"They got married?" someone said.
"No. Better."
"She was pregnant?"
"Exactly. Miss Brenner had become pregnant. And you all thought no one had sex outside of wedlock back in the old days."
They all laughed.
Ludwig smiled as well, but he didn't continue with the story. He waited, letting their curiosity grow until someone shouted out, "Well, what happened?"
"Oh," he said. "You want to know what happened to Faith Brenner?"
"Yes!"
"You really want to know?"
"Come on..."
Ludwig shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Nobody knows. She disappeared from her dorm room one night. Her body was never found. She didn't leave a note. Nobody saw her go, at least not according to any records that I've been able to find in my research, and believe me, I've looked."
"So she ran off with the guy," a student said. "The poor guy."
"A good theory," Ludwig said. "Except he was still around after she disappeared. The police questioned him extensively, and he claimed not to know the girl's whereabouts. He eventually graduated from Fields, married, and had a life of his own, one without Faith Brenner."
"Then she ran away," a woman said.
It was always the female students who wanted to believe Faith Brenner ran away and had the baby on her own.
"Think of how difficult that would be for a woman today, someone your age. Leaving everything she has ever known, with no family support, no money and no real education to speak of, to go and have a child and then raise it on her own. And I know a woman today might have an abortion, but back then...No, I find it hard to believe that Faith Brenner simply ran off to start a new life with her unborn child and no means of supporting herself. In a rural area with no transportation and only the clothes on her back." Ludwig shook his head. "Most unlikely."
The question hung in the air then—what really did happen to Faith Brenner?
Ludwig waited, thinking to himself, Come on, it can't be this hard to make the connection...
"Are you suggesting," one of the students said, "that Pioneer Club thing you talked about had something to do with it?"
"Why would I suggest such a thing?"
A ripple of enlightenment spread through the room. The students whispered and buzzed among themselves.
"Connections, right?" Ludwig said. "Everything's connected?"
Their buzzing grew louder, so Ludwig raised his arms for quiet. When they settled down, he continued.
"Some people do think she was murdered. They think that the scandal of the pregnancy and the relationship with the farm boy was too much for her family to bear. They had her killed to avoid the public disgrace and associated drop in social standing they knew would come. Faith Brenner's mother, Eliza Brenner, was never the same after the girl disappeared. She was inconsolable, wailing away her days in the upstairs of the Brenner family home, which still stands by the way on the corner of Ohio Avenue and Grant Street. Her father, Hiram Brenner, never spoke of the girl again after she disappeared. He focused his attention on his work and the three children he still had, the ones who had the good sense to marry the right people and stay out of trouble. Oh, and something else about Hiram Brenner, her father? The rumor has always been that he was one of the most powerful and important members of The Pioneer Club."
He paused. They were all paying attention to him now, most of them thinking some variation of, Why can't school be this interesting all of the time?
"But ever since Faith's disappearance, the folklore around campus has been that Faith Brenner wanders the halls of Maxwell, waiting for her lover, the farm boy from Fields University, to come and take her away." They watched him in silence for a long moment. "Do there seem to be any themes running through these stories we've shared today?"
"That this is a weird place," someone said.
"Not quite," Ludwig said. "Not quite. You see, folklore often plays on our deepest fears, as well as our greatest desires. We all wish to fall in love and live happily ever after, so we kiss in the gazebo and hope the magic works. Conversely, we all fear an early end to our lives, a snuffing out of all of our hopes and dreams before we've had the chance to realize them. And if those hopes and dreams do get snuffed out early, we hope that there's someone there to help us pick up the pieces. Someone to help us with our grades. Or maybe we just wish that some part of us lives on after death, wishing for the possibility of a reunion with the person we loved in life. Because, the truth is, our lives don't always turn out the way we hope they will. And sometimes young people die, often in horrible ways.
"Well, now that you're all cheered up, maybe we should go on..." But Ludwig saw a hand up in the back of the room. It was the same young woman who had originally brought up the ghost of Faith Brenner. "Yes?"