Dr. Russell Practices Persuasion

by Gregan

September 2003, Firthness Challenge Winning Entry

Rated PG-13

Author's Note:A Persuasion prequel, set in the late 20th Century. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, for Thursday’s lecture, continue reading Spengler’s Decline of the West and come prepared to discuss how his organic theory of history either fits or fails to fit the civilization upon which your final papers will be based. I expect everyone to turn in the outlines for your papers today. I will be conducting office hours this evening, from 5:00 until 6:30, should any of you need to speak with me. Good afternoon.”

With that, Martha Russell, Ph.D., left the lectern from which she taught senior level Historiography, the Philosophy of History, at Kellynch University and swept out of the hall. The students she left behind began gathering up their belongings, some muttering over the unreasonableness of a professor requiring them to read Spengler’s original works, and not a synopsis of his theorems.

“Anne, may I borrow your copy of Decline of the West?” Edward Wentworth leaned forward over Anne Elliot’s seat to ask, positive that she had completed Thursday’s assignment in advance. An intelligent and able student, Edward harbored no hope of competing with Anne for the high grade in Doctor Russell’s class. However, he knew that his friend would gladly help him earn an “A” in the last course required for his Bachelor’s Degree in Catholic Studies. Edward was studying for the priesthood, earning the first degree demanded by the Society of Jesus, that erudite order of religious men. His preferred course of study was Theology, and upon completion of his B.A., he would immediately begin post-graduate work in that field.

Anne was a member of an old KU family, her father, Walter H. Elliot, was the Dean of Admissions and a member of the Board of Trustees. The student center, Horace W. Elliot Hall, named for her grandfather. Their family was important not only at the University, but in the social whirl of the small town for which it was named. No party in Kellynch was considered successful unless one or more of the Elliots were in attendance. Walter Elliot reveled in the prestige that accompanied his appointment as Dean as well as in the contributions made by Elliots throughout the university’s history. That prestige was his very highest priority, followed by the family’s position in society and only a very distant third by his daughters and concerns unrelated to his position at KU and in society. Ironically for a man so firmly entrenched in university life, he cared little for academics, and found being a professor quite boring. Being a dean—the title and the deference that came with it—was of far greater value in his limited mind than educating students had ever been. As a student himself, his performance had been perfunctory at best, degrees and positions at KU resulted from his name rather than academic merit.

For their part, Anne’s sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, shared their father’s priorities and made no effort to understand Anne. Elizabeth, a KU Law alumna, determined before graduation that the actual practice of law, requiring long hours and producing little glamour, would unduly detract from her social visibility. Preferring to remain a big fish in KU’s small pond, Elizabeth chose to use her degree and the Elliot name to recruit students to KU’s renowned law school. More than pretty, Elizabeth was often called gorgeous, just as had been her namesake, their mother. She was tall and rail-thin with dark silky hair and dark-lashed blue eyes. A fervent participant in Kellynch’s social whirl, Elizabeth was admired by town and university society alike. Elizabeth saw her name and status as conferring both rights and duties upon her: the right to be haughty and self-righteous and the duty to be a social butterfly. Elizabeth intended to marry soon and marry well, as she believed their parents had done.

Mary was a master in the art of being the center of attention. Neither as beautiful as Elizabeth nor as intelligent and capable as Anne, Mary was as caught up in the prestige of being an Elliot at KU as her father and eldest sister. Her grandfather’s name was on the student center; her father was both Dean and Trustee. Her sister was a past president of the sought-after sorority of which Mary was an active member. Mary could work a room even better than Elizabeth, if she felt it necessary—which she often did. With little to recommend her, Mary was more traditionally popular than Anne had ever hoped to be at KU.

Despite this illustrious history and to the chagrin of her family, Anne’s only goal was an education. Her voracious appetite for knowledge and understanding made her a keen student, quite popular with the faculty, regardless of her name and connections. In her last semester, finished with every prerequisite except Historiography, her course load was full of philosophy and sociology electives. She and Edward Wentworth not only shared much of this class schedule, they frequently shared resources and ideas. The years at KU had cemented a friendship that had its genesis in their mutual passion for philosophical debate.

