“Well, that is original,” said Sister Heath; at which moment George Halliday came in, clean as to the hands and face but otherwise in well worn and much stained working clothes.
“Oh, this is my son George,” said Mrs. Halliday.
George, who had previously been primed by his mother about Sister Heath’s arrival, shook hands and said he hoped she wouldn’t mind having the same bathroom and if she would tell him when she liked her bath, he would keep out of the way. Sister Heath, with the faintly flirtatious manner that any personable young man—even if not so young now —can provoke in our sex, said she was sure he was the one that needed the bath after all his hard work.
“Well, I must say I rather do,” said George, “especially with a visitor here. If I have the bathroom before supper will that be O.K.?”
“Now isn’t that funny,” said Sister Heath, “because it’s just what I would have suggested. I usually have mine before I go to bed as it seems to make one nice and sleepy. Some people find it has absolutely the opposite effect and wakes them up, but I think it just makes you relax nicely.”
“That’s splendid,” said George, obviously relieved. “I have mine before supper as I’m usually in a bit of a mess after a day on the farm and then if I do want another one I have a cold shower in the morning in summer. But not in winter. Not till we can get central heating in the house—which will be never,” he added in a lower voice, not wanting to hurt his father’s feelings; but we much doubt whether Mr. Halli-day would have noticed the words unless they were distinctly and rather loudly addressed to him personally and even then —as Mrs. Halliday was beginning to realize and to face the fact—he might look puzzled and a little afraid, like a child faced by a difficult lesson.
Just then Hubback came into the room, announced “Miss Sylvia, madam,” and held the door for the Hallidays’ daughter, now for nearly ten years happily married to Martin Leslie and chatelaine of Rushwater, the Leslie family home, with several very nice children. Her shining golden hair was as golden as ever, and if she was now more Juno than Diana in her looks and her walk, it suited her admirably.
“Darling, how nice to see you,” said Mrs. Halliday. “This is Miss Heath, a friend of Lady Merton’s. She is staying here and I hope she won’t find it dull,” which words she accompanied by a conspirator’s look at Sister Heath, not because she thought it was necessary, but because she thought her guest would like to feel that she also was in the conspiracy: in which Mrs. Halliday was probably right.
“Hullo, Sister Heath,” said Sylvia, shaking hands in a very friendly way with the visitor. “What fun to see you again. Last time was when we had that go of flu at Rushwater and you saved all our lives. Are you here—” and instead of finishing her sentence she looked at her father.
“I am so glad to meet you again, Mrs. Leslie,” said Sister Heath. “I am having such a nice time here and it is so kind of Mrs. Halliday to have me. After tea I’d like to tell you all about my new home where I am living with my friend Miss Ward.”
“Oh, I know,” said Sylvia. “I hear all about her from Sister Chifnnch who comes to us for a holiday sometimes. We always pretend the children are hers when she comes, as she was there for all of them.”
Sister Heath said she would love it and must have a real talk with Mrs. Leslie sometime, at which point Sylvia realized the state of things and that her father probably didn’t know Sister Heath was a nurse and felt very glad that her mother had so efficient a help. Any awkwardness there might have been was stopped by Hubback coming in with fresh tea and some more cakes and another outsize cup for Sylvia, only this was just a flowered one with a gilt line round the top of the cup.
“What a lovely bit of Screwby,” said Sister Heath. “My friend Sister Chiffinch has a lovely collection of china cups and mugs. I collect china cats. Fve got about twenty, every size from those big china ones with glass eyes and spots on them that you can sit by the fire so that they look quite natural except that they are usually yellow—or blue—to some sweetly pretty little ones I got in Sweden when I went on a cruise last year made in Japan which really made me quite uncomfortable when I saw it on them afterwards.”
“Still they are English cats now” said Mr. Halliday, most unexpectedly.
His wife wondered if she had gone mad, or if the husband she knew had really returned, so long was it since he had been alive to what happened around him, but having said his say he relapsed into his usual state of withdrawal into some far place where his wife could not reach him.
