Never Too Late

by Angela Thirkell

  “Mr. George will do very well,” said George. “Come along, Vicar.”

  They followed Caxton to his workshop. Here he hung his cap on a hook, assumed the square paper cap which he still affected, his badge of master carpenter, and rummaged at the back of the shop among what looked like the sack of Troy, or Krook’s shop in Cook’s Court, Cursitor Street, but was in reality an ordered heap of useful, or possibly useful objects, hoarded by him against such an emergency as this.

  “I knew they were here” he proclaimed as he straightened himself again. “As pretty a set as anyone could want. Old Propett’s father over at Northbridge made those, Master George, when we used to have the old mowing machine and the pony. You used to ride on the pony while he pulled the mower and a fair young varmint you were, Master George. I’ve kept them nicely greased and if Mr. Choyce would like to have them he’s very welcome.”

  Without considering whether it was Caxton who was giving the shoes or George Halliday, the Vicar took them and admired them in a way that went to Caxton’s heart and head. George then offered to drive the Vicar back, but Mr. Choyce said he would like the walk and it was only ten minutes and with a hearty handshake to George and a suitable douceur to Caxton, he went away and George went back to the house.

  So the young squire was left alone and did not quite know what to do. This day was over, his father laid in the earth, his mother safely at Rushwater under Sylvia’s wing, with agreeable grandchildren when she wanted a change. The next thing, George supposed, would be lawyers and all the lengthy business of settling the estate. Sylvia had had her dowry when she married. His mother was also provided for and the rest would come to him when the government and the lawyers had got all they could. Luckily his lawyers, Keith and Keith, were old family friends. Robert Keith was a good fellow, brother to that nice Lady Merton who had provided Sister Heath. There would be much to be done, but George had learnt patience in the army and on the land, and knew that to do things slowly and in proper form is always the best. The professionals, the lawyers, must do the worrying; for him the first duty was to see that the work of the farm went on in its diurnal course. All these thoughts ran through his mind in the little estate room where his forbears had worked, where his father had worked and George had learnt from him. Now he would have to do everything for himself. He supposed his mother would live with him, as there was no Dower House and they could not afford to keep it up even if there were. Much as he loved his mother—and he did love her a great deal—he did not quite like the thought and then he blamed himself for selfishness and felt that feeling of universal guilt that we all—not particularly guilty—know far too well.

  A shadow fell across the table. He looked up and saw young Mr. Crosse.

  “Hullo,” said George.

  “Hullo yourself” said Mr. Crosse. “I know what it’s like when a parent goes. When mother died I didn’t know which way to look—nor did father for that matter. I must say the governor came up to form magnificently. So will you. What about dinner?”

  “I don’t know,” said George. “I daresay Mrs. Fothergill and Hubback will do something about it. Anyway it’s a long way off.”

  “Look here, Captain,” said Mr. Crosse, “I’m going to take you off to Barchester and we’ll have dinner at the White Hart. Do you good.”

  “It’s awfully good of you, John-Arthur, but I can’t,” said George.

  “All right; you’ve said it and now you needn’t say it again,” said Mr. Crosse cheerfully. “J’y suis, j’y reste as we used to say at Vache-en-Scurie. But you might let me see the pigs.”

  So they went round to the yard and scratched the pigs’ backs with sticks and smelt the strong but agreeable smell of well kept pig-styes and talked about the Barsetshire Agricultural Show which was to take place at Pomfret Towers this year, as a kind of joint tribute to Lord Pomfret whose land it was and Mr. Macfadyen and Mr. Pilward whose great and allied businesses of Amalgamated Vedge and Pilward’s Entire had joined with the wealthy ironmaster and self-made financier Mr. Samuel Adams to lease part of Pomfret Towers itself for clerical work and a considerable piece of the estate for experiments in fruit and vegetable growing.

  “And it will be a slap-up affair, my boy,” said Mr. Crosse, “I can tell you. I say, can I see your house? I don’t want to take it, so don’t think I do, but I’ve never seen upstairs.”

