Never Too Late

by Angela Thirkell

  “Oh, it was just as much Ludo’s fault,” said Edith.

  Mrs. Carter asked who Ludo was.

  “Oh, he is really Ludovic,” said Edith. “His father is mother’s cousin in a sort of way, only he’s Lord Pomfret, and Ludo is at Sandhurst and then he will be in the Brigade of Guards and I shall go to lunch with him at St. James’s Palace.”

  “All by yourself?” said Mrs. Carter, amused by her guest’s mixture of worldliness and ingenuousness.

  “Oh no, one couldn’t” said Edith with a kind of grown-up shockedness that made her hostess want to laugh. “Mother will take me, or perhaps Emmy or Clarissa because they are married,” at which point Mrs. Carter gave it up and said she could never do families and would Edith like to see the nursery after tea, which Edith said she would; not that she cared particularly for children unless it were her own nephews and nieces or her cousin Martin Leslie’s children; but if your hostess offers you a treat, it is polite to accept it.

  “I sometimes wish I were like Gran,” said Edith, who felt that Mrs. Carter was well-disposed to her and wondered if she herself were being a truly good guest. “She got on with everybody and everybody loved her,” to which Mrs. Carter found no immediate answer, for though she found this youngest Graham girl most agreeable and amusing company, she was confused by the number of relations that came into her talk and was not sure who Gran was. And even had she been told it is possible that it would not have meant very much to her, for she had not known much of West Barset-shire and among new-comers the name of Lady Emily Leslie was unknown, or but an old far-off echo.

  Then as a good hostess Mrs. Carter turned to her older guests and asked Lady Graham’s advice very prettily about people in the neighbourhood and what the clergyman was like. Luckily Lady Graham was able to give Mr. Choyce, the Vicar, an excellent character, though when Mrs. Carter came to think it over she could remember nothing very definite except that he read the lessons well and Lady Graham’s husband was Vicar’s Churchwarden, and there was a monkey-puzzle in front of the Vicarage that everyone wanted to cut down but they were afraid of the spikes.

  At this moment the rather loud but pleasant sound of the front door-bell was heard, followed by Dumka’s heavy footstep across the hall and a man’s voice. The dining-room door was flung open and Dumka announced Prodshk Hoggleby. As no one came in, Mrs. Carter asked her who it was.

  “Since it is housewives which carouse,” said Dumka, “I do not bring in the stranger, which is a young man. In Mixo-Lydia if it is the woman-meal, it is the costom that the yong man stays outside till the Prodshka, which is the housemother, ask him to comm. Then must he spit on the door and comm in.”

  Mrs. Morland knew she would have the giggles in a moment. Lady Graham looked on with a wholly charming want of interest and Edith stared. But Mrs. Carter, quite unmoved by her maid’s exposition of correct etiquette, told her to bring the guest in at once, and in came George Halliday r giving Dumka a kind of token chuck under the chin as he-passed her, we regret to say.

  “Oh, it is you, Mr. Halliday,” said Mrs. Carter. “How-nice of you to come. You all know each other I expect?”

  Lady Graham and Edith of course did and Mrs. Morland said hadn’t he been somewhere near Vache-en-£table during the war as she was sure her youngest son who was a temporary gunner had met him.

  “I’m sure we did,” said George, sliding himself in beside Edith. “What was his name?”

  “Morland; Tony, Second Lieutenant, guns,” said Mrs. Morland in what her hearers (and indeed she herself) felt to be a most dashing and military way.

  “Oh, rather” said George. “Sometimes talks nineteen to the dozen and then is as mum as a sphinx? Good fellow. Last time I saw him his O.P.—sorry, observation post—was on top of a factory chimney about seventy feet high, with a sway of anything up to twelve or eighteen inches at the top. He looked as green as—as—well, as anything—when he came down, but we got a spot of medical comforts off the M.O. and he was as fit as a fiddle. Nice chap. Oh, I do hope I’m not saying the wrong thing—I mean one doesn’t hear about fellows and you mostly don’t see them again—I mean I hope I’ve not said anything—I mean—”

  “No, he wasn’t killed,” said Mrs. Morland calmly. “He is married and has hundreds of children which is most expensive.”

