Never Too Late

by Angela Thirkell

  “You would do what you felt you ought to do,” said Lady Graham, without the least affectation. “My mother was an invalid for the last year or two of her life and her mind was often rather remote, but she became more and more sweet and loving,” and Lady Graham turned her head aside for a moment to look at a Morland print, but she could not see it very well. “I am sure,” she went on, after gently patting her eyes with her soft handkerchief, “that Mr. Halliday will quietly go, just as darling mamma went, when he is too tired to live here any longer. And now, my dear, may I see the nurseries?”

  Mrs. Carter, pleased to be deared, flattered by Lady Graham’s interest in her children, took her guest to the top floor and opened a door into a large room at the back of the house, looking across the garden to where the downs began to heave their green sides from the valley, flooded with afternoon light. The walls were white and all that was not white in the room was pink, all very shiny.

  “Exactly what I meant!” said Lady Graham.

  “But how?” said her hostess. “Oh, I do hope you weren’t thinking of taking it. I couldn’t bear to have ousted you.”

  “Oh, not that at all, my dear,” said Lady Graham. “It is only that I am so pleased because this is exactly what these rooms should be. I saw it in my mind’s eye, but you have done it.”

  “I am terribly pleased,” said Mrs. Carter. “And there is something else I want to show you. I do hope you will approve,” and she took Lady Graham into the room next door which was a small nursery kitchen where a light meal could be prepared and there was a refrigerator for the nursery milk and butter.

  “Perfect,” said Lady Graham with a kind of sigh of joy. “There was just one other thing—” and even as she said the words she heard Mrs. Carter saying “And there is just one other thing—”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Lady Graham. “I know. It’s a lift.”

  “How on earth did you know that?” said Mrs. Carter, almost sitting down flat on the floor in her surprise.

  “My dear child,” said Lady Graham, “when your brother let us see this house, I saw at once what was wanted to make the nursery floor perfect. I hope the lift door is fool-proof,” and Mrs. Carter showed her how the lift locked itself when up and could only be opened by nurse by a handle far above the children’s heads, and the same—only the other way up— when it was down. There was also a house-telephone from nursery to kitchen.

  “Of course the telephone is going to lead to all sorts of offence being taken between the nursery and the kitchen,” said Mrs. Carter cheerfully, “but I shall keep nurse whatever happens and I know she won’t go because Mrs. Panter is her sister.”

  “You mean Mrs. Panter whose husband is Mr. Halliday’s carter: 3 ” said Lady Graham. “I didn’t know she had a sister.”

  “Well, her sister is much younger than she is and went as under-nurse to Mrs. Francis Brandon at Pomfret Madrigal for a time,” said Mrs. Carter, “and she is very well trained. Oh, here you are, nurse. This is Lady Graham.”

  Lady Graham said How do you do very pleasantly in what nurse at once felt to be the right kind of voice, and further met with nurse’s approval by not offering to shake hands. That, in nurse’s opinion, was how a lady that was a lady should behave and not go making herself cheap like some people—by whom she meant, we think, Mrs. Grant who was Mrs. Francis Brandon’s aunt by marriage and lived mostly in Calabria, importing on her happily rare visits to Barsetshire Calabrian customs which met with no approval from anyone. Lady Graham then further pleased nurse by asking to see the night nursery, which was a pleasant airy room and if she felt that one could have too much of pink, that after all was Mrs. Carter’s business and nothing to do with herself. As the visit then threatened to become rather boring, she said she was sure nurse had lots of things to do and shook hands with her as a farewell. This nurse highly approved as it showed according to Nanny-etiquette that the visitor, having been duly impressed by nurse and Her Nursery, was now asking a boon rather than conferring one.

  “They are delightful nurseries,” said Lady Graham as they went downstairs, with such untruthful sincerity in her voice that Mrs. Carter asked her to stop and look at the bedrooms on the first floor which also had been done up very charmingly and quite conventionally with pale greens and soft whites and plenty of shiny chintz covers and curtains and so they came back to the drawing-room.

  “Quite, quite lovely,” said Lady Graham, “and I hope you and your husband will come to dinner soon. Now that my husband is not so much in London I want to have some parties,” and Mrs. Carter said how nice it would be.