  Whether George really wanted to show his father’s house to Mr. Crosse, even though they were brothers-in-arms, we do not know; but by the time they had got up to the first floor he was becoming almost boastful about its charms; and Mr. Crosse far from discouraging him was the first to suggest that they make a do of it and see the top floor and the roof. Nothing loth and already feeling much happier, George showed him the rooms at the top of the house which were pleasant if a little low in the ceiling and an interesting discussion took place as to whether servants were all undersized then, or had to stoop to get into their rooms.

  “I bet you five shillings that our top-floor rooms at Crosse Hall are lower than yours,” said Mr. Crosse, “and the windows even more difficult to open.”

  “Hand it over,” said George. “These windows don’t open at all. At least I mean there aren’t any sash cords and you have to keep them open with a bit of wood or your hairbrush. And our view beats yours hollow,” and indeed the landscape from the front windows was very lovely, with the water-meadows in the foreground, Hatch End with its mixture of Saxon wattle and daub with fine stone and brick houses, and the ground rising away from the river, sloping and undulating to the noble line of the downs where corn was ripe and sheep bells were tinkling, and the mellow afternoon sun was over all.

  “Kamarad,” said Mr. Crosse and pulling a handful of change from his pocket he counted out a florin, a shilling, two sixpences, two threepenny bits, and six pennies, which he gave to George, adding that he was sorry he couldn’t make it four pennies and two halfpennies and four farthings.

  Much heartened by this unexpected windfall George took Mr. Crosse up onto the roof to look for loose tiles so that he could score off Caxton who was apt to boast about the way the house was kept in repair. Happily there were no less than three, so George came down in better spirits than he could have thought possible. Mr. Crosse said he would mostly be at home for the present and would ring George up and make a plan.

  “I’d ask you to ring me up and then you’d have to pay” he said chivalrously, “but I’m afraid you wouldn’t. Thumbs up and all that rot, George. We’ll go to the Barsetshire Agricultural together if you don’t look out,” and then he went away. George looked after him till the car had crossed the river and then went back to the house and began to answer the letters from friends that had been accumulating. Later Hubback brought him a good dinner after which he worked again till sheer fatigue drove him to bed and a dreamless sleep.

  When Mr. Choyce left Hatch House he did so with sorrow in his compassionate heart. Perhaps the saddest thought to him was that he could do so little to help, but he reflected that at least he could always stand by. Life as a parish priest was, thank God, always full of duties and of opportunities for service and he would jolly well put salt on the tail of every opportunity of helping George that came his way. As he approached the Vicarage he saw Miss Merriman’s car outside and then Miss Merriman sitting on a bench in the sun just outside the house.

  “I am more sorry than I can tell you” he said. “I went back with George Halliday and time passed. He is a good fellow.”

  “I guessed you might be there,” said Miss Merriman, “so I waited. Isn’t it lovely not to see that horrid monkey-puzzle.”

  “I never knew quite how much I hated that Upas-tree till I saw it coming down,” said Mr. Choyce. “I felt, if it is not presumptuous to say so, rather like Samson when he pulled down the pillars of the Philistines’ temple. I have sometimes wondered about that and thought that possibly the Authorized Version has not quite reproduced the original text and the pillars were really wooden columns kept in the
ir place with wedges. As a child and later one always thought of them as about fifty feet high of solid stone and at least ten feet in diameter—or round-about that. Of course in the opera they are only cardboard. It is extraordinary how ignorantly one thinks.”

  So they admired the brickwork of the house, now free to the sun and air, and then went indoors to see the Arundel prints. What value in terms of art these reproductions may have, we do not know, but they became familiar to many of us in our youth in the houses of our parents’ friends and in those far-off days represented the last word in colour reproduction. Probably now, compared with the results of today’s processes, they would look dull and lifeless, and where they have all gone one does not know. However the fact remains that Mr. Choyce’s set, dealing with the Martyrdom of St. Ursula and her really unnecessarily large train of female attendants, are among our early memories and therefore neither good nor bad but simply themselves. Mr. Choyce’s pictures hung along one wall of the study in plain unpolished oak frames, and as the rays of the late afternoon sun could now strike directly on each it was impossible to see anything but dazzle and glare. Mr. Choyce’s University trophies and photographs were re-examined and admired in this new light and they talked of the war days when Lady Emily Leslie was living with her daughter Lady Graham at Holdings, and so came to Lady Graham’s children.

