CHAPTER ONE
Rosalind Hawkins answered the door with her entire being in a knot of anxiety; expecting yet another aggressive creditor, she schooled her face into a calm she did not feel. Outside, the dreary, drizzling day was giving way to another dreary night. The home that had once been her sanctuary was now under siege—and no longer hers.
How long must I bear this? How long can I bear this?
“I’m sorry,” she began as the heavy oak door swung wide, “But if you have a claim, you will have to apply to Mr. Grumwelt of Grumwelt, Jenkins and—”
But the figure outside the door was no hostile stranger. “Do I need to apply to a solicitor to visit, now, Rose?” asked the short, slender, gray-haired man on the front porch in surprise. She started, and began to laugh with relief at seeing a friendly face for the first time since the funeral, her emotions making her briefly giddy—and she hoped she did not sound hysterical. “Of course not, Professor Cathcart!” she exclaimed, “It’s just that I’ve had Papa’s creditors at the door all day, and I’ve gotten into rather a habit of—” She stopped at the sight of the Professor’s confusion. “Oh, never mind, please come in! I’m afraid I cannot offer you any refreshment,” she added, ruefully, “but the grocer came with a seizure notice and a policeman and carted away everything edible in the house before breakfast.”
A week before, that simple admission would have been unthinkable. Too many unthinkable things had happened since then for her to even think twice about this one.
Professor Cathcart, Ph.D. and expert in medieval and ancient languages, her mentor at the University of Chicago, widened his colorless eyes with shock. He took off his hat as he entered the door, and stood in the entryway, turning it in his hands nervously, twisting the soft felt. Rosalind closed the door behind him and led him into the parlor. She had all the gaslights on, burning in reckless abandon. After all, why bother to save the gas? The bills were already too great to pay.
He sat down gingerly on the horsehair sofa—which tomorrow would probably be gracing someone else’s parlor. His elongated face was full of concern as well as shock, and he appeared to be groping for words. She felt a stirring of pity for him; after all, what could one say in a case like this?
He licked his lips, and made an attempt. “I knew that Hawkins was not well off after those speculations of his, but I had no notion that things had come to such dire straits!”
“Neither did I,” Rosalind said simply, as she sat down on the matching chair, groping behind her for the arm of the chair to assist her. “While he was alive, his salary at the University paid the bills, and the extra tutoring he did for those brainless idiots in the Upper One Hundred kept the other creditors at bay. Now—” She turned her palms upward in her lap and examined them, unable to meet his eyes and the pity in them. “Now they descend.”
Professor Cathcart sounded dazed. “He left you nothing, then?”
“Nothing but a stack of unpaid bills and this house—which has been seized by the creditors,” she replied wearily. “They have graciously allowed me to retain my personal possessions—excepting anything of value, like Mama’s pearls.”
“They’re taking the pearls?” Cathcart was aghast. “Surely not—”
“ ‘Took’ the pearls,” she corrected, pushing her glasses up on her nose with a cold finger, trying not to remember how she had wept when they’d taken the only inheritance she had from her mother. “Yesterday. And other things—” She gripped the arms of the chair, trying to hold off the memory, the horror, of watching strangers sort through her belongings, looking for anything they might seize as an asset. “The books in Papa’s library are already gone, the furniture goes tomorrow, and the house itself whenever Mr. Grumwelt finds a buyer, I suppose. They say I can stay here until then. I could camp out on the floor until the buyer appears, if they’d left me the camping gear—”
She was saved from hysteria by a wave of faintness that made her sway a little and catch at the arm of the chair to keep from falling. The Professor was instantly out of his seat and at her side, taking her hand and patting it ineffectually. But his words showed a surprising streak of practicality.
“Child, when did you eat last?” he demanded. She shook her head, unable to remember—and that, in itself, was disturbing. Was she losing her memory? Was she losing her mind? “I haven’t had much appetite,” she prevaricated.
He snorted. “Then that is the second order of business; the first is to get you away from here. Go upstairs and pack your things; I’m not leaving you here to be jeered at by tradesmen a moment longer.”
