Part 2

The two girls made a pretty contrast: Ben so quick and alert, and Melanie so casual and apparently uninterested, although with an instant comment for every situation. Already, I observed, her tardiness had begun to draw out Ben's practicality. In appearance they were a contrast too, for Ben was fresh-complexioned, with rich brown hair which had maintained its steady natural shade ever since I had known her, whereas Melanie was pale and had changed the colour of her tresses three times at least and was now meditating a return from dark to fair.

Ben was not exactly clever or witty, but her brain was nimble enough and clear enough, and her laugh of such seductive clarity and readiness as to put men on their mettle. Women who make men talk better than they are accustomed to are always popular, even when they are plain; and Ben was by no means plain. Indeed, she had such pleasant looks as to cause constant surprise that she was still single and unattached; but only among those people who do not know how foolishly young men can choose their partners for life. Ben was probably too sane, too brightly normal. The feet of the young men of her acquaintance were either turned away from marriage altogether, or were dancing attendance upon creatures more capricious, more artificial, more suggestive even of decadence. Melanie, for example with her pallor and her exotic _coiffure_, was clearly more attractive to Tubby Toller and Eric Keene, who were plying her with cigarettes and other necessaries of life when I entered. Both these youths, who had been too young for the War, were now engaged in such walks of life as products of public schools and universities take to: Tubby having a clerkship in the Treasury, and Eric having one eye on the Bar, wherever the other may have been.

"Tell them about your scheme, Ben," said Melanie, when we were all at our ease.

"Well," said Ben, "there seems to be a vacancy for a kind of agent who will do all kinds of things for those who are too lazy or too busy or too helpless to do them for themselves and would pay to be relieved. Finding a house or flat, for example. There are heaps of people who would cheerfully give ten pounds to have these found for them. There are people all over the country, and in Scotland and Ireland, who would like their shopping done for them, particularly when the Sales come on. There are heaps of English people abroad--on the Continent, in India, in the Colonies--who want things done for them in London and have no one to apply to and trust. There is a constant demand for servants of every kind, not only housemaids and nurses, but chauffeurs and secretaries and private tutors. People want to know where they can have bridge lessons and golf lessons and billiard lessons. It's all very vague in my mind at present, but I'm sure there's something practical in it."

"It's not vague to me at all," said Tubby; "it's concrete. I've been thinking like a black while you've been talking, and I believe I've got a title. You must be original and alluring: a signboard, jolly colours, nice assistants."

"I should call it 'Ben Trovato,'" said Eric.

"Oh, don't!" Ben groaned. "No more puns on my unfortunate name, please."

"Or 'Ben's Balm for Harassed Housewives,'" Eric continued.

"Or just a notice like this," said Melanie:

DOMESTIC DIFFICULTIES FORWARD SOLUTIONS WITHIN

"Be serious," said Tubby. "I've got a real title for you. What do you think of 'The Beck and Call'?"

"Very good," I said.

"I think you should have a signboard hanging out," said Tubby, "Like an old inn, and on the sign, which would be very gay, something like this:--

THE BECK AND CALL DOMESTIC PROBLEM BUREAU

BRING YOUR NEEDS TO US FEES MODERATE

"I don't know about 'moderate,'" said Melanie. "It's what the most expensive hotels always say."

"Yes, and 'Domestic Problems'?" said Eric. "Don't they usually mean rows between husband and wife? Admiralty, Probate and Divorce stuff?"

"I suppose so," said Tubby. "But it would be impossible to put up anything that could not be misunderstood by someone. In connection with 'Beck and Call' I think 'Domestic Problems' might stand. And, after all, if a wife did come to complain of her husband there would be no great harm done; she would simply be told that that kind of business was not transacted and sent off to the nearest police court or solicitor."

"But you could charge her for it just the same," said Eric. "After all, knowing who is the nearest or best divorce solicitor is very special knowledge and ought to be well paid for."

