The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel)

by Cate Campbell

  All in all, he admitted to himself, it had been a wearing afternoon, and if Dr. Margot had been here she would probably have ordered him to go to his own rooms and rest.

  She wasn’t here, however, and he could hardly leave poor Hattie alone to try to keep order in the house. He placed glasses and salad plates on the tray, and, leaving his cane leaning beneath the rack with his serving coat, he carried everything into the dining room. After he had laid the table, he brought the empty tray back to the kitchen. Hattie glanced up as he backed through the swinging door.

  “I guess you givin’ up that cane for good, Blake.”

  “You know, Hattie,” Blake said, smiling at her, “I seem to have made a full recovery.”

  “Hmmm. Hope you ain’t rushing things,” Hattie said, and went back to chopping sprigs of dill for the fish.

  “No, ma’am,” Blake said, chuckling, but he left the cane where it was. It was nice not to have to maneuver it around furniture. It was wonderful to have both hands free. He promised himself he would make a conscious effort to walk without limping. He wondered if it was habit rather than necessity that made him favor the leg. “What else can I do to help?”

  “That salad needs tossing, and the butter dishes need filling. Good thing I done snapped those beans before Miss Louisa took it into her curly little head to go explorin’!”

  Blake took up the salad tongs as Hattie went on muttering to herself. To distract her, he said, “Tell me, Hattie. Have you heard anything from Miss Allison?”

  “She sent me a postcard with a picture of a cable car, which looks like some sort of streetcar. She didn’t say too much, though. I hope being with her parents hasn’t made her unhappy again. That poor chile! Her mother’s home now from that sanitarium, and she’s probably pestering Miss Allison all over again.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe the treatments did her some good.”

  Hattie threw him a dark look, and shook her knife in the air. “You can’t do good for some people, Blake, and that’s the Lord’s truth. Some people just can’t be helped.”

  “Well,” he said, wishing he’d chosen a different topic, “Miss Allison isn’t one of them.”

  “No, no,” Hattie said, resuming her chopping, shaking her frizzy curls. “No, Miss Allison is a sweet chile, that’s for sure. Such a sweet chile. Gonna be a fine nurse one day!”

  “I’m certain of that,” Blake said as he turned to the icebox for the butter crock.

  “Seems to me,” Hattie said, laying down her knife and scooping up the dill to sprinkle over the halibut. “Seems to me every chile out of this house is gonna be fine. All except the one.” She bent to slide the roasting pan into the oven, and straightened with a little whoof, one hand on the counter and one on her back. “That’s a sad thing, but that can’t be helped, neither.”

  “No,” Blake said with sympathy. He watched as Hattie moved a little stiffly back to her counter. “No, there’s no help for him, I’m afraid.”

  Hattie clucked, and shook her head again as she ran water into a kettle for the beans. “Such a pretty little boy, he was. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”

  “No.” There was nothing to add to this. Hattie had clung to her belief in Preston’s good nature for a long time. She had passionately grieved his supposed death. When they learned he was alive, Blake had feared for her, but Hattie had met that turn of events with an inner strength that sustained her through everything that followed.

  Mrs. Edith had not. Even now, more than a year after Preston had been confined, Mrs. Edith behaved as if he were merely in a hospital, as if he, like the other patients there, suffered from a lung ailment or some other treatable condition. She spoke as if one day he would return to Benedict Hall, and she kept his bedroom untouched and his place set at the table, all in readiness. No one argued with her about any of it.

  Blake thought that might not be the healthiest thing, but it wasn’t his place to have an opinion.

  Bronwyn found herself, without having actually agreed to it, facing an enormous claw-foot tub filled with lilac-scented water. There was a maid to help her, a middle-aged, gray-haired woman in a black skirt and white apron. They hadn’t had nearly so much staff at Morgan House. It hadn’t been part of Betty’s duties to help Bronwyn dress or run her bath for her. This woman—who had introduced herself as “Thelma, miss,” with a shallow curtsy—held up a wide bath towel and averted her eyes.

