Mrs. Morgan wiped her wet cheeks with a lace-edged handkerchief. “You’re all so kind, Mrs. Benedict,” she said. “I’m sorry about—well—it’s too kind of you to understand.”
Ramona said, “Of course I understand. I’m a mother, too.”
Margot said, “You’d better sit down, Mother.” Bronwyn stepped aside so Edith could move to the armchair. When she was seated, Charlie nestled close against her. His wary gaze took them all in—Bronwyn, her mother, Margot, Ramona. Margot said, “This must be confusing for Charlie. Not so long ago he was living in very different conditions.”
“I feel terrible about that,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“You couldn’t have known.”
Edith said, “The important thing is that Charlie’s safe now.”
“Yes,” Ramona said. She sat up very straight, and turned her face up to Bronwyn, who was standing behind Edith’s chair. “Bronwyn, I think we should be frank about the situation. My husband and I would like—no, we would dearly love—to adopt Charlie and raise him as our Louisa’s big brother.”
No one could miss the surge of color in Bronwyn’s face, nor the fading of it a moment later. Her eyes were stretched so wide Margot thought they must hurt, and she saw the girl’s throat muscles contract. Nevertheless, Bronwyn’s voice was steady as she answered. “Are you asking my consent, Ramona?”
Ramona glanced at Margot for guidance. Margot nodded, but she didn’t say anything. There was no need. Ramona was doing beautifully.
Ramona turned her face back to Bronwyn and said quietly, “I suppose we are, Bronwyn. We would always wonder, if we didn’t consult you, what your wishes might have been.”
“So kind,” Mrs. Morgan sniffled again.
“Yes,” Bronwyn said. She stepped around the chair, and knelt before Edith and the little boy. “Yes, you could have gone ahead without a word to us. I wouldn’t have blamed you in the least.”
For a long moment, she looked into Charlie’s small, anxious face. He shrank back at first, huddling closer to Edith’s body, but when Bronwyn made no move to touch him, he relaxed. He looked into the eyes of the mother he never knew, and Margot had the fanciful idea that an understanding passed between them.
In time, Bronwyn drew a deep breath, and pushed herself to her feet. She turned to Ramona. “I feel as if I love him—but I don’t really know him, do I?”
Ramona gave her a sad smile. “Well, dear, I love him, too, and I only know him a little bit better than you do.”
“Perhaps,” Margot said, “you need some time, Miss Morgan. To think about what all this means—to you and to your family.”
Bronwyn suddenly pressed the palms of her hands over her eyes. Margot thought she was crying, but it appeared, when she dropped her hands, that she had been gathering herself. She drew a long breath and released it before she said, “Thank you, Dr. Benedict, but I don’t need time. I knew before I came today, really.”
She looked around at the group of women, the hopeful, worried, tearful faces. “Charlie has found his home,” she said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything better for him. And I need to grow up myself before I can be anyone’s mother.”
Mrs. Morgan emitted a single sob, and buried her face in her handkerchief. Ramona put an arm around her shoulders. “You won’t object then,” Ramona said softly, smiling up at the girl. “Charlie will be our son, and you won’t mind.”
“I’ll be proud,” Bronwyn said. Her eyes glowed with unshed tears. “Perhaps, once in a while, you could send me news of him.”
“Of course,” Ramona said.
Edith said, “You can come to see him, if you like.”
“No,” Bronwyn said. “It would be too confusing. He needs . . .” She waved her hand, indicating the entirety of Benedict Hall. “He needs to understand that he’s home. That this is where he belongs. That he won’t be taken away, ever again.”
Bronwyn held her composure through the polite farewells, the thank-yous, the promises of letters and so forth. She and her mother shook hands with everyone, and Bronwyn took a last look at Charlie, but without trying to touch him or, as she longed to do, give him one kiss. She gripped her hands together in the backseat of the Cadillac as Blake drove her and her mother back to the Alexis. She bade Blake farewell and walked with her mother into the hotel and up to their room. She didn’t cry until the door was closed and they were alone, and then she lay on the bed and sobbed for a very long time.