"Yes," said Tubby, "I've lived in the same house for two years, but I'll be hanged if I know where the nearest police station is, or the nearest fire station, or the nearest pawnbroker. Those are the valuable facts of life, and I am ignorant of all of them. I know where my own doctor lives, and my own dentist, but I haven't a notion where there is a strange one handy. And of course dentists never work at night. The address of a good dentist who would answer a night call would be worth a tenner to anyone. You ought to specialize in that, Ben."

"I will," said Ben. "You are being very useful to me. Go on."

"The best of everything," said Eric, hastily cutting in, "is a good thing to know. It takes a lot of finding out oneself. I've got a haberdashery chap, for instance, who is absolutely useless with socks. His vests are good, his shirts, his collars; but his socks are disgraceful. Very dear, and no wear in them at all. 'Advice as to the best shops for everything' would be a great line for you."

"I saw a shop the other day," Tubby said, "where there were Chinese birds' nests in the window. For soup. I'll give you the address, Ben. That will be something to start on."

"Yes," said Melanie, "and I know the best place for rings and bracelets made of elephants' hair. For luck, you know. You'd better make a note of that."

"And China tea," said I.

"And Waterford glass," said Melanie.

"And Japanese artichokes," said Tubby. "They're delicious and they're practically weeds, but how many greengrocers have them? Hardly any."

"And salad oil," said Melanie. "The awful cart-grease most people give you!"

"I'll tell you another thing worth knowing in your business," said Eric. "Places--seaside resorts--where the water isn't hard. My old father had a horror of hard water and all our summer holidays were regulated by that. But it was the most difficult thing to find out."

"I hope you're writing all these things down," said Ben. "I must have one of those big alphabetical books. I'd no idea how clever you are--you're well worth a guinea a box."

"That reminds me," said Eric. "The best chemists. Where to get the best soap."

"And the best lavender water," said I.

"And the best cold-cure," said Tubby. "Nothing so important as that."

"What price indigestion?" asked Melanie.

"Yes, of course," said Tubby. "I know of some ripping stuff."

"But you're going much too far," said Ben.

"Never mind," said Tubby, "you'll find it'll all help. You can't know too much."

"There's that wonderful place for jam in Paris," said Melanie. "I forgot the name. It's in the Rue de Sèze: oh yes, Tandrade. You see them making it in the shop. Nothing like it. I'm sure that anyone who could act as an intermediary between English people and the best French shops would make a fortune."

"Or the other way round," said Tubby. "I'll bet you France is full of people who would like to get things from London but don't know how. Think of the awful things they have to put up with now," he went on. "Have you ever been in a small French chemist's? No one but a peasant in a smock to look after you. And their shoe leather; I mean for men. And their umbrellas. I can see an International Shopping Bureau going very strong."

"Please stop," said Ben, in mock despair. "You're too resourceful. And what do you think," she asked, turning to me, "shall we call it 'The Beck and Call'?"

"I think that's admirable," I said. "I wish I'd thought of it."

VII

When Colonel Staveley, with his buxom Belle, returned from Cap d'Ail and found no daughter to receive him, he was bewildered and shocked.

Still, as everything was comfortable and the servants were welcoming and kind, and even more because it is not so simple or desirable to lose one's temper in the presence of second wives as first, the Colonel controlled himself; but when Ben called, he relaxed.

"I can't conceive why you aren't satisfied to go on here," he began. "Your mo--I mean Belle--would be delighted to have you. She likes you, I know. She's said so, often. She said so again only last night. And you like her, don't you?"

"Yes," said Ben. "I do. But I don't think this is the place for me any longer. So long as you were alone I was glad to do what I could; but you've got Belle now. It's her house. It wouldn't be right--apart from anything else--for me to live here now. I can't think why you don't see that."

"She doesn't understand the servants as you did," said the Colonel. "She--she doesn't understand me. Those sandwiches you used to cut me at eleven--no one gets me those any more. I mean, not as they ought to be: thin and soft and without crust."

"I'm sorry," said Ben.

"Sorry!" exclaimed the Colonel. "Sorry is as sorry does. If you really were sorry you'd come back. Where are you pigging it, may I ask?"

"I'm sharing Melanie Ames's flat in Aubrey Walk," said Ben. "It comes far cheaper and there's plenty of room. And as soon as I can"--here she produced the bombshell--"I'm going to open a business."