  “I’m sure it’s worth it,” said George Halliday. “I mean, well after all your children are your children.”

  “And so are your grandchildren,” said Mrs. Morland in her most impressive voice and fixing George Halliday with an Ancient Mariner’s eye as she spoke. “Your son’s your son till he gets him a wife, But he goes on expecting you to help him to support all his children all your life,” which words, spoken in the kind of voice which the Sibyl doubtless used to Tarquin, quite silenced George Halliday, when suddenly Edith began to laugh, in a very friendly way but quite unrestrainedly, and everyone else laughed too.

  “I do hope I’m not butting in, Mrs. Carter,” said George Halliday, “but mother wants to know if you need a broody hen as one of ours has just started brooding.”

  “Exactly what I do want,” said Mrs. Carter. “Shall I come and fetch her?”

  “She’s in the back of my car,” said George. “She’s less than no use at home at the moment and upsetting all the other girls with her talk about a lay-down strike. If you really have some eggs for her it’ll give her something to think about.”

  Mrs. Carter entirely approved the idea and asked about George’s pigs.

  “Though really I ought to say your father’s pigs,” she added. “How is he?”

  “It’s awfully good of you to ask, Mrs. Carter,” said George, “but there isn’t much to say. He is going out quietly. Dr. Ford says it might be a week, or a month, or even a year. But Caxton doesn’t.”

  Mrs. Carter asked who Caxton was.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said George. “You know you seem so exactly right in the Old Manor House that I forget you are father’s tenant. I can’t help thinking of you as the real owner. Caxton is our estate carpenter.”

  “And he can do anything,” said Edith, who was feeling rather out of the conversation. “Carpentering and the electric light and the ram down by the spring and—oh anything.”

  “Isn’t your house on the mains then?” said Mrs. Carter. “We are here.”

  George laughed and said they were on the mains now all right, but with the animals to be watered on the upper part of the farm, his father had put in a small pumping machine.

  “And I’m sorry I must be off, Mrs. Carter,” he said. “The cowman is having a few days off and I am stopgap.”

  Everyone, we think, was sorry that he had to go. Mrs. Carter said he must come to supper and she would get her brother over. Lady Graham said he knew he was always welcome at Holdings and Mrs. Morland said when he had time he must come to High Rising for a night and meet George Knox again, as she felt sure they had lots of things to talk about.

  “I should love to,” said George Halliday. “I am sure he will tell me exactly how to bring up the runt of a litter and what kind of food to give a sow before the Barsetshire Agricultural Show,” and Mrs. Morland felt sorely tempted to say “Oh you naughty man” to him for this impertinence, but didn’t.

  So he went away and though the darkness slightly dimmed the day for Edith, it by no means took the grace from all alive for her elders. Lady Graham was able to give Mrs. Carter a good deal of useful information, such as the fact that if que needed a rabbit, or some game, Geo. Panter of the Mellings Arms could always supply it at a day’s notice, only a very little above market price and no questions to be asked. It was better of course only to ask for it in season, but even out of season Geo. Panter would do his best.

  “Oh, there is one thing I did want to ask,” said Mrs. Carter to Lady Graham. “Do you know if this house has a pew of its own in the church?”

  Lady Graham said would Mrs. Carter come to the Graham pew next Sunday and then they could enquire about the Old Manor House
pew, which invitation Mrs. Carter accepted with a very nice courtesy towards an older woman who was showing her a kindness.

  “If you would care to meet my cousin Everard, the headmaster of Southbridge School, I’ll ask him and his wife,” she said. “And if her sister and brother-in-law the Noel Mer-tons are down here, I’ll ask them too. My husband would love it. Saturday is the best day for Everard because he usually has a few senior boys to Sunday supper. Would that be all right?”

