Life Unveiled, by a Child of the Drumlins — Chapter 7 Part II - School Days

I formed a romantic affection, perhaps in my seventeenth year, for a new girl who moved into our village.

She appealed to my imagination, being so different from the girls I had known.

Beautiful, with deep, proud, dark eyes, she was a good student; had read much more than I had; and could translate Virgil far better, all of which made me look up to her.

Strange to say, I wasn’t jealous of her.

We studied Greek and Roman history together, and astronomy.

There were four of us girls, and two of the boys, who met at our various homes certain evenings studying together.

The old Greek and Roman names, and the constellations, are inseparably linked in memory, particularly with that lovely dark-eyed girl and, yes, those two boys.

It was a good fellowship I had with the boys, no nonsense--at least, hardly any.

The boys had their own sweethearts who met with us, as a rule, though they were less studious than we were.

I think at that time I was vaguely conscious of being liked by these boys in a different way than they liked their sweethearts--because I was a girl and because I was companionable besides.

There was always a certain piquancy about it.

And this has always been a pleasing consciousness in connection with my men friends.

I never could be satisfied with a friendship taking cognizance of but one of the factors.

At the time of which I am speaking, though, I would have been distinctly annoyed at any open manifestation on the part of the boys of interest other than _camaraderie_.

In fact a little later I was angered at occasional demonstrations in one who was a faithless swain;

for he would often manage to take his sweetheart home first and thus walk home alone with me.

I felt sorry for her because she had so little spirit; chided her for letting him tyrannize over her; upbraided him for being fickle; and tried to be a disinterested friend to both.

Yet as time passed there were a few occasions when, silencing my scruples, I permitted advances on his part of which I was heartily ashamed.

He would take us both for a drive, and after leaving her at her home, would attempt to put his arm around me.

Although at first repulsing him angrily, at length I suffered it, knowing all the time that it was wrong.

How tender and persuasive his tones as we drove along, yet he would be talking about the most commonplace things, and I would sit there straight and unyielding with burning cheeks.

I knew it was wrong for two reasons--because he was Bessie’s “beau,” and because I didn’t really like him that way; yes, and also because it was wrong to let any one put his arm around you.

The second reason seemed the stronger, and I was ashamed of myself for being susceptible to his wooing tones and ingratiating ways while really despising such faithlessness.

Had he tried to kiss me, I think I should have annihilated him on the spot.

In fact, I think I hardly dreamed of such an advance to _me_ then being possible.

I doubt if any other boy of my acquaintance would have believed that I would permit any one to do as this one did.

I was really more attracted to Walter, the other youth with whom we studied.

We were the best of friends.

One night he came to our door and asked me to come out on the veranda--an unusual request.

“Come out and see the stars,” was all he said.

Wonderingly I went out: it was a cold night, my teeth chattered.

We walked to the west end of the veranda and stood in silence for a little looking at the stars.

I remember how Orion shone; we spoke but little, but I recall how his voice trembled;

I did not understand it, but it moved me.

It was such a little thing, and perhaps I make more of it than there was, but there seemed something in his impulsive request and the silent contemplation of the stars that was electrical--youth and propinquity, I suppose.

Nothing came of it.

I think at the time I was undoubtedly more attracted to him than he to me, but I don’t believe he ever dreamed of it.

In fact, the boys and girls were wont to look upon me as a little aloof from them.

The sweetheart of this same youth said to me one Monday morning: “Genie, when I see you in church Sunday nights, you seem so far away;

your face looks so serious, and as though I would never dare speak to you; but when I see you in school and hear you laugh and talk you seem like one of us.

” Most of the girls had had their beaux who had sent them valentines and bestowed upon them juvenile gifts, but my experience in this field had been very meagre.

When a child, before I had learned to write, I remember being pleased with a little boy who drew me home on his sled, and once I printed him a note.

I hardly think I ever intended giving it to him, but I tucked it under the zinc of our sitting-room stove and my sister found and read it.

The mortification I endured hearing her repeat it cured me.

I so hated after that to hear “Freddie boy’s” name mentioned that I was glad when he moved out of town.

I recall no other sentimental affairs till I was perhaps fifteen or sixteen, when one of the academy boys and I had a clandestine correspondence.

He liked a lot of the girls, was very popular, and wrote to several of them; they used to brag about it and show their notes, but I told no one that he wrote to me.

The notes were usually trivial affairs, questions as to where the grammar lesson was, and the like, although there were a few I blush to remember.

I was quite infatuated for a time; he was the hero of my daydreams, but far more interested in another girl than in me; he doubtless had no inkling of what was passing in the mind of his prim little school-mate.