For an old warrior the Colonel took the blow badly. He had no words at all at first. "Business!" he then gasped; "what business?"

To his growing exasperation Ben told him our plans.

"Oh! he's in it," said her father, referring to my own modest financial share, and adding, if I know anything about him, "I never cared for the man, as you are probably aware."

He stamped up and down the room for a while and then began again.

"I'm not narrow-minded, thank God!" he declared. "Whatever else I may be, I'm not narrow-minded; but I'm bound to say I don't think it's quite fair to me to open an office of this sort. If you were taking up the secretaryship of a ladies' golf club I shouldn't mind. I'm all for women playing golf, so long as they have links of their own. Or a secretaryship to an M.P., say, as long as it wasn't a damned Labour member. But an office with a brass plate and your name--my name--on it, no! I draw the line there."

"It won't have our name," said Ben. "It's to be called 'The Beck and Call.'"

"Oh, is it?" he cried. "Is it? I like that! Colonel Staveley's daughter advertising herself at anyone's beck and call. A nice pill for an old soldier to swallow, a nice thing to explain away to one's friends."

Ben was silent for a while. Then, "I think you're taking it too seriously," she said. "Many changes have come about since you were young. The world has given up a lot of its sillinesses, and one of them is the prejudice against people going into business. I am convinced that no girl of twenty-two ought to be just a drone."

"I can't think why you never married," said the Colonel, peevishly.

"I suppose because it takes two to make a marriage," said Ben.

"You must have played your cards devilish badly," her father retorted. "There's Alicia, she's married, even though her husband is dead. And Merrill's married. And most of your cousins are married. I can't understand what you've been doing."

"Some girls must be single," said Ben. "Why, there are millions more women than men in this country alone. I read the figures only the other day."

"It is the duty of every woman of spirit," said the Colonel, oracularly, "not to be one of them. And what," he continued, "will you do when all the money's gone?"

"I don't see why it shouldn't succeed," said Ben.

"Succeed!" the Colonel snorted.

"Well, some things succeed," said Ben. "Everything doesn't fail. Look at the people round you: they're not all bankrupt."

"Very nearly," said the Colonel.

"They seem to have money for a good many frivolities and luxuries still," said Ben. "Anyway, I mean to do my best to make it succeed. And I hope," she added, "that if you're in any difficulty here you'll come to 'The Beck and Call.' I must send Belle some cards when we're ready."

"You needn't trouble," said the Colonel. "If you ever see Belle or myself on your premises or catch us recognizing this nonsense of yours, I'll"--well, you know how that kind of man always finishes that kind of sentence--"I'll eat my hat."

"Don't do that, father," said Ben. "Promise me a new one instead."

"With the greatest pleasure in the world," said the Colonel.

VIII

The Colonel was not alone in his hostility to Ben's decision. Most of the family, indeed, expressed disapproval, which is a word that was, I suspect, originally coined for no other purpose than to describe the attitude of people to any novel or independent action on the part of any of their relations, the younger ones in particular.

Ben's eldest sister, Alicia, who had settled with her two children, Paul and Timothy, at Hove, after her husband, Bertrand, was killed in the war, came hurrying up to add her voice to the attacking chorus; but she was not as wholehearted as her father, because, never in favour of his second marriage, she was glad that Ben had left Hyde Park Gardens. That now, she agreed, was Belle's domain, and beyond keeping an eye on certain pieces of furniture and a picture or so which she had marked down as some day to be her children's, she intended to have no more interest in it. But it was not in the least her idea that Ben should live with Melanie Ames and start out on a career of her own. Alicia's idea was that Ben should join her at Hove and help with the boys; and she put her case strongly.

"Of course it's what you ought to do," she said. "They would be good for you and you would be good for them. They ought to see somebody else besides me, now that their poor father has passed over, and the more you have to do with children now, the better you will understand them when you have some of your own. For I suppose you intend to marry," she added sharply. "You haven't got all this absurd modern girl's dislike of men as anything but tennis and dancing partners?"

Ben said that at the moment she was thinking not of men but of her livelihood.

