“Oh, I won’t stand for anything of that sort, father,” said Mrs. Carter. “I just happen to be the mistress of the house and nurse jolly well knows it. And IVe got my eye on a village girl, Cissie Panter. Her father is Mr. Halliday’s carter and her mother washes all the children’s things and irons them beautifully and Mr. Panter at the Mellings Arms is her uncle. It’s just as well to be in with the village. One would never get a Barchester girl to come here. Come down and have some sherry.”
So they had their sherry and talked and Lord Crosse was amused—and also pleased—to see how his rather masterful daughter was getting the village under her thumb. And being older and possibly wiser than his daughter he thought that presently the village would have her under its thumb; but she probably would not know it, for it would come as gently as a large snake slowly engulfing a small animal, though less painfully. A line from a great singer came to his mind, “But now England hath taken me” and he thought that with the slight alteration of Hatch End for England it would apply very well to his elder daughter, which made him laugh.
“What is it, father?” said Mrs. Carter, but he could not explain so he asked if she had heard from her sister lately as he hadn’t.
“Oh, they’ve gone on a cruise somewhere, and left the children with his mother” said Mrs. Carter, “and she says it’s awfully cold and there’s an Archdeacon on board who will have prayers on Sunday—not a proper service like on a liner when the Captain does it, but in the card room at half-past nine. She says it’s a bit of a bore to be up so early but after all it’s a shame to keep the card-fiends out of their room. I want her to bring the family here for Christmas. Will you come too, father? There’s heaps of room if we squash up a bit.”
“Much as I love you, I will not squash up,” said Lord
Crosse. “Suppose you all come to me for a week—both families?”
“Well—” Mrs. Carter began.
“That means no, I suppose,” said her father, with perfect good-humour.
“Oh, not like that,” said Mrs. Carter, “of course I’d adore to come, father, but I’m going to make the Vicar let me decorate the church and there’s a Carol Service and I want to try to teach some of the women to sing in parts, and arrange a party for the over-sixties who seem to be half the village, but I’m sure some of them are cheating. Could we come for the New Year, father, and you come to us for Christmas?”
Lord Crosse thought for a very few seconds.
“I would love to have you all for the New Year,” he said, “but I won’t come to you for Christmas. I am going to be quite truthful and say that though I love my grandchildren like anything I would find a Christmas with them and nurse, not to speak of the over-sixties and everything else, too exhausting. If you all come for the New Year I shall love it. I wish your mother could be there and see those babies of yours —but she can’t.”
“I know, father darling,” said Mrs. Carter, getting up and rubbing her cheek on the top of his head. “I do know and I’m sure mother would. We’ll come to you for the New Year of course. But don’t get into a habit of never going anywhere, father. We do want to see you,” which kind words touched Lord Crosse more than he would or perhaps could show.
“There is a book by Mrs. Gatty, called Parables from Nature,” he said, speaking half to his daughter, half to himself. “My mother used to read it me when I was small and one story was called ‘Purring When You’re Pleased.’ It was about a little girl who had to live with relations—very kind loving ones—because her parents were dead, and she was always shy and even rather rude. And the house cat had kittens and one was given to her for her own and she loved it, but it wouldn’t purr for milk or being stroked, and its brothers and sisters did purr. So she cried and cried till her aunt asked what it was and then of course there was a tiny sermon about showing your happiness and gratitude because only feeling it wasn’t enough.”
“And of course everything came right and she purred when she was pleased for ever and ever,” said his daughter. “All right, father, I do understand. Only you’ve got to purr sometimes. Mother purred like anything when she was pleased, didn’t she?”
“She did; she did,” said Lord Crosse. “You are quite right, my dear, as you always are. I don’t know what John-Arthur is doing. Tell him I’ve gone home.”
Then his lordship drove himself back to his large house and had his usual solitary dinner and dealt with a number of dull official and business letters and so to bed.