  Behind the modesty of the towel, Bronwyn stripped off her underclothes and stepped into the tub. The warm water gave her a wave of nostalgia for her own pink-tiled bathroom and towels washed by Betty and dried in the sunshine. She had bathed at the Ryther Home, but in tepid water that rose only to her hips, and she had felt as if she might drown when she tried to wash her hair.

  Now, she sank into water over her head, and gratefully used the shampoo left in the tray beside the tub. She scrubbed and scrubbed, and then, reluctant to leave the water, she lay soaking and thinking and wondering what the older Mrs. Benedict had been talking about, and why the sapphire that had once hung around Preston’s neck on an antique silver chain now was embedded in broken concrete. Mrs. Benedict had said, “No, no. That was all a foolish mistake.” Whatever could that mean?

  When a soft knock sounded on the door to the bathroom, Bronwyn started in surprise. She didn’t know how long she had reclined in the water, but her hair had started to dry and the water had grown cool. She called swiftly, “Just a moment, please!”

  It was Ramona’s high voice that answered. “Of course, Miss Morgan. Take your time. I have a dress for you, and some other things. I’ll meet you in the bedroom when you’re ready.”

  Bronwyn hurried to dry herself, to towel her hair and run her fingers through it, and to wrap herself in the borrowed bathrobe Thelma had provided. She let herself out of the bathroom and into the adjoining bedroom.

  Ramona was waiting there, seated at the dressing table and fussing with her own hair. She caught sight of Bronwyn in the mirror and gave her a delighted smile. “Oh, you look as if you feel so much better, Miss Morgan! Isn’t a bath just the most marvelously restoring thing?”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Benedict,” Bronwyn said. “This is so kind of you, but—”

  “Oh, don’t say it!” Ramona cried. She jumped up from the stool, and stroked the fabric of a dinner dress she had laid out on the bed. It was a green georgette with a low waist and handkerchief hem, and the high neck of the bodice was trimmed in matching satin ribbon. “I know your coloring is different from mine, but I think this will look well on you.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, skimming her own figure. “I haven’t quite been able to wear it since I had Louisa, I’m afraid. But you’re so slender, it should be perfect!”

  She lifted a little pile of folded things from the dressing table. “Now, here is a bit of lingerie, and a pair of stockings. Borrowed, of course, but all clean, I promise you!”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Bronwyn said.

  Ramona set the pile beside the dress, and patted it with her palm before she straightened, and turned a suddenly grave face to Bronwyn. “I can never repay you, Miss Morgan,” she said. “My little Louisa—oh, I can’t bear to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been there. My daughter means everything to me.”

  The simple statement struck Bronwyn to her heart. She wanted to protest that she hadn’t been the heroine they thought. She wanted to confess to this woman, who was being so kind to her, that she had been ready to carry her child away in place of the one she had lost. She opened her mouth, but no words would come.

  Ramona gave herself a little shake, and then laughed. “Everything’s all right, though, isn’t it? Nothing bad happened, thanks to you. No point in dwelling on it!” She started for the door. “Now I’ll go and dress for dinner, and you do the same. I have a hundred questions to ask you, and I know my husband will want to hear them, too. He’ll be so grateful! And you must call me Ramona, all right? If I may call you by your Christian name,
too?”

  She was gone a moment later, smiling, pulling the door gently shut behind her. Bronwyn was left alone in the bedroom, staring at herself in the dressing-table mirror and wondering, now that she had managed to get herself into Benedict Hall, what she could do to extricate herself before someone found her out.

  Thelma and Leona had come down at last, and were helping Hattie to plate the salads and fill the silver baskets with rolls. Blake exchanged his apron for his serving jacket and white gloves, and was on his way to check the dining room’s readiness when Loena came flying down the hall from the back staircase. Her red hair was falling out of its pins to trail on her collar, and her apron was twisted halfway around.

  Blake stopped and gazed at her in consternation. “Loena,” he said, frowning. “Is Mrs. Edith all right?”

  Loena skidded to a stop in front of him. “Mr. Blake, I was looking for you! I didn’t know what to do when she showed it to me, but I don’t think Mr. Dickson would like—” She broke off, out of breath, and pressed a hand to her chest.

