Never Too Late

by Angela Thirkell

  “And what were the ultimate fates of those women, poor things?” said Lady Graham who, as often occurred when she was not much interested in the conversation, was by now well behind-hand.

  Lord Crosse said gravely that he thought it was Bridewell and three paupers’ graves, but as Lady Graham looked distressed (though Edith and Mr. Crosse were having to suppress their giggles) he changed the subject and said he and Mrs. Morland had been over to see Lord Stoke who had sent Edith his love and said she must come again some day.

  “Oh, dear Lord Stoke,” said Edith. “You know he gave me a darling pearl necklace when Mrs. Morland took me to lunch with him, because he liked the name Edith, he said. Mother is taking care of it for me and I shall wear it on Occasions. I wish I’d had it in New York though.”

  “You can get much better looking costume jewellery—dreadful expression—in New York than you can ever afford in real jewellery here,” said Mr. Crosse.

  “Oh, but NO, John-Arthur,” said Edith with a prim earnestness that made Lord Crosse laugh. ‘When I am presented I can’t possibly go in sham pearls, can I mother?”

  Lady Graham said, with a kind of adumbration of a shudder, that some people had gone in false pearls, but they were not the right sort.

  “If you have pearls you wear them. If you haven’t, you do not,” said her ladyship, with the air of reciting one of Euclid’s Axioms.

  “But I can wear Lord Stake’s,” said Edith, “because he gave them to me because he knew the other Edith he was very fond of,” and had she not been a well-brought up girl she might—so Mr. Crosse felt—easily have said, “So there!”

  Miss Merriman sat silent as she so often had and so often still did. A few words that old Lady Pomfret had sometimes let fall; some letters with a baron’s coronet on the envelope which she had quietly burnt towards the end of her life, not greatly caring, after the manner of those of her rank brought up in pre-war days, what her secretary saw or did not see; a wreath of violets at the funeral whose sender was not identified except that a footman said he thought the groom that brought it was from Rising Castle but couldn’t be sure and thought perhaps he wasn’t; even all these put together did not prove anything. But that Lord Stoke had given to the young Edith a pearl necklace because she was Edith—also an Edith—well, whatever had once happened was gone and that was that.

  “Tired, Merry?” said Lady Graham kindly.

  “No. Just thinking,” said Miss Merriman.

  “Of darling mother?” said Lady Graham. “I do think of her so often, Merry, but I don’t think she is thinking of us. She is asking cherubs and seraphs for their feathers to make pens so that she can write in red ink and blue ink,” which unwonted flight of fancy from her ladyship surprised Miss

  Merriman and made her think of a song she had heard on the wireless about Laughing with Tears in my Eyes.

  “I must get Blundells to look at Edith’s necklace and see that the string and the clasp are in good order,” said Lady Graham, at once becoming practical. “Robert’s family have always dealt with them and he got my engagement ring there” and her ladyship looked with becoming sentiment at the very lovely diamond in an open setting which she always wore except when Messrs. Blundells’ man came down once a year to clean and revalue her jewellery. Though it must in fairness be said that last time Mr. Hooker had come he had said that if her ladyship gave any more of her good pieces to her daughters when they married it would hardly be worth while for him to come. But we need not say that he didn’t mean it and Lady Graham still possessed the diamond tiara and necklace that her husband had given her after the birth of their eldest son and very handsome she looked in them, though the occasions for wearing them were now sadly few.

  “And I often wonder,” Lady Graham continued, so did one thing lead to another in her fertile mind, “which of you ought to have the tiara.”

  “From my long knowledge of families, Lady Graham,” said Mr. Choyce, “I should suggest giving it to whoever marries the richest wife or husband, because they are more likely to take care of it,” a novel point of view but one upon which Miss Merriman at once brought her strong common-sense to bear, and silently agree.

  “Then I shall have to wait quite a long time,” said Lady Graham, “because the boys won’t be able to afford to marry for ages, and if Emmy had it, she would probably wear it all the time and take it off when it got heavy and hang it on a hook in the cowsheds. Clarissa could carry it off beautifully, but for a schoolmaster’s wife it would look outre,” at which point Edith and Mr. Crosse began to have the giggles and even the Vicar and Lord Crosse were hard put to it to look grown-up.