Mrs. Carter was one of the happy people for whom life has been, is, and probably will be as smooth as is possible for human life under present conditions. One does not for a moment grudge them their happiness, for they give it away in lumps to other people, but one cannot help wishing, a little, that one could have say a fortnight of it once a year for oneself. She adored her husband, intended to have and adore at least two more children and was able to deal with Hatch End as its superiors had always dealt with it: fairly but firmly, a little bullying for their good, as little favouritism as possible. And what is more she had from the first kept nurse in her place, much to the surprise of that worthy woman who looked upon young mothers with a baby from the month as half-wits, to be bullied and kept in their place, and seldom had she been more surprised than when Mrs. Carter not only came into what nurse had always called My Nursery as often as she liked, but even altered the children’s hours and food as she thought fit. Mr. Carter, for the male of the species is usually more timid than the female, had once or twice expostulated, fearing an explosion in the nursery and Notice from nurse, but his wife only told him not to be silly and if he did it again she would come to the office and disgrace him in public. And as she was very truthful and always kept her word, he very sensibly stopped discussing nurse and left everything to his wife. But, as all the village said, Mrs. Carter was a lady as was a lady. By which we think they meant that she would allow them to think they were getting the better of her once and would pounce if they tried it on a second time. Only once had Mr. Carter asserted his authority, when the Mixo-Lydian maid Dumka, whom Mrs. Carter had engaged before she knew the potentialities of the village, had a kind of Central European Rising all by herself, occasioned by a request from cook to keep that nasty garlic out of her kitchen, which Dumka countered with loud Mixo-Lydian patriotic songs and letting the milk boil over. On that horrid day, when Mrs. Carter was over at Crosse Hall, Mr. Carter had taken immediate action, rung up Mixo-Lydian House, the hostel supported (most unnecessarily) by Her Britannic Majesty’s Government, and said they must remove her at once or he would get the matter brought up in Parliament. Within a few hours a large car with three large Mixo-Lydian officials had arrived, collected Dumka and her luggage and the wages owing to her (which with mistaken generosity her employers had paid a month in advance) and taken her away. Nature abhors a vacuum and her place had been filled at once from the village, but rather in what we are given to understand is the Chinese method, namely that so long as you have a servant his or her provenance is not your business, nor are you to be surprised if he, or she, is a different one sometimes.
“You are lucky,” said George Halliday when Mr. Carter told him this interesting story at the Mellings Arms where both gentlemen were fetching some beer and strictly obeying the Scriptural injunction about not muzzling oxen that tread the corn by standing one another two pints each. “It takes an outsider to do that, or an old inhabitant. Father could. I’m not sure if I could,” but this was false modesty, for though Mr. Halliday was rarely seen in the village now, or indeed on his own farm, his name still commanded attention and we believe that George Halliday was quietly, though quite unconsciously, slipping into the Squire’s place which his father would not hold much longer.
And not for nothing had Mrs. Carter come from a line of respectable landowners who were now hereditary peers and though not Barsetshire by ancestry were proving themselves to be worthy of the county. As a girl at Crosse Hall she had watched her mother and learnt much, among other things just h
ow far you should let the people on your place go and where it would be a good thing to be generous and where it would be better to be just; and even on occasions to bully. On the few occasions when she and George Halliday had talked together she had learnt a good deal of his inherited and acquired knowledge of the place, had used it well, and intended to learn more.
All the invitations were accepted. Cook spread the good news of a dinner for ten in the village and for a short time the kitchen yard was like Mafeking Day with crowds clamouring to be allowed to help, till cook—who most luckily was a
Barsetshire woman herself though from over Hartletop way which is terra incognita—came majestically out of the kitchen, picked a couple of tried helpers out of the crowd and sent the rest away. Peters, hearing at Crosse Hall via the girl at the telephone exchange that Mrs. Carter was having a dinner party, wrote to his employer’s daughter to offer his services for the evening, an offer which Mrs. Carter gratefully accepted and then had a delightful sense of security, like floating in a padded boat on a very calm sea or, even better, being in an extremely comfortable bed with a string quartet playing softly in the next room. Lord Crosse being informed, after the deed, of what Peters had done, said he supposed Peters would have to go and he had better take half a dozen of that good champagne with him.
