Part 11

"I suppose a girl is best," she continued after a moment's thought. "A young man wouldn't do? And yet I see such lots of advertisements in _The Times_ Personal Column--how interesting that is and how sad sometimes!--I'm told that all those funny love letters, as they sound like, are really burglars' codes. Isn't that dreadful? But so every one says. But about this gentleman reader, there are such lots of advertisements from disabled officers wanting employment that perhaps one ought to consider one. I wonder how disabled officers read aloud, dear? Rather strong voices, I'm afraid, after so much drilling. I shouldn't like to be shouted at. Speaking of disabled officers, there's a rather nice lame man in the shop downstairs who showed me the way up. I suppose you've noticed him, dear? I think I must buy something from him on the way out, so as not to disappoint him. I wonder if he's got a Longfellow? I used to love Longfellow when I was a girl. That man getting another to propose for him and the other one being the real one--I haven't read it for years. We might begin with that.

"I hope someone is going to propose to you, my dear," Aunt Agatha went on. "So pretty and clever as you are, and so managing. People tell me this office is wonderfully run. I don't say I want you to marry the lame man downstairs, but I'm sure he's a gentleman, he has such a charming voice, and he's very good-looking. All but the leg. But legs aren't everything. What's that proverb about helping a lame man over a stile? How well you'd do that!

"I hope I'm not taking up your time, dear," Aunt Agatha continued; "but it's such a long while since you came to see me, and if I'm a nuisance you must make me pay half a crown, or whatever it is you charge for an hour's interview."

"What makes you think Mr. St. Quentin, the lame man downstairs, would make me a good husband?" Ben asked.

"I liked the look of him," said Aunt Agatha. "He looked kind and he's a gentleman. And I don't think it's a bad thing to be a book seller. Anyone may do that now, and he'd bring you home the new novels. Besides, it's a good thing to marry a man who's out of the house all day. I hate to see husbands in to lunch. All wrong. Home lunches are for women. Besides, my dear, there's an epidemic of marrying in the Staveley family and you'll catch it. You can't escape. Look at your father! And then I'm told that Alicia is engaged again to someone at Hove. A widower. I always said that Hove was too near Brighton. What is the proverb--'Marry in----' Oh, no, it's not Hove, it's Hastings: 'Marry in Hastings and repent at leisure.' How silly of me, but they're both on the South Coast.

"And poor Merrill, she came to see me the other day. All in black, the rouge, and looking so demure; but if I were one of those bookmakers who advertise in the papers that they never pay, I'd go so far as to bet a pony--it was a pony that your uncle always put on for me on the Derby favourite year after year, but how seldom the favourites win!--I'd bet a pony, whatever it means, that she's got another man in her eye. I could see him lurking there, the rascal, and not a clergyman this time, I'll be bound. I taxed her with it, and she said 'No' with such a pretty blush that there wasn't any doubt at all.

"And then there's Guy come all the way from India to marry your friend. It's wonderful, I think, that that engagement should have lasted so long, and he in India too, where men fall in love so easily. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but don't you believe it, my dear. There's a better proverb than that which says, 'Out of sight, out of mind.' But I can't admire Guy's constancy too much; he's a regular Don Juan; no, I don't mean that--Don Quixote; no, that other man, without fear and without reproach--Bayard. He's a regular Bayard. Not only to have gone all through his life in India loving her truly, but to have been faithful on the ship too! That's marvellous. I have the deepest respect for him. Indeed, my dear, I almost rank him with you.

"It shows how susceptible all you Staveleys are, and unless you're very careful, my dear, you'll fall too. You ought to be inoculated. Not that inoculation's any good. I never had such severe colds as after the doctor injected what he called my own culture into my arm. Culture--I didn't know I'd got any. I thought that was confined to the universities. But sneeze! You should have heard me. Perhaps you did--I'm only about a mile from Campden Hill. Well, dear, I'm a foolish old woman and I'm sure I've talked a lot of rubbish; but I'm very fond of you and you always do me good.

"And now I must be going. I'm so glad to have seen you in your place of business. And you'll get me a nice girl, won't you? We decided on a girl, didn't we? Yes, I think it must be a girl, because sometimes I should like her to take me to the pictures instead of reading. Reading can be rather tedious. And it would never do for me to go to the pictures with a disabled officer, would it? A nice girl, then. The week after next. Half-past two to four. Without adenoids."

