being honest about what she wanted. She wasn’t even sure if Nate did give her his full attention, she would be able to tell him how frightened she was of the impending birth of their child. He was battling his own fears the only way he knew how, by working as hard as he could to save up money for their future. Would it help if he knew how scared she was? Did she have the energy to then try and calm his fears? Yet she needed to confide in someone, because carrying the burden of her own anxieties alone was making things worse.
Hearing Annie sigh, Laura sat up, wiped her tears with the back of her hand, and said, “I’m such a fool. Whining on about my problems. Not asking how you are…besides angry that Nate is downstairs working and you have to put up with his pitiful little sister.”
“Oh, darling, it does me good to get out of myself. But I would like to ask something of you. I know your current plan is to go down to your parents’ ranch next Saturday morning so you can spend Easter morning with them. I was wondering if you could postpone your visit?”
“Of course I can, but why? Is there something wrong? Oh, Annie, what is it?”
Annie shook her head, and when she mopped up her own tears with the edge of her nightgown cuff, she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. Now I’m the one being silly. It’s just that, with Nate so busy, I know I would feel better with you in town. I get these unreasonable fears, particularly in the evenings. During the day, with Kathleen popping in and out, or Jamie and Ian bringing me my newspapers to read, or even having Dandy here to amuse me while the children are at school, I can keep busy. But when everyone is downstairs at dinner, or in the parlor until bedtime, or have retired for the night, the room gets cold and lonely and it’s harder to keep the fears at bay. That’s when I really appreciate your company.”
“What fears?” Laura leaned over to her bedside table and took out two clean handkerchiefs, handing one to Annie.
Annie blew her nose, feeling the sprout kick in protest, and she said bluntly, “I’m afraid that I, or the baby, or both of us, will die.”
There, I said it.
“Oh, Annie, of course that’s not going to happen,” Laura exclaimed. Frowning, she continued more slowly, “First of all, you will have your physician attending. Didn’t she train in obstetrics at some famous New England medical college just for women? She will know what to do if there is the slightest complication. And Mrs. Stein will be here, and she has oodles of experience and all those grandchildren, who, if half of her stories are true, she pretty much single-handedly delivered into this world. As for pain, I thought that nowadays, they can give you stuff for the pain, can’t they?”
Annie’s heart warmed at how earnestly Laura was trying to reassure her. If only it was that easy.
Laura touched her face lightly and said quietly, “I’m sorry. You know all this. Tell me, why are you so afraid?”
“Back when I was living with my first husband’s relatives, I took care of one young woman…John’s cousin. She had the finest doctor her wealthy parents could buy, yet not only was her child stillborn but she ultimately succumbed to childbed fever.”
Annie shuddered, remembering how the young woman, writhing in pain, wracked by bouts of vomiting, had moaned incessantly, wanting to see h
er dead baby girl. She said, “I often thought how unkind her creator had been by not taking her child and her together at the same time. Now, I don’t know which I fear the most: the loss of the baby here inside of me, or the idea that I won’t live to raise my child. It’s a harsh reality, but the plain truth is that childbirth is the single most common reason for a young woman’s death.”
Laura hugged Annie and let her cry.
Finally, Annie heard Laura whisper, “What can I do to help?”
She sat up and wiped her eyes. “You know, what would help is if you would agree to be the baby’s guardian, along with Nate, if that should become necessary. I know that Nate will be a wonderful father, and I know everyone here would help. Goodness knows there are enough orphans already sheltered in this home. But it would ease my mind so if you would agree to take that formal role. Just in case there is some wicked step-mother in the future picture. But don’t you dare tell Nate I said that!”
Annie suddenly felt an enormous sense of relief, but seeing the shocked concern in Laura’s eyes, she chuckled and said, “See how morbid I’ve become? That’s why I need you with me as much as possible over this next month. So you can tell me not to be a fool and jolly me out of my ridiculous fancies.”
Chapter 41
Saturday evening, April 16, 1881
San Francisco
“Believing that woman can do what man can, for she held that faith, she strove with noble but ignorant bravery to compass man’s intellectual attainment in a man’s way, and died in the effort.” Sex in Education, Edward H. Clarke, 1873
As Laura sorted and put her type away in their appropriate compartments in her compositor’s case, she thought once again about her conversation last Sunday with Annie. She still didn’t know how she felt about learning that her strong, invincible sister-in-law could entertain such fears about the coming birth of her child. She was incredibly honored that Annie had shared those fears with her. The next morning before leaving for school, she’d done as Annie asked and wrote her mother explaining why she was cancelling her visit over Easter.
She also tried to follow Annie’s advice regarding Celia and Kitty. Consequently, on Monday morning when they stopped to pick her up at the boarding house, she made a simple apology to Celia for not being understanding about Ned. She didn’t say anything else, because Annie said it was important to be honest, which she wouldn’t have been if she pretended to accept the blame for Bart’s behavior.
The rest of the week, she refrained from saying anything that sounded judgmental when the subject of Ned came up, and she stuck to asking safe questions about how the packing and plans for the European trip were going. As a result, tensions eased.
Seth was a different matter entirely. As usual, each morning he sat up with the driver of Kitty’s carriage, and when they got to the ferry, he made no effort to get her apart from Celia or Kitty, so there wasn’t any opportunity to have a private conversation. She supposed that was a blessing, actually, because she wasn’t ready to have a conversation that might end their friendship for good. Annie told Laura that she needed to be honest with herself, figure out what she really wanted from Seth. But every time she thought about him, her mind skittered away in fear.
And it wasn’t as if there wasn’t plenty to keep her mind occupied this week, including what she and Caro should do about their growing conviction that the French instructor, Proctor, might have played a significant role in Grace’s problems last fall.