  “Then I’ll have it, mother,” said Edith, “and throw it over the windmill—only there isn’t one. But there’s the thing up behind Hatch House on the downs that George put up that pumps the water up to the cattle tank. I’ll throw it over that. George can pick it up for me.”

  “And now we will talk about something else,” said Lady Graham whose sixth or social sense told her that Edith’s nonsense had gone on quite long enough and that a joke of that sort would probably hurt George Halliday if it came to his ears—which she hoped it wouldn’t. Miss Merriman who saw more than she said, at once spoke of the Old Manor House and said Lady Graham had told her how charming Lord Crosse’s daughter and her husband had made it and what excellent babies they had, while Lady Graham asked the Vicar when Septuagesima Sunday was and why it had that extraordinary name, though when he had kindly and fully explained she did not in the* least understand; but we think this was really because she was still too much disturbed b> her youngest daughter’s silliness to listen, or even to prere^J to listen; and probably Mr. Choyce realized this too. Edith got up and walked away to the window, Mr. Crosse follow ing her.

  “Don’t,” said Edith in a cross voice. “If a person can’t be alone when they are cross, what’s the use?”

  “If,” said Mr. Crosse calmly, “one person is they, what a lot of people must be in the room. But you oughtn’t to, Edith.”

  “Oughtn’t to what?” said Edith in a sulky voice.

  “To cheek your mamma,” said Mr. Crosse. “Extremely bad form. Most embarrassing for me, who am the person who really matters,” which statement so puzzled Edith that she forgot to be cross.

  “But why do you matter, John-Arthur?” she said, rather hoping to catch him and somehow take him down a peg.

  “Because, as I said, you have made me extremely uncomfortable,” said Mr. Crosse. “You have been impertinent to your mother. If I—or George Halliday for that matter—heard anyone being rude to his mother—I can’t say my mother because she is dead—we should be livid.”

  “And you are livid now?” said Edith in a very small voice which also had a very slight mocking inflection in it, but to this Mr. Crosse was adamant.

  “No,” said Mr. Crosse, half amused, half sorry for Edith who was such good company but had behaved really badly, “just thoroughly disappointed. You need something to do, you know. I shall speak to your mother about it. No I shan’t, I shall speak to Miss Merriman. I say, father, if we are to look in at the Old Manor House we must go, or the children will be in bed—incommunicado.”

  So Lord Crosse and his son went away, and then Miss Merriman said she would drive Mr. Choyce back to the Rectory as there was some talk of his exchanging pulpits one Sunday with the clergyman at Nuffield only the difficulty was that Lady Pomfret wanted it to be when she and all her family were at home, but the Vicar at Nutfield must not know this or he would be jealous. Mr. Choyce obligingly offered to come disguised as a very High Church Archdeacon, and then was serious and said how much he would like to come.

  “Your man was in the army, I think,” he said.

  “Yes he was a Captain in the Barsetshire Yeomanry,” said Miss Merriman, “and he likes to be Captain The Reverend on his letters.”

  “I suppose I oughtn’t to say this,” said Mr. Choyce, “because I wasn’t in the army myself, but I do so envy people who are two things
at once, like that very nice man over at Southbridge who is Colonel the Reverend something— Edward Crofts—that’s his name.”

  “I like it too,” said Miss Merriman. “It seems to me very fine and English that His Majesty’s—I mean Her Majesty’s—Commission comes first. Of course when you get marquises—or dukes’ sons—it is more complicated. But it must be rather fun to be The Reverend Lord Henry Somebody. Is that right?” she said anxiously.

  “Yes. I think you are correct,” said Mr. Choyce, “though I have never had to face that particular question. Will you come in for a few moments?”

  Miss Merriman was not in a hurry and said she would like to and had Mr. Choyce invented any new gadgets; for his ingenious anti-burglar devices and cat-doors were much admired not only in Hatch End but as far afield as Barchester, where the Dean had been heard to say, warmly, that a man like Choyce ought to be in the Close, evidently feeling that a priest of Mr. Choyce’s ingenuity would be a valuable weapon against the Palace.