“Thank you, my lord. The one that her ladyship used to fancy, if I remember,” said Peters.
Lord Crosse did not answer.
“Is that all, my lord?” said Peters.
“Yes, yes,” said Lord Crosse. “Her ladyship would have liked them to have it. You can take the little car, Peters. I will have the Bentley. You had better go over early and see what you can do for Mrs. Carter. How many will there be, do you know?”
“Ten, I believe, my lord,” said Peters, “and black ties. I will leave your lordship’s things ready before I go,” and he went back to his pantry and told the pantry boy that if the silver was well done he might come and look at him—Mr. Peters—in his black evening suit before he went over to help the Honourable Mrs. Carter with her dinner party.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Peters,” said the boy. “I’ll tell mum to press my suit so as I’ll be smart when I come to look at you.”
“You’ll ask your mum, my boy,” said Peters, “not tell her.
“If I’d have told my mother to do anything I’d have had the stick. Time you learnt to press your own suit. You’ll never get into good service if you can’t press a gentleman’s suits, and brush them and sponge them too. I don’t know how you boys expect to get into good places.”
“Please, Mr. Peters,” said the boy, “mum says I’m not to be a servant, Mr. Peters. She says I ought to look higher.”
“Now, one more word like that, young fellow, and back home you go for good,” said the justly outraged Peters. “Where would I be, do you think, if I hadn’t learnt my work proper, the same as you’re learning it now under ME. Why, I might be behind a counter selling bacon, or stockings. Or I might be a clurk sitting in an office adding up figures all day.”
“Oh, you couldn’t do that, Mr. Peters,” said the boy, not so much in doubt of Mr. Peters’s capacity to add any number of figures or sell any quantities of stockings or groceries, as in recognition of his great personality, intended by Providence for high places.
“Now, you listen, my lad,” said Peters. “If you see your Sunday suit’s clean and your boots properly shined and your hair brushed and clean hands and don’t you forget behind your ears and your nails, I might take you to help at the Honourable Mrs. Carter’s dinner party. I say I might.”
“OW!” said the boy in a whisper. “You are good, Mr. Peters.”
“Good’s nothing to do with it,” said Peters. “I know my place, the same as his lordship knows his, and if you learn to know yours you might be butler in a Good House some day, or a Gentleman’s Gentleman. There’s still houses where they have them. And mind you don’t eat nothing as comes out of the dining-room, it doesn’t look well. There’ll be supper afterwards and I’ll let you taste the champagne. But don’t you tell your mother all that. Just say Mr. Peters wants you to come and help.” He began to re-arrange the silver in the drawers, dreaming of a day when perhaps Crosse Hall would have a mistress again and entertain properly. But that wouldn’t be in his lordship’s time, no nor in his neither. Still, it wouldn’t do the silver any harm to give it another rub.
News of a dinner-party for ten at the Old Manor House spread quickly through the village and gave considerable satisfaction, for it stood to reason, said Mrs. Panter, who did all her ironing just inside her kitchen door the better to see what was going on down the street, that the Old Manor House was the right kind of house for the gentry and Mrs. Carter was a very nice lady and most of her smalls were real silk except her nylons that were washed at home. And the children had nice things and there was some lovely table-linen. Not that sort with lace all round it and bits let in and try how you will you’re almost bound to get just a tiny crease here and there if the lace isn’t quite on the square, but Reel Linen, as good as Mrs. Halliday’s; that heavy the tablecloths were it was all she could do to get them on the line and came up beautiful with hardly any starch. This joyful rumour ran up and down the village and the Mellings Arms counted on a profitable evening.
The first guests to come were Mr. Carter’s cousins, the Headmaster of Southbridge School, Everard Carter, and his wife who was Lady Merton’s elder sister. Everard was the fair type which does not appreciably age till one day you look at it in strong sunlight and see that it has gently withered, as it were. His wife except for being slightly on the buxom side had altered very little since Everard had fallen in love with her at sight during the summer holidays nearly twenty years ago and both were much liked by the boys (who are pretty fair judges), most of the masters and parents and—perhaps most important of all—the school staff. Everard Carter had hardly overstated matters when he once said that if he died and no one were told except the form masters the school could run quite nicely for another year without anyone noticing. To which his wife had replied that she would mind so dreadfully that it wouldn’t be worth his dying.