Naturally retiring, Anne felt quite at ease with Edward and genuinely liked him. Some at KU avoided him, uncomfortable with his deep-seated religious beliefs, not yet secure enough in themselves to accept his true piety. Anne, while not terribly religious, appreciated the sincerity of Edward’s calling. Rather than being uncomfortable on the spiritual plane, like her peers, Anne was uncomfortable on the physical plane those peers occupied. Edward’s commitment to his vocation enabled them to develop a truly platonic friendship, untainted by those corporeal considerations that so daunted Anne. While others caroused all night, using liquid courage to connect with the opposite sex, Anne and Edward argued philosophy, proofread one another’s papers and were frequently escorted from the library at closing. They had more in common than intellectual thirst; both were misfit middle children, Anne for her lack of social ambition and Edward for his desire to devote his life to the Church.

Anne, well aware that she faded into the woodwork when either or both of her sisters were present, was content to carry on as an actual student. Her friendships were deep and true, consisting mainly of Edward and Nancy Smith, nee Garvey, a bright and cheerful young woman who graduated at the end of Anne’s sophomore year, but by whose guidance Anne had carefully navigated the occasionally murky waters of freshman year. Nancy had since braved the world of post-graduate studies, where she was promptly swept into romance and marriage by the persuasions of the handsome and charming entrepreneur Alan Smith, a college dropout. Although marriage had made Nancy an infrequent correspondent, Anne never doubted her sincere friendship.

Digging into the maroon knapsack in which she carried her textbooks to class, Anne produced a well-read and dog-eared copy of the requested text for Edward. As she passed it over the back of her seat, she laughingly teased, “I don’t know why I even waited for the question, I should have known you’d need mine! It’s a good thing I finished my outline last night, or you’d be in serious trouble, my friend.”

“Anne, you’re as dependable as the Energizer Bunny -- you just keep going and going and going! I’ll give this back to you as soon as I put the finishing touches on my outline. My brother is coming in tonight and we’re going to buy the rest of my books after dinner, so I promise I won’t have to borrow it again.”

“Frederick is in town? What brings him to Kellynch?”

Frederick Wentworth was well known. At age twenty, he wrote a computer operating system that worked far better than anything Bill Gates and his minions had ever dreamed of. Despite a lack of formal education, his genius with computers was taking him far; Silicon Valley was collectively salivating over his concept and wooing him as an employee or trying to buy the operating system. “Whiz-kid Wentworth,” as Time, Newsweek and People dubbed him, was riding high on the waves his invention created.

“He’s coming to see me before he goes to California. He’s been in Europe talking to SAP and in Canada talking to some company up there, so we haven’t seen each other in a while. He expects to be in California for a while, so he wants to have a long visit first.” Edward’s elfin face lit up with a smile, “Why don’t you have dinner with us tonight? He’d love to meet you; after all, I’ve done nothing but talk about you for three and a half years!”

Anne paused and cocked her head, considering a meal with intelligent conversation versus another mind-numbingly dull evening at home listening to her father and sisters drone on and on about their “important“ social engagements and the prestige of the Elliot family at KU. After all, even if Frederick turns out to be a pocket-protector geek, Edward is always fun to talk to.

“Sure, I’d love to. Where should I meet you?”

Edward’s smile broadened; his secret wish to introduce his best friend and his charismatic younger brother, one of the few men in the world that Edward knew was capable of valuing Anne and all that she offered, was about to come true. “Frederick wants to take me out for a real meal, so we’re going to Ruth’s Chris. We can pick you up in about forty-five minutes or so. Our reservations aren’t until 6:30, but if we get there early, we can watch the sunset from the bar while we wait for our table.” Edward wanted this introduction to take place in as romantic a setting as he could manage.

“Ruth’s Chris? I’ll have to change.” Glancing first at her faded jeans and then at the simple Timex on her wrist, Anne added, “I have a meeting with Dr. Russell in ten minutes. It won’t take long; she just wants to review the outline for my paper with me. About an hour?” When Edward nodded, Anne continued, “Great, 6:00 at my house. Don’t worry about coming to the door, I’ll come out when I see your car.” Anne feared that if they dared introduce Frederick to her family, her father would spend the entire time pronouncing why “Whiz-kid Wentworth” was an inferior species as a non-student or non-alumni of KU. She dearly longed to skip such “pleasantries” both for herself and for Frederick’s sake.

Being well acquainted with her family, Edward readily agreed, “Sure, Anne.” Backpack on his shoulder, Edward headed to the door of the now empty lecture hall, his lanky figure reminiscent of a newborn colt, all legs and awkward grace.