  “And what is your husband’s part of the country?” said Lady Graham, only just stopping herself in time from saying county, for though Barsetshire is of course the loveliest, the most diverse, the most friendly county in the South (for of the North we know alas little or nothing), there are other counties and there is even London, where Aubrey Clover the brilliant playwright-actor-manager and his wife who keeps her maiden name of Jessica Dean for theatre purposes have their home, though owing to tours in America they are not always there.

  “Well, it’s London really,” said Mrs. Carter half apologetically. “His people were rather Anglo-Indian and lived in South Kensington. His great-uncle—or great-great, I can never remember—was an archdeacon and married a Lady Sibyl somebody and they hadn’t any children, but there was another great-uncle who married and had a family. Everard Carter, the headmaster of Southbridge School, is a kind of cousin of ours. Do you know him?”

  “My brother John Leslie’s boys were all at Southbridge School,” said Lady Graham delighted, as we always are, to find a link with people we have liked. “How very nice. I must ask them to dinner and perhaps you and your husband will come and meet them. His wife is a sister of Lady Merton, I expect you know her; her husband is Sir Noel Merton, the Q. C,” and then it turned out that Mrs. Carter had met the Mertons in London so everything became very comfortable.

  “Of course our people aren’t very real Barsetshire yet,” said Mrs. Carter. “I mean the Crosses, father’s people. They’ve only been here for two generations, but father seems to have settled and John-Arthur is quite Barsetshire now. At least he will be if he gets married. My sister and I did our best for him when he was in London, but it somehow didn’t click.”

  “Never mind,” said Lady Graham soothingly. “I must tell my married daughters to ask him to dinner,” after which words her ladyship sat back with the face of an angel who was busying itself (for we cannot think of angels as either he’s or she’s, owing to their all wearing the same kind of clothes) with mundane affairs. So then young Mrs. Carter had to ask who her married daughters were and nearly went mad in trying to disentangle Leslies and Beltons. “And of course your brother has been to Holdings,” her ladyship went on, “and we love having him, but Edith—my youngest girl—was in America all this winter so I went to London with my husband for several weeks and really we have seen no one. But I hope you and your husband will come soon.”

  Mrs. Carter said they would love to and then Lady Graham wondered when Edith would come and seemed a little anxious, so Mrs. Carter asked her to look at the kitchens which she was delighted to do, for with every year she grew more like her mother, Lady Emily Leslie, in an all-embracing desire to poke into other people’s houses.

  We need hardly say that Mrs. Carter’s cook, a foreigner from Barchester (and when we say foreigner we do not mean Mixo-Lydian, but merely born outside Hatch End) was graciously pleased to receive her ladyship and not only showed her the new patent practically-non-coal-consuming Begum cooker, but also the gas installation for central heating and the new scullery sink of stainless steel. And of course Lady Graham was enchanted to poke about and ask piercing questions, just as her mother would have done, but when she asked about the scullery sink cook pursed up her lips and said there was some said one thing and some said another, but it didn’t seem right-like to have a sink as wasn’t white.

  “Yes, I do so see what you
mean, cook,” said Lady Graham. “You can’t ever make steel look as white as a nice porcelain sink. Of course a steel sink doesn’t chip, which is something —though I am sure you would never let a sink be chipped.”

  “Of course not, my lady,” said cook, whose face had darkened at the word chip, but after Lady Graham’s rider was again composed. “And I’m not saying, my lady,” cook continued, “as these stainless steel sinks are wrong. After all we do use stainless steel saucepans, my lady, but when you come to clean them with that wire-wool it fair takes the skin off your finger-tips, and I don’t fancy doing out the sink with wool-wire, but Mrs. Carter says she’ll have a nice white one put in if I don’t get on with this one.”

  “Now that would, be nice,” said Lady Graham, rather basely truckling to cook, Mrs. Carter thought. “But I suppose it would be rather old-fashioned now. The Duke of Omnium has stainless steel sinks at Gatherum Castle and so does Lady Pomfret at the Towers,” which statements were noble lies, or at the least statements made with the express desire of helping Mrs. Carter not to have to instal new and expensive sinks, and in the hope, almost amounting to a certainty, that what she had said would never reach Gatherum or the Towers.