XLVI

Ben was receiving her first visit from her stepmother.

"First of all let me thank you so much for being so kind to my sister," Belle said. "She's not a very decisive person. Perhaps you gathered that?"

Ben admitted it.

"Anyone at all emphatic can do what they like with her," said Belle. "And that's why I'm so glad she's in your hands.

"But that's not what I came about," said the comfortable lady as she sank luxuriously into a chair. "You must forgive me butting in like this, but I want help badly and only you can give it."

"The cook hasn't left?" Ben asked.

"Oh, no. She seems to be satisfied, if one dare use such a strong word about a cook, or indeed any servant, nowadays. No, it's not the cook, it's your father."

"Yes?" said Ben.

"Well, it's rather a difficult thing to talk about to a daughter--and a stepdaughter too--and one knows what stepmothers are supposed to be--but I'm all at sea about him. He's so different from what I was expecting--from what he promised, in fact. When we were talking about the second marriage he was so thoughtful and considerate of me, so generous, always brought me flowers or some little thing, and you know how fond I am of _marrons glacés_--too fond, the doctor says--and I was very lonely, you know, and I had felt so neglected since Vincent died; and it did really seem as if I was to have someone to pet me again after all. Because Vincent, you know, was the kindest man. There was nothing he wouldn't do to please me; he was always bringing cushions, and arranging for week-ends in nice hotels, and motor trips.

"Well, so was your father at first; but this is what is troubling me: Vincent kept it up to the end, but your father has dropped it already. Now, what I want to know, dear, is this: is it just your father's way or has he got tired of me?"

"Oh, I don't think he's got tired of you," said Ben, earnestly.

"Was he like that to your mother?" Belle asked.

"He wasn't very thoughtful of little things, ever," said Ben. "But he was fond of her."

"Yes," said Belle. "But how did he show it? It isn't enough for me to be merely in a house with a man; see him at dinner and watch him reading the paper and, what is much worse, hearing him do it--you have no notion how that rustling gets on one's nerves, when he turns over; that isn't marriage to me. And he is so particular about the food and the service. Was he always like that?"

"He was always rather--well, I might almost say fussy," Ben admitted.

"I wouldn't mind his fussiness if he was fussy over me too," said Belle. "But he isn't. It is all for his own comfort. Of course we're all selfish, I know. Every one's selfish. I'm selfish and I'm lazy. But I do try to play the game, and I don't think he does. And I'm getting frightened." She lowered her voice and drew her chair nearer. "Because, I've got the idea that Vincent knows. I've got the idea that he's looking. I can't say exactly where he's looking from; I can't see him with my mind's eye at all--but I feel that he is looking. Out of some kind of window up there, I suppose; for he was a good man, Vincent was--a dear, good man, kind and open-handed and ready to think the best of every one, even if he did use awful language sometimes and take a little too much wine now and then; but he was so nice in his cups, as they say, not like some people at all: gentle and exaggeratedly polite, even though a little maudlin. In spite of all this, I'm sure he's up there. But it's dreadful thinking that he's looking on and knowing and being sorry for me and"--she sank her voice still lower--"hating your father. Because, my dear, it's going to make me hate him too. There, I've said it."

"Oh, no, Belle!" cried Ben. "You mustn't, you mustn't."

"But I can't help it," said Belle. "It's coming on, and if it gets worse I shall leave him. There's nothing to stay for now"--she sobbed a little--"but if it got worse it would be a sin to stay on."

While her stepmother had been talking Ben's thoughts had flown to the future and all that the breaking up of her father's present establishment would mean; but only hazily. Directly she was left alone they assumed the clearest of outlines. For if her father were single again what would he do? It was only too evident: he would request his daughter to return. And what would she do? She would have to say yes. She would not have the courage--or possibly even the right--to say no. Horrible to lose all this independence, this amusing work just as it was beginning to pay. But it would be inevitable, because he was her father, and he was getting old, and she would have no real reason to offer against it, being free as she was.

If it had been anyone else's father she would not have liked him at all, she found herself thinking. Ought the accident of parentage to entail such self-sacrificing devotion as it often does? Anyway, it did; and so long as she was free she would probably have to return.