“But—” she protested, knowing his own resources were slender. He cut her off at the single word, showing an unexpected streak of authority.
“I can certainly afford to put the daughter of my old friend up in a respectable boardinghouse for a few days, and take her to dinner too. And as for the rest—well, that was what I came here to speak to you about, and that would be best done over dinner, or rather, dessert. Now, don’t argue with me, child!” he scolded. “I won’t have you staying here! The next thing you know, they’ll probably cut off the gas.”
At just that moment, the gaslights flickered and went out all over the house, leaving them in the gray gloom of the overcast day, the uncertain and haunted hour before sunset. Suddenly, the house seemed full of ghosts. If nothing else, that decided her.
“I’ll just be a moment,” she said, truthfully, since most of her belongings were already packed into a carpetbag and a single trunk, with only a valise waiting to receive the rest. Mr. Grumwelt had watched her with his nasty, beady eyes, like a serpent watching a bird, the entire time she packed; presumably to make sure that she did not pack up something that no longer belonged to her. Fortunately, he did not recognize the value of some of the keepsakes she had managed to retain, or he would doubtless have confiscated them as well. He had made it very clear to her that anything she carried away, she did so on his sufferance. The trunk already stood in the hall; she had only to finish packing her valise and carpetbag. “I find myself in the position so many philosophers like Mr. Emerson profess to admire—unburdened by possessions.”
“I’ll get a cab,” the Professor replied.
Bergdorf’s was not crowded at this time of the early evening; the theater crowd had not yet begun to arrive. Fortunately, the German restaurant had never been one of her father’s choices for dining out, or the memories the place evoked would have been too painful to permit her to eat. No, she had no sad ghosts waiting for her here, and Bergdorf’s was clearly Professor Cathcart’s favorite, for the waiters all recognized him and they were shown to a secluded table out of the way of traffic. She wondered what they made of her; too plain to be a member of the demimonde, too shabbily dressed to be a fiancée or a relative. Did they assume she was his housekeeper, being granted a birthday treat?
Perhaps they take me for a suffragette relation, or one who has a religious mania and has given all her worldly goods to Billy Sunday. No matter. The respect they accorded to Professor Cathcart extended even to such peculiar females as he chose to bring with him; service was prompt and polite, and the headwaiter treated her with the deference that might be accorded to one who wore a gown by Worth, rather than one from the cheaper pages of Sears and Roebuck.
She had once worn fine gowns—not by Worth, perhaps, but by one of the better Chicago seamstresses. That had been before her father’s run of bad luck with his investments, and she had chosen to economize on her gowns as well as in other household matters. It had not mattered to her teachers and fellow students; they probably would not have noticed unless she had donned the chiton and stola of an ancient Greek maiden, and perhaps not even then. Her economies had gone unremarked, which had saved her pride. Since another of her economies was to abjure eating out, she was not forced to parade the slender state of their purses in public.
The Bergdorf was comfortably warm, lit softly with candles and a few well-placed gaslights. The only sounds were those of conversation and the clink of silver on china. The Professor was one who gave a gourmet meal all its due reverence, so they ate in silence. Rosalind was not loath to do so either; the peculiar sour-savory tang of the sauerbraten awoke a hunger of intensity she had not realized was possible, and although she seldom drank, she joined the Professor in a lady-sized stein of the Bergdorf’s excellent beer. The food vanished from her plate so quickly she might have conjured it away, and the attentive blond-haired, blue-eyed waiter brought her a second serving without being asked.
“Vielen dank,” she said to him, surprising a smile from him. He winked at her, and hurried to answer the summons from another table.
She devoured her second helping with a thoroughness that would have embarrassed her a month ago. Now her capacity for being embarrassed had been exhausted, and her pride flattened like a sheet of vellum in a press.
The waiter returned at the Professor’s signal, and cleared away the plates as the Professor ordered Black Forest torte for both of them. Rosalind did not even make a token protest; it might be a long time before she ever ate like this again. Her torte was long gone before the Professor had finished his, and she settled back in her chair with a sigh of melancholy mixed with content.