  “Nothing very particular,” said Mr. Choyce modestly, “but I did think of something for my spare room—I can’t bear the expression guest-room, I don’t know why.”

  Miss Merriman said she thought it was because it somehow sounded like an iron bedstead, a very thin and rather lumpy mattress with not enough blankets, and transparent window curtains that didn’t meet, which point of view, put with her usual air of calm decision, struck Mr. Choyce very much.

  “If you don’t mind coming upstairs?” he said, rather—or so Miss Merriman thought amusedly—as if he were assuring her that his intentions were honourable. Miss Merriman said she would be delighted, so Mr. Choyce led the way to the first floor and opened a door, showing a pleasant bedroom of good size looking over the front garden and away towards the church and the village. His guest’s skilled eye, trained by many years of looking after other people and their comfort, at once saw that the bed was a really good one, snugly set in a corner away from draughts, but near enough to a window to make reading in bed easy and—almost as important—with the light coming from the left hand so that one could write letters in bed.

  “A delightful room,” she said.

  “Praise from you, Miss Merriman, with your experience,” said Mr. Choyce, much gratified, “and now I must show you what I have got for this room. It is one of those things like a padded arm-chair without any legs to sit up in bed in. It lives in this cupboard, so that any guest who wants breakfast in bed can have it comfortably. Of course I have a proper tray as well, with legs that go up or flat with a spring.”

  Miss Merriman said it was so comfortable that any guest of his would want to be ill for a day, just for the fun of it.

  “And washing-things in this cupboard,” Mr. Choyce went on, opening a door. “A basin, you see, with hot and cold, and it tips up to empty it. And a house-telephone by the bed so that my guests can talk to me if they wish and a real telephone as well. When the Archdeacon was here he said he had half a mind to get me unfrocked and take the living himself. And now may I show you my other spare room? It will not tire you?”

  Miss Merriman, amused, interested and rather touched by the Vicar’s thought for his guests’ comfort, said she would be delighted. He took her along the passage and down a few steps into a large, light room with six camp beds, their blankets neatly folded, stacked, and dust-sheeted on them.

  “I must explain this,” he said, not without pride. “You know I had a large rather poor parish in Liverpool, near the docks, before I came here. I got very fond of my parishioners after I had knocked one or two of the liveliest out—fair fighting of course—and I think they liked me and I didn’t want to lose touch with them. They gave me some very handsome silver when I left the parish. I never liked to ask where it came from, but there were a good many varieties of crest on it. Most of the young men are dock workers or seamen and some come south, so I keep this room as a kind of dormitory for them. If they are at Southampton they can easily lorry-hop to Barchester. But I am boring you?”

  Miss Merriman did not answer for a moment.

  “It doesn’t bore me,” she said. “It interests me very much, Mr. Choyce. I know a good deal about boys and young men. From a different class it is true, but they are all the same when they are young. I think our work has been rather the same—looking after people. You know what my work was during the war when Lady Emily Leslie was living with Lady Graham at Holdings and I was more or less in charge of her.”

  Mr. Choyce said no one could ever forget her and how distracting she was to the congregation and how entirely unconscious of it and always so kind and so lovely.

  “And now I am doing what I can for Lady Pomfret,” Miss Merriman said. “But that cannot go on for ever and she will need a younger woman to help her. Forgive me, Mr. Choyce. I didn’t mean to talk about myself.”

  “I may say, and quite truly, that I have never known you speak of yourself before,” said Mr. Choyce. “I feel it is an honour. I shall remember it and keep it to myself. Shall we go downstairs?” so they went down and when Miss Merriman had thanked Mr. Choyce for letting her see the Vicarage and he had sent friendly messages for the Pomfrets she got into her car and drove away to the Towers.