Smiling to herself, Anne headed to the office of her advisor, the dreaded and feared Dr. Russell. Anne could never quite understand why her classmates found Dr. Russell intimidating. Anne found her to be warm, supportive and understanding. Anne unconsciously placed her in loco parentis for the mother she lost as a teenager. Dr. Russell’s advice and comfort reminded Anne of the sensible teachings and unswerving devotion of which she’d been deprived with her mother’s death.

Through Anne, Dr. Russell rediscovered the joy of teaching lost after lecturing bored twenty-year-olds on the intricacies of the philosophy of historical theory for thirty years. Anne’s intensity not only echoed that of a younger Martha Russell, it reminded the professor of her dearest friend, Anne’s late mother. Lonely years as a childless widow trying—and usually failing—to imbue her own love of theory to her students had jaded Dr. Russell. In Anne, she recognized potential she no longer possessed, and that had been lost with the death of Elizabeth Stevenson Elliot. Dr. Russell fervently hoped that Anne would continue her education, and follow the Elliot tradition to a professorship at KU. Anne was her hope for salvation, so to speak. Should Anne become the inspiring professor that Dr. Russell no longer aspired to be, and that her mother ceased to be after marriage to the pretentious and shallow Dean Elliot, perhaps Martha Russell was a worthwhile teacher after all.

After approaching Dr. Russell’s door and finding it closed, Anne peered into the office that housed the secretarial staff of the History Department. “Hi, Kelly. Hi, Ms. James. I have an appointment with Dr. Russell, is someone with her?”

The student worker and the department secretary looked up and smiled at Anne, a staff favorite. Each was seated behind a small institutional desk in the spacious but sparsely furnished office, but there the similarity ended. Ms. James’s desk was decorated with framed pictures of her four cats and her beloved show-quality Yorkshire Terriers as well as with the detritus invariably left behind by the stereotypical absent-minded professors who expected her to sort it out on their behalf. What desktop space she had not cluttered up herself was buried under syllabi, textbook lists and marked-up drafts of academic papers. In contrast, Kelly’s desk was spotlessly clean with an unblemished blotting pad, neat pencil holder and bud vase complete with freshly picked flowers.

Ms. James consulted a seemingly unintelligible calendar tacked to the wall beside her desk before answering, “No, she’s expecting you, go on in.”

Kelly couldn’t help teasing Anne just a little, “How does it feel to be the only student in Historiography to turn in their outline on time?”

Anne took the comment as intended and shot back, “It’s great, too bad you’ll never know!” and laughingly backtracked to Dr. Russell’s door.

Dr. Russell’s door was now open in anticipation of her scheduled meeting with Anne, star pupil and beloved daughter of a cherished friend. After the necessary discussion relating to Anne’s analysis of the rise and fall of the Tokagawa Bakufu, resulting from the competing forces of cultural intransigence and forced entry by the Americans, Anne closed her notebook and prepared to take her leave when she was forestalled by Dr. Russell.

“Anne, I’ve been invited to dinner tonight by your father. Chancellor Shepard will be there, and we very much hope to speak to you about graduate school.”

“Dr. Russell, I appreciate your interest, but I’m really not planning on graduate school. It would be frivolous when I don’t intend to become an academic. Besides, I won’t be home tonight. I’m having dinner with Edward and his brother. In fact, I must run, they’re picking me up in half an hour and I have to change.”

Dr. Russell raised a brow in surprise. “Dinner with Edward and his drop-out brother? Anne, is that wise this early in the semester? You don’t want to fall behind in your reading, perhaps you’d better cry off. I know Chancellor Shepard really hopes to persuade you to sit for the GRE’s. After all, taking the test is not a commitment to graduate school.”

Anne smiled gently as she hung her knapsack over her slender shoulder. “I promise I’m not behind in my reading at all. I do appreciate all that you and the chancellor are advising me to do, Dr. Russell. It’s just that I’ve explored this field as far as I want to, at least for now. I’m really looking forward to taking some time off to consider my options. Besides, do you really think that I should pass up a steak dinner with ‘Whiz-kid Wentworth’? Any tips he can give me on navigating Windows might make the dinner worthwhile in and of itself.”

“Anne, do you realize what a promising scholar you are? The chancellor and I do not want to see you waste yourself in some dead-end office job, or teaching in the public school. Without a graduate degree, there really are no other options.” Dr. Russell sighed, “At least I don’t worry about you running helter-skelter into an early marriage like Eliz . . . so many bright young women do.”