  “Well, of course, your ladyship,” said cook, visibly shaken, “I’m sure I’ve nothing against stainless steel sinks if madam wants them, but I always say with a sink you want one as you can see the dirt on.”

  Lady Graham said that was what she always thought herself and so departed with her hostess to the upper regions. Even as they came into the hall the front door-bell began to ring loudly. Mrs. Carter said she thought the maid was out and opened the door herself to Mrs. Morland and Edith Graham.

  “May we come in?” said Mrs. Morland. “I have brought Edith back to her mother.”

  Mrs. Carter welcomed her and Edith and took them into the drawing-room where Agnes was now sitting in a large comfortable arm-chair, looking at her lovely hands and thinking peacefully of all her children and their various perfections. When she saw Mrs. Morland and Edith she got up and came forward with a charming smile—so like her mother Lady Emily Leslie’s smile, only Lady Emily’s smile and her keen eyes were like a hawk’s (if hawks can smile) while Lady Graham’s were like a dove’s (if doves had large dark eyes and not small round ones).

  “How kind of you to bring Edith back, Mrs. Morland,” she said, shaking hands with that lady. “And of course you know Mrs. Carter.”

  It did occur both to Mrs. Morland and to Mrs. Carter that if any introductions were necessary they should be made rather by the hostess than by one of her guests, and they exchanged smiles, but both ladies were intelligent enough to realize that Lady Graham, far from presuming, was merely being herself. Edith said how do you do to Mrs. Carter very nicely, though she could hardly wait to tell her mother about the lunch at Rising Castle.

  “And do look what Lord Stoke gave me, mother,” she said, lifting the little string of pearls from where they lay on her neck. “He said he gave them to someone else called Edith, a very long time ago, and she gave it back to him. Edith Thorne I think he said. Isn’t it lovely, mother. I always frightfully wanted some pearls. Aunt Rose did give me some lovely pretence ones in New York, much bigger than these, but these are really pearls.”

  “How lovely, darling,” said Lady Graham, who was quickly putting together in her mind half-forgotten stories about the late Lady Pomfret. “You must tell me all about it presently.”

  Edith, a little ashamed of having made a social gaffe, said she was sorry she had talked so much, but it was so exciting to have some real pearls, and she had always frightfully wanted some.

  “And it is so delightful that you have come to live here,” she continued to Mrs. Carter, with a kind of unconscious parody of what grown-up people said. “I mean this house wants to be lived in and the Hallidays wanted the right people to live here. They are extremely nice, and George is quite a good farmer and has bought some of father’s pigs,” at which point Lady Graham looked at her daughter and Edith subsided, suddenly realizing that she was putting herself forward too much.

  “Edith was in New York all last winter with my brother David Leslie and his wife,” said Lady Graham to her hostess, with an air of explaining everything. “I hope she was a good guest with you, Mrs. Morland.”

  “As good as gold,” said Mrs. Morland. “We went over to Crosse Hall and saw Lord Crosse and your brother, Mrs. Carter, and Edith’s cousin Ludovic was there, so it was very pleasant. And today we lunched with Lord Stoke. He is older than he was. Of course we are all older than we were every moment of our lives, but sometimes one suddenly notices oldness in a person. I expect our children see it in us long before we know it is there.”

  As usual Mrs. Morland had hit the nail, in her own rambling way, on the head, but we doubt whether her hostess quite understood her, for a young mother of two agreeable babies still thinks of the present as all and the future as something which may never happen and in any case is not worth bothering about. Lady Graham did understand, for she had begun to see age in her own delightful, incalculable mother, Lady Emily Leslie, and try to guard her against its ills, long before Lady Emily herself recognized her adversary. Though when she did recognize him, she had returned his salute with her own peculiar loving mockery and had not kicked against the pricks.

  The Mixo-Lydian maid then irrupted into the room and stood gazing at the company.

  “Yes, Dumka?” said Mrs. Carter, who apparently found this apparition quite in order.