When she quieted, Iris brought her a glass of water and a damp washcloth. She stroked Bronwyn’s hair, and murmured nonsense words of comfort. When the shuddering aftermath of tears subsided, Bronwyn sat up, wiped her face with the cloth, and took one final sniff.
“Are you all right?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” Bronwyn said. “I am.”
She spoke the truth. The tears were the final step, the last act of the saga of Preston Benedict and herself. Their child was safe, and in the best possible care. She had no more secrets to protect. There was only one final thing to be done, and she would do that now, while she and her mother were alone.
She swung her legs off the bed, and went to stand by the window, looking down at the automobiles and horse carts maneuvering around one another on First Avenue. Tomorrow, Captain Albert would carry her and her mother back to Port Townsend, but after that . . .
She turned to face Iris. “Mother, I’m going to go to Oakland.”
Iris looked up at her with surprise and consternation. “Oakland! Where is that?”
“It’s in California.”
“California! Why, Bronwyn? What put that in your head?”
“It’s Mills College. They have a very good dance program. I’m a little old to start, but I want to try.”
“Your father . . .”
“It’s a women’s college. He should approve.”
“Oh, Bronwyn. California is so far away!”
“Just a train trip, Mother. You take the train directly from Seattle to San Francisco.”
“But how did you find this college?”
“I looked it up in the library. I’ve already applied.”
“But you could go here, couldn’t you? The Cornish School accepted you.”
“The Cornish School is only a few blocks from Benedict Hall. I would always be tempted to go there, to see the—to see Charlie. That’s not a good idea.” Bronwyn sighed, and turned back to the window. “I think it’s fair to ask you for this, you and Daddy. To ask you to help me. But if you say no, I’ll find my own way. I’ve waited too long as it is.”
Below her in the street, the traffic was thinning. A single horse, pulling an empty wagon that had probably held vegetables or perhaps barrels of fish, clopped wearily by. The sun had gone down, and only the very tops of the highest buildings now glimmered with its waning light. From this angle, Bronwyn couldn’t look up the hill toward Millionaire’s Row, but she didn’t need to. She would never, as long as she lived, forget Benedict Hall, or the surprising people who lived there.
Behind her, Iris matched her sigh. “You’re right, of course, dear.”
Bronwyn, startled, spun to face her mother. “I am?”
Iris rose from the bed, and went to the mirror to take up a comb. She began to smooth her finger-waved hair. “I don’t know what Chesley will say. We’ll just have to convince him.”
Bronwyn went to stand beside her mother, and their eyes, so much the same, met in the mirror. “He might shout, and stomp around,” Bronwyn said.
“Then I’ll probably cry,” Iris said. She shrugged, and smiled into the mirror. “But that won’t change anything.”
Bronwyn hugged her mother’s shoulders. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I’ll go to Mills with you. See you’re settled. You won’t mind that, will you?”
Bronwyn dropped a kiss on her mother’s temple. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
The mood in Benedict Hall was more relieved than jubilant. Ramona and Edith took Charlie upstairs, and M
argot could hear them in the guest bedroom, planning what changes were needed to turn it into a second nursery. Blake returned, having dropped off the Morgans at their hotel and then picked up Dick and Dickson from their office. He had to make a second trip for Frank, who was delayed by a meeting with Bill Boeing. By the time Blake and Frank pulled into the driveway, the whole family was gathered in the small parlor for a celebratory drink. Louisa was in her mother’s lap, and Charlie was standing at his grandmother’s knee, sucking on a forefinger, his small face intent as he watched and listened.
Dickson said in his gruff voice, “Is that boy ever going to talk?”
Edith said, “Dickson, shush. Give the child time.”
“How much?” he said, gesturing with his whisky glass. “Louisa has been talking a blue streak for months already.”