  “Who showed you? And what?”

  “Mrs. Edith! She has that—that awful stone, the one Mr. Preston. . .” She dropped her hand, and seeming to realize the disarray of her appearance, began straightening her apron. “She’s been keeping it in her room all this time, looks like!”

  “That damned sapphire,” Blake muttered, winning a look of shock from the maid. She had never heard him swear. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had uttered a curse word, and certainly not in front of the staff. Just the same, if there were any circumstance that deserved hard words, this had to be one.

  “I hope you’ll pardon me, Loena,” he said. “You surprised me. I was under the impression that stone was out of the house for good.”

  “She’s been hiding it in a drawer,” Loena said. Her eyes were wide with excitement, and her freckled cheeks were flushed. “But now it’s on her bureau, with all that concrete around it. I saw it when I was dressing her, and she said she’s takin’ it to Mr. Preston. Is she going to see Mr. Preston? I thought Mr. Dickson said—”

  “That’s enough, Loena,” Blake said firmly. “We do not talk about the family that way, as you know very well.”

  “Yes, sir.” Loena dropped her gaze to the floor.

  “Now,” Blake said. “Please tidy your hair, then go into the dining room to help Thelma set out the salad plates.”

  “Yes, sir.” Loena fumbled with her hairpins, but she glanced up from beneath her sandy eyelashes. “Are you going to tell Mr. Dickson?”

  “Never you mind, Loena,” he answered dismissively. “This is not something for you to worry about. Go, now. We have a guest, and Hattie’s trying to hurry dinner along. She needs you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Blake.” Loena spoke demurely, but there was another inquisitive flash of blue eyes before she smoothed the last wisp of hair underneath a pin, and tripped off to the kitchen.

  Blake, despite his concern, felt a smile tug at his lips. Loena had suffered at Mr. Preston’s hands, but she had made a full recovery in both body and spirit. He tried to be firm with the twins, but he—and Hattie, too—were awfully fond of them. They would one day marry and leave Benedict Hall, he supposed, but he would miss their quick steps on the stairs and their light voices, chattering together as they went about their work.

  He sighed, and drew himself up. He would have to speak to Mr. Dickson after dinner. He wished he had taken charge of the sapphire himself, and disposed of it properly. It was all delusion, of course, part of Mr. Preston’s illness, but it had haunted the Benedicts since he brought it home from the war. All that was required for an object to have power, he supposed, was for someone to place their faith in it. It was irrational, but Mr. Preston had not been rational for a very long time.

  Mrs. Edith’s delusion was proving to be every bit as persistent as Mr. Preston’s. Blake hated to burden Mr. Dickson with this latest evidence, but he couldn’t see a way to avoid it.

  The dining room of Benedict Hall was everything Bronwyn had imagined it would be, and more. The table was twice as long as the one her family used. A silver candelabra stretched down the middle, fitted with slender white candles. A vase of white roses mixed with cut ferns rested on a sideboard. There was a large chandelier, but the electricity was off, and the curtains partly drawn so the room remained cool. Still, the silver sparkled, and the pale flowers and candles gave a sense of lightness to the scene, augmented by the white linen tablecloth and snowy napkins. It made the dining room of Morgan House seem darkly Victorian by contrast.

  As Ramona ushered her to a chair, Bronwyn remembered, with a wave of embarrassment, her childish fantasies. The reality shamed her, even though none of these people would ever know that she had once imagined herself becoming mistress of their house.

  Two men came in, and were introduced to her as Dickson Benedict and his son, Dick. The elder Mrs. Benedict drifted in after them, looking vague and a little lost. There was an empty chair at her right, with a full place setting of china and silver. Bronwyn watched it anxiously, expecting Margot Benedict to come in at any minute, and exclaim, “Miss Jones! Whatever are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in quarantine!”

