Scholarly Pursuits

by M. Louisa Locke

“Rake—A student.” College Slang Dictionary, 1881 Blue and Gold Yearbook

  Laura hurried down Dana towards Caro’s boardinghouse, trying not to stare at the Chi Phi fraternity house as she went by, trying not to speculate on whether any of the young men sitting on the front porch had been part of the group harassing Grace. Seth had cogently pointed out to her that life on campus would be intolerable for her if she saw every man on campus, every man in a fraternity, as her enemy. He was right, of course. But it would be easier to stop seeing every male as the enemy if she and Caro could prove for sure that Proctor was the enemy.

  And time was running out. For everything.

  There was less than a month before final exams, and she was starting to panic that there wasn’t enough time—to finish the paper on female poets she was writing for Sanders, compose the last essay for Royce, slog through the final German translations for Putzker, and keep up with the last flurry of assignments in her math and Latin classes. Most of all, she was afraid there wasn’t enough time to bring their investigations to a successful conclusion.

  Seth had asked her, point blank, what she would do if that happened. She said she didn’t know, which was the honest truth. What she did do, however, was tell him everything that she and Caro had learned over the past month. She described the harassment Julia Beck experienced last year and how she’d witnessed Grace undergoing similar harassment. She gave him the reasons why they first suspected Professor Sanders then decided that he probably hadn’t been involved. She told him about Ruth Leverton and why they believed that the French instructor, Theodore Proctor, could have been the one who seduced Ruth last spring and may have been bought off by Ruth’s father. Finally, she told him why they thought all the signs indicated that Proctor was the one behind the coordinated campaign to drive Grace from Berkeley.

  Remarkably, Seth hadn’t said one negative word against any of the conclusions she and Caro had drawn.

  The only sticky part came when she told him about Bart. Not the part he already knew, about Bart being drunk and stopping the three of them on the path after the literary society meeting. But the part she hadn’t told anyone…that Bart had grabbed her. She’d not been explicit, beyond saying he had tried to “interfere” with her, but Seth had reacted pretty much as she expected. In fact, she learned a couple of new swear words that he then apologized profusely for using.

  However, he did seem pleased when she told him she’d not shared this with anyone else—not even Annie—and that telling him about it had made her feel so much better, and that was the truth.

  For some reason, putting what happened in words, recalling the satisfaction she’d felt in kicking Bart in the shin and escaping, and the unvarnished anger Seth had expressed that anyone had dared treat her in that fashion made her feel less ashamed. He had also been very blunt in telling her that she shouldn’t take Bart lightly. Said he’d known too many young men like him over the years. Men who seemed like buffoons but had unsuspected reserves of anger that alcohol unleashed. Said that this, combined with a belief that they could get away with anything, made men like this potentially very dangerous. However, that was when he also cautioned her not to see every man on campus in the same fashion.

  Now she needed to figure out how much to share with Caro of what Seth had said, since it would be hard to talk about him without revealing her feelings.

  When she got to the door leading up to the attic room, she still hadn’t decided what or how much to tell Caro, but she needn’t have worried.

  As Caro opened the door, she said, “Come on up and let me pour you some tea while you tell me what happened over the weekend with Mr. Timmons. And don’t you dare pretend ignorance. You should know by now what a keen observer of human nature I am.”

  Laura laughed. “I thought I was being so discreet. Celia and Kitty didn’t notice that there was anything different.”

  “Well, they didn’t see the way the good man blushed when he tipped his hat to us as we passed him in the hall after German class yesterday, and I knew I wasn’t the cause.”

  “Oh, Caro, did he? What a sweetheart. He’s promised not to tell anyone that we have moved beyond being just friends to something more, so he’d be terribly embarrassed that you found him out that quickly. He prides himself on having a poker face.”

  “Why the secrecy? Do you think your family will object?”