I must think of some way to earn my way. She had a vague idea that she might take a position as a governess somewhere, or even as a schoolteacher in some Western state. Any thought of achieving a Ph.D. in the classics and medieval literature was out of the question now, of course. She only hoped that she could convince someone that her unconventional education had made her fit to teach the “Three Rs.”
The waiter arrived to clean off the dessert plates, and with him came coffee. Professor Cathcart settled back in his chair as she sugared and creamed hers liberally, cradling his cup in both hands.
“You must forgive your old friend and teacher his bluntness, but how did you come to such a pass?” he asked. “I had not thought your father to be the improvident sort.”
She shook her head, bitterly. “You may lay the cause of our loss at Neville Tree’s door,” she replied, with bitterness not even the savor of her dessert could remove from her mouth. The Professor had the grace to blush, then, for it was he who had introduced that scion of prominent politicians to the elder Hawkins.
He said nothing more, for indeed, there was no more to be said. For all of Neville Tree’s illustrious parentage, the man was no better than a common sharpster. He had come looking for investors in his bank, and he got many, including Professor Hawkins; he then ran the bank into the ground with his poor management—all the while drawing a princely salary leaving investors and depositors alike holding nothing but air and empty promises. Not content with that, he concocted another scheme with many promises that he would get the money back and more—he would go and find oil and make them all rich. Throwing good money after bad, Professor Hawkins and others had fallen for his plausible tale a second time, and once again found themselves with shares of useless stock in a company that had drilled for oil where no geologist would ever anticipate finding any. Presumably, he had taken himself to another state with more schemes designed mainly to allow him to draw a handsome wage at the expense of others.
Under the table, Rosalind’s hand clenched on her napkin. When her father had told her of the loss of all of their savings and more, she had not had the heart to reproach him. “I only wanted to give you what you should have had, Rose,” he had said plaintively…
“But the History Department—” Cathcart began again.
“You know that none of them have ever approved of my ‘unwomanly’ interests,” she retorted sourly. “Doubtless, if they knew, they would be pleased enough, and advise me to go and get married like a proper female.”
As if any young man had ever, or would ever look twice at me. Plain, too clever by half and with the curse of always saying what I think. That latter habit had gained her no friends among her fellow students, who could look elsewhere for romantic interests. Any man at the University can find himself a nice, stupid girl with good looks or money who will assure him he is the cleverest creature on earth. Why should he take one with neither who will challenge him to prove he is her equal?
“Your mother’s people—” Cathcart ventured.
He knew nothing about her parents’ relationship with her maternal grandparents—Professor Hawkins had been careful to keep that unsavory situation very private. It was natural for Cathcart to bring them up, but only the fact that she had borne with so much already made it possible for her to bear this as well. “They appeared the day of the funeral,” she said. I will not call those—creatures—my grandmother and grandfather. “They insulted my father, slandered my mother, and told me that if I admitted some specious sort of guilt, agreed to be a good and obedient girl, and gave up my nonsense about a University degree, they might consider permitting me to take up some position within their household. I assume they meant for me to come be a drudge to Uncle Ingmar, and be grateful to them for the opportunity.”
Cathcart s expression grew horrified. “Even when he was still sane, Ingmar Ivorsson was not fit company for a female, and certainly is not to be left alone with one!” he blurted.
She only nodded. “I told them what I thought of them, what Mother had thought of them, and what they could do with Uncle Ingmar, and showed them the door.” That might have been what brought Mr. Grumwelt down upon my head with such uncanny swiftness. They probably went off and alerted every one of Papa’s creditors. Did they expect me to come running to them as soon as the vultures arrived, begging forgiveness?
