When a girl has been keeping house for her father for three or four
years and her father then (although sixty-three) marries again, her
position is not easy, nor does it demand a blind belief in all the
malignant tradition that surrounds stepmothers to admit this. As a
matter of fact, Colonel Staveley's new wife would probably have been
happier if her stepdaughter had remained in the house. Indeed, I am
sure of it, for she is neither a jealous woman nor a meddlesome; and
Ben's knowledge of her home and of its master's ways would have made
life more simple, while the girl herself would have been a companion
when that master was playing bridge at his club or informing such of
his fellow-members as would still listen to him what the Government--if
it had a grain of sense--would do.
For some time--we are now in the year 1921--Ben and her father had had
the house to themselves, for her mother was dead. This lady, I ought to
say, had displayed something like genius in the ordered way in which
at definite intervals, and with discreet alternations of sex, she had
put her children into the world; first a girl and then a boy, and then
a girl and then a boy, and so on--beginning with Alicia as long ago as
1883, and then Cecil in 1887, and then Merrill in 1890, and then Guy in
1894, until her youngest daughter's turn to arrive came in 1899, and
Toby's, her youngest son's in 1902, and the tale was complete.
Of these six, when Colonel Staveley married again, only Ben was at
home. Alicia had become Mrs. Bertrand Lyle and the mother of two boys
and was now a widow; Cecil, who was a soldier in India, had married
a French girl and was childless; Merrill had married a Hampshire
vicar and was childless; Guy, also a soldier in India, was engaged to
Melanie Ames, a friend of Ben's; and as for Toby, he was nominally
imbibing learning at Oxford, but, like so many undergraduates of my
acquaintance, seemed more often to be imbibing other things in London.
I don't mean to excess, but dancing is a thirsty form of industry, and
late hours have been known to lead to early restoratives.
Ever since Mrs. Staveley's death, the Colonel had counted on Ben, who
was then eighteen, for everything that would promote his comfort. He
knew--none better--that the first essential of a selfish man is an
entourage of unselfish people. And of these Ben was the chief. It must
not be thought that the Colonel was a bully; rather, a martinet. He
suffered from a too early retirement, aggravated by his wife's meekness
and complacency, and as he had not thrown himself into any amateur
work, and was, by nature, indolent and conversational, he was left with
far too much leisure in which to detect domestic blemishes. A pedant
for routine, his eye, when it came to any kind of disorder or novelty
of arrangement, was like a gun. There was one place and one only for
every article in the house, beginning with the hat-stand in the hall;
and his first instinct, if not thought, on entering his front door was
to look for something out of position. And so onwards, through whatever
rooms he passed.
When he descried a fault it was, formerly, his wife, and latterly Ben,
who was court-martialled; and not the actual offender. This probably,
while fortunate for that person, was even more fortunate for the
Colonel, who might otherwise have been without cooks and parlourmaids
most of his life, for servants often put up a better resistance to
martinets than the martinets' own flesh and blood. But whereas Mrs.
Staveley had been reduced too often to tears, Ben bore the assaults
with a courageous or stoical humour.
"I can't conceive," the Colonel had exclaimed wrathfully, on the very
day before this story begins, "why on earth people can't leave my
umbrella alone."
"But it's there all right," Ben replied. "I noticed it in the stand a
few minutes ago."
"Yes," he snapped, "but some idiot has rolled it up. That new girl, I
suppose. I thought she looked an officious fool the moment I saw her."
"Well, father," said Ben, "if she did roll it up, it was purely through
excess of zeal, that's all; and don't let us be too hard on excess of
zeal in these times, when almost everyone is so slack."
"But what about her being too hard on my umbrella?" the Colonel
demanded. "That's what I complain of. If I leave it unrolled--which I
did very carefully and on purpose--it's no business of anyone else to
roll it up. And no woman can roll an umbrella, anyway. It's an art."
"All right, father," said Ben, "it shan't happen again."
"I hope not," the Colonel barked back, "and it wouldn't have happened
this time if you'd kept Atkinson. I can't think why you let her go."
"My dear father," said Ben, "I've told you again and again. She left
in order to be married. Surely a girl must be allowed to marry if she
wants."
"Pooh!" said the Colonel, with infinite scorn. "Marriage!"
It was on the next day that he announced his own engagement, through
which Ben was driven to come to a decision as to her career.