  “Goodness, no. My parents, at least, would be delighted to know there was the possibility I would settle down with a man who spent ten years driving cattle and also had a trade that made a decent wage. My odious sister-in-law Violet, and her husband, my brother Billy, would think it was a well-deserved comeuppance that I fell in love. Nate thinks enough of Seth to have hired him to clerk in his office, so I don’t think he would object…not if Annie thinks it is a good idea. And Annie, well, she is the one person in the world who simply wants me to be happy, whatever I decide. Nevertheless, I want to keep this to myself for a little bit, before everyone feels the need to comment.”

  Caro chuckled and said, “Well, I promise not to reveal your secret.”

  As Laura sat down and opened her lunch, she said, “Now tell me if you’ve gotten any further with proving Proctor might be our man.”

  “Haven’t made much progress. The administrator at the Deaf and Blind school hasn’t replied yet to my letter asking if I could speak to some of the students who knew Grace, but I do have another meeting scheduled with Reverend Mason for this coming Sunday. His note was pretty cryptic, although he did write that he’d found out some distressing information about what had been going on with Grace. Probably means he’s learned that his Chi Phi boys haven’t been quite the gentlemen he’d hoped they were.”

  “Would be helpful if it turns out one of them mentioned Proctor as having been part of the scheme against her.”

  “Very helpful, but probably too much to hope for. On Monday, I talked to Julia Beck and asked her if she and the others on the Oestrus saw Proctor as part of the pro-fraternity group of faculty.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She appeared surprised at the question. Said she didn’t associate him with either faction; always saw him as one of those mediocre minds, everybody’s friend, but only interested in what was best for him. She did say he had the reputation of being a Don Juan.”

  “At least that’s confirmation of what Mrs. Shepard told you, which should make it easier for me to warn Kitty.”

  “Really? I thought you’d agreed that your friends shouldn’t know anything more about our investigations, for fear they would pass it on to Ned.”

  “I know, but Seth made me promise to tell her. Not the details about our suspicions about Proctor playing a role in the attacks on Grace, or even what we have guessed about Ruth, just that he has an unsavory reputation when it comes to female students. Seth made the very good point that if anything happened to Kitty, and I hadn’t warned her, I would never forgive myself. He’s right. I was hesitating because I think she and Celia will only see it as meddling on my part. But I would rather risk the final end of our friendship than risk Kitty’s safety. I am going to tell her tomorrow. I was just waiting to see if there was anything else you learned from Julia that might help me convince Kitty that spending time with Proctor isn’t a good idea.”

  Caro shrugged and said, “You have to do what you feel is best. I will be interested to see if your talk with Kitty results in a resurgence of hostility towards either one of us. That alone would suggest he’s involved in some fashion.”

  “Oh, Caro, I can’t believe I forgot to tell you. Remember how you thought it was suspicious that the first time I was targeted was the Monday after I went to talk to Sanders? I think you were right that my visit to Sanders prompted Bart’s hostility…but guess who was in the hallway the day I went to see Sanders?”

  “My goodness, you don’t mean Proctor was there?”

  “Yes, and not only that. I ran into Putzker as I came up the stairs and dropped the two poetry books I was ta
king to Sanders. Proctor bent over, picked them up, and handed the books back to me.”

  “Laura, if Grace went to Proctor about her suspicions about Sanders, and he told her not to confront Sanders, then those books would tell him that you had found out the same information as Grace.”

  “Yes, only unlike Grace, I was actually going to talk to Sanders.”

  “And you think that Proctor then told Bart to target you?”

  “You know, I’ve been thinking about that. It could be that Proctor didn’t have to specifically direct Bart to do anything. All he would have to do is mention that you and I are two of those man-haters…which is what Ned said his fraternity brothers called me. Bart would see that as a good enough reason to give both of us a hard time. Then Elliot, worried about bad publicity, told him to stop…at least stop doing anything in public.”