Sister Heath said she liked cats, they were quite like companions, but some people felt really quite funny about them and instanced several cases of friends who always knew if a cat had been in the room and usually had hay-fever in consequence. Under this instructive though uninteresting flow of talk Mr. Halliday gently went to sleep. Sylvia looked at her mother and got up. Mrs. Halliday went with her daughter to the back yard, where Sylvia had left her car.
“Can I do anything for you, mother?” said Sylvia, who in her capacity as head of a large house with cottages on the estate was used to running people’s lives for them.
“Nothing, darling. Nothing,” said her mother. “But it’s worse for George. He is so alone. Of course he has the farm and the men about the place. But it isn’t the same. And he hardly ever gets out to see young people.”
“But look here, mother,” said Sylvia. “George isn’t young. I’m not young now if it comes to that. Old George is all right and he’s sure to marry someone sometime. Any girl would jump at him.”
“I wish she would,” said Mrs. Halliday. “I had rather wondered—”
“Look here, mother,” said Sylvia. “Now you’ve got Sister Heath, can’t George come over to Rushwater now and then? I can always find some girls for tennis and things. I’m glad you’ve got old Heathy. She’s been with lots of my friends for babies and she does know her job. But George doesn’t get about enough. He is turning into an old stick-in-the-mud. What about Edith Graham?”
“Such a nice girl,” said her mother, “but only a child. Now if George could find someone like Lady Graham, or that nice Mrs. Carter at the Old Manor House who is Lord Crosse’s daughter—”
“—or a film star or a princess” said Sylvia, half laughing, half a little cross at her mother’s want of energy. “Tell him to come over to Rushwater soon. John’s boys will be there and I know Minor will break his neck on something. He wants to do the church tower and everyone knows the tower is all crumbly and the battlements fall off it as soon as look at you. Send George along and I’ll do the rest,” and with a very loving hug she said good-bye and drove away. Mrs. Halliday’s world, which had been growing warm and alive suddenly became grey and cold, so she went back into the house. At the door she paused and looked away up the river valley to where Barchester spire used to be visible in her younger days though the growth of trees had hidden it now. Then she looked across the valley to Hatch End where the Old Manor House was now the lively home of two babies and quite likely more to come, with that kind Mrs. Carter the efficient ruler of it all. So had Hatch House been in her early married days and for many, many years. A fragment of a simple, lovely song came to her mind,
“The smiles, the tears of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone, now dimmed and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken,”
and she felt the pricking behind the eyes which means, fatally, that tears are very near. For a moment she let them well up and one even got out and ran down her face. But this was too much. Angrily she banged it back with her handkerchief and went back to the drawing-room, where she found her husband playing halma with Sister Heath.
“We are having such a nice game, Mrs. Halliday,” said Sister Heath. “I’ve won one and Mr. Halliday has won one and now we are having the Cup Final. Now, I see a lovely move you can make, Mr. Halliday, and if you do I shall be O-U-T, Out,” but Mr. Halliday, as intent on the game as any champion chess
player, paid no attention at all. At last he picked up a man (if halma men can be called that, but we know no other name) and moved it.
“Well, that was a mean trick, Mr. Halliday,” said Sister Heath cheerfully and at the same time—so Mrs. Halliday observed—quietly moving one of her own men into a very dangerous position. “Your move again.”
With a careful hand Mr. Halliday pushed one of his men into the hole left by Sister Heath and looked up triumphantly.
“Well! you do make some good moves, Mr. Halliday,” she said.
Mr. Halliday said in a careless way that he had luck with games of chance, which was a mean thing to say of halma where skill, or at any rate concentration, is certainly needed. But as he seemed happy to have won, neither lady was disposed to criticize. Then there was the six o’clock news which was a mixture of the dull and the depressing as so much news is apt to be now that science and what calls itself democracy have got the upper hand. Among the announcements was the death of Mr. L. N. B. Porter, C.B.E., a retired member of the Civil Service, in consequence of a fractured leg sustained when endeavouring to cross the white crossing lines on a rainy day, which announcement gave Mr. Halliday lively pleasure, for he and Mr. Porter had been at Oxford together, and Mr. Porter was his junior by two years and there is something agreeable about showing those younger men that they may be weak-minded enough to die if they like, but it isn’t the sort of thing you would do. And such was Mr. Halliday’s exultation that Sister Heath wondered if she ought to get a sedative from her little box of medicines in case he didn’t sleep. But his hour of glory had passed and he fell asleep in his chair.
