Hall of Secrets (A Benedict Hall Novel) (6 page)

“Nothing. Nothing,” Dick said roughly.

Cousin Margot made a bitter sound that might have been a laugh. “Cousin Allison is going to be in the house for some time, Dick. She might as well know.”

The dining room door opened once more, and Hattie’s round, perspiring face appeared. “Miss Margot, a letter came for you.” She pulled it out of her apron pocket, a slender white envelope with blue script on it, and handed it over. “It’s from California. I thought you’d want to have it right away.”

“I do, Hattie. Thanks.” Margot took the letter and held it without opening it.

Hattie, scrubbing her hands on the hem of her apron, scanned the table and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Now, I made that nice butterscotch custard, and hardly nobody ate any of it!”

Dick said stoutly, “It was delicious, Hattie.”

Ramona said, “Mrs. Edith was upset. It spoiled our appetites. I’m sorry.”

“Now, don’t you never mind that, Mrs. Ramona.” Hattie bustled around the table to pick up the two dessert plates. “Don’t you never mind. You all just enjoy your coffee, and I’ll go see if Mrs. Edith and Mr. Dickson are doing all right. Maybe some tea for Mrs. Edith . . .” Her last words faded away as she hurried out of the dining room and the door swung closed behind her.

Margot said, “I hope Mother isn’t still taking laudanum. There are serious problems with long-term use. I’ll speak to Dr. Creedy.”

“He was here yesterday,” Ramona said.

“Good.” Margot pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’ll call him tomorrow. Now, will you excuse me, everyone? Cousin Allison?”

Ramona said, “But we’re going to listen to a concert on the wireless, from New York. Don’t you want to—”

Margot said, in a weary voice, “Thank you, Ramona. I think it’s best all around if I just go to bed.” She said good night to everyone and walked out of the dining room. Her shoulders were hunched now, and her steps were shorter and slower. She carried the letter, seemingly forgotten, in her hand.

When she had gone, Dick growled, “This is unfair. None of it was Margot’s fault.”

“But what can we do?” Ramona breathed. Allison watched the two of them, at a loss.

“Not a damned thing.” Dick threw his napkin down, rose from the table, and held Ramona’s chair as she stood up. “No, if Father won’t take steps, there’s not a damned thing we can do.”

Allison wondered what he meant by take steps, but she was sure it wasn’t proper to ask. Whatever was going on, it was obviously making Margot unhappy. As she followed the family out of the dining room and down the hall to the small parlor, she felt more confused than ever. This woman she had designated as her enemy had big problems of her own. It was hard not to feel sympathy for her.

 

Margot gathered up her umbrella, dry now, and trudged across the lawn to the garage. The rain had stopped, but the cloud layer remained, thick and forbidding. Only the light she had left on at the foot of the stairs beckoned to her through the darkness.

She didn’t remember the letter from Frank until she reached for the doorknob and found the envelope still in her hand. She tucked it into the pocket of her dress, opened the door, and dropped the umbrella into the pottery stand inside. She would wait, she thought. She would get ready for bed, make a cup of tea, and settle down at the old, scarred table to read it. She would indulge herself in imagining Frank sitting opposite her, hearing his voice in the written words. If she closed her eyes, she could see the streaks of silver gleaming in his dark hair, be enchanted anew at the vivid blue of his eyes.

She found a fresh nightdress folded on the foot of her bed, and a wave of affection for Hattie swept over her. Hattie didn’t like her living over the garage any more than Blake would if he knew. Margot, for her part, had forbidden Hattie a dozen times to climb these narrow stairs to “do” for her, but she might as well have saved her breath. There was daily evidence of Hattie’s presence—a fresh bar of soap, a change of sheets, soiled laundry disappearing and reappearing clean, pressed, and folded. A bad cook but a good woman, the Benedicts said of Hattie. The truth of it brought a smile to Margot’s lips even now, lonely and disheartened though she felt.

She lingered over washing her face, turning back her bed, putting on her nightdress, brewing her tea. The letter, with her name in Frank’s cramped handwriting, lay in the center of the table. While it was still unopened, she didn’t have to face what it said. It wasn’t her nature to leave it there all night, of course. She was accustomed to facing her challenges squarely. The trouble with this particular challenge was that there seemed to be no answer. No resolution. There was no response she could think of that could bridge the distance between herself and Frank.

She sat down at the table, her teacup at her elbow, and drew the envelope toward her. Just looking at his handwriting reminded her of the comforting strength of his good right arm and the saving efficiency of his left arm. That left arm, and that mechanical hand with its cleverly jointed fingers, were a testament to how far the two of them had come.

Margot touched the unopened envelope with her fingers. Ten days had passed since they had said good-bye, a painful and poignant farewell neither of them wanted to make. It had left a sore spot in her heart, one she knew she should stop probing, but which she couldn’t help revisiting, over and over.

She had walked with Frank to King Street Station that misty November morning. She was due at the hospital, but she had just time to see him onto his train, then hurry back up the hill. The car would have made the whole thing much easier, but she was used to its absence now. She knew the streetcar schedule, knew which taxicabs were best and which should be avoided. On this day she had walked, meaning to savor the crispness of the end of autumn. She met Frank at his boardinghouse, and they strolled down Cherry together, turning toward the campanile that towered above the train yard. The giant clock warned them they had only a quarter of an hour. Frank, handsome in his Stetson and his camel’s hair coat, carried his valise in his left hand and a bulging briefcase in his right. Margot carried her medical bag. The breeze from the Sound had a bite to it, but her coat was buttoned up the front, the fur collar pulled high under her chin. She glanced up from beneath the brim of her hat and saw that Frank’s mouth was as set as her own must be.