  Caro cocked her head and took a long sip of her tea. She said, “That makes sense. We may never know if Grace told Proctor about Sanders or the poems. We may never know if he counseled her not to say anything and, if so, why he didn’t want that information out. Maybe it was just to make sure Sanders wasn’t forced to retire, move away, and take Mrs. Sanders out of his reach—if Mrs. Shepard’s hint that they might be lovers is accurate. What we do know is that if we are right about Ruth, he had a really good reason to try and figure out a way to get Grace to leave campus before she said anything.”

  “In that case, if he thinks we don’t know what happened to Ruth, he might not have been behind our harassment.”

  Caro said quickly, “Oh, I still think he might have been behind the harassment. Just think, what if before going off on the camping trip, Willie Caulfield told Proctor about the threats I made? He certainly would be interested in trying to get me to leave campus. Then, discovering you had the poetry books, he might have concluded we had fixed on Sanders as the person behind Grace’s harassment.”

  “Which is exactly what we thought at that point, wasn’t it?” Laura remembered how Proctor had smiled as he handed the books back to her.

  “Don’t you see? That would have made you seem less of a threat and more of a nuisance, since it appeared you were searching down the wrong rabbit hole.”

  “What’s the matter?” Laura asked Caro, seeing her staring in the distance, her tea cup held in the air and a frown on her face.

  “It’s just occurred to me that if you do warn Miss Blaine about Proctor, who then tells Ned, and this information eventually gets to Proctor, you will quickly shift from being a nuisance to a real threat. Promise me you won’t go anywhere on this side of the bay without a male escort. I’m sure that your Mr. Timmons would agree.”

  Chapter 44

  Sunday afternoon, April 24, 1881

  Berkeley

  “The Oestrus Indictment against Fraternities: Sixth—Fraternities prevent the continuance of studious habits.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 1879

  Caro missed her frequent meetings with Laura, but her friend hadn’t had any time, outside of the German class they took together. With only two weeks until final exams, Laura needed to spend her free hours on her scholarly rather than her investigative pursuits. There wasn’t much to investigate, in any case. They were stuck with a whole lot of supposition but no concrete evidence to take to anyone in authority. And, if the rumors were true, the university president and the faculty were all in a bit of a bother about a visit by some select committee of the Regents, so this wouldn’t be the optimum time to bring them some vague accusations.

  Nevertheless, she rather wished Laura was with her in this meeting with Reverend Mason. She hadn’t discussed religion with Laura, but she did know the young woman attended some sort of church on Sundays, so Caro thought she might be more objective.

  When she rang the bell at the side entrance to St. Mark’s church, Mason threw open the door, clearly having been waiting for her.

  “Miss Sutton, please come in…so punctual. Before we go to my office, I wanted to inform you that I have invited two young men to meet with us as well. Mr. Elliot Sinclair, who I believe you have met, and Mr. Jerome Johnson, who says that he is in Professor Moses’ class with you.”

  What had the man done?

  Caro was consumed with an overwhelming desire to tell the old fool what she thought of him. She took several deep breaths, which had been her aunt Jean’s advice to her all her life as the best way to control her emotions, and she let thoughts of that gentle woman drain away some of her anger. Only then did she respond. “They are waiting in your office?”

  “Yes, but I can ask them to leave. They wished to speak with you about the role they played, much to their shame, in the troubles Miss Atherton faced this fall. I think it will help you understand better what went on if you listened to what they have to say.”

  She nodded her acquiescence, then followed him down the hall. As she and Mason entered the office, Elliot and Jerome leapt to their feet. Ignoring their greetings, she went to sit on the chair that Mason pulled out for her. The two boys, and that’s what she decided to consider them, just boys, sat down, looking very apprehensive.

  Good, they ought to be scared. I wonder what justifications they are going to come up with for their behavior?

