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."
"My poor Merrill," said Ben, "I wish I could. But it's too late. I've
got into this business and I must stick to it."
"Very well, then," said Merrill, "let me be your first client and get
me a nice jolly curate, even if I have to pay for him myself."
X
Uncle Paul, however, approved, and Uncle Paul was a valuable ally.
Uncle Paul was Mrs. Staveley's and Lady Collum's brother: a man of
about sixty who had lived with his parents as long as they lived and
then had taken rooms in Bayswater with a housekeeper. Naturally shy
and unambitious, and made more shy by an unconquerable stammer, he had
never gone into any business but remained home-keeping and retired,
famous in the family for his mechanical skill. If a doll's house were
required, Uncle Paul made it. His jig-saw puzzles had been marvels
of difficulty before the term jig-saw was invented. With his lathe
and other tools he added little improvements to most of the pieces of
mechanism that shops carelessly put forth.
But his masterpieces were ships, possibly because his father had been
a shipowner and much of Paul's odd time as a boy and youth had been
spent in prowling about the vessels in harbour. The sea itself had no
attraction for him; he was the worst of sailors; but by everything to
do with ships he was fascinated.
From making models for young friends and testing them, he had come to
sailing them himself, and was one of the most assiduous frequenters of
the Round Pond, with the long wand of office proper to all Round Pond
habitués who have Masters' Certificates.
That was his principal outdoor recreation. The only other motive that
could take him from his abode was his love of music, instrumental
rather than vocal, and the Queen's Hall knew few figures more
intimately than this tall spare man, with a slight stoop, a pointed
grey beard and highly magnifying gold-rimmed spectacles.
It has never been satisfactorily determined whether the saying about
the darlings of the gods dying young means young in years or young in
heart. But if it ought to run "Those whom the gods love are still young
no matter when they die," then Uncle Paul was one of the elect.
"I think," he said, after listening to the outline of "The Beck and
Call" project--and you must understand that whenever Uncle Paul spoke,
it was with great difficulty, the words sometimes keeping distressingly
out of reach for agonizing moments (during which, like so many
sufferers from this impediment, he refused all assistance) or rushing
out pellmell--"I think," he said, "it's a good scheme. Very amusing at
any rate. You will meet such lots of odd people. And you will be doing
something. I don't mean," he added hastily, "that you have not been
busy up to now. We have all admired the way you kept house and devoted
yourself to your father. But that was routine. Now you will be in the
world and having adventures." He sighed. "What fun!" he said.
Ben amplified, and in the course of the story of the genesis of her
plan mentioned Mrs. Lintot's remark that she would willingly pay an
annual subscription for these vicarious London services.
"Yes," said Uncle Paul, "that's of the highest importance, a guarantee.
Now what you have got to do is to write to all your friends explaining
your scheme and offering to be at their service for a year at, say,
three guineas each, and asking them to write to all their friends about
it too, like one of these snowballs one reads of, or the American
officer's prayer. Anybody living far out of London ought to find it
well worth three guineas, and three guineas is nothing. Lots of them
may drop off after the first year, but it would give you a start. If
you get only sixty or seventy annual clients to begin with, that would
ensure your rent. Some of these people would probably get their money's
worth over and over again, even if others didn't. At the end of the
year, you might have to raise the subscription, but in the first year
you will be making your name and you can afford to be generous. I shall
put down three guineas myself, but what for, I haven't the vaguest
notion at the moment; and if I get no return I shan't grumble--for the
unusual reason that it will be my own fault."
"I should hate to take three guineas from you," said Ben. "You couldn't
possibly make so much use of me as that, and I'd rather do it for
nothing."
"Hush!" said Uncle Paul. "Don't say such things. The dangerous words
'for nothing' must disappear from your vocabulary the moment you go
into business."
"How horrid!" said Ben. "But I defy you to think of anything you could
want from me. When you've got Mrs. Crosbie eating her head off, how
could you need 'The Beck and Call'?"
"We'll see," said Uncle Paul. "Here's my cheque anyway. I want to be
your first client."