“Well, here I am, all ready for the fray,” said Sister Ward, coming into the drawing-room. “I’ve sent Heathy—well I suppose I ought to say Sister Heath now we’re on duty—to have a nice little nap and I shall be with Mr. Halliday. We’ll soon get our times on duty arranged. Heathy and I have worked together ever since we were at Knight’s. I’ve just had a nice chat with your old cook, Mrs. Halliday, such a character and really quite devoted to the family and she’s going to give me a recipe for Barchester Buns and now you must just relax and try not to worry. And I said to your son —George isn’t it?—I said to Mr. George he’d be much better out on the farm because he’s no use here at present and he’s going to show me his baby pigs sometime and how the tractor works. So he’s gone off really quite cheerful,” and although Mrs. Halliday found it difficult in her present dazed condition to believe that George, or she herself, could ever feel cheerful again, she was grateful to Sister Ward.
The news spread fast. Many neighbours brought flowers for Mrs. Halliday but did not try to intrude. After lunch she arranged the flowers, taking particular pains to make lovely vasefuls for the two nurses and then there was nothing to do. She dared not go far in case she were needed, though Sister Ward had assured her that Mr. Halliday was having a nice little nap. George was on the farm. She rang her daughter Sylvia Leslie up and said she mustn’t racket about because of the expected baby, to which Sylvia replied that the baby was perfectly able to look after itself and she would come over that afternoon and bring butter and eggs and a couple of fowls from the home farm. Then the telephoning was over and there was the long, warm afternoon before her and she could not read, or deal with her letters, because she listened always—though to what or for what she did not quite know. So she went out into the garden to which so much of her love and care had been given and began to clip off dead roses and carnations, and then that was done and it was only half-past three. She went round by the back of the house to the workshop and found Caxton there, as he mostly was.
“Come in, mum,” he said, touching the square paper cap (like the cap of Mr. Chips the Carpenter in the Happy Families of our youth, a game now forgotten or vulgarized by a kind of horror-comic cards) which he always wore at work, folding a fresh one for himself every day. Mrs. Halliday sat down on an upturned box and they talked about old times when Mrs. Halliday had first come to Hatch End as a bride.
“I have still got that lovely box with the cedar-wood lining you made for me to put my furs in” said Mrs. Halliday. “You always managed to get good wood, Caxton. You’ve got some fine bits over in that corner.”
“Best seasoned elm as I’ve seen in many a year, mum,” said Caxton. “I marked that tree and I kept my eye on her when I first began to work here, mum, I dunnomany years ago, over at old Lord Pomfret’s place she was and his head carpenter was by way of being a friend of my father’s, and a couple of years ago she had to come down because his lordship had to sell some timber, so I went to Mr. Wicklow, his lordship’s agent, and I asked if I could buy some of the wood when she was felled and Mr. Wicklow is a gentleman, he is, ; and he said, You and Wheeler—that was his lordship’s head carpenter then—you manage it between you. So when she was felled and Wheeler had cut her up nice he let me pick some good bits and I’ve looked after them and they’re well seasoned.”
“They make coffins of elm, don’t they?” said Mrs. Halli-day, thinking of Mrs. Gamp and her brilliant extemporization of The Woodpecker Tapping the Hollow Elm Tree, in place of Oak Tree, when she came to call on Mr. and Mrs. Mould.
“Well, mum,” said Caxton, apparently embarrassed, which was unusual in him as he had an excellent opinion of himself, “they do in a manner of speaking—and a lovely wood it is,” he added, carried away by professional feeling. “A pleasure to work on, mum.”
“I think the Squire” said Mrs. Halliday, deliberately using her husband’s territorial name, “would like to have a coffin made on the place when his time comes. And he would like you to be the man to make it, Caxton. Well, I must go back to the house,” and she got up and went away with a feeling of sad pride, almost of happiness, that the old servant might do one last service for his master.
