The Forsyte Saga Volume 2(19)

Michael pushed his fingers through his hair.

‘How old’s your wife?’

‘Only a girl – twenty.’

Twenty! Just Fleur’s age!

‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Bicket; I’ll put it up to Mr Desert; if he speaks for you, perhaps it may move Mr Danby.’

‘Well, Mr Mont, thank you – you’re a gentleman, we all sy that.’

‘Oh! hang it! But look here, Bicket, you were reckoning on those five copies. Take this to make up, and get your wife what’s necessary. Only for goodness’ sake don’t tell Mr Danby.’

‘Mr Mont, I wouldn’t deceive you for the world – I won’t sy a word, sir. And my wife – well!’

A sniff, a shuffle – Michael was alone, with his hands plunged deeper, his shoulders hunched higher. And suddenly he laughed. Pity! Pity was pop! It was all dam’ funny. Here he was rewarding Bicket for snooping Copper Coin. A sudden longing possessed him to follow the little packer and see what he did with the two pounds – see whether ‘the pneumonia’ was real or a figment of the brain behind those dolorous eyes. Impossible, though! Instead he must ring up Wilfrid and ask him to put in a word with old Danby. His own word was no earthly. He had put it in too often! Bicket! Little one knew of anybody, life was deep and dark, and upside down! What was honesty? Pressure of life versus power of resistance – the result of that fight, when the latter won, was honesty! But why resist? Love thy neighbour as thyself – but not more! And wasn’t it a darned sight harder for Bicket on two pounds a week to love him, than for him on twenty-four pounds a week to love Bicket?…

‘Hallo!… That you, Wilfrid?… Michael speaking…. One of our packers has been sneaking copies of Copper Coin. He’s “got the sack” – poor devil! I wondered if you’d mind putting in a word for him – old Dan won’t listen to me… yes, got a wife – Fleur’s age; pneumonia, so he says. Won’t do it again with yours anyway, insurance by common gratitude – what!… Thanks, old man, awfully good of you – will you bob in, then? We can go round home together… Oh! Well! You’ll bob in anyway. Aurev!’

Good chap, old Wilfrid! Real good chap – underneath! Underneath – what?

Replacing the receiver, Michael saw a sudden great cloud of sights and scents and sounds, so foreign to the principles of his firm that he was in the habit of rejecting instantaneously every manuscript which dealt with them. The war might be ‘off’; but it was still ‘on’ within Wilfrid, and himself. Taking up a tube, he spoke:

‘Mr Danby in his room? Right! If he shows any signs of flitting, let me know at once.…’

Between Michael and his senior partner a gulf was fixed, not less deep than that between two epochs, though partially filled in by Winter’s middle-age and accommodating temperament. Michael had almost nothing against Mr Danby except that he was always right – Philip Norman Danby, of Sky House, Campden Hill, a man of sixty and some family, with a tall forehead, a preponderance of body to leg, and an expression both steady and reflective. His eyes were perhaps rather close together, and his nose rather thin, but he looked a handsome piece in his well-proportioned room. He glanced up from the formation of a correct judgement on a matter of advertisement when Wilfrid Desert came in.

‘Well, Mr Desert, what can I do for you? Sit down!’

Desert did not sit down, but looked at the engravings, at his fingers, at Mr Danby, and said:

‘Fact is, I want you to let that packer chap off, Mr Danby.’

‘Packer chap. Oh! Ah! Bicket. Mont told you, I suppose?’

‘Yes; he’s got a young wife down with pneumonia.’

‘They all go to our friend Mont with some tale or other, Mr Desert – he has a very soft heart. But I’m afraid I can’t keep this man. It’s a most insidious thing. We’ve been trying to trace a leak for some time.’

Desert leaned against the mantelpiece and stared into the fire.

‘Well, Mr Danby,’ he said, ‘your generation may like the soft in literature, but you’re precious hard in life. Ours won’t look at softness in literature, but we’re a deuced sight less hard in life.’

‘I don’t think it’s hard,’ said Mr Danby, ‘only just.’

‘Are you a judge of justice?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Try four years’ hell, and have another go.’

‘I really don’t see the connexion. The experience you’ve been through, Mr Desert, was bound to be warping.’

Wilfrid turned and stared at him.