The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel)

by Cate Campbell

  None of this happened. The new train pulled in to the station, and Mrs. Benedict set out across the platform with a determined step. Bronwyn, yawning in the pre-dawn air, followed her. They settled on the first seats they could find, and Mrs. Benedict brought out sandwiches she must have bought at Union Station in Portland. She said brightly, “Breakfast!”

  Mrs. Benedict showed no evidence of second thoughts when the conductor announced their arrival at Walla Walla. On the contrary, she glowed with excitement as they stepped down from the train into a hot, sunny morning. The station was newer than the big stations of Seattle and Portland, but far more modest, built of brick, with just one story. There was a ladies’ lounge off the simple lobby, and the two of them stopped in it to freshen up.

  Bronwyn gazed at herself in the mirror, dismayed by the flaws in her appearance. Her borrowed dress was creased, and inevitably stained by two days of travel. She fluffed her hair with her fingers as best she could. She had natural curls, but they were pressed flat at the back of her head. She resolved to keep her hat on.

  Mrs. Benedict, however, had brought a change of clothes in the brocade valise, and she was resplendent now in a summer frock and opaque white stockings. She wore an enormous gold brooch in the shape of a spray of flowers, studded with tiny rubies and emeralds. She took out a compact, and powdered her cheeks. Bronwyn splashed water on her face, but didn’t bother with anything else. In the clear daylight, the whole escapade seemed even more preposterous than it had the day before.

  Three taxicabs waited outside the station. Mrs. Benedict chose the newest-looking vehicle, an enclosed sedan. The driver was polishing his windshield, but when she signaled to him with an imperious wave of her gloved hand, he hurried to jump into the driver’s seat. He started his motor and pulled out of the line to come up to the curb where the two of them waited. He jumped out with a jaunty tip of his hat and an eager “Good morning, ladies, good morning!” He took Mrs. Benedict’s valise, and held the door of his automobile for them to get in.

  Mrs. Benedict bestowed a sunny smile on Bronwyn. “Almost there!” she said. And to the driver, “The Walla Walla Sanitarium, please. In College Place.”

  Mrs. Benedict appeared utterly confident, sure of herself and her destination. Bronwyn’s heart fluttered uneasily beneath the dotted swiss bodice of her dress. She took off her hat, eyeing its bent brim with misgivings. She worked it with her fingers, trying to restore its shape, and trying not to think about what would happen when they arrived. Would it fall to her to explain Mrs. Benedict’s odd behavior? Would the people at this sanitarium perhaps hold her responsible?

  The taxicab driver said cheerily, “Yes, ma’am. Walla Walla Sanitarium. My pleasure.” He touched his hat brim again, climbed into the driver’s seat, and they were off on the final stage of their improbable journey.

  Bronwyn put her hat back on, and hugged herself as they drove. She felt the dryness of this place in her throat, as if she had swallowed dust. Her skin itched. The sun was punishing, burning the shrubberies and browning the lawns they passed. The images of the bad dream didn’t fade, as nightmares usually did, but stayed with her. She couldn’t shake off a sense of impending disaster.

  Mrs. Benedict clearly felt no such sense of doom. She glanced in her compact two or three times, smiling at herself, tucking in a strand of hair. She said, in a confiding tone, “Preston wants me to color my hair. It’s gone gray now, but once I was a true blonde, just like he is—well, was.”

  The change in verb tense startled Bronwyn. “Was—?” she ventured. Perhaps this was the moment when Mrs. Benedict would realize—

  But Mrs. Benedict waved one white-gloved hand in a negligent gesture. “Oh, well, I mean when he was a boy, you know.” She smoothed her chignon with the palm of her glove. “He thinks I should do something about the gray, but I don’t see why it matters. I’m a grandmother, after all!” Her little laugh was like the shaking of tiny bells, incongruously girlish. Her eyes were brilliant in the glare of the sun.

  None of it felt right, or natural. Mrs. Benedict’s gaiety was as brittle as glass. The taxicab bearing them to their destination had been too easy to command, as if the driver had just been waiting for two unescorted women to appear so he could carry them off to a place of his own choosing.

