The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel)

by Cate Campbell

  Mother Ryther turned next to Blake, and Margot had to press her lips together to keep from protesting this examination of her staff. The interview was not going as she had planned. “Mr. Blake,” Mother Ryther said. “Why did you feel the need to come inside? I believe the usual custom is for the driver to wait with the automobile, especially one as fine as your Cadillac.”

  Blake’s deep voice reverberated in the small room. “Ma’am,” he said, “these two ladies are in my care, just as your children are in yours. Meaning no disrespect, but we didn’t know what we would find within your walls. We heard a good deal of shouting from the front door.”

  For the first time, the flicker of a smile twitched at the old woman’s mouth. “Bath day,” she said. “And housecleaning. Squabbles and stains seem to go together.”

  Margot leaned forward, and picked up her medical bag with a decisive gesture. “All that’s needed, Mrs. Ryther,” she said, “is for us to inspect your dormitories, your kitchen, and your bath facilities. We want to assess the needs of your children. Vaccinations will be required, of course. Nurse Church will handle the paperwork.”

  Mother Ryther gazed at her through her spectacles. “I don’t hold with vaccinations.”

  “Why?”

  “Sticking my children with needles? Putting God-knows-what into their little bodies?”

  “It’s 1923, Mrs. Ryther,” Margot said, striving for patience. She could feel the clock’s swift ticking, the relentless passage of her one free afternoon. “Medicine has advanced a great deal, which you must know. Diphtheria, smallpox, whooping cough—our children don’t need to suffer these anymore.”

  “Newfangled,” Mrs. Ryther said.

  “Hardly,” Margot said. “Their efficacy is well proven.”

  “It doesn’t make sense, injecting germs into children.”

  “You misunderstand,” Margot said. “Vaccines are inactivated viruses and bacteria. They’ve been used for thirty years and more. I can send you the research, if you like. In the meantime, the governor supports our work, and wants your children to benefit as the ones at the Clinic do.”

  Mother Ryther was clearly an expert at the long, considering stare. She favored Margot with one now, and Margot’s foot began to tap in irritation. Finally, the old woman said, “Dr. Benedict, the governor is a good man, but he doesn’t know what’s best for my children.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” This was Sarah, speaking crisply. Mother Ryther’s eyebrows lifted. “But you turn to donations and assistance when you need them, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s good for the community to help,” Mother Ryther said.

  “No doubt,” Margot said. “The question is, do you want us to help as well? If not, perhaps we should waste no more of your time.” To underscore her point, she stood up, her bag in her hand. Beside her, Sarah also stood, though she left the heavy box of supplies on the floor.

  Mother Ryther pointed to the box. “What’s in there?”

  Sarah seemed not to share Margot’s impatience. She answered in detail, listing the contents of her box and ticking the items off on her slender fingers. “Thermometers. Two stethoscopes. A supply of vaccines and serums for common childhood illnesses.”

  “We can test any children you think are at risk,” Margot put in. “We should also test for tuberculosis.”

  “What do you usually do about medical attention?” Sarah asked.

  “What any other mother does,” Mother Ryther said with asperity. “I call a doctor.”

  “Can you pay your physicians?”

  “We trade,” Mother Ryther said, with no evidence of embarrassment. “Milk and eggs and vegetables.”

  Margot had taken her share of such “trade,” especially in the early days of her private clinic. Some of the offerings that had come her way were less than helpful, but she had accepted them just the same.

  “Well, Mrs. Ryther,” Sarah said, brusque and efficient now, as if the matter were settled. “Your children will fare better with preventive care than waiting until they’re ill to see a doctor.”

  “And the government will pay.”

  “The government will help. But applications need to be made.”

  The old woman picked up her pen and toyed with it, glancing from Sarah to Blake to Margot, evidently in no hurry to make a decision.

  Margot said, “The vaccinations will be required. There will be no money without them.”

  Mother Ryther’s eyes flicked down toward the ledger on her desk. Margot could see now she was in the process of managing bills. Surely this woman felt the pressure of time just as she did.