  “I am sorry you had to go so soon, Mr. Choyce,” said Miss Merriman. “Lord Mellings turned up a little later and he and Edith and the other young people went on the river. I wish Mr. Halliday could have stayed.”

  “I am glad you mentioned that,” said Mr. Choyce. “I am rather concerned about him. He is taking things very seriously. Better than too lightly perhaps, but it won’t be good for him to live alone.”

  Miss Merriman said he had his mother.

  “I know, I know,” said Mr. Choyce. “But it may not be] easy. He is master now and will have to make changes.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Miss Merriman thoughtfully. “The Dowager is always a possible problem. Not my business of course. He must marry.”

  From some people, unconnected by any ties of blood or old friendship with the Hallidays, this might have seemed pure meddling. But Miss Merriman in her hardly acquired status of what we must—with great deference to her—call Eminence Grise to the Nobility and Landed Gentry, had a profound store of knowledge, quietly garnered and much pondered in her own heart as well as her mind.

  “I quite agree with you,” said Mr. Choyce. “But whom?”

  “There I am at present quite helpless,” said Miss Merriman quietly: and this, we think, was the first time in her long service and care of the Pomfret family that she had come near admitting defeat. “And,” she added, looking away from her host towards the churchyard where Squire Halliday was sleeping his long sleep as far as this world was concerned, “I do not even begin to see light. Any more than I do at present for Edith.”

  “Why Edith? Isn’t she rather young to be worried about?” said Mr. Choyce.

  “Not when three young men who are all on good terms are thinking about her,” said Miss Merriman.

  “George Halliday and young Crosse one can see with half an eye,” said Mr. Choyce, “but I confess I don’t see another, unless it is Lord Crosse; he’s a widower,” at which Miss Merriman had to laugh and said she was perfectly sure that Lord Crosse never thought of her at all except as a pretty rather spoilt chit.

  “No, I meant Ludo,” she said.

  “Lord Mellings? But he is only a boy,” said Mr. Choyce.

  “Edith is barely more than a child,” said Miss Merriman. “They are cousins and have been practically brought up together.”

  Mr. Choyce, thinking aloud, said “Propinquity, propinquity,” and though Miss Merriman thought it quite a good comment we do not think she quite took the allusion.

  “So what happens next?” said Mr. Choyce.

  “I don’t know yet,” said Miss Merriman. “Edith is like Clarissa in some ways, but she feels she does not have a confidante. Clarissa used to tell Lady Emily her thoughts; Edith is self-contained. Too self-coptained for happiness perhaps. And I do not see my way to helping her at present. I am a failure and I don’t like it, Mr. Choyce.”

  “There is only one answer and I am going to make it even if you don’t like it,” said Mr. Choyce. “Don’t be silly. The word failure has nothing to do with you, Miss Merriman.”

  Miss Merriman was silent and Mr. Choyce wondered if he had gone too far. Then she got up, touched his hand very lightly and said: “Thank you. You have reminded me of my duty. I shall carry on,” and she went out of the house, followed by Mr. Choyce. He shut the door of her car and then laid his hand on the top of the open window.

  “Duty? I don’t understand,” said Mr. Choyce.

  “Duty to old Lady Pomfret and then to Lady Emily for many years,” said Miss Merriman. “And because of that, duty to her granddaughter Edith. And also through her my duty to Lord and Lady Pomfret and Ludovic. And love—of one kind—has gone with all the duties.”

  “You are rather like a pelican,” said Mr. Choyce thoughtfully.

  Miss Merriman asked why.

  “You are ready to feed all your nurselings with drops of your heart’s blood,” said Mr. Choyce, almost angrily. “Do you never think of yourself?”