  Bronwyn turned to the window, gazing blindly at sunbaked fields and weathered farmhouses, horses and cattle switching their tails against flies. She was still looking out when the sanitarium rose into her view.

  The building was reassuringly solid, rising against the pale summer sky, three pillared stories surrounded by landscaped gardens and graveled paths. It looked much as Bronwyn had imagined a sanitarium should look, and it had a large sign proclaiming it THE WALLA WALLA SANITARIUM, in florid script. The taxicab swept up to the front steps without hesitation, and the driver smiled at them both in his mirror. Bronwyn’s feeling of dread began to seem foolish.

  Whatever was to come, it was clear they were actually going to go inside this elegant place. She took her own compact out of her small handbag.

  Mrs. Benedict swept her with a sly glance. “That’s right, dear,” she said softly. “You’ll want to look your best. You never know—you and Preston might work things out after all.”

  The floor nurse came to tell him he was about to have visitors. She said the Dunlaps were bringing his mother up to see him, and she reminded him that it was a special privilege. “Not a visiting day,” she said sternly.

  Preston barked a sour laugh at that. Special privileges came with the hefty fee the pater was paying every month to keep him here. Old Dunlap never failed to remind him of that. They treated him well, Dr. and Mrs. Dunlap, but Preston understood perfectly that their respect was due to the pater’s dollars, and not his own charming person.

  He hadn’t, however, been expecting his mother. Her letters assured him she was trying, but that his father couldn’t spare Blake for the long drive. Something must have changed. He hoped she had brought the stone. Once he had it in his hands again, he would feel he could do anything. He would have the courage he needed.

  He hurried to put on a fresh shirt and a pair of the good trousers his mother had sent to him. He wasn’t allowed cuff links, of course, or a tie, or even a belt. He folded back his shirt cuffs, though that made him look like a day laborer. There was nothing he could do about the belt. At least his shoes had a nice shine, since he had had plenty of time to polish them, though he had nothing much to polish them with. An orderly had shaved him just this morning, and of course he had no need of a barber. His hair—wasn’t. Completely burned away. He was as ready as he could make himself.

  Odd that in the current circumstance, it was only for his mother that he would make such an effort. It wasn’t like him, but he felt sympathy for her. She had suffered a great deal, believing him dead. That was hardly his fault, but he had tried, in the few small ways he had at his disposal, to make it up to her. He had almost none of the feelings other people wasted their energy on, yet he clung to this shred of filial devotion. It made him feel virtuous.

  Poor Mater. She was going to suffer again, and soon. She deserved better, but it couldn’t be helped.

  He pressed his forehead to the tiny window in his door, peering down the corridor to watch his mother step out of the elevator. The Dunlaps were with her, and they were followed in their turn by a slender young woman with brown curls and a hesitant air.

  He knew her instantly. Unlike himself, she had hardly changed at all. She looked a bit older, of course, but the difference between sixteen and nineteen wasn’t a significant one. She was wearing a dotted swiss frock that was a style unsuited to her, slightly too big and too long. It was as if she had lost weight, or made a bad purchase.

  That didn’t seem like her. He remembered being impressed by her good clothes and her natural chic, though she had been so young. Deliciously young. Soft, in that unformed way young girls had. She had even been rather sweet, if a little silly, like her girlish mother.

>   He wondered if Bronwyn was still silly. She should have acquired a bit of seasoning, considering what had happened. He remembered thinking, three years ago, that the girl had potential, if she could avoid turning into her mother. It would be interesting to know if her potential had ever been realized. More likely, she had just given in, like other girls in her social class, followed the rules, found a husband, given up.

  He couldn’t see her eyes yet, but he remembered them. He had never seen eyes like that, hazel dusted with gold flecks that gleamed in the sunlight, and were even faintly visible by moonlight. In most other ways, she was ordinary, but those eyes, and the soft brown curls that went with them . . .

  Yes. Bronwyn Morgan was a very pretty girl. And of course she had adored him, which was gratifying.

  None of it signified now. But it was nice to think that his son had an attractive mother. The boy should be good-looking. Well bred.

  But what the hell was the girl doing here? How had Mother found her?

