Never Too Late Page 10

  “Is it a Valiant?” said Edith, but it was a Greatheart and she wondered if she could pick up its methods easily. For although English-speaking typewriters have English-speaking type every one of them has tricks and arrangements peculiar to itself.

  “I can’t explain the way this one works because I only do it by heart,” said Mrs. Morland. “I mean once I have mastered what things to move I can do it as long as I don’t stop to think. But the moment I begin thinking what I’m doing I don’t know what to do next. It is all extremely mortifying. Did you sleep well?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Edith, very nearly adding “of course” because so far in her life she had never—unless one counted toothache or the time she had chicken-pox—known anything beyond getting into bed at one end and waking up at the other, as it were.

  “I rang your mother up after you had gone to bed last night,” said Mrs. Morland “and she is going to call on Lord Crosse’s married daughter at the Old Manor House this afternoon and asked if I would come too and bring you with me and then you can go home with her. I’ve never seen it, so that would be very pleasant. So this morning we will do whatever you like. Shall we go to lunch with Lord Stoke?”

  “Oh, I’d love that,” said Edith. “I know him a little, because he comes to see mother sometimes and he shocked Cook dreadfully because he came in by the kitchen door, but she was very proud about it really. He came to a Bring and Buy Sale once when I was quite young and he took some tickets in a raffle and won a hideous vase and he gave it to Leslie Major—that’s one of my cousins that was in the cricket match on Saturday—but he had a fight with Leslie Minor and it got broken.”

  “It sounds exactly like a Bring and Buy Sale,” said Mrs. Morland. “I think I was there too that day.”

  “I know you were there,” said Edith, “because my sistei Clarissa, the one that’s Mrs. Charles Belton now, was there and you said you would send her a copy of your next book.”

  “Oh dear, and didn’t I?” said Mrs. Morland.

  “Of course you did,” said Edith, almost indignant with her hostess for such mistrust of herself. “And Clarissa boasted about it to everyone. She took it with her when she was married and went to live at Harefield,” by which news Mrs. Morland appeared almost unreasonably flattered. For somehow to be liked by someone very young is flattering, but to have one of one’s books (which one had thought to be only readable by grown-ups) liked by one of the young is extremely upsetting and makes one feel one is perhaps of some value after all.

  “And I met Miss Merriman, Lady Pomfret’s secretary,” said Mrs. Morland. “I liked her so much and I want to have her to lunch one day, but she is always busy.”

  “She always will be,” said Edith. “I don’t mean,” she added, going pleasantly pink in the face, “that she is busy because she doesn’t want to see you. She is just busy. She is rather like those water-flowers with very long stalks and they seem to move about a good deal but they are always tied by one leg. She does come to see mother because she lived at Holdings when Gran was there, in the war. But I don’t think she visits anyone else unless she goes with Sally when Sally asks her to. It is what one would call a Dedicated Life” she added primly, on which Mrs. Morland’s comment was “Affected puss,” which shows how well she and her guest were getting on.

  Accordingly Mrs. Morland rang up Rising Castle, the residence of Lord Stoke, thirteenth baron of that name. The castle itself had a Norman keep in fair condition from outside, though inside there was little except traces of the old stairway which wound up between the outer wall and an inner wall of which most had crumbled or was crumbling to pieces. The rest of the building had been thriftfully used by the present owner’s great-grandfather who with material from the old building had erected a comfortable mansion for himself. The remains of the castle were now scheduled as a National Monument which the public were allowed to visit at sixpence a head during the summer months. This they did in quite large numbers, though there was very little to see and most of the fabric bore notices which said “Danger. Do not go any further,” or “Private,” or “The Public are asked NOT to throw anything down the outside shafts.” But as the Public in general either cannot read, or does not wish to, or takes all notices to be directed against other people and not Itself, it went everywhere and threw newspapers and cigarette ends and unwanted sandwiches down the shafts like anything, of which rude and repulsive habit Dr. Ford had said that the slope or glacis outside the castle on the river side was probably now nearer its primitive condition than it had ever been since interior plumbing was introduced.