CHAPTER 8
There is, if we examine ourselves, an almost Awful Pleasure which many of us feel in a death when it does not really affect us. Perhaps this feeling is strongest among we happy many—and if a Carping Critic or Peevish Purist says among we is not good grammar, we do not think that us would be at all euphonious here, if that is the word we mean, or if it means what we think it means, who though our mother bore us in a Southern Clime are Scotch by right of a traceable though modest line of Scotch forbears. Our first glance every week-day morning at the Thunderer is at the Deaths to see if we have outlived a contemporary or, even more creditable, someone a good deal younger than ourself.
Mrs. Morland, who though her mental processes were confused had, as Mr. Macfadyen had once said, the root of the matter in her, always started her day by the Deaths but very rarely got as far as the obituaries. For this she had several excellent reasons, one being that they had nearly all been written before the person died, which didn’t seem fair. She also had a bone to pick with the compositors in that on the front page announcements they so often arranged the lay-out (which, she said in a learned way, she took to be the way the printer arranged the lines of the front page) so that someone came just where the paper is folded in the middle when you get it, so that unless you open it right out and iron it, which is impossible unless you have a large flat table, because your arms aren’t long enough, you will probably miss it. But at this point her old friend George Knox, to whom she was imparting these views, said that to call a table flat was a pleonasm as no tables were unflat. Mrs. Morland said she had used flat simply to explain to George Knox exactly the kind of table she meant, because everyone knew that if you opened the Times right out and spread it on a table it was apt to slide off somehow if you weren’t careful, but on a really flat table that wouldn’t happen. If, said George Knox, by flat she meant that it had a large plane surface, she was confusing the issue; to which Mrs. Morland very nimbly retorted that she meant the current issue, as if it were yesterday’s she wouldn’t be reading it today and if it were tomorrow’s it wouldn’t be here. And then Mrs. George Knox said tea was ready and Laura must stay for it, which she did.
The news of Mr. Halliday’s death after a steady and mercifully short decay of every faculty, was no surprise. He had been respected by all and loved by many. His uneventful life had been lived on his own land, his home was happy, his children good citizens and very good-looking. George had done his duty through the war and later for the land. Sylvia’s marriage with Martin Leslie had been a very happy one and she was carrying on the traditions of Rushwater just as all Leslies would have wished.
The funeral service was at the little church in the village and the coffin that Caxton had made was carried by the farm servants. Mr. Choyce read the words which bade farewell and Godspeed to the Squire and he was buried beside his ancestors, all of whom, from Wm. Halliday, Gent, who had built Hatch House in 1721, had in their turn been laid where they had worshipped. Kind Sisters Heath and Ward who had places of honour were truly moved, and luckily will never know how much better they looked in their professional uniform than they did in their best blacks. After a funeral there is always the question of a party so that the old friends who have come may meet quietly and see one another. Mrs. Halliday who was county to the bone would willingly have asked her friends to Hatch House, but George, using his new authority, said it would probably be the end of her. Both Dr. Ford and the nurses agreed, so her daughter Sylvia said she would take her mother back to Rushwater directly after the service. There she could be as quiet and retired as she liked and would have delightful grandchildren to play with. It was a warm day of late summer and as the little congregation came from the church they lingered to talk. Mrs. Halliday, who had behaved as a lady should all through the last difficult month, did no
t fail her own standard, but much as she valued the feelings which had brought so many old friends to the church she was not fit for any further exertion and was glad when her daughter Sylvia put her into the car, without waiting for the friends who had gathered, and took her away. Kind Sister Heath and Sister Ward also drove away to Northbridge with a pressing invitation to George to come and have tea with them one day. Friends and villagers came to take George Halliday’s hand. Lady Graham, who had asked him to come to Holdings for lunch and get away from people, naturally took this opportunity—just as her mother Lady Emily Leslie would in similar circumstances have done—to issue a general invitation to the rest of the company, some of whom accepted with pleasure. These were mostly relations and the older friends. Lord Crosse, who had worked with Mr. Halliday on matters affecting Barsetshire as a whole where East and West were for the moment united, had come from Crosse Hall, as had his son. His daughter Mrs. Carter was there too with her husband, George’s tenants now at the Old Manor House. Lord Stoke too, whose boast it was that he had never missed a funeral in the county yet, had brought Mrs. Morland. Not that she had known the Hallidays much, but Lord Stoke liked to have someone to talk to during the drive and she was always welcome at Holdings.