They all heard the front door open and close, and a moment later, Frank’s tall figure appeared in the doorway. Louisa squealed, “Fa!” and threw herself from her mother’s lap to barrel across the room and grip Frank’s legs. Laughing, he bent to pick her up.
“Uncle Fa, Louisa,” he said, nuzzling her curly hair. “Uncle Fa.”
“Fa!” she crowed again.
“See what I mean?” Dickson said.
Charlie watched as Frank crossed to the divan and settled onto it with Louisa on his lap. Frank smiled down at the boy’s solemn little face. “Good evening to you, Charlie,” he said.
Charlie stared up at him. After a moment, with something like ceremony, he removed his finger from his mouth. His forehead furrowed, and his lips worked, forming and re-forming, until he finally pronounced, “Fa?”
Margot was startled into laughter, quickly suppressed. Edith smiled with fond pride, and Dick and Ramona exchanged a glance.
Frank said, “That’s right, Charlie. I’m Uncle Fa.”
“Fa!” Louisa repeated, kicking her heels against Frank’s thigh.
Charlie glanced at his cousin, then back to Frank. He blinked once, then pronounced with great care, “Un-co Fa.”
“Good man,” Frank said with a nod. “Well done.”
Charles Dickson Benedict gravely returned Frank’s nod before he replaced his forefinger in his mouth.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted, as always, to my first reader, Catherine Whitehead, and to the other members of the Tahuya Writers Group: Brian Bek, Jeralee Chapman, Niven Marquis, and Dave Newton. Heartfelt thanks go to my editor, Audrey LaFehr, for helping me shape and direct the Benedict Hall novels. Thanks also to Martin Biro, her assistant and an editor in his own right, for his quick responses to my questions and worries (authors always have worries!). Peter Rubie at FinePrint Literary Agency has been faithful and helpful.
I wish I could also express my gratitude to a physician and a nurse, two people I never had the opportunity to meet, but whose personal libraries provided me with resources perfectly suited to my needs. The book Manual of Emergencies, published in 1918 by J. Snowman, MD, bears the beautiful copperplate signature of one A. Gerend, a physician. Materia Medica for Nurses, by A. S. Blumgarten, MD, published in 1924, was once the property of Kathleen M. Hayes, a nurse who, according to the handwritten inscription in the book, practiced in a hospital in Berwick, Mississippi. I’m so grateful these volumes came into my hands, and I will always treat them with the reverence they deserve.
Medical help and advice came from Dean Crosgrove, PAC, and Nancy Crosgrove, RN, ND. Help with historical details was provided by Professor James Gregory, of the University of Washington History Department, and by James Sackey, of the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, Washington. I’m especially indebted to work done by the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project for information on restrictive neighborhood covenants.
Perhaps most importantly, my thanks go to my readers. I have loved writing about the inhabitants of Benedict Hall and the people whose lives they touch. Thank you for sharing this journey with me. Without readers, writers would be talking to themselves. We might go on doing it, but it wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
THE BENEDICT BASTARD
Cate Campbell
About This Guide
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Cate Campbell’s The Benedict Bastard.
Discussion Questions
1. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many upper-class girls were deliberately brought up in ignorance of sexual intercourse and its consequences. In the industrialized societies of the twenty-first century, with the proliferation of television, movies, and books on every topic, is this even possible? Is there such a thing as too much information?
2. Child labor laws were passed in the United States Congress in the first two decades of the twentieth century, but were struck down by the Supreme Court because they denied children the “freedom” to work. A quatrain by Sarah N. Cleghorn in 1916 illustrated the problem and incited an angry public response:
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
Is there still a problem with child labor? At what age is it acceptable for children to work, and for how many hours in a day?