  Caro let the Reverend Mason start the conversation, and he recounted how disappointed he had been to discover that boys in his Chi Phi fraternity, along with some Zetas, had participated in some of the hazing against Miss Atherton. He mentioned that Mr. Johnson, who was a member of the Chi Phi fraternity, had admitted that they said some rude things to Grace and laughed when she tripped or dropped a book.

  She turned and looked at Mr. Johnson, a tall young man with a shock of black hair and a snub nose, who had turned bright red when she looked at him. He was a rather earnest student, frequently volunteering to recite in Moses’ class. However, she wouldn’t be surprised if he joined in the laughter that Bart Keller’s actions generally elicited among the other males, since it would be the easiest way to prove he wasn’t some sort of grind.

  When Mason asked him to speak up, he apologized meekly, saying that he felt terrible when the Reverend told them that their practical jokes had caused Miss Atherton to leave the university, indirectly causing her to catch a dreadful flu and die. He said they had never meant to harm her.

  Caro replied, “And Mr. Johnson, did these practical jokes include defacing her property by spilling ink on her person, ripping pages out of her notebooks, destroying her flower arrangements at the Junior Exhibition Day, and leaving notes in her mailbox that included the suggestion that she would be better off dead?”

  Caro watched the color drain from his face as she mentioned the death threats.

  “No, no, never,” he cried out. “I mean, I heard about how someone messed with the decorations on Junior Exhibition Day, but I thought the whole junior class was the target of that…not Miss Atherton specifically. And I know some of the boys bragged that they’d left her some ‘love letters.’ I assumed these were notes slipped in her textbooks, along the lines of what some said to her in person when she passed by. She wouldn’t have been the only girl, or man on campus, who’s gotten such things. But I never suspected anything like you’ve described. Did you hear about that, Elliot?”

  He looked pleadingly at the senior sitting next to him.

  Elliot signaled the other boy to be quiet and said, “Like Mr. Johnson here, I did know about much of the day-to-day activities, and I confess I should have done more to reprimand the boys in my house when they got a little carried away. But you must understand, Miss Sutton, among the seniors and some of the juniors, there was still a lot of anger about the anti-fraternity activities on campus from the previous years. My class lost a lot of good friends to the general suspension, while others got held back and won’t be graduating with their class. I’m afraid that anger got directed at Miss Atherton when it was discovered she’d written certain letters to the Oestrus.”

  “And how was that discovered?”

  “Her fiancé, Mr
. Caulfield, told me, although I’d heard rumors to that effect before he confided in me.”

  That’s very interesting. Elliot has just admitted Willie told him about the letters. But I wonder who started the rumors he’d heard? Could Grace have told Proctor, and he was the other source?

  She said, “And in your mind, that anger justified hazing her, including the substitution of a fake essay that caused her public humiliation at the joint literary society meeting.”

  When Elliot remained quiet, Reverend Mason said, “Mr. Sinclair, did you play a hand in that? I’ve never understood why any of you feel pride in coming up with these ‘fake’ publications as part of the class rivalries. But I accepted that they were a way of building class spirit, as with the cane rush, which I confess I participated in back in my undergraduate days at college. But to single out an individual, who never did you any harm, an innocent young woman. Surely, you see how wrong that was?”

  Caro leaned towards Elliot and said, “Do you understand that event was used, by someone, to reinforce a rumor among the faculty that my cousin had suffered some sort of emotional collapse? And that this rumor, combined with the fact that someone was stealing her papers from the faculty mailboxes in order to make it look like she had failed to do her work, meant that at least one professor intended to fail her?”

  “Miss Sutton, is this true?” the Reverend exclaimed, then turned to Elliot. “Did you know about this?”

  For the first time Elliot seemed nonplused. He stammered out, “I hadn’t heard…you say someone actually stole the assignments she turned in? God, I can’t believe someone would stoop so low. Oh, I’m sorry Reverend, I didn’t mean to swear. This is the first I’ve heard of this.”

  Chapter 45

  Monday afternoon, April 25, 1881

  Berkeley