But supposing she was not free! Her heart fluttered.

If she were not free--if she had thrown in her lot with another--her father would have no right....

XLVII

It was about half-past ten when the door of "The Beck and Call" office opened and admitted Mr. St. Quentin.

Ben was alone. "Dolly has a day off," she said, "and Miss Marquard is accumulating things for a number of our people, or I would ask you into the back room.

"What is the news?" she asked.

"Oh, I mustn't talk about news," said Pat. "I've come as a client."

Ben laughed. "A client! That's splendid." She became very businesslike. "What can we do for you to-day?"

"It's perhaps rather an odd request," said Pat, "but I was wondering if you could help me to find--well, in point of fact, a wife. For myself, I mean."

Ben reeled for a moment under the suddenness of the shock.

"A wife!" she then exclaimed, blushing a little and fumbling for her notebook. Anything to regain composure!

"Yes," said Pat. "There's nothing so extraordinary about that, is there? Lots of men have wanted wives ever since the world began. In fact, there's a rumour that that is why it has gone on."

"Yes--I know--I've heard," Ben replied. She was recovering her nerve now. "But we don't transact business like that here. You want a matrimonial agency, if there are such things."

"No, I want 'The Beck and Call.' I have the greatest faith in it," said Pat. "I believe it can get me one--if it will."

He looked at her with a smile in his grave eyes until she looked away; but she was smiling too.

"I'm afraid----" she began.

"At any rate," he said briskly, "let me describe my requirements and then perhaps you'll know better. Age, shall we begin with age?"

"If you insist on treating this as a marriage office, yes," said Ben.

"I do," said Pat. "Age, then: twenty-three or four."

"Yes," said Ben.

"But you haven't written it down," said Pat. "This is a serious request. I am honestly asking your help, and I've never been a real client before. First impressions, you know."

"Very well then," said Ben, making the note: "twenty-three or four."

"Height, medium," said Pat. "Hair, dark. Eyes, grey-blue. Have you got all that?"

"I've taken it down," said Ben.

"Voice, musical," Pat went on. "Laugh, delicious."

Ben looked away as she affected to write.

"Is that essential?" she asked.

"Absolutely," said Pat. "Must be in business," he went on. "No idle woman need apply. This kind of business would be all right."

"Do you mean she is to continue in business when she is married?" Ben asked.

"I should leave that to her," said Pat; "but I hope so."

"Aren't you rather narrowing it down?" Ben asked. "Making it rather difficult for yourself?"

"I was trying to make it more easy for 'The Beck and Call,'" he said. "If the essentials are so explicitly stated, so little time need be wasted on the search."

"You have been wonderfully explicit," said Ben. "But what about yourself? The girl--if she is found--will naturally want to know something about her husband, who at present, of course, is a stranger to her. What is she to be told?"

"That he is utterly unworthy," said Pat; "a man of twenty-seven who was knocked about in the War; a bit of a dreamer; a second-hand book seller with an ambition to write; fairly amiable in temper; fairly sound in health, but for a slight deficit in the number of legs normally served out to men; and, although, as I said, utterly unworthy, filled, for a woman of the kind specified, with worship, admiration, and love. Do you think you could find a wife for a fellow like this?" he asked.

Ben was silent. She stood still with lowered eyes and a heart beating much too fast, but very, very happy.

"Do you?" he asked again.

It was fortunate that no other inquirers arrived at that moment, for they would have found something very like a Universal Aunt in the arms of a second-hand book seller with only one leg.

XLVIII

Mr. Paul Mostyn to Miss Benita Staveley:

"MY DEAREST BEN,

"I have been a very long time in resorting to 'The Beck and Call' for assistance; but now I have a real need. Will you go to the best Bond Street jewellers and buy a ring regardless of cost? It is a wedding present for one I am very fond of. Choose it as though it were for yourself.

"I am, "Your devoted, "UNCLE PAUL"

XLIX

Mr. Toby Staveley to Miss Benita Staveley:

"DARLING OLD BEN,

"What a lark! I am preparing the best suite in the place for your honeymoon. All the best, honey, from your loving brother,

"TOBY STAVELEY "Manager "Fairmile Towers County Club, Ltd."

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Advisory Ben, by Edward Verrall (E. V.) Lucas