  CHAPTER 6

  At the Old Manor House trie front door was not locked by day, so father and son went in and found their respective daughter and sister, otherwise Mrs. Carter, at home and to her they suggested a dinner party to be given by her for Lady Graham; the guests, as far as she could make out, having also been chosen by them in advance. Some married daughters might quite reasonably have been slightly put out by a party so arranged over their head as it were, but good-natured Mrs. Carter said it would be absolutely marvellous and how clever of father to think of it and she would invite them next week.

  Lord Crosse said not Monday as he was dining at the Deanery and not Friday because that was a dinner of the Barchester Club. So Mrs. Carter said Wednesday then and why not ask her husband’s cousins the Everard Carters from Southbridge School as Lady Graham’s nephews had been there; which was no reason at all, but quite a good one if one liked it.

  “That’s us, two,” said Mrs. Carter. “Everard and Kate four; you five, father; Lady Graham six, and we’d better have four more. The table takes ten easily. Oh, George Halliday. He never seems to get treats.”

  “I feel sorry for that boy,” said Lord Crosse, though George’s boyhood had gone a good many years ago, just as young Mr. Crosse’s had, when the last years of the war took them both. “His mother is a delightful woman, but his father isn’t much good now. If I begin to get invalidish and slow and don’t sleep and feel sorry for myself, and grumble, you must buy a poison pill for me,” which his dutiful daughter at once promised to do—for one’s own father would of course never be really old and certainly not like poor Mr. Halliday. “Yes, do have him,” Lord Crosse went on. “And what about John-Arthur? You might ask Edith for him. She is rather spoilt, but it isn’t her fault. I can’t think why Lady Graham doesn’t get her into a job.”

  “Oh, he must come of course, father,” said Mrs. Carter. “That’s five men and we want one more woman. It’s funny to be a woman short. Why not Mrs. Morland? She’s awfully nice.”

  Lord Crosse made a little noise as though he were beginning to speak, checked himself, and then said it wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Of course it isn’t,” said Mrs. Carter rather indignantly, “and if it had been your own idea, father, you would have been awfully pleased. I’ll ring her up. There’s a bit of the road up this side of Low Rising and I’ll remind her about it.”

  “I could send for her, easily,” said Lord Crosse, upon which his undutiful daughter called him an old fusspot and then repented and kissed him very lovingly and invited him to come and see the children in their bath.

  Nurse had got them both in the large bath together, very pink and clean and splashing each other, though not very fiercely for both were still of the age when their arms and legs are almost boneless. Nurse said Not to wet p
oor grandfather, but this was evidently only a token remark, for the children splashed more wildly and aimlessly than ever till nurse took the younger out, wrapped it in a towel and gave it to its grandfather, taking the older one herself to dry its hair.

  “Gib,” said the younger child with a divine toothless smile, poking vaguely with one fat finger at where it thought its grandpapa kept his eye and making a very bad shot at it.

  “She nearly said Grandfather,” said Lord Crosse proudly.

  “It wasn’t grandfather,” said nurse. “She meant your watch, my lord. When you made it strike for her last time you saw them in their bath, your lordship said Tick-tick/ and she never forgets anything,” said nurse proudly. “You take our big boy, my lord, and I’ll dry baby’s hair,” which she then did by rubbing it with a soft towel and twisting it into neat damp light brown ringlets, when it looked so silly and divine that its besotted grandfather had to bend over and kiss the nape of its soft neck which made it give a kind of crow of joy, considered by all present to be extremely brilliant and accomplished. Then nurse took the boy and gave the girl back to Lord Crosse, who held her in exactly the right way, so earning nurse’s approval.

  Mrs. Carter, who was now quite used to having two babies about the place, was not as besotted about them as her father, but approved the whole scene and then nurse graciously gave them their conge on the grounds that Some People wanted a nice drink of milk and beddy-byes.

  “That woman does make me feel small,” said Lord Crosse to his daughter. “I’ve not felt so put down since I went to my prep, school. Your nurse was much the same, and your mother and I sometimes wondered what belonged to whom. She obviously owned you and the nursery maid and most of the staff—except the cook. She and cook didn’t speak which was rather restful as then your mother and I didn’t have to listen to what nurse said cook had said or what cook said nurse had said.”