Some time after this, when we were discussing our futures, he told me of his intention of being a minister.

I remember his earnest voice and shining eyes as he spoke of our anticipated careers, and said that we ought to do a great deal of good in the world.

When, later than this, Walter, the youth of whom I have spoken, announced to me that he was going to study law, I recall the occasion vividly: It was an August night when a lot of us young people and our mothers were in the creek, in swimming.

Since I have known more of the world, I have wondered that there was never anything unpleasant to look back upon in those associations.

But we had all been well brought up and were comparatively innocent, although we did not know it then.

(I saw this the other day: “‘I learned of my own existence,’ said Innocence, ‘only when I ceased to exist.

’”) We mingled together, youths and maidens, on geological excursions, star-gazing, in the woods botanizing, in the water learning to swim, and never thought of the possibility of anything but the frank, chaste comradeship there was among us.

I recall what a display of meteors there was that night, and how the sight thrilled us.

We had gone to the willows before sundown and had lingered in the water till the stars came out.

During a pause between one of the trials when Walter was teaching me to swim, we stood transfixed by the sudden appearance of a great fiery ball which seemed to burst just over our heads and fall into a near-by meadow.

Walter’s arms tightened as he held me; awestruck, we stood there an instant, a thrilling one (perhaps it was not all due to the meteor).

Whenever after that I would think of that night, it always made me blush; why, I did not know, unless because I had to admit to myself that I liked to feel those strong, firm arms around me.

A broken arm sustained in my school days is closely linked with another of my girlish romances: One May day, instead of going directly home from school to help with house-cleaning, as I had promised, I went to drive with one of the girls.

She was bringing home a seamstress.

As we neared the railway track, an approaching train, and simultaneously a newspaper fluttering at the horse’s feet, made him shy and jump.

Essie was cool enough, but the seamstress shrieked and grabbed the lines, making the horse wheel, which swung the buggy round and down a bank, throwing us out.

The woman who had caused the accident, though unharmed, howled with all her might, adding to the confusion.

Essie picked herself up and chased her horse.

I picked myself up and stood, a little dazed, with gravel and cinders ground in my cheeks and hands, with a general bruised sensation, and with my left arm hanging in a limp, queer way.

To a man who asked me if I was hurt, I answered, “No, only my arm is broken.

” The by-standers laughed incredulously, but I insisted.

They told me to move it; I tried, but could not tell whether it moved or not, till I put my other hand on it to follow it.

It felt dead.

Putting the pale seamstress and me in a wagon, they drove us home, she groaning and shrieking most of the remaining mile and half-fainting, so that I had to support her with my sound arm.

As I went up the steps, Mother and Sister came toward me, frightened at my bruised face and disordered appearance, and that limp arm.

“I’ve come to settle the house,” I said, trying to make light of it, but as they started to cry I begged, “Don’t cry, Mother, or I can’t stand it.

” And quickly she braced up and began preparations for the Doctor, only the tremor in her voice showing her anxiety.

Father and the Doctor soon came; neighbours flocked in; someone asked, “Are _both_ bones broken?

” Even in my distress I was amused at what, in my recently acquired knowledge of anatomy, I considered woful ignorance--“both” bones, when there is only one in the arm proper!

I can see now the frightened faces of the children peering in at the window as I lay on the couch while the arm was being “set.

” I almost wanted to laugh, they looked so distressed.

They said I was very brave.

There were weighty reasons for my good behaviour, vanity being the chief: Already I had decided to study medicine, and thought that any weakness on my part now would show my unfitness for it; but mainly, I wanted to appear well before the young doctor who was then the hero of my dreams and of those of my friend, Annette.

For months previous we had romanced and whispered about him, recording in our diaries every glance he chanced to bestow upon us.

Though scarcely aware of our existence, he dwelt in all our air-castles, and we shared him between us in a way girls have before they learn what jealousy means.

And now something had happened that brought him right into my home!

Here he would speak to me, look at me, and take an interest in me--for we never deceived ourselves that he had ever really shown any interest in us.

It was all this that made me oblivious to the pain, if, indeed, there was much pain.

I was quietly elated.

While driving home I had exulted in the thought that as our family physician lived so far away, Father would be sure to call the young doctor.

While he was working over me I could hardly wait to see how Annette would look when I should tell her all about it.

What a silly happy girl I was with my broken arm!

Even having to stay out of school was compensated for by his daily visits.

I treasured his lightest word.

He whisked in, breezy and cheery.

It was delightful to hear him speak my name--his rich, full voice, and his slight stammer--I doted on them.

Days when the splints had to be changed and the bandage loosened were red-letter days, as his calls were then lengthened.