Lady Graham—again just as her mother would have done —took charge of all arrangements as a matter of course and before George knew where he was Lady Graham had got him into her car with her eldest soldier son, who had leave that weekend. Lady Graham put the professional soldier and the war-commission George in front and took Edith in the back with her. This arrangement was the best that could have been made, for the young officer in The Brigade of Guards was properly impressed by having a War Veteran beside him and George found himself telling Captain James Graham what war was really like and forgetting his own troubles. Everyone else got into his or her own or someone else’s car.
“But there’s a fellow who knows just as much as I do, or more,” said George, who had taken an immediate liking to the young soldier. Not that the Graham boys were unknown to him, but there were years enough between them and such different ways of life that they rarely met of late. “Young Crosse, I mean. We were in quite a lot of places at the same time.
“How did you manage that?” said Captain James Graham, too innocently.
“That’s what only old soldiers know,” said George and they both laughed and George told Captain James Graham how magnificent the Brigade had been in the fighting outside Traire-les-Vaches and how ten men had held Vache-en-Stable against practically the whole of the German army who were occupying Vache-en-Foin at the moment; while he, George, and his Yeomanry were at
“I say, I wish I’d been old enough to be there,” said Captain Graham.
“Just as well you weren’t, as you probably wouldn’t be here now,” said George. “Toes up, that’s what you would have been.”
Captain Graham at once adopted George Halliday as his model.
“My young brothers will be simply sick that I’ve met you,” said Captain Graham. “I say, when they next get leave, do you think they could see you? I mean you come to lunch or something and let them talk to you. Or when you’re in London could you possibly lunch with us at St. James’s. We do our guests pretty well there. My next brother, Robert, is a bit of a poet. John knows all about art, but we rag him, because he’s the youngest and they’re always a bit cheeky,” which brief view of the Brigade of Guards as exemplified in the younger Grahams left George a little confused and feeling very old. But he liked the well-mannered youngster and said he would love to come, only it was difficult to get to London because of the farm.
“Oh, I say, you could leave it for a couple of nights,” said Captain Graham. “Father always says no one is indispensable which” he added with an amusing pompousness “is correct, because Holdings gets on just as well when he isn’t there which he quite often isn’t because of missions and boards and things.”
“But you’ve got Goble,” said George. “We haven’t got a bailiff. But we’ve a very good carpenter.”
“Oh, I know all about your Caxton,” said Captain Graham. “He comes over to see Goble with a bit of three-ply or an oak beam and things of that sort and swaps them for some of Goble’s glazed drain-pipes. Pure barter.”
“Perhaps it’s really Bartershire,” said George, who suddenly felt much younger and rather happy, at which Captain James Graham, of Her Majesty’s Brigade of Guards, suddenly exploded into a guffaw and thought George Halli-day was one of the nicest fellows he had seen for a long time. All very well to be a Captain in peace time, but here was a real War Captain who had been in France and fought the Germans.
By this time they were at Holdings, quickly followed by Lord Stoke with Mrs. Morland and Miss Merriman with Mr. Choyce, and one or two other friends. Lady Graham had arranged a kind of picnic lunch in the Saloon as the large drawing-room was called, with everything on the table and no servant, which was just as well, as Odeena would certainly have dropped or broken something in her sympathy with the mourners.
“It was such a beautiful ceremony, Mr. Choyce, and wonderful weather. You do things so well,” said Lady Graham to her Vicar, apparently under the impression that he had been entirely responsible for Mr. Halliday’s dying at the right moment so that he could be buried on a fine hot summer day.
Mr. Choyce said it was very good of her.
