Mr. Choyce lingered a little at Holdings to tell Lady Graham and Miss Merriman about the very simple little memorial of Mr. Halliday which his widow and children were having put inside the church.
“It would be a privilege for me to show it to you” he said addressing Lady Graham and Miss Merriman. “I wonder if you would care to come back with me? I would drive you to the church and bring you back safely.” Lady Graham was otherwise engaged, and urged Miss Merriman to go. So Mr. Choyce drove Miss Merriman to the church, where Mr. Halliday’s grave was now smooth and all the wreaths gone.
“There will be a plain stone on the grave,” said Mr. Choyce, “and the family have put the little memorial in the north wall, just above their pew. Come in,” and he stood aside for Miss Merriman to enter the church. Above the Squire’s pew, where rather ponderous stones on the wall described the virtues of past Hallidays, was a smaller stone bearing Mr. Halliday’s name and the dates of his birth and death and below these the words “He dwelt among his own people.”
“What a good epitaph,” said Miss Merriman, speaking half to herself. “And what a good life. My epitaph should be, ‘She dwelt in the houses of other people,’ ” and both were silent.
When they were outside the church Mr. Choyce asked her to come to the Vicarage and have some tea. “And then I will drive you home,” he said. “I am indeed sorry to hear that you have not been well.” So they drove to the Vicarage where Mr. Choyce put Miss Merriman into the most comfortable chair in his study while he went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Miss Merriman sat and thought about nothing—or at any rate about so many things that they all made a kind of conglomeration that became a confusion and nothingness in her mind. So much so that when Mr. Choyce came back she was almost startled.
“I am afraid I came in rather abruptly,” said Mr. Choyce.
“I am so much alone that I rather forget my manners.”
“No, indeed you didn’t” said Miss Merriman. “I was just thinking and got rather lost.”
Mr. Choyce said that people who were tired often got lost, but it meant nothing and they always came back. One had seen it again and again all through the war, he said, and once during the war he was having a week’s holiday in Liverpool with a blitz every night and found he had completely forgotten where his old church was for several hours, but luckily his memory came back and he was just in time for the early service.
“I never met the war,” said Miss Merriman. “I was with Lady Emily all the time. I haven’t really met much in my life.”
“But, my dear Miss Merriman,” said Mr. Choyce, “a great many people never met the war and I am thankful that it was so. They were doing their duty in places which happened not to suffer. A bomb might just as well have fallen here as anywhere else, but it didn’t. They were very near Barchester more than once, trying to get that camp at Sparrowhill, but no damage was done.”
“I think I would have tried to do something real,” said Miss Merriman, “but Lady Emily needed me.”
“We all needed you,” said Mr. Choyce. “Someone who keeps her head and can be relied on is exactly what one wants. If there had been a bomb I am sure you would have dealt with it most efficiently. No one could say for a moment that your work—and your life—aren’t real.”
“I am glad you think so,” said Miss Merriman. “I can’t. You see I have been That Useful Miss Merriman nearly all my life, and now I think I am soon going to be That Poor Old Miss Merriman,” which she said without bitterness, as a mere matter of fact.
“My dear Miss Merriman,” said Mr. Choyce, torn in two between the Friend and the Pastor, “you may be poor and you might—conceivably and not for a long time—be old; but That Miss Merriman never. Simply Miss Merriman, on whom so many people have relied for every kind of help. From what I have seen at Holdings, from what I have heard from people who knew the Towers in the late Lord Pom-fret’s time, you have been the quiet, the unceasingly watchful guardian of so many people—and of their homes.”
Miss Merriman was silent. Then she said: “I am glad you think so, Mr. Choyce. But—and I say it without any regrets or bitterness—service is no inheritance. No—I am ungrateful. To be able to help Lady Emily was an inheritance in itself. I think my real work was done when she died. When I say no inheritance I don’t mean money. Lady Emily rewarded me generously for anything I did and so have Lord and Lady Pomfret. I have enough to live on, simply. But the life I have led for so long must soon come to an end and I must start again.”
“With so many friends willing—wishing—to help you,” said Mr. Choyce.
“I know I am ungrateful,” said Miss Merriman. “I know I am stubborn—or pig-headed if you like—about my own—I can’t think of the word I want—”
“I think I can,” said Mr. Choyce. “It is Integrity. It has somehow got left out of the Christian virtues, but whether it is Christian, or Pagan, or as I think the best of both, it is your crowning virtue,” to which words Miss Merriman did not reply.
“If it were not presumptuous,” said Mr. Choyce, carefully choosing his words, “I would ask if I might be allowed to offer you any help I can give. We are such old friends now that you won’t take this amiss?”
“I couldn’t, I couldn’t” said Miss Merriman, though she found speech extremely difficult.
“I do not wish to intrude in any way upon your private life,” said Mr. Choyce. “But if now—or at any future time— though the sooner the better from my own selfish point of view—you could feel able to take on one more job of looking after someone, I would offer myself to be looked after. As a permanence. Don’t speak. I know how difficult it is when one has been crying. I have a large clean handkerchief here which is at your service,” and he pressed it into her hand.
“Do you mean—?” said Miss Merriman, but she was so sodden with tears that her speech was affected and she had to blow her nose violently.
“That’s better,” said Mr. Choyce in the voice that a nice Nanny might use to a be-blubbered child. “Yes, I do mean what I didn’t say. Will you take me on as your next—and I hope your last—job of devoting yourself unselfishly to other people: 3 Don’t try to talk just yet. If you could perhaps nod your head?”
Miss Merriman, for the first time in her life no longer mistress of herself, nodded her head and blindly stretched out a hand which Mr. Choyce took and pressed.
“Now everything is all right,” he said, adding, with a reminiscence of his war experiences in Liverpool, “All Clear. Don’t try to talk. I expect you are ready for tea. My housekeeper is out so I have put the kettle on.”
“Then I will come with you, Mr. Choyce,” said Miss Merriman, and suddenly it occurred to both these middle-aged people that neither of them had ever heard the Christian name of the other.
“If you could call me Herbert, it would be delightful,” said Mr. Choyce.
“Yes, Herbert,” said Miss Merriman, her utterance still considerably impeded. “And my name is—”
“No, don’t tell me just yet,” said Mr. Choyce. “This is all rather overpowering and I can’t stand much more. A thing like this has never happened to me before. May I call you Merry for the present?”
“Please do,” said Miss Merriman. “It was Lady Emily who began calling me Merry and most of her friends have used it. I am really Dorothea.”
“A most suitable name, my dear, and so much more pleasant than Theodora,” said Mr. Choyce. “But Merry you have always been and shall be. And now if you will come into the kitchen we will get our tea.”
Miss Merriman, her eyes dried and now mistress of herself, laid her head against his shoulder for a moment. Then they went together to the kitchen, to the hearth and the centre of the home.
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Never Too Late Page 30