One day just before he came I had read two statements in the Bible that had amused me: “A horse is a vain thing for safety,” and, “The arms of the wicked shall be broken.

” He laughed heartily when I told him what I had found, and leaning over my chair as he looked on the page, asked with engaging stammer, “Is th-that really in the B-bible, Genie?

” That was told with unction to Annette when she came after school--ostensibly to keep me informed about the lessons, but chiefly to get reports of the daily visits.

She envied me then, but her time of rejoicing came later when he treated her for jaundice; only, she complained, jaundice wasn’t as interesting as a broken arm--one “looked such a fright”; and, if the truth must be told, by the time her jaundice developed we had both become somewhat disenchanted.

Our unfeeling idol remained in ignorance of our adoration, and actually wooed and married an attractive young woman of his own age!

We tortured ourselves with watching the progress of this courtship, and tried hard to pose as blighted beings during the week of his wedding.

At the fatal hour that gave him to another, we agreed to withdraw from the gaze of the cold world and battle with our sorrow alone.

It fell to me to pick Grandma’s raspberries at that hour; but the hands could perform their task though the heart was wrung with grief.

The seclusion of the berry-patch was welcome; there would I wrestle with this cup.

I thought of Annette and hoped she was as secluded as I, and wondered if her heart was as heavy.

Picking the berries, I recited aloud “The Lonely One” (the most melancholy poem I could think of) and tried to picture the long years of desolation ahead of me.

But my recollection is that, try as I would, I could not induce the requisite degree of misery.

And not long after, Annette and I confessed to each other, rather guiltily, that for some time our feelings had not been as heartfelt as we had led each other to suppose.

Thus ended our romance about “Apollo,” as we named him in our diaries.

It must have been three years before I left school that I conceived the idea of studying medicine; it was during the period when I was so religiously inclined.

I had been to a Sunday-school excursion on Seneca Lake that day when the idea came to me.

There I had heard much talk of a girl in our class who, having received a severe fall some months before, and whom we had considered hopelessly injured, was now improving surprisingly under the care of a woman physician from a distant town.

Her parents were too poor to procure these services, but an aunt had recently sent for the physician; and the girl’s recovery then seemed assured.

All this I heard without apparently hearing, giving it scant heed in the hustle and gayety of our lake picnic.

An old negress on the boat had told our fortunes that day, predicting beaux and happy or unhappy marriages for all the girls but me.

When someone asked, “Isn’t _she_ going to marry?

” she replied: “Go ’long thar, her father doan’t want her to marry--she hain’t got no call to get married.

” I was rather pleased at this: if it showed anything, I thought, it showed that I was to have something different from a merely domestic career; but I had no idea what my course in life was to be, nor what I wanted it to be; and I think I was not then particularly concerned about my sick schoolmate.

It was that night after returning home, as Mother and I sat on the “stoop” in the darkness, talking in a desultory way, that this news about Dora’s improvement occurred to me.

Our talk was mingled with my own dreams and cogitations as to what my future was to be.

I knew I must do something, but what that something was I did not know.

Music had been prohibited, teaching was out of the question because of my incompetency in mathematics--suddenly into my mind there came the strange, hitherto undreamed-of idea, and I said, first to myself, then to Mother, “I will be a doctor.

” It all came in a twinkling--how scarce women physicians were, how much they must be needed, and that if there were more of them in the smaller towns, poor modest girls like Dora, who had refused treatment from a man, need not suffer so for lack of means to employ them.

I can hear now the dismay in Mother’s voice as she said, “Oh, Eugenia!

” Fired with the idea, I talked eagerly and rapidly; it seemed clear that it was to be; there was no question about its fulfilment; but how it was to be accomplished, so far as finances were concerned, I was puzzled to know.

For Father’s health was precarious then--two bank failures and hard times made just the ordinary expenditures hard to meet.

I did not see how it could be done, but knew it would.

Elated over the project, the very suddenness with which it had come to me convinced me of its ultimate accomplishment.

I felt annoyed at Mother’s objections.

When she demurred, I insisted on her giving a reason.

Her chief one, that it was going out of my sphere, irritated me.

In those days (I hope I am less so now) I was very intolerant of another’s point of view, and Mother’s illogical way of meeting questions tried me exceedingly.

Her insight, her intuition, her faith, her estimate of character, were strong, but her logic was poor.

Probably then, knowing me as she did, she felt it would be a life for which temperamentally I was not suited; perhaps she divined some of the disappointments and failures I have since experienced; but she was unable to give a reason and could only protest in a pitying way.

I can hear her tones yet, her words of regret and dismay, as I announced my intention with a finality she seemed to realize.