3. The concept of what is or isn’t obscene varies for different eras and different cultures. The Comstock laws in the early twentieth century made it illegal to publicly discuss contraception, ruling such topics obscene. Margot Benedict, in her medical practice, struggles against the Church and the established medical community in order to supply women with information. Is there still reluctance, in the present day, to open discussions about preventing pregnancy?
4. The Ku Klux Klan was active in the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s, and influenced the establishment of restrictive neighborhood covenants. These covenants persisted for decades, only becoming illegal after the civil rights movement and the ensuing reforms. What effects did such restrictions have on cities like Seattle in creating racially segregated neighborhoods? Have cities recovered from those effects a century later, or do echoes of them remain?
5. The Benedicts use their money and influence to protect their family and dependents. Preston is confined in a sanitarium rather than being sent to prison, and Sarah Church’s family is allowed to stay in their home when less well-connected people are not. Do you think the Benedicts abuse their power in some instances? Do they consider themselves above the law?
6. The word bastard has different meanings, in the English language and in the story of this novel. To which of them do you think the title of The Benedict Bastard refers?
7. In the book Send Us a Lady Physician, Regina Morantz-Sanchez writes, “More than one historian has portrayed the years between 1900 and 1965 as dark ones for the progress of women in medicine. . . .” Margot Benedict makes reference to the problem, and on her brief visit to Montana, learns that herbalists often stand in for physicians, particularly in treating women. Why do you think the progress women in medicine were making in the late nineteenth century halted, and even reversed? Is there still a male bias in medical practice?
8. Vaccinations were quite common by 1923, though many people didn’t trust them. In what ways does that distrust mirror the controversy surrounding vaccines in the early twenty-first century?
9. From the mid-nineteenth century until the last one crossed the country in 1928, the Orphan Trains are estimated to have carried more than a quarter of a million homeless or abandoned children, including infants, from New York to rural communities in the Midwest and West of the United States. The results were, as you might expect, mixed. Was such a disposition of children the best idea for its time?
10. In what ways do you think the position of children in society has changed since the 1920s? Are all of the changes positive?
11. Margot Benedict finds value in the herbal treatments Jenny Parrish administers, and is interested in their applic
ation to her own medical practice. In the present day, this is sometimes called “integrated medicine,” a relatively new term. What fresh ideas that Margot is willing to consider—ideas outside traditional medical practice—have been put into regular use today? Do herbalists still have a place in health care in the twenty-first century?
Photo by Shelly Rae Clift
Cate Campbell is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has worked in more jobs than she can count—as a teacher, an office nurse, a waitress, a nanny, a secretary, a saleswoman, and a singer. The great mansions of Seattle, many built around the turn of the twentieth century, along with her lifelong fascination with medicine, history, Seattle, and the stunning cultural and social changes that marked the decade of the 1920s are her inspirations for the Benedict Hall series. The career of her father, a dedicated physician and a war veteran, served as a model for both Margot Benedict and Frank Parrish. Visit her on the Web at catecampbell. net.
BENEDICT HALL
In this richly layered debut novel, Cate Campbell introduces the wealthy Benedict family and takes us behind the grand doors of their mansion, Benedict Hall. There, family and servants alike must face the challenges wrought by World War I—and the dawn of a new age brimming with scandal, intrigue, and social change.
Seattle in 1920 is a city in flux. Horse-drawn carriages share the cobblestone streets with newfangled motorcars. Modern girls bob their hair and show their ankles, cafés defy Prohibition by serving dainty teacups of whisky to returning vets—and the wartime boom is giving way to a depression. Even within the Benedicts’ majestic Queen Anne–style home, life is changing—above and below stairs.
Margot, the Benedicts’ free-spirited daughter, struggles to succeed as a physician despite gender bias—and personal turmoil. The household staff, especially longtime butler Abraham Blake, has always tried to protect Margot from her brother Preston’s cruel streak. Yet war has altered Preston, too—not for the better. And when a chance encounter brings a fellow army officer into the Benedict fold, Preston’s ruthlessness is triggered to new heights.
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