It was Monday, the beginning of another school week. Serving breakfast to the students, I got a close look at Erica as she walked from the coffee service back to her place at the table. She looked as sleepy this morning as she had on Sunday. After what Constance Claire had said the previous day, the others were aware of her strange behavior as well. I looked at each and wondered what they were thinking.
M Dumont was doing us the honor of breakfasting with us this morning. He didn't often do this. He doesn't feel that he should mix with the undergraduates. In fact, M Dupont wanted nothing to do with anyone at Begley House. He was faculty, he wished you to know, not student, and did not mingle with the masses. He had his breakfast with us occasionally however.
In spite of invitations and a genuine desire on the part of the other guests to learn more about him and his field, he simply could not be bothered with tea after dinner. He had places to go after classes and often did not return until almost lock-up time. I once offered him a key but he declined. He would rather get the concierge out of bed to let him in than have the bother of a key. I didn't like this much, being the concierge in question, but it did serve to establish his social position as higher than mine, which was the intent, I suppose. Being both a professor of French and a French professor, his appearance and demeanor were always impeccable. He acted his station in life at all times. This morning, he seemed not at all aware of the struggles of young Erica, but he was a very clever chap and I have always thought that Europeans kept their thoughts to themselves much more often than we Americans did. He got up from his coffee, visited the sideboard for a hard boiled egg and a biscuit and returned to his seat without a glance at Erica.
Dora Lund hadn't quite given up on the too much studying idea she had posited the day before to explain Erica's obvious fatigue. She suggested, once again, that Erica's classes must be very difficult for her.
"No, not at all." Erica said slowly, obviously trying to conceal whatever was wrong with her this morning. "My German classes are almost pro-forma, since I've spoken German from birth. Even the philosophy class isn't hard. The prof spends more time explaining the German than he does explaining the philosophy."
"Oh well," responded Dora, "I might have the same easy way of it if I were taking classes in Swedish." She allowed the rising and falling accented syllables of the Swedish language to modulate the English sentence. I smiled slightly at the exaggeration. Dora could put on the Swedish act whenever she wanted to and she used it a lot. The Swedish accent came and went with delightful whimsy. Dora was a lot more playful than she seemed.
I noticed John Watson looking at Erica very solemnly, and not saying anything. He did look like he wanted to, but was restraining himself. Professional restraint, I assumed. Physicians-to-be observe, but they do not often comment. Even when asked, they are reluctant to express a definite opinion. At least, that was the position of John Watson, physician to be as he was.
For her part, Erica did not appear to notice anyone at all. She consumed her porridge and excused herself back upstairs.
Once she had gone, the conversation resumed, with the now absent Erica as the topic.
"Do you think she is studying too late at night?" Dora Lund asked me, looking quite serious. "Is she making herself sick over it?"
"However should I know?" I responded, smiling softly at her, "Unlike some, I sleep at night."
"Perhaps she just had a bad night," Robert Miller suggested. "That happens to everyone from time to time."
That was his first comment of the day. Mr. Miller rarely entered into a conversation with the other students at breakfast. He was our transfer student from the East. By East, I mean New York, not China.
Robert tried to fit in, from time to time, but without much success. He seemed too serious for the other students. Quite serious, he was, but I couldn't say exactly what he was serious about. His politics were admirably to the left, but seemed somehow to be too much so, and too defiantly so. He never seemed to understand that he was among friends here, that the other students mostly agreed with his politics. He assumed much too often that he was in conflict with anyone who presumed to say anything at all political in our parlor conversations. Whenever he said something my first thought was to tell him to calm down, that it wasn't that important, at least not that important at tea time. It seemed important to him to be the most socialist of them all. He was studying political science to be sure, but I never knew that crowd to be so continuously on their guard as he seemed to be.
He was such a strange addition to Begley House that I even made a few discrete phone calls to a friend to make sure he was attending classes. I didn't want anyone in Begley House who was here for any other purpose than student housing. He wouldn't be here at all if he hadn't put down hard cash, in advance, for the whole term, on my desk at a time when I really needed it to fill a sudden vacancy late in the enrollment period. I didn't want to be sorry for my weakness, and truth to tell, I didn't think I had made a mistake at all. He was certainly polite and well spoken, and regular in his habits so far as I could tell. He had no friends that I knew about and never got noticed outside of normal student activities. He went to town in his car after classes rather more often than some of the others, but I suppose they would do the same if they had an automobile to go to town in. He did seem to have a bit more money to spend than the average, but most certainly didn't flash it around.
After breakfast, they all went off to their classes, leaving me to wonder after Erica, as I found myself doing all too often. She did make classes today, I noticed. A bit slower than usual, perhaps, but willingly. I cleared breakfast, helped cook some, and enjoyed an hour of relative peace, happy enough with my life, I suppose.