That night I wrote in my diary, doubtless sentimentally, of this new idea.

I think I rather gloried in Mother’s objections, and in the ridicule of my sister when she heard of it.

(She probably felt much as some other girls and boys did: some boys who remembered my hyper-sensitiveness and timidity as a child thought I would never have “sand” enough to study medicine.

) For a little I chose to consider myself a martyr.

Years later, in looking over the diaries of that period, much of what I had written seemed so at variance with what I then felt, that it seemed like the experience of another person--so false, so sentimental, such a pose!

In shame and disgust I destroyed the records.

From the time, though, that the idea came to me, it was persistently held.

In school I worked with added zeal, paying especial attention to studies I thought would be of use to me, and feeling impatient at those which were distasteful, and which I thought little likely to be helpful.

But how poorly qualified was I then to judge of this!

I know now that just because of my failure to buckle down to what was hard for me (particularly mathematics and physics), I missed the mental training I most needed in those years.

The education of the attention, the moving along calmly from proof to proof, the deductions, the synthesis, the exactness, the close, true ways of thinking, the patience, the calmness; in short, the mental discipline which mathematics would have given me, I failed to acquire; and I can now see how handicapped I have been because of this failure.

With senses so acute, and the emotional nature so intense, the proper balance would have been found in a more rigid intellectual training.

The deficiencies have had to be made up, when made up at all, at too great a cost; and the efficiency in my chosen field of work has fallen far short of what it might have been had I been more tractable then, more heedful of the advice of my elders.

Confiding my hopes to a few intimates, from them I got the sympathy I craved.

Gradually my ambition became known in the school.

It was perhaps two years later before a word was said to me on the subject by my father.

I thought it strange that he who showed such an interest in my studies should be so indifferent in this which meant so much to me.

But I learned in time that it was not indifference.

It seems he told Mother not to be anxious over it and not attempt to dissuade me.

“If it is a mere whim,” he had said, “it will soon pass, and no harm will be done; but if she is in earnest, she will do it, and opposition will only make her more intent on it.

” When he saw it was not a whim, he acted promptly enough; and when the time came for me to go to college, he smoothed the way as only the most unselfish of fathers could.

And so did Mother and Sister; their ready help was given, their own economies and self-sacrifices were cheerfully contributed that I might accomplish my purpose.

A certain noon as I started for school as usual Father said: “Eugenia, hurry up to the office when school is out; I want to take you to see Dr. Barnard.

” To my questioning look he explained: “If you are bound to be a doctor, you may as well begin to find out something about it.

I have talked with the Doctor; he says he will take you as a student; you can read in his office Saturdays and get a start in that way.

” I wonder if my father knew how happy he made me that day.

As I went back to school I trod on air.

A radiance suffused my whole being.

There was very little studying that afternoon--whispered explanations to a favoured few, wonderful tolerance on the principal’s part at my inattention to studies and open disregard of rules.

We whispered and wrote notes and were in a delicious flutter of excitement.

As Father, the Doctor, and the Professor were great cronies, I presume my teacher knew of the plan long before I did.

Dr. Barnard was a man of perhaps thirty-five, though to me he then seemed much older.

He was comparatively a newcomer in the town but, being a Mason, found favour in Father’s sight.

A good man with whom to be associated, a student of human nature, kind, easy-going, with a keen sense of humour, he was wide-awake as a physician and, what is especially to the point, he did not take me too seriously, but wisely concealed from me that he did not.

I think he cured me of some whims and susceptibilities; and I can see that he helped to develop my sense of humour and to counteract some of my strenuous, sentimental views of life.

But it was done tactfully.

He never shocked, though often surprised me.

That memorable first day he talked to me about the study of medicine, about college life, its requirements, the difficulties to be encountered, and the courage necessary.

All that I could hope to do while in school, he said, was to occupy the time I might otherwise spend in desultory reading, in studying advanced physiology and anatomy, thus making my first year in college easier.

I could prepare my lessons and he would quiz me on Saturdays.

So, in addition to my school work, I studied Gray’s Anatomy.

He let me take home a box of bones, and I felt proud indeed to be learning about each little groove and facet and tuberosity.

On Saturdays I recited and sometimes went with him into the country, often reading to him from books on _materia medica_ or on pathology as we drove lazily along.

Occasionally he took me into the houses to see an interesting case, but as a rule I held the lines during his visits (and was always nervous till he was back in the buggy).

Once I went with him when he reduced a fractured arm.

I got angry at the rough, coarse-voiced woman who stood by ridiculing her husband for his groans and sighs;

she called him a calf, and said he ought to have a few babies, then he _might_ make a fuss.

The Doctor was much amused at my embarrassment.