  “The tea is placed on the table, Prodska Carter,” said Dumka. “Also have I made a Prjoskoffen, because there is a young maiden here.”

  Mrs. Carter, apparently quite unmoved by these remarks, said they were having tea in the dining-room because tea was much more comfortable on a table and shepherded her guests across the hall into another delightful room looking over the garden to the downs. Here a round table was spread and everyone sat down.

  “Thank you, Dumka, that is all,” said Mrs. Carter.

  “You are not yet seeink the Prjoskoffen, Prodska Carter,” said Dumka, pointing to a large, flat, round cake. “I shall be tellink that he is made with butter—Bog! which butter you have here, from cows, not like our butter in Mixo-Lydia which is from the milk of a donkey-woman.”

  “She means a she-ass,” said Mrs. Carter, calmly. “Please sit down. Do come here, Mrs. Morland. You get a lovely view up the garden to the downs,” and indeed it was most lovely, but to a student of human nature like Mrs. Morland not so attractive at the moment as her hostess’s maid.

  “What good English you speak,” she said. “Did you learn it here?”

  “I kiss your feet, Prodska Morland, that you flatten me so,” said Dumka.

  “Flatter, not flatten,” said Mrs. Morland kindly.

  “So, I thank you,” said Dumka. “Already I had with all correctness learned English at Bunting College which is the University of Mixo-Lydia, and I am Letter-maiden, which you say in English Bachelor of Letters, but for us it is Letter-maiden, which is more correct. It is our Ambassador here, Excellence Gradka, which is foundling this college.”

  “Thank you, Dumka. It is founding, not foundling. You can go now,” said Mrs. Carter.

  “So, I thank you,” said Dumka. “Now do I go to clean that sink which is a robbish. In Mixo-Lydia we would laugh ourselves of a sink. In Mixo-Lydia we have a stream in the middle of the street where all the Sczarhzy, what you call house-mistress, wash all the clothes two times in the year and ollso the dirty plates one time in the year. In Slavo-Lydia, which is inhabited of pigs and devils, they wash the dirty plates in a hole where the pigs—”

  “Thank you, Dumka, that will do,” said Mrs. Carter, thus earning the respect of her guests for her way of dealing with her maid and also their eternal annoyance at not being able to hear exactly how the Slavo-Lydian plates were washed, and with a kind of curtsey Dumka went away.

  Lady Graham and Mrs. Morland, both mothers of grown-up families, began to compare notes abo
ut grandchildren. Mrs. Carter would rather have liked to listen, but as a hostess she felt she should entertain Edith in case she felt out of it and asked her what she was doing.

  “Well, really nothing at present,” said Edith. “My brothers are all in the army and both my sisters are married and what I would like to be is a grown-up daughter at home for a bit. You see I was in New York with Uncle David and it was lovely and exciting but rather same-ish, if you see what I mean. I mean I had a marvellous time but it was always the same thing. At home such a lot of things are always happening and there are the cows and the pigs. Do you have pigs, Mrs. Carter?”

  Mrs. Carter said the garden wasn’t large enough for a pig-stye, though she liked pigs very much.

  “You have been to my father’s house, haven’t you?” she said.

  “Oh yes; twice,” said Edith. “I would like to go again because Lord Crosse’s butler used to be the butler at the Towers when old Uncle Giles was alive. I’m Edith after old Aunt Edith,” at which point Mrs. Carter had to say that she felt quite giddy with all Edith’s relations.

  “You see I haven’t very many,” she said. “There’s my brother, my elder sister who lives in London with her husband and family and some Carters at Southbridge. Mother had some distant cousins but we never see them. You know my brother, don’t you?”

  “John-Arthur? Oh, of course,” said Edith. “First he was in this house when the bank still had it and then mother took me to lunch at Crosse Hall and John-Arthur showed me the Grotto and then John-Arthur came to tea with us and then Mrs. Morland took me to lunch yesterday at Crosse Hall again but the boys were highly uncivil.”

  Mrs. Carter, amused by Edith’s way of speech, asked her how they were uncivil. “If John-Arthur was uncivil I will scold him,” she added.