Cathcart gave her the ghost of a smile. “So you have burned all your bridges, then. That was brave of you. Not necessarily wise, but—”
“Professor, that bridge is one I would not cross under any circumstances. I had rather take Charon’s boat than the Ivorssons’ offer.” She set her chin resolutely, but could not help a shudder of fear. Charon’s boat…it could come to that. She had contemplated suicide that very night, alone with her despair in the echoing house. She had more than enough laudanum in her valise to suffice…
But now the Professor’s expression turned—calculating? Definitely! She had seen him look precisely like this when he was about to prove some obscure point, or had found a new research trail. She felt interest stirring in her, a feeling she had not experienced in days.
“I wanted to ascertain whether or not you had any other prospects,” he said, quietly, but still with that calculating look in his eyes. “I have had a—well, a rather peculiar communication from a man in the West. It is so peculiar that I would not have advised that you consider it, unless you had no other recourse.”
Now her interest was surely piqued. “Professor, what on earth are you hinting at?” she asked, sitting up a little straighter.
He reached into his coat pocket. “Here,” he said, handing her a thick, cream-colored envelope. “Read this for yourself.”
Obeying, she opened the envelope and set aside the thick railway ticket, and read the single sheet of thick vellum contained therein with growing perplexity. “This—this is certainly strange,” she said, after a moment, folding the sheet and returning it to its paper prison. “Very strange.” She slipped the railway ticket to San Francisco in beside it.
Cathcart nodded. “I’ve had the man looked into, and from what I can find out, he’s genuine enough. He’s something of a rail baron on the West Coast and lives outside of San Francisco. The ticket is genuine; I telegraphed to his office to be sure that the letter had truly come from him, and the offer is genuine also. He’s said to be as rich as Croesus and as reclusive as a stylite, and that’s all anyone knows of him. Other than the fact that he has phenomenal luck.”
“He might have been describing me, precisely,” Rose said aloud, feeling again that little thrill of apprehension, as if she was about to cross a threshold into something from which there would be no escape and no return.
“That is what was so peculiar, that and the offer itself.” Cathcart flushed. “I thought of all manner of other possibilities; one does, after all—”
“Of course,” she said vaguely. “White slavery, opium dens—” She noticed then that Cathcart’s color had deepened to a dark scarlet with embarrassment, and giggled; she could not help herself. “Really, Professor! Did you think I was that sheltered? After all, it was you who let me read the unexpurgated Ovid, and Sappho’s poems, and—”
She stopped for fear that the Professor would have a stroke there and then. It never failed to amaze her that the scholars about her could discuss the hetairai of the Greeks, Tristan and Isolde, Abelard and Heloise, and the loves of the girls on the Isle of Lesbos, and then blush with shame when one even mentioned the existence of certain establishments not more than a dozen blocks from the University.
“Don’t decide at once,” he urged her, swiftly changing the subject. “I’ll take you to Mrs. Abernathy’s boarding house; rest and think for a few days. This should not be an act of impulse.”
“Of course not,” she replied—
But she already felt the heavy, cold hand of Fate upon her sleeve. She would go to this man, this Jason Cameron. She would take his job. After all, she had no choice.
Rose woke with a shock, startled out of disturbing dreams by sounds she did not recognize. For a moment, as she glanced around, she panicked with disorientation, her heart racing with fear as she groped for her glasses. This was not her room! Nothing was where it should be—why was that rectangle of light at the foot of her bed, and not off to the side—and why was there only one, not two? Why were the walls white and what was that huge, looming object at her left?
And why weren’t her glasses on the stand beside the bed, where they should be?
Then, as the bed beneath her creaked in a way that her bed never had, the steadying knowledge of where she was and why she was here came flooding back.
Nothing was where it should be because she was not at home, and never would see her room again. She was in a narrow, iron-framed bed in Mrs. Abernathy’s boarding house for respectable young ladies.
Rose had met a few of them last night, and had immediately been reassured as to the solidity of this establishment. Several of the ladies were nurses; one worked at the Hull House with the indigent. Another was a typist for Professor Cathcart at the University. Her own shabby genteel clothing fit in perfectly here, giving her no cause for embarrassment.