“I’m glad youve come first, Everard,” said Mr. Carter, “because I want to put my boy down for Southbridge. He’s nearly three.”
“Don’t lead your aces, my boy,” said Everard. “I’ll probably have retired by then and the school gone down at least ten places, like Snakes and Ladders. Write to the School Registrar and put it in another envelope addressed to me and I’ll see your chap is safely down, even if it means putting Adams’s boy or Lady Cora Waring’s down a peg. I’m all for nepotism.”
“Can I see the children?” said Kate Carter, a request which her cousin-in-law found highly reasonable and took her up stairs leaving the men to talk, which was chiefly about Carter ramifications and their common great-, or great-great uncle the Archdeacon who was an Egyptologist and married a Lady Sibyl Somebody who was distinctly peculiar.
“It’s a pity they had no children,” said Mr. Carter, thinking of his two upstairs and every intention of more to come.
“Well,” said Everard, “I don’t know. They were both pretty dotty. I wouldn’t have liked my family to take after them. Not that Lady Sibyl was any relation, but old Uncle Tom was. Anyway I don’t believe much in heredity. Look at Pomfret. His father, old Major Foster, was no good at all and no one knows much about his mother. He never wanted to come into the title and the place and look at him now.”
Mr. Carter said he did not really know the Pomfrets and he thought Lord Pomfret didn’t look very well.
“He isn’t,” said Everard. “But he does all he ought to do and more. That’s where blood does tell in the end. And his wife is a wonder and runs half West Barsetshire, which must be nearly as difficult as running a school. Of course they have Miss Merriman. A most remarkable woman. She has been a kind of secretary-companion all her life and never made a false step as far as one knows. She pretty well ran the Towers when old Lady Pom
fret was alive and she pretty well ran Lady Emily till her death and was on good terms with everyone. She practically runs the Towers now, though everyone doesn’t know it. Who have you got tonight?”
Mr. Carter mentioned the names of the guests. Everard expressed the great pleasure that he would feel to see Mrs. Morland, who had been such a help to the School at the outbreak of war, and almost immediately upon these words that lady arrived, from which moment Mr. Carter felt that he was an un-noticed guest in his own house. For though his guests tried to include him in their conversation it was obvious that Mrs. Morland was their real flame. Lady Graham and Edith arrived simultaneously with Lord Crosse and Mr. Crosse in their various cars and the noise, to the accompaniment of sherry, became as deafening as only a small party of well-bred people can be.
“We’re all here, aren’t we?” said Mr. Carter to his wife, who said she thought so, but would ask Peters, who knew everything. But even as she said these words Peters, who was vastly enjoying the ritual of opening the front door and greeting the guests, announced Mr. George Halliday. We think that most of those present had rather forgotten about him, which of course made everyone greet him with more than usual friendliness, especially Lady Graham who did not forget him and perhaps saw more of him and his parents than anyone else in Hatch End. For when the darkness of a long illness descends upon a house and the sufferer often has not the strength and hardly even the wish to see old friends, it is ten to one that friends, unless specially invited, will gradually stop coming. Mrs. Halliday, seeing much and saying little, sometimes wished that her son had work that took him away from home, even if it were in China, or Mngangaland where at least Canon Joram could have given him excellent introductions to the present King, who after taking a third at Balliol (largely owing to an over-riding interest in games of skill and chance) had gone home, ritually murdered his father, given small government jobs to his seventy-nine brothers and sisters, and was gently leading his countrymen back to their primitive condition of laziness, squalor, and over-eating varied by periods of abstinence when game was scarce or the crop of Mnganga-hoko, the staple diet of the country, failed because the inhabitants had alternatively forgotten to plant it, or were all at the cinema on the ritual night for collecting the harvest; which state of things had got even worse since the arrival of three-dimensional films.
Never Too Late Page 18