She stopped when they reached the entrance to the station. Automobiles rattled up in a continuous stream, their passengers disembarking with cries of farewell, calls to the porters, a great fuss of trunks and suitcases and hatboxes. Frank paused with her, and the two of them stood facing each other just under the awning, a little island of tense silence amid the flood of activity.

“Frank.” Margot spoke through a throat aching with the pain of approaching separation. “I wish we could talk about what’s happened between us. I still don’t quite understand.”

He looked down at her, his blue eyes flinty with distress. “I think you do, Margot,” he said. The pain in his voice matched her own. “You should. It’s a matter of principle.”

“It’s no less a matter of principle for me.”

A porter approached them, touching the brim of his flat cap. “Luggage, sir?”

Frank shook his head without taking his eyes from Margot’s face. A woman in a long fur coat, just being helped out of a touring car, called to the porter, and he wheeled away toward her. Frank set his valise down and switched his briefcase to his left hand so he could put out his right to Margot. “Nothing more to say just now,” he said, a little roughly.

“I suppose not,” she whispered. She put out her own right hand. Their fingers met, intertwined, and held. She felt the warmth of his skin through her glove, the pressure of his fingers gripping hers, pressing them more tightly than was necessary, and she understood he loathed this public farewell as much as she did. She wanted to lean forward, to press against him, to kiss the lines around his mouth that had become so dear to her, to feel his firm lips on hers, but of course she couldn’t. Not here. And, perhaps, not now. “Frank, I—” she stammered, with an uncharacteristic loss of composure.

“We’ll think about it,” he said tightly. “We’ll both think about it.”

The whistle of the train, a blast of steam-powered noise that made Margot’s ears ache, reminded them of the time. Frank released her hand, his fingers sliding away, parting from hers with reluctance. She wanted to seize them back, but of course she couldn’t do that, either.

He bent to pick up his valise again. “Watch the glazier,” he said unexpectedly. “The seals.”

She could only nod. At that moment she didn’t give a damn about the clinic’s new windows.

“I’ll write,” he said, and then, swiftly, he turned, the hem of his coat flaring, and strode away. She watched his back, following the tilt of his hat, the set of his shoulders, until he disappeared through the glass doors of the station. There she lost him in the crowd, too many other hats and coats and raised arms for her to follow his progress. Her hand felt cold where it had just moments before been warmed by his. Her eyes stung embarrassingly as she turned away from the station and started up toward Fifth Avenue and Seattle General Hospital.

Margot Benedict had not expected to fall in love. She was, and had been since she was only fourteen, consumed by her ambition to be a physician, and once she achieved that goal, by the drive to establish herself, to earn the respect of older doctors, to resist the prejudice and ritual exclusion women physicians faced, more intense now than in a hundred years of medical practice. Part of what was wrong between her and Frank was that drive, that need to fight for equality for herself and for other, less privileged women. Romance had never entered into her plan, and now, with her heart aching over Frank’s absence, she almost—but not quite—wished her life had followed its expected path.

“Too late for such thoughts,” she told herself. She was learning that the heart, once engaged, was impervious to logic. It was hard to recall what her life had been like before Frank Parrish came into it. He had protected her, sustained her, supported her when her old supporter was laid low. No, there could be no regrets, and no turning back. Whatever was to be between them, she couldn’t, and she wouldn’t, wish they had never met.

Now, alone in the small apartment that still felt as if it belonged to Blake, she turned Frank’s letter over and slid her thumb beneath the flap.

There was only one sheet, closely written. She hadn’t seen Frank’s handwriting often. The tightness of the script, the rather cramped style of it, surprised her. Her own handwriting was large, almost careless, and she had to take care not to scrawl. Frank’s looked, she supposed, like the handwriting of an engineer. It was orderly, controlled, every word calculated to fit on its line, every line planned to fit on the page. She wondered if he had written the letter on another sheet, then copied it onto this stationery, with the March Field letterhead at the top. It read:

Margot read the letter twice, while her tea, forgotten, cooled in its cup. She wanted to cry out to him, remind him of her warning that she wasn’t like other women. She wanted to argue, persuade, point out how he was wrong, but they had already done all of that. He was beyond any doubt a man of honor and principle. His war experience had only deepened those attributes, and she loved and admired him for it.

What he couldn’t see, and what their bitter argument had failed to persuade him of, was that her position came from the same beliefs. Honor. Principle.

It wasn’t that she and Frank didn’t agree on the underlying necessity for women to have access to birth control.
All
women, as she had stressed to him, not just wealthy ones. He had no objection in principle, or even in practice. It was her association with Sanger that so offended him. The public and controversial nature of that association embarrassed him, even angered him. When she first understood the depth of his feelings, she was shocked. When she tried to point out that poor women were being imprisoned by continuous pregnancy, he had said he understood.

“But,” he said stiffly, “it’s a personal matter. It should be managed privately.”

“Frank!” she protested. “If it’s always private, most women will never know their options. I see poor women and girls all the time who have never heard of condoms or sponges. All they know is Lysol, and that can be lethal—to say nothing of useless.”

She saw his slight shudder of distaste at her bluntness, but he said only, “It’s against the law.”