Mrs. Abernathy was a stolid woman who had not been at all disturbed when they appeared on her doorstep after dark. She had taken in Professor Cathcart’s whispered explanation and the money he pressed into her hand with a nod, and had sent Rose to this room on the second floor, just off the common parlor. Her trunk was still downstairs in a storage closet, but she hardly needed what was in it. She’d brought up her carpetbag and valise herself, and had attempted to be sociable with some of the other boarders, but fatigue and strain had taken their toll, and she had soon sought the room and the bed.
She stopped groping for her glasses, preferring the vague shapes of furniture and windows to the stark reality of this sad little room. She closed her eyes again, and lay quietly, listening to the sounds that had awakened her. Down below, someone, presumably Mrs. Abernathy, was cooking breakfast; from the scents that reached her, it was oatmeal porridge and strong coffee, cheap and filling. Other girls in tiny rooms on either side of her were moving about. By the very faint light, it could not be much past dawn—but these young women were working girls, and their day began at dawn and ended long after sunset, every day except Sunday.
That was when the full impact of her situation hit home. Within the week, she would join them. She had not realized just how privileged her life had been, even with all the economies she and her father had practiced these last several years. She had always been something of a night-owl, preferring to study in the late hours when she would be undisturbed; her classes had always been scheduled in the afternoons, allowing her to enjoy leisurely mornings. Now she would obey someone else’s schedule, whether or not it happened to suit her.
Everything was changed; her life, as she had known it, was over. It lay buried with her father.
The rest of her life stretched before her, devoid of all the things that she cared for—the joys of scholarship, the thrill of academic pursuit, the intellectual companionship of fellow scholars. She would be a servant in someone else’s house, or a hireling in someone’s employ, subject to their will, their whims. Very likely, she would never again have access to a resource like the University Library. Her life, which had been defined by books, would now be defined by her position below the salt.
Professor Cathcart had insisted that she think Cameron’s offer over carefully before deciding, but her options were narrower than he thought; the choices were two, really. Take Jason Cameron’s job (or search for another like it) and become a servant in the household of a wealthy, and probably autocratic man—or take a position teaching in a public school.
The latter actually offered fewer opportunities. It was unlikely that she would find such a public school position in Chicago; there were many aspiring teachers, and few jobs for them. She would have to seek employment out in the country, perhaps even in the scarcely settled West or the backward South, where she would be an alien and an outsider.
In either case, as a private tutor or as a teacher, she would be a servant, for as a schoolteacher she must present a perfectly respectable front at all times, attending the proper church, saying the proper things so as to be completely beyond reproach. Neither a schoolteacher nor a child’s private tutor could even hint that she had read the uncensored Ovid. Neither would dare to have an original thought, or dare to contradict the men around her. The days of her freedom of thought, action and speech were over.
She had not wept since the funeral; she had remained dry-eyed before the Ivorssons, before Mr. Grumwelt, before his greedy minions. She had stood dry-eyed for days, but now something broke within her at the realization of how much a prisoner of society she had become overnight.
Her eyes burned, her throat closed, and she bit her knuckle trying to hold back the tears. She was unsuccessful, and quickly turned her face into the pillow, sobbing, smothering her weeping with the coarse linen so that no one would overhear her. How could any of the women here hope to understand her grief? This prospect of life that she found intolerable was the same life that they had always led.
One born to slavery finds nothing amiss with chains…
She curled up into a ball, forming herself around the pillow, as she cried uncontrollably. She had never believed that a heart could be “broken,” but hers certainly felt that way now.
Oh Papa—why did you have to die and leave me like this?
Then came guilt for thinking such a terrible thing, which only made her weep the harder as she realized she would now face the rest of her life without his dear, if absent-minded, presence. Finally, she could weep no more; she huddled around the soaked pillow, muscles and head aching, eyes swollen and burning, throat sore with holding back her sobs, nose irritated and raw. Her physical discomfort did nothing to distract her from her sorrow.
While she had cried out her grief, the noises to either side of her disappeared, leaving only the sounds of activity below-stairs. She did not feel that she could face anyone, and as for breakfast—the very notion made her ill.