“And so nice to have frofer hymns,” said her ladyship. “Not those dreadful ones up in the high numbers for all sorts of things one has never heard about like Zenana Missions and Trades Unions.”
“I do wish, Lady Graham, that you wouldn’t make me laugh,” said Mr. Choyce. “I absolutely agree with you, but unfortunately the Bishop doesn’t. He has found a new hymn by a religious Atheist beginning:
‘O God, although Thou art not there,
Men sing to Thee as if Thou were,”
at which Captain James Graham and ex-Captain George Halliday burst into a loud and most un-funereal guffaw.
“What are you laughing at, young fellers?” said Lord Stoke, who had vastly enjoyed his outing and was making an excellent lunch in the proud consciousness of being much older than Squire Halliday and very much more alive. Several people told him it was a hymn.
“Him. Which him?” said his lordship.
“Not him, Lord Stoke, hymn,” said Lady Graham. “Oh Mrs. Morland, do explain to Lord Stoke.”
Mrs. Morland, always willing to oblige, leaned towards Lord Stoke and said very distinctly, “Mr. Choyce. quoted, a. silly, bit. of. a. Hymn. that. made. US. LAUGH.”
Lord Stoke said she must mean one of these horror-comics and part of the table began to describe, or invent, dreadful films or strip-drawings it had seen.
As the party was going so well Lady Graham sat back and thought about nothing in particular. Miss Merriman asked Mr. Choyce if he had done anything about the monkey-puzzle outside the Vicarage.
“Oh, it’s gone,” said Mr. Choyce.
“Do you mean someone has taken it?” said Miss Merriman, who had thought of that horror as a permanent part of Vicarage grounds. “What an extraordinary thing.”
“Oh, I don’t think anyone here would do such a thing,” said Mr. Choyce. “No, I had it removed. After you had been to see my house I began to dislike that tree. Also it made the wall where my Arundel prints are so dark that I could hardly see them; trees do grow so if you don’t cut them back and I was really afraid to try to cut it: it was so spiky. So I asked one of the men who were mending the road if they could push it over with the tractor, but we found that might break some of the windows, so they very kindly put a chain round it and pulled. It was a splendid sight. I felt like Joshua before Jericho,”
“And had you a ram’s horn to blow?” said Miss Merriman.
“Now, how did you guess that?” said Mr. Choyce. “I haven’t got a ram’s horn—besides one needs seven priests bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns to get a city wall down. But I did remember the passage to which you refer in Joshua, cha
pter six verse thirteen I think, and I had my speaking trumpet.”
“How did you come to have one?” said Miss Merriman admiringly.
“It was left to me lately by a very deaf old aunt,” said Mr. Choyce. “She also left me quite a considerable sum of money. And so, as I was saying, I shouted at the men through the speaking-trumpet, just as the two men—I never know who they are—shout at the tug-of-war teams. And they gave a great tug each time and up came its roots and down it fell. Then I didn’t know what to do with it and just then that nice young Crosse came along—Lord Crosse’s son you know” he added, looking towards Mr. Crosse, “and he gave them two pounds for their trouble and told them to deliver it at Lord—I can never remember his name now, Sir Ogilvy Hib-berd that was—Lord Aberfordbury that’s it—at his house. So that was the last of it.”
Miss Merriman looked towards young Mr. Crosse with amusement and admiration. This was the way to behave. So would old Lord Pomfret have behaved. So, though by different methods, would Lady Emily Leslie have behaved. So would Lady Emily Foster now in her roaring teens behave and so would the Honourable Giles Foster. But not Lord Mellings, she thought.
“And now,” said Mr. Choyce, “one can see the Arundel prints quite well. You did say you wished one could see them better when you did me the honour to look over my house. I hope you will come again and see how the place is improved now. Will you?”
Miss Merriman said she did not think she could get away at the moment, but when Lord and Lady Pomfret and the younger children went to Italy as usual, she would love to come.
“I may be staying with Lady Graham for a few days” she said, “and then we can make a plan.”
Never Too Late Page 25