  Mother Ryther said, “And who is going to give these vaccinations? This nurse?”

  “Nurse Church has been doing this work for some time now, Mrs. Ryther. We’re lucky to have her. Her skills are excellent.”

  “Hmm. I suppose we’ll see.” Mother Ryther put her hands on her desk and pushed herself to her feet. She was wearing a long dress with a high collar, and when she stepped in front of the desk, Margot saw old-fashioned button-up boots beneath it. She moved stiffly, and her hand moved to her back, then dropped self-consciously to her side. As she approached the door, Blake opened it, and gave one of his small, formal bows. Mother Ryther, seeing this, raised her eyebrows at Margot once again, as if to warn her she wouldn’t be charmed into compliance.

  A new odor struck Margot at the top of the staircase of the Ryther Home. It reminded her a little of the hospital smell, that miasma of disinfectant and medicine, floor wax and bleach. In this case it was overlaid with the sort of aroma she associated with bodies. Young bodies, big and small, clean and very likely not-so-clean, healthy and—at least some of them—ill. Her nose twitched, and when she glanced down at Sarah, she saw Sarah’s wide, delicate nostrils flutter. The noise was muted now—she could only suppose the bath day crisis had passed—but the house was full to the brim with the sounds of children.

  “Usually most of the children are at school,” Mother Ryther said over her shoulder. She walked steadily, but with a side-to-side gait as if her feet hurt her, or perhaps it was her hips. She was too old for such work, Margot thought. But who else would take on such responsibility?

  “Today is a holiday,” Mother Ryther said, “so we moved up bath day to keep them busy.” She paused at a door. A torrent of voices poured out when she opened it, but when Mother Ryther put her head around the doorjamb, the room fell quiet. She clicked her tongue, once, the way Hattie sometimes did at Benedict Hall, and then withdrew, closing the door. She seemed not to notice the tide of sound rising again as they walked on.

  “You may already know that we require all our children to stay in school until the age of fourteen. The boys learn a trade, and the girls enroll in business school. We rarely accept pregnant girls, because fortunately there are other places for them to go. Our mission—” She stopped again to open a door. In this room there was only a murmur of conversation in light feminine voices. A girl greeted her, and she nodded, and closed the door again. “Our mission,” she repeated, as she led them onward down the corridor, “is to give orphaned or abandoned children the same opportunity in life as those who grow up with their own parents.”

  She paused before a double door, behind which came the sounds of small children at play, mixed with the wails of at least one baby. With her hand on the knob, Mother Ryther said, “I believe these are the children you should meet first. They’re the ones with the greatest need, because they’re so young.”

  “How do you find them?” Sarah asked.

  “Mostly,” Mother Ryther said, her voice softening, easing into a tone of resignation and sorrow, “our children find us. Infants are sometimes left on our doorstep. Occasionally, the hospitals send newborns, either because they’ve been abandoned or because the mother died in childbirth.” Margot winced at this. “Once in a while a poor mother comes in person, and either leaves her children, or takes up residence with us if she has no place else to go.”

  It
was the first time she had spoken with any emotion, and she gave a slight shake of her head, as if to deny the hint of weakness. As she pushed the doors open, Sarah and Margot exchanged a glance. Blake, close behind them, with the box of supplies balanced on his hip, cleared his throat.

  Mother Ryther cast a warning eye back at him. “Men are not generally allowed here,” she said. “Some of our older girls help out here in the nursery, and we want them protected.”

  “Will you accept my voucher for Mr. Blake’s character?” Margot asked solemnly.

  “I will. This time.” The wrinkled lips pulled down again. “Come in now, and meet my youngest children.” Mother Ryther went into the room, and held the doors wide for the three visitors to pass through.

  Margot’s experience of nurseries was of two extremes. At Benedict Hall, little Louisa and her nurse dwelt in a beribboned haven of pink and cream silk, of puffy quilts and tufted pillows and pastel flocked wallpaper. At Seattle General Hospital, the nursery was all white, with cribs of white-painted iron, bleached sheets and pillowcases, nurses in long white aprons and starched caps. Only the floor was dark, the uniform brown of the linoleum that covered every hospital floor.