Mrs. Halliday, with a mixture of relief and anxiety, went to find George who was, as she expected, in what was now called the Estate Office though it was once the servants’ hall. But it was a nice room with two large windows looking out towards the downs and easily heated in the winter as it was over the furnace. Here, as usual, George was rounding off the farmer’s day by doing some accounts and letters up to date.
“Am I disturbing you, darling?” said Mrs. Halliday, sitting down.
“Yes, darling, you are,” said George. But seeing that she took this seriously he put down his papers and came and sat beside her. “But I like your Miss Heath. I’ve half a mind to have delayed war shock or something and have her to myself. She’ll get awfully bored here though. There isn’t really much to do, is there?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Halliday. “But one has to think ahead.”
“Sorry, darling,” said George. “I ought to have seen what you mean; and I’m awfully glad you’ve got someone. You know, mother—it’s perhaps rather a horrid thing to say— but—”
“Your father is getting old very quickly now,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Dr. Ford isn’t too hopeful. So I thought—no, I didn’t even think—I’m too tired. It was Mrs. Carter who thought. She got Lady Merton to ask Sister Heath if she or her friend could come here.”
“Well, it’s a bit of a shock, but I’m awfully glad,” said George. “And now I hope you will have breakfast in bed sometimes or lie down in the afternoon. She’s a fine woman, Sister Heath, and I’ll jolly her along. Look here, mother. I don’t want to sound beastly, but you know the arrangement about the place.”
“You mean your father making it over to you?” said his mother. “He has talked about it sometimes lately.”
“Well, I’ve been so busy one way and another that I haven’t had time to think much about it,” said George, “but I had to go to Keith and Keith—you know, our solicitors in the Close—the other day about things in general and I asked them about the place. Look here, mother, you mustn’t worry—you’re all right—but father never did make the place over to me. Mr. Keith said he had talked about it and then the matter had never gone any further—that was ages ago. Father must have thought he did. Anyway if he had I’d probably have died first and then he would have had to pay the death duties. You can’t get past them,” by which term we think he meant the heavenly powers in general who have placed us on a globe that we can’t get off and then pour water on our heads.
There was not any answer to what George had said. Mrs. Halliday almost felt the rage of the lioness when her cub is in danger—and owing to the oversight of the lion. It would probably mean the end of Hatch House, the passing of Wm. Halliday’s house and lands from the family; or George being tied to the land he could not afford to keep as it should be kept; a day-labourer without wages. She felt a sudden dull resentment against Keith and Keith—against the Government—against the world and even against her husband.
“Well, we’re not dead yet, mother,” said George, with a good attempt at cheerfulness. “And now I’ve told you the worst. You’re all right, mother, with a settlement—never mind details now—and Sylvia had her whack when she married. Now I’ll tell you something not quite so bad. When father wasn’t so dot—I mean some time ago before he got old, he did tell me he had been insuring against death duties. It only came back to me today when I was up in the top field, because it was there he told me about it—oh, ages ago. He did rather like to do things on his own and he mayn’t have done it through the solicitors. Anyway I’m going into it with Robert Keith next week and I’m going through every paper of father’s here as well. Now let’s forget it. And if he didn’t—well, we’ll manage somehow, mother.”
Mrs. Halliday could have cried, but as one gets older that blessed relief is denied. With Sylvia happy and safe she would have been quite happy to live in a very small way— perhaps in the village—leaving George with the house for some possible wife some day. But what would he have to offer to a wife now? In a kind of hen-like frenzy her thoughts rushed about inside her head, counting the possible brides with good dowers for George that the county could provide and then she had to laugh at herself inside and think she, would just try to live for the present, from day to day. All she could say to George was “Darling” and she did not kiss him, nor even touch him, for when the cup is full to the brim it needs but a touch and it overflows.