"Nonsense," said Alicia. "You know perfectly well you are doing it purely from selfishness. You are excited about going into business just as other girls would be excited about their coming out. It's sheer self-indulgence. And you don't need the money," she went on; "you have grandmamma's two hundred, or whatever it is, and if you lived sensibly with me and put it into the common stock you would have no anxieties whatever. I am sure Bertrand would have wished it. In fact, I happen to know that he does wish it. I asked him last night."

Ben opened her eyes. "What can you mean?" she asked, "by saying that you know he wishes it, and that you asked him last night--when he's dead?"

"I don't think of Bertrand as dead," said Alicia. "There is no death. He has merely passed over. I am in constant communication with him. I am very psychic; strangely so, considering what a matter-of-fact family we are. A throwback, I suppose." She closed her eyes. "Would you go against Bertrand's express desire?" she asked earnestly.

"I don't know," said Ben, "but in any case I should rather have it expressed to me direct."

"And so you shall if you will come to Hove," Alicia replied eagerly. "There is a Circle there which you shall join. Not that I have to call in any medium myself; I am too psychic. And Bertrand and I are one, as we always have been. But it would be necessary for you."

"No," said Ben. "I should be afraid. I don't like that kind of thing. And it's too late anyhow."

"I think you're horridly selfish," said Alicia. "And speaking as your elder sister, almost old enough to be your mother, I want you to know that I don't think you ought to be running a business at all. It's not nice. The kind of women who run businesses are not nice; they're hard and they've usually had a past. You will acquit me of narrow-mindedness, I am sure, but that's how I feel. And I don't believe it's too late to get out of the agreement, if you've signed one. Considering the way most house-agents behave, I think it's one's duty to get out of agreements now and then, just as a lesson to them."

"My dear Alicia!" Ben exclaimed.

"Well, I do," Alicia replied petulantly. "And as for poor Bertrand, he'll be heartbroken. He had built all his hopes on your joining us at Hove."

"Is he in Hove too?" Ben asked.

"Practically," said Alicia.

"No," said Ben; "I can't come; it's impossible."

"And then there's your health," said Alicia. "You'll lose your complexion poring over registers and accounts in London. You'll begin to look raddled; like all women in business. People will call you 'capable,' and that's the end. No one wants a capable woman, out of her office."

Ben only laughed.

"And Hove's so invigorating," Alicia resumed. "The Sea Wall! And haven't you any interest in your nephews? You were fond of Bertrand, weren't you? You always seemed to be. Are you going to neglect his boys? Ben, dear, I thought better of you."

Alicia sighed and looked like one against whom the whole world was arrayed.

"You're making me feel very guilty," Ben said. "But it's no good. I can't change now. And I believe--if this is selfishness--that a certain amount of selfishness is right. I am sure that one ought to try to be independent; everyone ought. And why shouldn't it be called 'self-help' or 'self-reliance' which are considered virtues, instead of 'selfishness'? Anyway, I must go on with it now. If it fails, I may change my views altogether, or, of course, if anything happened to you, and Paul and Timothy were left stranded, I might think it was my duty to come to the rescue. But not now."

Alicia made a noise as of one who would live for ever.

"Besides," Ben went on, "it would only mean for a short time probably. You're not so settled as all that. Supposing you were to marry again."

"Ben!" exclaimed Alicia, "I'm shocked at you."

"I'm sorry if I hurt you," said Ben. "But people do marry again. Look--well, look at father."

"I decline to look at father," said Alicia. "I think it's horrid. At his age too."

"Well, then," said Ben, "look at Belle. She's not so very much older than you."

"I think that's almost more horrid," said Alicia. "And it's very cruel of you, I think, to say such a thing to me, knowing as you do how devoted Bertrand and I always were and still are. And the boys, too! What man wants to marry a widow with two boys?"

"I feel convinced that it has been done," said Ben. "But I apologize. And I am very sorry, but I must repeat that I am going to be independent; I want to stand absolutely alone. I think it's my duty."

"I'm tired of the way people use the word 'duty' when they want to please themselves," said Alicia.