  Here, in the Ryther Home, her first impression was of unrelenting drabness. Cribs and cots lined the walls, each covered in blankets clearly handed down from an earlier time, and washed until their colors had melded into one vague gray. The walls were dingy, though the house was only three years old. The curtains, hanging dispiritedly from their rods, were a sallow beige, and the linoleum floor was also beige. A bucket of diapers soaking in Fels-Naptha stood in one corner, its distinctive smell permeating the warm air.

  The only color came from the children themselves. Margot counted fourteen of them, their hair every shade from blond, to red, to a curling head of hair as black as Sarah’s own. There were no Negro children, but there were two that must, Margot thought, be Indian. The youngest was standing in a crib, the source of the wailing she had heard from the corridor. Tears ran down the child’s cheeks, and its nose ran copiously.

  Two teenaged girls in printed aprons were ferrying children back and forth from an attached bathroom, wrapping the clean ones in towels, seizing the reluctant remainders to work their clothes off and get them into the bath. It was obvious they had their hands full, but when the visitors came in, they lifted the current wet ones out of the bath and carried them to Mother Ryther. Four older children, five or six years of age, trailed behind them. Others, several who looked to be about four, and one silent, slow-moving child of about three, wandered aimlessly through a litter of toys and blankets. The remains of lunch were stacked on a sideboard, and a counter held a stack of boiled and folded diapers next to an enormous jar filled with nickel-plated safety pins.

  The room felt chaotic to Margot. She drew a breath, unsure where to begin. She heard wheezing from somewhere, and it distracted her as she tried to locate the sufferer.

  Sarah crossed the room with a quick, unapologetic step, smiling in friendly fashion to the two older girls as she passed them. She walked straight to the crib, and gathered the howling baby into her arms. From the pocket of her cape she produced a huge white handkerchief, and began scrubbing the child’s face of tears and mucus.

  One of the girls said defensively, “She cries a lot. I think she misses her ma.”

  Sarah said, “She should be held when she cries.”

  The girl said, “Don’t do ’er any good to spoil ’er.”

  “It doesn’t do any good to break her heart, either.” Sarah settled the child against her, tucking the little head under her chin as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The baby clung to her with both arms and both legs, shuddering as her sobs began to subside.

  Mother Ryther stood in the very center of the room, her arms folded. “That one came a week ago,” she said. “A policeman brought her. He found her wandering down in the Tenderloin, and nobody to claim her.”

  Margot heard Blake draw a sharp, painful breath. She felt the same sorrow, but like Mother Ryther, she had learned long ago to discipline her feelings. Pity wouldn’t help these abandoned children. Sarah’s instinctive caretaking would. And medical attention, which was what Margot had to offer.

  “I assume you deal with louse infestations, obvious infections?” she asked.

  “Doctor,” Mother Ryther said. “I’ve been taking care of babies for longer than you’ve been alive. The answer to your question is, Of course.”

  Margot accepted this without argument, though she could have cited a hundred cases in which years of experience seemed to amount to little. She turned to Blake. “Could you set the box of things on that counter, Blake? I may as well start with this child, and work up to the older ones.”

  She turned as she spoke, to indicate the area she meant, but Blake was staring into a corner, his lips parted as if he had been about to speak, but was distracted.

  Margot, another instruction dying on her lips, followed the direction of his gaze. Her heart gave a sudden lurch.

  The child crouched near the wall. He held a toy in each hand, and he was staring up at the strangers with an intent expression at odds with the childish softness of his features. Two, Margot thought he must be. Certainly no older than three. His eyes were a clear, translucent blue, and his hair was a pale ash blond, almost white. Nearly transparent.

  It was a thing Margot remembered about her youngest brother when he was small, the silvery color of his hair. The crystalline color of his eyes had never changed, even when he was an adult. The two together, and the shape of the child’s chin, the silhouette of his head, made her shiver.

  This little one could have been the identical twin of Preston Benedict when he was tiny. For long seconds Margot and Blake stared at him.