“Don’t let’s think about it yet, mother,” said George. “God knows we don’t want father to die. But he seems so tired and mostly doesn’t care much about anything—except you of course. I’ll be all right. Don’t worry, darling.”
“No, I won’t,” said Mrs. Halliday. “But it’s so hard for you, George, doing all you do for the place. You ought to have married.”
“Listen, mother,” said George, very kindly but firmly, “you’ve said that to me now about thirty-six times a year for the last—oh more years than I can count; ever since the war and several times during and before it. I don’t particularly want to get married. And if this insurance doesn’t work I’ll have precious little to offer a girl, even if I knew a girl that would like me. You know, mother, we old war horses aren’t as young as we were. But I’ll ask Sister Heath if you like,” at which his mother had to laugh. The slightly emotional moment passed and she went back to the drawing-room where Sister Heath was telling Mr. Halliday about the Clovers’ new play that she had been to a matinee of when she went to London and he was simultaneously telling her about how he had seen Irving once when he was a boy and as neither of them was in the least interested in what the other was saying they were getting on splendidly.
“We had the nine o’clock news while you were out of the room, Mrs. Halliday,” said Sister Heath. “Mr. Eden was speaking, but we just missed that bit, and then there was a Party Broadcast with a Labour peer speaking in a really quite disagreeable way. I don’t mean bad language but just a rather nasty kind of way if you see what I mean. So I said to Mr. Halliday did he want to hear any more, and he said he didn’t because he couldn’t hear what the speaker was saying which really was no loss if you see what I mean. He had a most peculiar name, Aber-something, but I daresay he was Welsh which would account for it. The Welsh do really have quite peculiar names.”
“Was it Aberfordbury?” said Mrs. Halliday, very cleverly seizing a moment when Sister Heath had to
breathe.
“There now! I knew you’d know, Mrs. Halliday. I said to Mr. Halliday, I’m sure Mrs. Halliday will know,’” but Mrs. Halliday was hardly listening. She was looking at her husband with deep love and telling herself that she must try not to grudge him anything he wanted, for a day might be near when she would give the world and if necessary her immortal soul if they would help him; but they would not.
“You have been so kind, Sister,” said Mrs. Halliday, forgetting Sister Heath’s role as visitor, only seeing her as the embodiment of authority and such help as could be given. “I’m not much help, I’m afraid.”
“There’s just the one thing you could do, Mrs. Halliday,” said Sister Heath, who through practice was able to speak to her patients’ friends without the patient noticing much. “Will you say I look tired and ought to go to bed?”
“Leonard dear,” said Mrs. Halliday, coming close to her husband, “I think our guest is rather tired and ought to go to bed now.”
“Yes, my dear. Who is she?” said Mr. Halliday.
“Miss Heath, a friend of that nice Lady Merton,” said Mrs. Halliday, wondering in a tired way how often she would have to act a part. “The stairs are rather slippery for a stranger and she might slip. Do you remember when your mother came here and slipped on the stairs and we had to keep her in bed for a couple of days?”
“Poor old mother,” said Mr. Halliday in almost his old voice. “How rude she was to Dr. Ford.”
“Well, I’m rather anxious about Miss Heath,” said Mrs. Halliday. “It’s the first time she has been here and I don’t want her to have a fall like your mother. Could you give her your arm upstairs?”
Even if Mr. Halliday’s mind was vague his feeling of courtesy to a guest was strong. He got up, with a little help from his wife, and offered his arm to Sister Heath who at once took it and with it his whole weight and the whole future responsibility for him. Mrs. Halliday watched them go up the dark shining staircase and disappear along the corridor and then she sat down, suddenly too tired to stand and mercifully too tired to think. Here George found her and asked where his father was.
Never Too Late Page 23
