CHAPTER VIII The “Medic”
Belle and I decided to go to a coeducational school to study medicine, and settled upon Boston University. I was a happy girl that summer, getting ready and picturing the future. Associating Boston with Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whittier, I loved it before going there. Belle, who had studied guide-books and maps, was glib in her knowledge of the city; she knew just where the railway station was, and the college, and how to get from one to the other. Her confidence impressed me, for maps and topography were ever a vexation to my spirit; her assurance impressed our parents also, and it was decided to let us make the journey alone.
Our family physician, who had written to the Dean, had received an assuring letter: we were to go directly to the College and matriculate, and there obtain addresses for boarding-places. In later years I have realized what misgivings our parents must have had in letting us start out alone, mere schoolgirls who had never been more than thirty miles from home, green village girls, unused to city ways—ignorant of the world, of life, of themselves.
The last picture I have of my grandfather, is the one as he rode into our door-yard the October afternoon of the evening I was to start for Boston. Sitting his horse firmly and proudly (he was then eighty-five) he brought me a fine full ear of yellow corn for a “keepsake.” I have often wondered what made him bring that particular thing. Was it that he knew the sight of it when far from home would be so dear, serving to bring back Grandma’s kitchen and the overhanging ears suspended by their turned-back husks? Or was it that he recollected what a fascination the full golden ears had had for me when I had played around the corn-house years before in the October weather? I never knew. I think I did not then question why. But that long yellow ear of corn which he brought to me on the eve of my first leaving home was a precious gift, inexplicably precious as I try to explain it now. I clung to him with unwonted tenderness as I bade him good-bye, and through my tears watched him slowly ride away.
The night we left home, just before I started for the train, my class-mate, Walter, came to the door and asked for me. I wondered why he had not gone ahead to the station with the other young people. Drawing me out on the “stoop”, in the darkness he quickly kissed me, wrung my hand, and with a choked “good-bye” ran down the steps. Astounded as I was, and with my strict ideas about such things, still I did not resent that kiss. And as Father and I drove to the station in the darkness, leaving Mother alone at home, to weep, I was sure (though she had kept up till the good-byes were over) Walter’s kiss was a welcome diversion, a partial relief to the pang of leaving home and parting with Mother.
At the station the young people were gathered, chatting gaily, but Sister was unusually quiet. They loaded us down with fruit and flowers and absurd advice—a merry noisy party as the train came thundering in; merry and noisy except for the few who were pale and silent with something wretchedly painful tugging at our hearts and rising in our throats.
Hurried kisses and hearty handclasps to the girls and boys, and then—my sister! We had not thought it would be so hard. It was like tearing one’s body apart. Never till that moment had we realized what we were to each other. We had never been separated more than a week in our lives, and here was this train ready to bear me away from home, away from my precious sister, into a life in which she was to have no part! The agony as they separated us (for we clung in desperation as the men shouted “All aboard!”) was the most cruel thing that had then come into my life.
When at Syracuse, after putting us on the sleeper, Father left us, another pang was added; the last link was snapped. I can see him now trying to look cheerful as he waved to us from the platform; and I trying to keep the tears back till the train should bear us from his sight. Never a word of all the anxiety and misgiving he and Mother must have felt! The train moved off bearing the two girls with aching throats and tear-stained faces—two girls who had never left the home shelter, bearing them rapidly away in the darkness to the unknown city to begin the study of medicine.
Soon reacting from the sadness of parting, after the lumps had left our throats, we became excited, even gay. Everyone had advised us what to do on a sleeper; had warned us about thieves; told us of queer amusing things which happened to inexperienced travellers, and we were fairly spoiling for an adventure of some sort. But as our fellow-passengers seemed strangely indifferent to us, we began to feel it was going to be quite uneventful. Still, though detecting no one who looked like a thief or a cut-throat, we hid our purses and watches with care, and I kept my hat-pin within easy reach, in case any one should molest us. We found some difficulty in fastening the curtains of our bed; there were great gaps between the fastenings; men passing down the narrow aisles would drag the curtains aside. It was a novel and not at all reassuring experience—we girls cooped up on that narrow bed, undressing in the dark stuffy place, right in the sound of men’s voices, with men continually passing. It seemed then, and to this day it seems, a kind of indelicate thing to disrobe in the proximity of a carful of strange men, with only insecure draperies to insure privacy.