On Tuesday, when she met with Caro at her boarding house, Caro had all sorts of new information to share. She reported that by carefully going through Ruth’s scrapbook, she had found plenty of evidence that Proctor frequently had been one of a foursome with Ruth, Grace, and Willie when they went out to eat or to the theater. Some of the details about these social engagements came from Grace’s letters to her mother, now that Caro knew that her cousin’s periodic references to her “friends” R.L. and T.P. referred to Ruth Leverton and Theodore Proctor. In addition, she was able to see that the social outings her cousin had been referencing corresponded to most of the mementos in Ruth’s scrapbook.
Caro thought it was significant that Grace only used Ruth and Proctor’s initials, and Ruth usually neglected to mention that Proctor was one of the “friends” she listed in her captions under the mementos. This indicated that Ruth and Grace both knew there was something slightly wrong about a professor and a student having this sort of social relationship. The question remained, did Ruth ever spend time with Proctor alone? If so, was he indeed the father of her child? And did Grace know about this? Or perhaps more importantly, if she learned of it, when did that happen?
Caro said, “Ruth told us that she had been too preoccupied with her marriage to write to Grace last fall, and I found no mention of this marriage, much less the child, in any of Grace’s letters. Therefore, it is possible that Grace didn’t know about the baby, although she may have known about the marriage. In that case, she would have had no reason to be suspicious of Proctor or question his friendship. That means it was perfectly possible that she went to him with her concerns about Sanders at the beginning of the fall term.”
Laura agreed that this was a reasonable supposition, but they had absolutely no proof that Grace had maintained a friendship with Proctor after Ruth failed to return to campus. She didn’t mention him or even a T.P. in her letters to her mother last fall. She wasn’t taking any classes with him, and the conversational French group seemed to have disbanded. All they knew, from her dying letter to Caro, was that Grace had confided in someone, who later turned out not to be trustworthy, and that it didn’t look like this person was Reverend Mason or Professor Sanders.
What Caro had learned, however, from Mrs. Shepard, the friendly gossip, was that Proctor did have a reputation of not being entirely professional with female students. Caro had taken a couple of the photographs from Ruth’s scrapbook over to the Shepards’ cottage on Wednesday. Her ostensible purpose was to get May Shepard to identify a number of the students in the photographs, all of who had turned out to be seniors last year and had since graduated.
However, after May left the cottage to go to class, Caro stayed to have tea with Mrs. Shepard. After looking at the one photograph she brought with her that had Proctor in it, Mrs. Shepard said something about him being too charming for his own good. When Caro asked what she meant, Mrs. Shepard leaned close and told Caro how her son had advised his sister May to take her French classes with Carey Jones and her German with Albin Putzker, because Proctor, who taught both of these languages, played favorites.
In short, women who flirted with him and men who drank with him got better grades. She also commented that she believed that Proctor was a frequent guest at the tea parties that Mrs. Sanders hosted for selected students…and stayed on even when her husband went back to his office to work.
She had added that one of the older professors once commented to her that if Proctor spent less time socializing with undergraduates and more time getting a few academic articles published, he wouldn’t be stuck at an instructor’s salary for the rest of his career. Mrs. Shepard had laughed at this point and said it was her impression that Proctor might not care about that, since he must have some private source of income to explain how he was able to indulge his expensive tastes, including moving into the most exclusive hotel in Oakland last summer.
Mrs. Shepard’s not-so-veiled innuendo supported their suspicions about Proctor and Ruth…particularly if the private income came from Ruth’s father in the form of a bribe to keep Proctor’s mouth shut. If this were true, Proctor would know that the one person on campus whom Ruth might confide in was Grace, which would mean he would have a very strong motive for trying to get her to leave town. His presence at the tea parties and his reputation for drinking with his male students suggested that he would have the kind of relationships with fraternity men that would permit him to orchestrate a harassment campaign against Grace.
Laura could just imagine Proctor drinki
ng with Bart Keller, then encouraging him to play one of his little pranks on Grace. What they couldn’t figure out was what role Mrs. Sanders would be playing in all this? Was she just another victim of Proctor’s manipulation?
By Thursday, Caro had found more corroborating evidence for their belief that Proctor was behind the campaign against Grace when she had a meeting with Professor Moses, her political economy professor. Caro explained to him that Grace Atherton was her cousin and that she was trying to figure out why Grace had such academic difficulties the previous fall.
Moses was very frank. He didn’t think Miss Atherton was up to the intellectual rigor required of upper division courses, despite the positive grades she’d made her first two years at Berkeley. His proof was that she didn’t turn in the midterm essay and then tried to tell him that she had turned it in, but someone must have stolen it. He told Caro that Proctor had informed him that she’d tried out the same story with several other professors, and they had let her turn her work in late.
Moses was outraged that these professors, in his words, let a “pretty face and a sad story” sway them, and he told Caro he had planned on giving Grace a failing grade for the term, unless she was able to redeem herself in her final exam.
Laura couldn’t help but think about Seth’s concern that her involvement in this investigation might hurt her with faculty…like Moses. But forewarned was forearmed. Grace, poor thing, had gone into all this blind to the danger.
The problem with all this evidence was it was so very circumstantial. And that was where she and Caro got stuck. How did they prove that any of their suppositions were correct?
Laura put the last piece of type away, took off her apron, and said good night to her fellow workers. As she walked out of the building, she thought about how insidious the whole campaign against Grace had been. The way Ned and Celia blamed Laura for Bart’s behavior on Friday night convinced her that if Grace had complained to any of her fellow students about the “little jokes” being perpetrated against her, she would have been told she was making it all up or that she had brought the problems on herself. Even Reverend Mason had dismissed her concerns, and of course she could no longer trust Sanders, once she knew of his ethical lapse with the poetry.
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