“Where is it?”
“I put it on your desk.”
She walked over to her desk and found the letter on top of her blotter. It was in a white envelope with the college letterhead and crest in the upper left-hand corner. She tore open the envelope, wondering what it was all about, and took out the letter.
She read it through once.
Then she read it through a second time.
Then a third time.
Then she said Ruth! in a small stricken voice and handed the sheet of paper to her roommate. Then, unable to stand any more, she fell headlong on her bed. She did not cry; she could not have cried if she had wanted to. Nor did she say anything more. She merely lay on the bed, unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to feel anything but the overwhelming shock of the letter.
Ruth took the letter from her and sat down with it. This is what it said:
Dear Miss Shepard:
I regret that it is my duty to inform you that, at a recent meeting of the Student Personnel Committee, it was the committee’s decision that you be requested to withdraw for the coming year. Withdrawal rather than expulsion will keep your record clean, as it were, and will facilitate your continuing at another college if you should choose to do so.
If it is your decision to withdraw from Clifton, I hope you’ll let me know within the next several days. If you should wish to discuss any aspects of the decision of the committee with me I will be available in my office Monday through Friday from 8:30 to 5 for the duration of the term.
That was all.
“Linda—”
“Not now, Ruth. I have to get this book read in time for class tomorrow, and I have to grind out a paper and then there’s a good fifty words of Spanish vocabulary that—”
“Linda!”
“—I have to memorize. And after that—”
“Linda, please!”
She closed her eyes and stopped talking, still lying face down on the bed, still numb and still unable to understand fully what had just happened to her.
“Linda, you can go and talk to him. When he finds out what you’ve been doing for the past three weeks, when he tells the committee that you’re working now and that you’re going to get through your courses—”
“It’s no use, Ruth.”
There was a dead note of finality in her voice.
“You’ve got to talk to him, honey.”
She sat up on the edge of the bed, her face composed now and perfectly calm. “I’ll talk to him,” she said dully. “But it’s not going to work. I can tell. He’s going to tell me that it’s just no use, as it were, and that he wishes me the best possible luck in whatever field of endeavor I eventually choose, as it were, and if I’m ever passing through the town of Clifton between 8:30 and 5 Monday through Friday—”
“The old bastard!”
“It’s not his fault. I just got this new-leaf project a few months too late, that’s all.” She hauled herself to her feet, her face set, her eyes determined.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I told you,” she said levelly. “I have a book to read and a paper to write and a good fifty words of Spanish to learn. I might as well get to work on them now.”
Dean Maples was in his office the following afternoon.
Dean Maples was sympathetic.
Dean Maples was understanding.
Dean Maples was sorry.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I’d like very much to tell you that there was a possibility that the committee might reconsider your case, but I’m afraid it’s impossible. As you know, you failed to pass a single course in the entire first term. Since then we’ve learned from your professors that your attendance has been sporadic to say the least and that you’re expected to fail again.”
“But I’m going to pass those courses,” she explained. “I’ve been working for three weeks now, Dr. Maples. And I’m sure I’ll pass.”
“It doesn’t seem very likely.”
“Give me a chance — if I don’t pass them all I’ll withdraw. Isn’t that fair?”
He puffed at his pipe and looked long and thoughtfully at the inkstand in one corner of his desk. Then, his eyes still fixed on the inkstand, he said: “It’s not just your grades, Miss Shepard. There are reports of your personal conduct that... uh... that influenced our decision.”
As it were, she thought.
“That’s changed, too.”
Dean Maples closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them but kept them turned toward the inkstand. It was a fairly common-looking inkstand and Linda couldn’t understand what was so fascinating about it. She wondered if the old man was afraid he’d blush if he looked her full in the face.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid the situation is impossible, Miss Shepard. I’d recommend that you consider transferring elsewhere, or plan to spend a year out of school with the option of reapplying to Clifton after a year’s leave. Quite a few students have done that and have profited by it.”
“I see,” she said. She didn’t see especially but the dean had paused for breath and she felt that she had to say something.
But now there was nothing much more to say.
“I’m going to pass those courses,” she told him. “You don’t believe me, but I’m going to pass those courses. Even if I can’t come back.”
“Well,” he said. “I certainly hope you do, but—”
“Not so that I can transfer,” she finished. “Not so that I can come back here.”
“Why then?” he asked, temporarily derailed.
“If you have to ask,” she said gently, “you’ll never know.”
She kept working, knowing that she would have to withdraw at the end of the term anyway, knowing that the work she was doing wouldn’t keep her in school and wouldn’t really do much of anything for her. But she had to prove to herself that she could do it, had to keep her head above water and wind up with her courses passed. Proving her point to Dean Maples was secondary; proving it to herself meant a lot more to her for the time being.
Besides, as it turned out it was easier to keep going than to stop. It was like the line in Macbeth about being so far steeped in blood that to go on is easier than to return. She was in the study habit now for better or for worse. It was normal to go to classes, normal to read and write, normal to spend all her waking hours at her desk. Learning was becoming an end in itself, strangely enough, and she was actually beginning to enjoy the whole thing.
It was ironic, she thought. Now that there was no more opportunity for her to go on with her work, now she was getting a kick out of it. If only she had approached the whole problem that way from the beginning! She was just starting to realize how different the whole thing might have been. If she had worked on her schoolwork while she was with Don, if a secondary interest in the academic part of school had kept her busy when she wasn’t with him, then she might have had a chance to keep him. If she hadn’t been so damned possessive because he was all she had, then he might not have been quite so anxious to get her off his neck. Well, whatever had happened had happened. There was no sense crying over spilled milk... or over a fractured maidenhead, for that matter.
Read and study and sleep.
Sleep and study and eat.
Eat and read and sleep.
That was about all she did, right up to the week of exams, right up to the last and hardest week of the term.
Just read and study and eat.
And sleep with Joe Gunsway.
It started one afternoon when Joe gave her a ring on the phone. It seemed he had learned what she was doing and wanted to give her a hand if she ever needed any help with anything. Of course there was nothing that she needed from him. She knew this and she knew that he knew it as well. It was just his way of saying that he was there, still in love with her, still ready to help her in any way he could, still anxious to be with her and to love her.