  Dr. Benedict didn’t appear, however. A crisp salad of greens and yellow tomatoes was served, followed by baked fish and asparagus. Still there was no Margot Benedict. Bronwyn could hardly eat for the nervous expectation that rumbled in her stomach, but dinner progressed with no sign of the doctor. The conversation turned to the events of the afternoon, and Bronwyn found herself the reluctant object of everyone’s attention.

  Ramona began by describing everything that had happened, and how relieved she was when Blake and Bronwyn had shown up with the wanderer safe and sound. There were murmured exclamations over the adventure, and expressions of gratitude, as well as criticisms of the child’s nurse, and a brief discussion of whether she should be sent packing.

  When the rush of comments subsided, the younger Mr. Benedict, called Dick, said, “How did you come to be in Volunteer Park, Miss Morgan? Are you visiting friends in Seattle?”

  “I—well, yes, in a way.” Bronwyn lowered her gaze to her half-eaten dinner, hating to lie to these nice people.

  “Oh,” Ramona said. “If you’re staying with friends, they might be expecting you. Will they be worried, Bronwyn, dear? We could telephone to them.”

  “Oh, no,” Bronwyn said. “That’s not necessary. The thing is, I—”

  “You’re one of the Port Townsend Morgans, I think.” This came from the elder Mrs. Benedict, who had so far not spoken more than three words altogether. It seemed a surprise to everyone at the table. Every head turned in her direction, and there was a suspended moment, empty of conversation.

  It was Ramona who broke the silence, with the courtesy that seemed to be her special gift. “Oh, are you, Bronwyn? How delightful. I was in Port Townsend once, when I was just a girl. Where is your house?”

  “It’s at the top of Monroe Street, facing east.”

  “Oh, I think I remember it! It looks out over the water.”

  “It does.”

  “And it’s that lovely peach color.”

  “Father says it’s the color of raw fish,” Bronwyn said, attempting a smile.

  “How amusing!” Ramona said. “You could call it a salmon color, I suppose. That sounds ever so much nicer. In any case”—she reached to pat Bronwyn’s hand—“it’s a stunning house.”

  “Thank you, Mrs.—that is, Ramona.” Bronwyn glanced around the elegant dining room. “Of course, it’s much smaller than Benedict Hall. And a good bit older.”

  “I don’t believe I know your family,” Dickson Benedict said in a gravelly voice. “What’s your father’s name, Miss Morgan? What business is he in?”

  “His name is Chesley Morgan,” she answered. “Morgan Shipping and Supply.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the younger Mr. Benedict. “You know them, Father. There was the railroad line they started, and Morgan Shippin
g was involved with delivering the tracks and managing the labor.”

  “Only laid a mile of that railroad, didn’t they?” his father said. “Before it went bust?”

  Dick Benedict made some reply, and the conversation, to Bronwyn’s relief, shifted to matters of commerce. The maids came in to set crystal bowls of pink sherbet in place of the dinner plates. It was chilled and slightly tart, and Bronwyn ate every spoonful.

  Ramona said, “Isn’t this nice on a hot day, Bronwyn? Our cook makes good use of raspberries. It’s my favorite.”

  Bronwyn said, “Yes, it’s lovely.”

  “Preston loves it,” Edith Benedict said, with one of those interjections that seemed to startle everyone. An embarrassed silence followed, but Mrs. Benedict turned to Bronwyn as if the statement had been meant for her.

  “Excuse me?” Bronwyn stammered, wondering if she’d missed something.

  “Preston. My son.” Mrs. Benedict pushed away her own barely touched dish. Her breathy voice cracked, and she took an unladylike sniff. “Poor Preston,” she said, and pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve. “Preston loves sherbet. He just loves it.”

  Bronwyn froze. “Mrs. Benedict, I don’t—that is, I thought—”

  Dickson Benedict cleared his throat, with a rumble like thunder. “Now, now, Edith,” he said. “I’m sure they have sherbet in Walla Walla.”

  Bronwyn, at a loss, turned to Ramona, but the younger Mrs. Benedict gave a subtle shake of the head, and changed the subject. “So, Miss Morgan,” she said, with deliberate cheerfulness. “What friends are you visiting? Will you be staying long in Seattle?”