  Sarah interrupted them by carrying the baby forward and laying it on a blanket on the counter, beginning to strip off its ill-fitting and stained shirt so Margot could begin her examination. Margot blinked, and made herself look away from the toddler in the corner. She took the stethoscope Sarah was holding out to her, and fitted the earpieces into her ears while Sarah unpinned the baby’s wet diaper. The little girl’s bottom and belly were red with rash.

  Margot turned to her work. It was coincidence, of course. Preston had put the idea in their heads with his claims of a child. They would have known if it was true. Someone would have come to them. The Benedict name—and wealth—had that effect.

  With the earpieces of her stethoscope in her ears, she bent to listen to the baby’s heart and lungs. There was no time for pointless speculation. She had work to do.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Your eyes,” Preston had said, “are so unusual. It looks as if someone sprinkled gold dust in them.”

  His white smile included both Bronwyn and Iris. They had withdrawn to one of the small round tables in the Bartletts’ parlor, where the buffet was laid out with a grand silver tea service. Tiered plates held sandwiches and cakes. Iris had been anxiously twisting her handkerchief when their waltz ended, but Preston had returned Bronwyn to her mother with a respectful bow, and now was charming both of them, bringing cups of punch and a saucer of finger sandwiches.

  Iris said in a voice so diffident it was barely audible, “Thank you, Captain Benedict. Please do sit down with us.”

  “Call me Preston, please, Mrs. Morgan. I took off the uniform months ago.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat down. Iris said, “I’m sure your parents are so very glad you’re home safe.”

  “So they say,” he said, with a light laugh that made the golden lock of his hair flutter above his eyebrows. He touched his pocket, where the pen and notepad were unobtrusively displayed. “I believe my father is relieved that I’m gainfully employed once again.”

  “Your column,” Bronwyn said. Her cheeks felt warm, and she feared she was unbecomingly flushed. She picked up the cup of cold punch and took a sip.

  “Do you read it?” he asked, with a sudden focus on her that made her cheeks f
eel even warmer. She bobbed her head, afraid of saying something silly. “That’s marvelous, Miss Morgan. I do hope you enjoy it.”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Yes, very much.”

  “How kind.” He smiled into her eyes, and her heart fluttered in response.

  Iris gave a small, discreet cough. “I was surprised that Anabel Bartlett invited the press to Margaret’s party.”

  Preston’s regard returned to her, and a faint, charming line appeared in his smooth brow. “Don’t you approve, Mrs. Morgan? Gosh, I’m sorry about that. I assure you, I always do my best to keep ‘Seattle Razz’ respectful. This is such a chic event, don’t you think?”

  “Well—I suppose—”

  “Oh, yes, Mother, it is,” Bronwyn said suddenly. “Everything straight from Emily Post, right down to the sandwiches.” She pointed to the ones on the plate in the center of the table. They were perfectly and quite unnaturally symmetrical, with paper-thin slices of cucumber arranged between buttered slices of bread. The crusts had been neatly cut off, and Bronwyn could imagine the leftover bits of sandwich lying around on the counter in the Bartletts’ enormous kitchen. She wondered if the servants got to eat them, or if they were just thrown out.

  Preston chuckled. “I keep a copy of Etiquette on my desk at the paper’s offices,” he said in a confiding way. “Although I admit there’s more news when a hostess defies the rules than when she follows them to the letter!”

  At this they were all smiling, exchanging confidential glances. Bronwyn felt infinitely sophisticated at that moment, she and her pretty mother sitting at a private table with the newspaperman, sharing an inside jest. He was not wearing gloves. When he put out his hand to pick up his cup, she followed the gesture, drawn by the even texture of his skin, the masculine shape of his fingers, the fine golden hairs that marked his wrist below snow-white cuffs. Her stomach contracted strangely as she remembered the feel of that cool, strong hand pressed against her back, guiding her in the steps of the waltz. The fabric of her dress was so thin it was as if his palm had touched her bare skin. He had breathed into her ear, “You dance like an angel, Miss Morgan!” and she had utterly, absolutely, believed him.