  Lady Graham began to realize, but without any rancour, that this pleasant new-comer was going to be the very capable Queen of Hatch End in a very short time and determined to be on good terms with the rising sun. Not that her ladyship needed any social aspirations, for her position together with her husband’s was unassailable and while the village would give lip service to the Carters as open-handed gentry living in a good house, it would be to Holdings that mothers would aspire to send their girls when they reached the floor-slopping and china-breaking age, to be trained by Lady Graham’s old cook into wringing out your clorth in the suds, my girl, before you wash the kitchen floor with it and none of your slopping water about and if I catch you with the soap laying in the pail when there’s water in it you won’t have no chance to do it again, and mind when you do her ladyship’s best china and don’t go pulling the handles off the cups when you dry them the way some girls do as haven’t been brought up proper.

  “I’m sorry John-Arthur isn’t here,” said Mrs. Carter as Lady Graham began her good-byes. “He’s in town all this week, but I hope he will be down at Crosse Hall for some time after that. Perhaps if I get him you will all come to dinner.”

  Lady Graham said they would love to and so went away with Edith.

  Mrs. Morland said she must be going too. Mrs. Carter thanked her very prettily for calling and said she must come over to dinner while the evenings were long; perhaps on the same day that the Everard Carters came, which Mrs. Morland said she would like of all things and Mrs. Carter and her husband must come over to High Rising and make the acquaintance of the George Knoxes, which Mrs. Carter said would be delightful, and so Mrs. Morland drove away, having much enjoyed her excursions to Rising Castle and Hatch End, but quite glad as always to get back again to her own house and writing-table. Although she drove herself about Barsetshire a good deal, she had hardly ever been known to spend even a night away from home and perhaps she was wise. For when we stay with friends of whom we don’t know very much, their bread is not usually bitter, but some of them do have extraordinarily uncomfortable beds. And whether the beds are the kind that sink to a trough in the middle that you roll into and can’t get out of, or those that rise to a steep mountain from whose side you roll off all night, they are equally revolting and yet a bulwark of our English liberties. For if every man’s house should be his castle we presume that the fifty-seven varieties of Procrustes’ bed are also canonically admissible. But do not let us sleep in them.

  CHAPTER 5

  People who met Lady Graham for the first time were apt to underestimate her ladyship, judging her by her gentle manner and rather cooing voice to be what in that part of Barsetshire was known as a soft gobbin. But no soft gobbin could have managed so well a clever and rather difficult husband, three sons now all in the army, and three daughters of quite different temperaments. Lady Graham’s mother, Lady Emily Leslie, had said, in one of her flashes of inspired insight, that she hnew Agnes’s children each had a different father and she thought they each had a different mother as well. Which really seemed to cover the matter pretty thoroughly.

  “Now, you have had so much experience of young people in your Liverpool parish, Mr. Choyce,” said her ladyship to the Vicar who had come to see her about some small parish matter, “that I am sure you can help me.”

  Mr. Choyce, feeling that his ministry in a Merseyside parish where most of the young were ignorant of the laws both of God and Man (which was perhaps just as well as they would then have broken them deliberately instead of in cheerful ignorance) was hardly a helpful preparation, begged to know in what way he could assist, either by counsel or by works; though he had very little confidence of being able to help her with either.

  “It is simply about Mrs. Carter,” said her ladyship.

  “But I thought you said young people,” said the Vicar.

  “Young compared with us, I mean,” said Lady Graham. “After all her two children are only babies and mine are quite old. Even Edith. Mrs. Carter seems very young to me, but perhaps that is only because her children are so small. I could easily be their grandmother but of course having sons before daughters does set one back though Clarissa and Emmy have done very well. Dear James, I do hope he will marry. A wife is so useful in the Brigade of Guards if she is the right kind. John isn’t married either nor is Robert, but of course they are too young to consider it seriously.”

  “If” said Mr. Choyce, who had not liked to interrupt Lady Graham but felt he really must get her to draw to a point if possible, “I can be of any assistance, you know you may command me.”

  “Of course I know your kindness, Mr. Choyce,” said Lady Graham, who was unpicking a little bit of petit point that had gone wrong and not paying much attention to her guest’s answer. “Do you see a pair of scissors with gold handles anywhere?”

  Mr. Choyce looked on the floor, saw the scissors half under a small footstool, retrieved them and gave them to their mistress.