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Merriman calmly. “Quite often. I have thought of myself several times today. I have thought how pleasant it would be to see your study now the monkey-puzzle is down and it has been even more pleasant than I thought. Now I must go or Lady Graham will make hay of the supper arrangements and we have a good many of the young people staying on, I think. Good-bye, Mr. Choyce,” and she laid her hand on his.

  “Good-bye, Miss Merriman, and thank you a thousand times,” said Mr. Choyce, “and God bless you,” which words he said so simply that they were not in the least embarrassing. We do not mean that anyone would mind being so addressed with so good a wish, but the difficulty is to know what answer to make.

  “Then God bless you too,” said Miss Merriman and she quietly withdrew her hand and drove away to Holdings. Mr. Choyce did a little weeding in his garden and as he weeded it occurred to him that when Miss Merriman spoke of Lady Graham making hay of the supper arrangements, it was the first time in his acquaintance with her—and that had begun some fifteen years or so ago when Lady Emily Leslie came to live with her daughter Lady Graham at Holdings— that he had ever heard one word of criticism of her employers. At least it was hardly criticism in an unkind sense, but for once she had spoken of Lady Graham just as one of Lady Graham’s own friends might—quite kindly and with considerable reason—have spoken.

  At Holdings as usual life was in full swing. Lord Mellings had turned up in the little car which his father’s generosity had allowed him to buy. Emmy Grantly had come over from Rushwater to see her mother and father and talk to Goble the bailiff about some pigs for her cousin Martin Leslie and boast about the success of Rushwater Ranelagh in the local show and how they were showing several heifers at the Bar-setshire Agricultural, but not the young bulls because they had already been bought practically before they were born by Senor Garcia a very rich Argentine breeder who came to England every year and was also celebrated for his wholesale purchases of any pictures of chocolate-box English beauty. The three Leslie cousins had come over from Greshamsbury and were having friendly battles with their Graham male relations. Edith was being alternately bullied and flattered to the top of her bent and Mr. Crosse had said at least four times that he must really go, but as no one had paid the faintest attention to him he was still there. Mrs. Morland, enjoying the noise and the life, was perfectly happy to sit in a sheltered sunny corner on the terrace till such time as Lord

  Stoke had finished bargaining with the bailiff Goble about a sow in farrow. So pleasurably was she thinking about nothing that a voice saying How do you do, Mrs. Morland, made her jump and looking up she saw Lord Crosse.

  “May I sit with you?” said Lord Crosse. “I c
ame to see Sir Robert about the Barsetshire Agricultural^ next meeting, but he is about the farm as usual, so I will sit here, if I may, till he turns up.”

  “Yes, do,” said Mrs. Morland. “I was just wondering what my next villain should be. My publisher tells me that I ought to have an English villain for a change, but I don’t want the English to be Villains.”

  “A very proper sentiment, if I may say so,” said Lord Crosse, “though one has to remember that there are exceptions to every rule. And after all a lot of the best novels have them. Think of Scott’s Varney and Rashleigh Osbaldistone. Think of Count Fosco. Think of all Dickens’s immortal villains.”

  “Yes, but you can’t help rather loving Dickens’s villains,” said Mrs. Morland, “because they do so enjoy being villainous and he enjoys making them, bless him. The only real villain I can think of at the moment is Lord Whatshisname— I mean the one that was Sir Ogilvy Hibberd.”

  “It is extraordinary how no one can remember that man’s name,” said Lord Crosse thoughtfully. “Aberfordbury is the nearest I can get.”

  “But it is Aberfordbury, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Morland, “only I don’t think I could use his name in a book. It would be plagiarism, wouldn’t it?”

  “More likely libel,” said Lord Crosse. “He could be very nasty if he took offence, so do be careful. I should hate you to be involved in anything of that sort.”

  “Well, if he wasn’t pleased I would write a letter and say I meant quite a different person with the same name,” said Mrs. Morland seriously.

  “Really, dear Mrs. Morland, for an intelligent woman you are the silliest woman I have ever met,” said Lord Crosse, looking at her with much admiration. “I do beg you not to try to use that man in a book. He is simply bursting with spite and might make things rather unpleasant for you, which I could not bear. He is really quite capable of going to law.”