Evidently, either no one had missed her or Professor Cathcart had indicated that she was to be left alone, for no one came to disturb her. Despair held her in that hard, narrow bed in invisible bonds; she could not even muster the strength to reach for her glasses. Once again, the presence of the laudanum in her valise beckoned temptingly. She need only drink down the entire bottle, and all her troubles would end in a sleep with no waking.
Would that be so bad? True Christian doctrine told her that suicide was a sin, but the ancients had held it no more a sin than healing a wound was. When the soul was wounded past bearing—when life became intolerable—why tolerate it?
Why, indeed? Why spend the remaining years of her life in an existence that was less than life? Why must she smother her very soul to see her body fed? Surely that was no less a sin than simple suicide!
How many grim, gray spinsters had she seen in her schools, withered creatures who had ruthlessly rooted out every vestige of intellectual curiosity in themselves and now sought to do the same to the pupils beneath them? Life as one such as they would be less than life.
Better to end it all now.
She spent a moment in fantasy, imagining what the news of her death would mean to those around her. The Ivorssons, of course, would cluck and shake their heads, and say that they had expected nothing else from her—she knew better than to anticipate remorse from any of them. She could leave a note, blaming her despair on Neville Tree—a subtle sort of revenge, since the stigma of having caused a girl’s death would ruin him, especially if she did not say precisely why he had driven her to this. People would assume the worst; they always did.
She uncurled herself from her pillow; felt for her glasses and put them on, since she could not write a suicide note if she could not see. But her hand fell upon something else as well; Jason Cameron’s letter. Almost against her will, she found herself drawing the letter from the envelope and reading it again.
But this time, reading it carefully rather than skimming it, she got a much different sense of the writer’s personality than she had in the restaurant. There, she had been startled by the strangely accurate description of someone with precisely the same accomplishments as her own. Now she was drawn to the paragraph about the children.
In particular, her eyes were drawn to the statements about the daughter.
“…the victim of prejudice that holds her sex as inferior to the male.”
Surely, the man who wrote such words was not the uncouth tyrant she had imagined! And surely, he would not object to her continuing her own education—even if she had to choose an area of specialization other than her first choice—
Perhaps she would not be treated like a servant after all. This letter seemed to have come from the pen of a man who cherished scholarship, and would accord a scholar honest respect.
Shouldn’t she at least see if he was the enlightened man his letter promised?
After all, the bottle would still be in her valise. She could end her life at any time; it did not have to be here. She could make the journey to the West Coast first; see the vast hinterlands in between. She had never personally seen a buffalo, a cowboy, or a Red Indian. She had never seen a mountain, or an ocean. She had lived all her short life in Chicago; surely before she committed any rash act, she ought to see more than just one city.
Besides, if one ended one’s life—the setting ought to be something less squalid than this.
The ancient Romans called in all their friends, gathered their most precious belongings about them, and had a great feast complete with poetry and music. Then, in the midst of splendor, they drank their bitter cup.
She should take more thought to the setting of her demise.
Besides, it would distress those pleasant girls if I did away with myself here. It might even cast a stigma upon poor Mrs. Abernathy, and neither she nor they have done anything to harm me. No. It would be impolite and unpoetic to drink my cup here.
If she waited until she reached the West Coast, however—
I could go to the Opera House when Caruso sings there.
That would be a setting worthy of the Romans, and a properly poetic ending as well.
If I saved—I could have enough for a fine gown, and a private box. Even if the promised wages come to less than he states, I could save enough.
Yes, that would be the way. To drink the dose at the first intermission, perhaps—drift away into death with glorious music accompanying her—be found dressed exquisitely, with her letter of farewell lying beside her on the table—
She might be thought to haunt the place afterwards, which would do the Opera House no harm, since every good theater should have a ghost.
Not in squalor, but in splendor; turning her back on this world in a way that could not be ignored or pushed onto the back pages of a newspaper.
I seem to have decided to live. For now, at least.