  “Oh thank you, Mr. Choyce,” said Lady Graham, “but I never think the woman who lost a piece of silver need have swept the whole house in the middle of the night and made all the servants get up and asked everyone to rejoice with her, but I expect it was easier to get servants then. If you had not found my scissors so kindly I should have waited till tomorrow and told Odeena or Aggie to look for them. But I daresay that is rather different.”

  “There is something to be said for doing nothing and waiting,” said Mr. Choyce, but he was thinking of a Bach cantata beginning Sei nur still und harr auf Gott and though his feelings for Lady Graham were of a deeply admiring kind he was pretty sure that her ladyship would not take the allusion, and to explain Bach and German and their relation to a small pair of gold-handled scissors was for the moment beyond him. It then occurred to him that Milton had said something of the same sort in much the same words, which annoyed him, till he reflected that Milton’s words had not been set most movingly to music, which cheered him considerably, and such is the speed of thought that all this happened while Lady Graham was putting the gold-handled scissors back into their red morocco case and did not notice his silence.

  “I will tell you what it is, Mr. Choyce,” she said. “Mrs. Carter doesn’t know if the Old Manor House has a pew and I don’t know either, so we thought you could tell us.”

  “It is the third from the front on the left of the aisle,” said Mr. Choyce, “and Caxton can tell you all about it. It is such a comfort to have a sexton who knows everything. Of course the Old Manor House has not been lived in since that last old Miss Halliday died, and she never went to church because she was bed-ridden, or so Caxton tells me. I will ask him. It was in my predecessor’s time.”

  “How good you are, Mr. Choyce,” said Lady Graham. “If there is a Manor House pew of course the Manor House must use it. I daresay the hassocks will want looking at, because there was a lot of moth in the church just before you came and we had to get some new ones. It might be a good idea to have plastic covers for the mothy ones.”

  Mr. Choyce said that was indeed an idea.

  “Unless of course it is Forbidden,” said Lady Graham.

  The Vicar asked how.

  “Well, I mean there are all sorts of extraordinary things in the Bible one mustn’t do though one would never dream of doing them,” said Lady Graham. “I mean like not seething the kid in its mother’s milk which is really quite unreasonable. But I daresay it all meant something quite different originally, and of course plastic wasn’t invented then.”

  Mr. Choyce, though deeply mov
ed by these words, did not quite know what to say, so far had her ladyship’s divagations taken them from the subject under discussion, namely Had the Old Manor House a pew and whether the Carters would wish to use it.

  “But I will tell you what I will do, Mr. Choyce,” said Lady Graham, her lovely eyes shining even as her mother’s used to shine when Lady Emily had thought of some particularly good piece of meddling. “I will ask Mrs. Carter to come into our pew and after the service we can speak to Caxton about it. And perhaps then you will come back to lunch here.”

  The Vicar thought these suggestions admirable, though the last came highest in his estimation, and then Edith who had been to lunch with Mrs. Halliday came in, full of information about the home farm and how George Halliday was going to plough up that nasty bit of land and try potatoes in it and if that succeeded he might do some market gardening as well as farming. Mr. Choyce, who knew nothing whatever about potatoes, tried to look wise but gave it up as a bad job and only wondered, for human nature was his great interest, whether Edith was becoming as masterful as her eldest sister Emmy who bade fair to rival Mrs. Samuel Adams in telling people what. But Mrs. Adams was much more gentle now and even apt to be a little boring about her children upon whom she looked with the adoring surprise of a hen who has hatched a brood of parti-coloured ducklings.

  Odeena, who we may add for the benefit of such readers as do not know, was called after the Barchester Odeon by her film-sodden mother, then brought in tea which was always very good at Holdings and both Agnes and her daughter waited on Mr. Choyce till he felt almost embarrassed; but by reflecting that it was the Office that commanded respect rather than the Man he managed to make a very good meal.

  “We were talking, darling,” said Lady Graham to her daughter, “about the Old Manor House pew.”

  Edith asked which one it was.

  “It is that pew where we usually put some of the Harvest Festival offerings when there are too many of them,” said Mr. Choyce.