Dr. Russell’s words recollected for Anne a constant conundrum that coughed around her psyche, causing her to pause in the doorway, “I know I’ve asked this a hundred times, Dr. Russell, but why in the world did she marry him? Yes, he’s an Elliot, and because of that he’s a dean; but she was truly wonderful, both beautiful and brilliant. Whatever possessed her to sidetrack her career for marriage to a man so different from herself?”

Dr. Russell sighed again. “Oh, Anne, many women make foolish mistakes in the name of love. Your father impressed your mother when she first arrived at KU. He’s handsome, he’s charismatic, and when he was younger, he was even more so. Your mother was as susceptible as anyone to the vagaries of romance. His appointment as Dean cemented everything for her. She believed she’d found her Mecca: a handsome, charming, well-connected dean at a prestigious university; he was her dream lover, at least at first. Love is dangerous, even more so for women who hope to excel in demanding careers. You remember her as unhappy because despite all of the things that she believed made him an ideal match, he never was her equal in either intelligence or common sense, and his value system was simply incomprehensible to her. But by the time this became clear, you girls had been born. You became her world while his remains to this day his stature and prestige as an Elliot at KU. She was bitterly disappointed, and had she not had three beautiful daughters, I cannot imagine that she would have stayed.”

Dr. Russell’s words replayed throughout Anne’s short walk home and as she dressed for dinner. This account of her parents’ marriage coincided with her own memories – a beautiful and cerebral mother wearied of her slightly dim but handsome husband and his constant attempts to immerse them in society. Anne never heard her mother complain, certainly not! However, Anne’s observations and intuition told her more than words: romance had failed her mother. Rather than the scintillating company of other intellectuals the young doctoral candidate Elizabeth Stevenson counted upon, physical attraction and ambition drew her to Walter Elliot and away from her own dreams. Years of exposure to the quietness of her mother’s despair and the regret caused by the exercise of her sexuality coalesced in Anne’s deeply held belief that love, romance, physical attraction, sex and all that these entailed separately and together were never worth the risk of bitter disappointment. Anne chose celibacy and was, in her way, as committed to it as Edward, for vastly different reasons. Romance, love and marriage were pitfalls and prudent, sensible Anne rarely fell into pitfalls.

In this contemplative frame of mind, Anne was watching for Edward’s silver blue Corolla from the window of her father’s study when her sister’s plaintive voice interrupted her reverie. ‘Anne, can I borrow your diamond earrings for the mixer tonight? Yours are so much nicer than mine; I can’t understand why Daddy let you have Mommy’s. After all, I lost my mom, too.”

Anne sighed and turned to face her younger sister, who was dressed “to the nines” in a black suede mini skirt, tight red sweater and high-heeled pumps. Expensive perfume saturated the air around her. Obsession, again, thought Anne. Anne saw Mary’s attire as advertising “AVAILABLE”, and loudly, for all of Fraternity Row to see, but knew from experience that any well-intentioned suggestion for a more subtle approach would fall on deaf ears. Sympathy for the very young girl Mary had been when their mother died kept frustration and contempt from appearing in either Anne’s voice or her demeanor. “Dad didn’t ‘give’ them to me, Mary. Mom left them to me in her will, just as she left you her pearls and Elizabeth her engagement ring. But, yes, you may borrow them, they’re in my jewelry box.”

Mary had just squealed her thanks when Anne was momentarily blinded by the setting sun caught in the windshield of a late model Ford Explorer turning into the driveway. It was driven by a young man whose features were similar to Edward’s. Correctly surmising that the driver of the SUV was Frederick, Anne made her way from the study window to the Explorer waiting at her front door.

She opened the car door, intending to voice a cheery greeting. Instead, their eyes met and her world spun off its axis. The subtle, almost spicy scent of him seeped into her pores as his intensely green eyes mesmerized her -- was he seeing into her very soul? Cheeks flushed and heart racing, Anne lost the ability to speak, to breathe, to think, to do anything but grip the handle of the car door and feel him, smell him, taste him, be him. When the world finally ceased spiraling around her, she felt an inexplicable need to laugh out loud, to cry, to jump and twirl with glee. Wordlessly, he told her that he felt it too, an instantaneous connection pulling them into a vortex of privacy. His broad, long-fingered hand reached out to hers and giddy with anticipation, she stretched to meet it. Inconsequential details jumped out at her, the freckles on his skin from which sprung curling blonde hairs, the broad, weathered leather watch band on his right wrist, the calluses on his palm. Was that her heart beating, or his?

Copyright held by Gregan - 2003