But now she was impatient to be gone. The sooner she was on her way, the sooner she would find out if the promise of the letter was true gold, or dross.
She managed to get herself out of bed, and went to the washstand to pour cold water from the pitcher into the waiting basin. Just as well that it was cold; her ablutions succeeded in removing the outward signs of her despair from her face. She dressed in an odd combination of luxury and penury; her most intimate underthings were silk (though much-darned), but her stockings were of the coarsest and cheapest cotton at five cents the pair, and they were as heavily darned as the silk. The one thing that she never regretted about losing her maid was that she never again had anyone about to tie the laces of her corset as tightly as a human could manage; she had not retied the laces in a year. She donned that garment by letting out her breath and hooking it up the front, and tolerated being that much more out of fashion by not having a fifteen-inch waist.
Petticoats were the same mixture of luxury and thrift, depending entirely on whether or not she had been able to mend them. Her shoes were still good, although they would need resoling soon; her walking skirt and shirtwaist ready-made from a store that was far from fashionable, and of fabric that could be laundered at home. All of her expensive gowns had been sold long ago to dealers in second-hand clothing. Much of her own wardrobe had come from the stores of those same worthies.
I told Papa I didn’t care about dresses, that I would rather have books…I wonder if he believed me. Did he ever guess how much I missed the silks and velvets?
She wondered, too, what her new employer would think. Or would he even notice the sad state of her wardrobe?
She arranged her hair—her one real beauty—into a neat French braid, and set a pathetic little excuse for a hat squarely on the result, securing it with a daggerlike hatpin. Putting Jason Cameron’s letter into her reticule, she stepped out into the hallway.
She would need to contact Mr. Cameron to let him know that she was accepting the post, so that he didn’t hire someone else while she was making the arduous journey across the country. Her ticket was really a series of tickets, a rainbow of colored pasteboard, each of them for a different pair of cities. Evidently, one did not simply “get on” a train in Chicago and arrive at San Francisco to “get off” the same train. From Chicago, one went to Kansas City; there one boarded a train from a second rail company bound for Los Angeles. Once there, a third and final change of rail companies took one to the final destination. But within the three stages, there were other options, other changes of trains, depending upon what day one traveled. It was all very bewildering.
No doubt—she must get in touch with Mr. Cameron, and the only one who knew how to do that was Professor Cathcart. So she must venture back into the beloved and hallowed halls of learning and endure a veritable barrage of memories in order to find the Professor himself.
She bundled herself in her old wool coat and slipped down the stairs and out the front door without meeting anyone. She walked to the University, since she could not afford streetcar fare, much less a cab. It was not much more than a mile, and she was used to walking. It was going to be another grim, gray day, but at least it wasn’t raining anymore.
What would the weather be like in San Francisco?
Wasn’t California supposed to be hot, even tropical? She occupied her thoughts with such speculations until she reached the University campus, ignoring the shouts of a group of young men playing football in the Quadrangle.
Every step brought out another memory that hurt, and she felt like the little mermaid in the Hans Anderson tale who felt as if she walked upon knives with every step she took on her conjured legs. Somehow she found Professor Cathcart, who took one look at her and insisted that she sit down while he sent for some coffee. She had always ignored his secretary before this; now, acutely sensitive to women in subservient positions, she watched the drab woman carefully. I must learn to move and talk like that, she thought, paying careful attention to the little things that made Cathcart’s secretary so inconspicuous. I will have no choice but to learn…
“Are you certain that you wish to pursue this offer?” the Professor was saying anxiously, as he pressed a cup of coffee into her cold hands. “Are you positive?”
Beneath his questioning, she detected something else, and after a moment, she identified it with some surprise.
Relief. He was already regretting his hasty impulse in setting himself up as her protector and rescuer, and he wanted her off his hands as quickly as possible!
Resentment built, and was quickly vanquished by weariness. This should have been expected. The Professor, a confirmed bachelor, had suddenly found himself burdened with an unwanted female who was not even related to him. Yes, he was her mentor and teacher, but he had never expected to find himself caring for her mundane needs, only the intellectual ones. Now that he had the time for second thoughts, he was probably cursing himself for last night’s visit. If he had waited a few days, she would have been gone, and he would not have felt the need to find out what had happened to her.