  Edith was carrying a smallish valise, the brocade one they had all given her for a birthday eons ago. He hoped it was in there. He hoped she had remembered. Sometimes, these days, Mother didn’t seem to be precisely clear in her mind.

  But it must be in there. That was how she had found Bronwyn Morgan! Great things happened to those who possessed Roxelana’s sapphire. And here it was, nearly within his grasp. Its power would be restored to him. Nothing would hold him back.

  Poor Mother. When she realized, she would break her heart anew. It was regrettable, really it was.

  It had been clear from the moment they climbed the neatly painted steps and went into the bright tiled lobby of the sanitarium that the management was eager to please Mrs. Edith Benedict, once they understood who she was. There were some startled comments about her visit being unexpected, but these were hastily amended to words of welcome, assurances that all was well, offers of tea and a comfortable place to sit while the patient was informed of her presence.

  No one spoke Preston’s name, though, and Bronwyn was assailed by a fresh wave of anxiety. She wished she could speak to one of the staff privately, ask them what this was all about.

  A Dr. Dunlap was called, and he came hurrying out of an inner office to bow over Mrs. Benedict’s hand and inquire after her husband and the rest of the family. Mrs. Benedict introduced Bronwyn as “my young friend, Miss Morgan.”

  Dr. Dunlap was a silver-haired man with a dark mustache and thin dark eyebrows. He took Bronwyn’s hand in his large, smooth one, and raised an eyebrow at the uniformed nurse who had come to fetch him.

  “Call Mrs. Dunlap,” he said. She nodded, and hurried off with a rustle of her starched apron.

  The doctor turned back to Mrs. Benedict. “Were you planning to take Miss Morgan—er—up with you, Mrs. Benedict?” he said, with an air of delicacy.

  “Of course,” Mrs. Benedict said. “They’re old friends.”

  The doctor’s mouth pursed beneath his mustache. “Don’t you think that might be—er—just a little too much for your son?”

  Bronwyn’s knees suddenly trembled. Your son.

  He had said it, this doctor, this man who was obviously in charge here, and that meant it was true. Preston lived. The newspapers had been wrong. He hadn’t burned up in the fire after all, but was here, a patient in this sanitarium. The fact of it, the import of the realization, made Bronwyn’s head spin as if someone had struck her. She reached for something to steady herself, and her groping hand found the wall. It was a flocked pattern, and she focused on the feel of the flocking under her palm, something to keep her from fainting.

  The doctor said other things, and Mrs. Benedict answered. Mrs. Dunlap appeared, a woman on the verge of old age, with gray hair and a thick waist. She wore a nurse’s uniform with heavy black stockings, but no apron. She joined in the conversation, but Bronwyn heard nothing that any of them said. The tumble of her own thoughts drowned out every word.

  She hardly knew how they all made their way to the elevator, or what was said as it bore them up two floors, to the top of the building. The doors of the elevator parted to show a hallway drenched in sunlight from dormer windows set into the outer wall. Opposite the windows were several single doors, all closed. Bronwyn barely noticed any of it.

  He was alive. Mrs. Benedict wasn’t deluded. She hadn’t brought Bronwyn all the way across the state on a fool’s errand.

  Preston was alive. He hadn’t abandoned her after all. He had been ill. Injured in that terrible fire.

  Stunned by the implications, she stumbled as they left the elevator, and Mrs. Dunlap turned to look at her. “Are you all right, Miss Morgan?”

  “Yes,” Bronwyn said. Her voice sounded faint in the tiled corridor.

  “Are you sure? Are you prepared for this?”

  Bronwyn frowned at the question. The spinning of her mind slowed, and she focused on Mrs. Dunlap’s kindly face. “Prepared?” she asked.

  “You know about Mr. Benedict’s condition, I hope,” the nurse said. They were still walking, following Mrs. Benedict, who led the way with eager steps, the valise bouncing against her knee. Dr. Dunlap hurried to stay beside her, a solicitous hand hovering behind her thin back. Bronwyn and Mrs. Dunlap trailed behind them.

  Bronwyn said, “His condition?”

  Mrs. Dunlap put a hand on Bronwyn’s arm, slowing her progress. Mrs. Benedict and Dr. Dunlap were already far down the corridor. Bronwyn glanced to her left, to one of the closed doors. Through its small, screened window, she could see that the room beyond it was bare and empty.

