The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(155)
‘How many of you are working here?’
‘Six. Two of us do the cooking; one the accounts; and the rest washing, mending, games, singing, dancing and general chores. Two of us live in.’
‘I don’t see your harps and crowns.’
Norah Curfew smiled.
‘Pawned,’ she said.
‘What do you do about religion?’ asked Michael, thinking of the eleventh baronet’s future.
‘Well, on the whole we don’t. You see, they’re none of them more than twelve; and the religious age, when it begins at all, begins with sex about fourteen. We just try to teach kindness and cheerfulness. I had my brother down the other day. He’s always laughed at me; but he’s going to do a matinée for us, and give us the proceeds.’
‘What play?’
‘I think it’s called “The Plain Dealer”. He says he’s always wanted to do it for a good object.’
Michael stared. ‘Do you know “The Plain Dealer”?’
‘No; it’s by one of the Restoration people, isn’t it?’
‘Wycherley.’
‘Oh! yes! ’ Her eyes remaining clearer than the dawn, Michael thought: ‘Poor dear! It’s not my business to queer the pitch of her money-getting; but Master Bertie likes his little joke!’
‘I must bring my wife down here,’ he said; ‘she’d love your walls and curtains. And I wanted to ask you. You haven’t room, have you, for two more little girls, if we pay for them? Their father’s down and out, and I’m starting him in the country – no mother.’
Norah Curfew wrinkled her straight brows, and on her face came the look Michael always connected with haloes, an anxious longing to stretch good-will beyond power and pocket.
‘Oh; we must!’ she said. ‘I’ll manage somehow. What are their names?’
‘Boddick – Christian, I don’t know. I call them by their ages – Four and Five.’
‘Give me the address. I’ll go and see them myself; if they haven’t got anything catching, they shall come.’
‘You really are an angel,’ said Michael simply.
Norah Curfew coloured, and opened a door. ‘That’s silly,’ she said, still more simply. ‘This is our mess-room.’
It was not large, and contained a girl working a typewriter, who stopped with her hands on the keys and looked round; another girl beating up eggs in a bowl, who stopped reading a book of poetry; and a third, who seemed practising a physical exercise, and stopped with her arms extended.
‘This is Mr Mont,’ said Norah Curfew, ‘who made that splendid speech in the House. Miss Betts, Miss La Fontaine, Miss Beeston.’
The girls bowed, and the one who continued to beat the eggs, said: ‘It was bully.’
Michael also bowed. ‘Beating the air, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh! but, Mr Mont, it must have an effect. It said what so many people are really thinking.’
‘Ah!’ said Michael, ‘but their thoughts are so deep, you know.’
‘Do sit down.’
Michael sat on the end of a peacock-blue divan.
‘I was born in South Africa,’ said the egg-beater, ‘and I know what’s waiting.’
‘My father was in the House,’ said the girl, whose arms had come down to her splendid sides. ‘He was very much struck. Anyway, we’re jolly grateful.’
Michael looked from one to the other.
‘I suppose if you didn’t all believe in things, you wouldn’t be doing this? You don’t think the shutters are up in England, anyway?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ said the girl at the typewriter; ‘you’ve only to live among the poor to know that.’
‘The poor haven’t got every virtue, and the rich haven’t got every vice – that’s nonsense!’ broke in the physical exerciser.
Michael murmured soothingly.
‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I was wondering whether something doesn’t hang over our heads too much?’
‘D’you mean poison-gas?’
‘Partly; and town blight, and a feeling that Progress had been found out.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied the egg-beater, who was dark and pretty. ‘I used to think so in the war. But Europe isn’t the world. Europe isn’t even very important, really. The sun hardly shines there, anyway.’
Michael nodded. ‘After all, if the Millennium comes and we do blot each other out in Europe, it’ll only mean another desert about the size of the Sahara, and the loss of a lot of people obviously too ill-conditioned to be fit to live. It’d be a jolly good lesson to the rest of the world, wouldn’t it? Luckily the other continents are far off each other.’