If she should take Cameron’s offer, she would not only be off his hands, but halfway across the continent. He would never have to bother about her again. He could soothe his conscience with the content of Cameron’s letter, which promised a secure and fulfilling position. He had urged thought and caution, she had taken both, and he was under no obligation to interfere further—or to assist her in any way.
“Yes,” she said, with weary resignation. “I am sure. I would like to notify Mr. Cameron that I will accept his position, but there was no address on the envelope.”
“I can take care of that,” Professor Cathcart replied—a bit too eagerly. “I’ll have him wired that you’re coming, in fact, so that he doesn’t hire anyone else.” There was no doubt; he was unhappy about his current obligation to her and wanted it done with.
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” she began, hiding her bitterness at his reaction.
“It won’t be any trouble,” he said heartily. “I’ll just send a message to the rail office, and they’ll see to it all. While I’m at it, I’ll have them check the timetables for the correct schedule—you do want to leave tomorrow, don’t you?”
She shrugged. It was obvious that her welcome here was at an end. “Why not?” she replied, which sent another look of relief across his face. “It’s not as if I have anything to stop for. My research—well, what’s the use in pretending? I’ll never finish the degree, so I’ll hardly need my notes. Perhaps one of your other students could use them.”
Professor Cathcart made a token protest, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Not when both of them knew that she was only speaking the truth. The sour taste of anger and despair rose in her throat, and she stood up, hastily.
“I’ll go back to the boardinghouse and set things in order,” she said, suddenly feeling as if she could not breathe properly in the dusty office. “If you could have that railway schedule sent over—I know you are busy, Professor, you can’t be spending all your time with me when you have students who will be completing their degrees to help—”
He flushed, but did not contradict her; he merely fumbled in his pocket and pressed some money into her hand. “This is for a cab in the morning, and one now,” he stammered hastily. “I’m sorry it isn’t more. Your ticket entitles you to meals on the train, so you should be fine...”
He babbled on for a little longer, and she finally fled his office to avoid his embarrassment. And she did not take a cab back to the boardinghouse; every penny in her purse was one more than she had expected to have, and she was not going to waste those pennies with frivolities like cabs. She had no choice, though, in the morning; there was no way that she was going to get herself and her heavy trunk to the train station without a cab—unless she was lucky enough to find a cart and driver for hire at that hour.
When she reached the boardinghouse, not only was the schedule waiting, but a telegraph from Jason Cameron himself. In the terse words required by telegraphy, he expressed pleasure that she had chosen to take up the position, promised her needs would be met on the way, and assured her that she would be greeted by his people at the Pacifica switch.
What, she wondered, is a “Pacifica switch?”
It must mean something to a rail baron, she reasoned. That would have to do for now.
After missing breakfast, she did not intend to skip any other meals although her appetite had vanished again; she managed a luncheon of tea, wafer-thin ham and thick toast, and joined the other girls for a dinner of potato-laden stew with astonishingly little meat in it, more thick slices of bread, and a bread pudding. On the whole, if this was the daily fare here, she was just as glad not to be staying. A diet so starch-heavy would quickly bloat even the slimmest person.
She took to her bed early, like the nurses who had awakened her, for her first train left the station almost at dawn. After so much walking and emotional turmoil, she was exhausted and drained.
Her last thought before sleep finally caught her was actually one of wonder—wonder at herself, for having made so clear and final a break between her past and her future. Perhaps it was true that despair could drive people to heroism and daring.
But she went into sleep, not with a feeling of excitement, rather of resignation. She might be stepping off into the unknown, but it was not with a sense of adventure.
Perhaps that, too, had died with her father. She had once greeted each day with anticipation. Now, her only hope was that the new day would not be worse than the old.
And when all was said and done, for that, too, she had an answer, in a small bottle in her valise...