"My dear Alicia," said Ben, "don't let's start all over again. You said that before. If you knew what efforts I make not to say things twice in one conversation!"

Alicia compressed her lips with grim firmness. "Very well," she said. "There's no more to be done. But it will be terrible telling Bertrand."

"Surely," Ben suggested, "he knows already?"

"Ah, that I cannot say," said Alicia. "All I know is, he counts on me for everything."

IX

Ben's second sister, Merrill, whose husband was a country vicar, also had something to say against Ben's project, and said it; but with less acrimony than Alicia. Merrill had always been easygoing.

"Of course it was quite right to leave father," she agreed. "You couldn't have gone on there, with that fat woman. And what we're going to call her I have no notion. Nothing shall ever make me say 'Mother.' What do you call her?"

"I call her Belle," said Ben. "We arranged it."

"I couldn't do that," said Merrill. "I don't believe in the word as a name anyway. I think of it as something entirely different; something, between you and me, of which I'm sick to death, as you would be if you lived in a vicarage a few inches from a church. Ugh!--bells! But the name's a problem. 'Mother' is impossible; 'Stepmother' is absurd; 'Mrs. Staveley' would be absurd too. The wisest thing is not to see her at all and then one needn't call her anything. But that," she continued, "is nothing. What I want to ask you to do is to come and live with us; and if you had a spark of decency you'd do it."

Ben made a movement of dissent.

"And it wouldn't be such a sacrifice either," her sister went on, "for there's lots of things to do. Egbert won't have a car, it's true, but we can get one in the Village, only a bob a mile. There's a golf links four miles off and there's plenty of tennis and bridge. There are some quite decent young men; one, by the way, who's rolling."

"But there are the bells!" said Ben.

"Never mind about them," Merrill urged. "One can get used to anything--except," she added, "Egbert. Be a sport and think of your sister. I assure you, my dear, I shall go mad if I don't have someone to talk to and be with. You wouldn't have me in an asylum, would you?"

"But my dear Merrill," said Ben, "how can it be as bad as that? What is the matter with Egbert? You used to like him. I can't understand why everyone seems to get so tired of their husbands or wives. It makes me glad I'm not married. You liked him once, tremendously."

"I don't say I hate him now," said Merrill, "but he's become impossible. He spends his whole life between neglecting the parish and writing his book. It's not living at all. And no one will read his book. Who wants books on the Hittites? I tell him he'd far better be paying some attention to the English in the village, but that makes him cross. And when he's not writing, he's complaining of being overlooked and not being made a canon. He's always perfectly sweet and polite to me, and I could slap him. Not that we quarrel: not a bit of it. Ours isn't the kind of house you could call a 'Bickerage' for a moment. But we just stagnate. He doesn't really need me and I'm bored by him. Oh, how bored! If only he would take one or two backward boys it would be a relief, a change, but he won't. He says they would interfere with his work.

"This isn't," she went on, "the kind of life that I married for. But then, what is it that one marries for? I know what the Church service says, of course, only too well. But surely there should be some fun too? That is what we're brought up to believe and expect; but I assure you, Ben, I've never been anything in Egbert's life whatever. Not really. I'm merely in his house; I see that his meals are punctual and fit to eat; I see that he has clean surplices; I see that his study is dusted and the fire lit; and I listen to his tales of woe. And that's the end of it. I'm just his wife. He wanted me badly enough, and he got me, and that was the end. It has never occurred to him that a wife could want to be anything more than the punctual inmate of a man's house. I can't even keep a dog, because dogs get on his nerves. But he likes you--you could make him a little more human, I believe, if anyone could. Do give up this 'Beck and Call' stuff and come and help me. I'm certain it's your duty."

Ben shook her head.

"But don't you do anything in the parish?" she asked. "Don't you visit?"

"Do I not visit?" exclaimed Merrill. "Of course I do. I have to. It all falls on me. But is that what I was made for? Why, I'm only thirty-one. Is that any life for a woman of thirty-one? No, Ben dear, be a sport and come and stay with us and you and I will have some fun and you'll keep me from thinking too much and regretting too much. Egbert won't worry you a bit; he'll hardly know you're there."