  Mrs. Dunlap followed her glance. “There’s only one patient on this floor,” she said. “It’s that room at the end, the one facing us.” Her hand was still on Bronwyn’s arm, and she brought her to a stop with a gentle pressure. “Miss Morgan,” she began. “It would be best, before you visit Mr. Benedict, that you understand—”

  Mrs. Benedict interrupted her. She looked back down the hallway, and called, “Miss Morgan! Oh, do come along! He’s waiting for us!” She had come to a stop before the last door at the end of the hall, and was shifting from foot to foot with eagerness as she waited for Dr. Dunlap to find the right key on a large ring.

  Bronwyn started toward her, suddenly eager. It was simply marvelous, that after all this time—all the heartbreak and misery and loneliness—she would see him again. He was alive!

  He would be changed, of course. He had been ill, after all. Still, her heart lifted in anticipation.

  “Miss Morgan, wait,” Mrs. Dunlap said. She caught her arm again, and held it. “I’m afraid it’s going to be something of a shock—”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Dunlap,” Bronwyn said. “He knows me. I can’t think it will be a shock to him to see me.”

  “Not for him,” Mrs. Dunlap said. Later, Bronwyn would think of this, and remember the grimness in the nurse’s face, but for now, impatience drove her. She tugged her arm free of Mrs. Dunlap’s hand, and hurried down the corridor.

  She came to a stop just short of the room. In her haste, her hat had slipped askew. She put a hand up to straighten it, then dropped the hand to her throat to smooth the collar of her dress. After all this time, his first sight of her should be perfect. At least, as perfect as she could make it under the circumstances.

  She found she was holding her breath. She released it, and took a fresh one, preparing herself.

  The door opened, and Mrs. Benedict rushed past Dr. Dunlap into the room. Bronwyn heard Mrs. Benedict’s light voice, then a deeper, rougher one. A man’s voice. It didn’t sound familiar to her, but it must be Preston. Mrs. Dunlap reached her side, but she didn’t speak again. She stood just outside the door, gazing at Bronwyn with resignation.

  The moment had come, the moment she had despaired of for so long. Bronwyn fluffed her hair a bit with her fingertips, fixed her most charming smile on her lips, and stepped forward.

  CHAPTER 21

  As the old-fashioned skeleton key rattled in the lock—it was laughable, really, to see the
faith old Dunlap placed in his antiquated locking system—Preston adopted a nonchalant pose, leaning against the wall, his scarred hands thrust into his pockets. When the lock clicked and the door opened, his mother fairly burst into the room, pushing past the doctor. She glowed with pleasure. She dropped the valise to the floor and crossed to Preston with her hands out.

  “Preston, darling!”

  “Mater,” he said, straightening, reaching with his own arms to accept her embrace, and return it. “How lovely of you to come all this way.” His voice was better than it had been, a little smoother, a bit more resonant. Oddly enough, though Dunlap was practically an antique himself, his hydrotherapy approach had helped a good bit with the scarring of Preston’s throat and lungs. The air here in Walla Walla was devilishly dry, but the steam of the hydrotherapy room was soothing, when he was allowed to go there.

  “Darling, I have a surprise for you!” Edith withdrew from his arms, and looked up into his face with a coquettish air. She put up her hand, and stroked his scarred cheek as if it were still the fine-skinned surface it had once been.

  “Oh, do tell, Mother,” Preston said with a smile. “I’m absolutely agog.”

  Edith stepped aside, and indicated the doorway with a flourish of her arm.

  Preston turned toward the open door just in time to see Bronwyn Morgan step into view. The sunlight from the dormer window behind her made a halo around her slight form. Her golden brown curls glowed with it, and the dotted swiss turned to gauze under the harsh light. She wore a smile on her pretty mouth, and those gold-flecked eyes were wide and eager.

  She lifted one foot to step over the sill, then froze. One hand gripped the doorjamb. The color drained from her rosy cheeks until she was as white as the iron frame on his bed. Her smile faded, bit by bit, her lips parting, mouth open. The greeting she had been about to speak caught in her throat, supplanted by a single, wordless sound.