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."