  The present residence of his lordship is only a stone’s throw (though this would depend upon what sort of stone and who threw it) from the Castle and is quite hideous, though comfortable. Lord Stoke, who had never married and disliked change, had kept everything more or less as it had been in his mother’s lifetime, a lady of strong character who always went out in buttoned boots and for the whole of her life had them buttoned by her personal maid. His only remaining near relative was his half-sister Lucasta, Lady Bond—a form of address upon which her ladyship had insisted since her husband’s death when her son and his very capable wife, niece of Mr. Middleton over at Skeynes, had come into the title. But she would have done better to let herself be known as the Dowager Lady Bond (even as old Lady Lufton had gladly done when her son married Lucy Robarts the sister of the parson) for the consequence was that the village, with the fine English gift for getting rank and titles wrong, mostly addressed her ladyship as Lady Lucasta, some of the more modern and subversive members even going so far as to call her—though never to her face— Lady Luke, in a very dashing way. But as she had never been called Lady Luke, neither she nor the county would have known what people were talking about.

  Mrs. Morland was looked upon with favour by Lord Stoke’s servants because she always asked after their wife, their husband, their children, or their bad leg, as the case might be and stood no nonsense from his lordship. With his lordship’s present butler she was on particularly friendly terms, as his elder sister Annie had been for many years the faithful and very trying housemaid to George Knox. When George Knox married Anne Todd, she who was Mrs. Morland’s secretary, he had secretly hoped that Annie would give notice, as faithful servants of a bachelor mostly do when another female is introduced into the establishment. But nothing was further from Annie’s thoughts and after one or two stand-up fights with her mistress she had settled down nicely, recognizing in the new Mrs. Knox one of the ruling class.

  “How are you, Albert?” said Mrs. Morland. “Miss Graham hasn’t been here before. Her father is Sir Robert Graham over at Hatch End.”

  “Oh, how do you do, Albert,” said Edith who, luckily for her, had no fears or inhibitions about servants, treating them as friends though with an invisible line drawn over which no well-trained servant ever stepped, realizing as that vanishing class did and still does, that nearly every human being is of value in his own sphere and that for a butler to take any liberty with even the youngest of his employer’s guests would be almost as bad—though of course not quite—as if a guest took a liberty with his host’s staff. “I think Mrs. Panter at Hatch End is a cousin of yours.”

  “That’s right, miss,” said Albert, “and I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure. She’s a wonderful one at getting up shirts she is. I take his lordship’s best dress shirts over to her and she gets them up lovely. It’s a treat the way she does the fronts, miss.”

  “Does his lordship still dress for dinner then?” said Mrs. Morland.

  “Oh yes, madam,” said Albert, almost shocked by such ignorance in one who, although she wrote books, was an old friend of his lordship’s and didn’t pay no attention to his lordship when he was a bit waxy. “Every evening I put out his lordship’s dinner jacket suit. His lordship has the two pairs of trousers for it, madam, with braid down the seam which I understand was quite the thing in his lordship’s younger days, and I keep them nicely pressed, turn and turn about as they
say, and I put the studs in his shirt, and lay out two black ties.”

  Mrs. Morland asked why two.

  “Well, madam,” said Albert, “his lordship doesn’t hold with ready made up ties—and really, madam, one doesn’t hardly know what to think things is coming to if gentlemen have made-up ties—and his lordship sometimes finds a little difficulty in tying the tie just the way he likes it tied, and I’ve seen his lordship throw three white ties—that was when we used to have proper dinner parties, madam, and his lordship was wearing his tails—on the floor because they didn’t go the way he liked. But with the black ties we find the two are enough.”

  Though Edith could have listened with fascination to this conversation for ever, it was obvious that they could not spend the day in the hall. Her admiration for Mrs. Morland rose when that lady said two black ties were certainly enough and where was Lord Stoke.

  “His lordship,” said Albert, in a quite different voice, recalled by Mrs. Morland to his status as butler-valet, “was in the gun-room, madam, when I last seen him. If you and Miss Graham will come into the morning-room, madam, I will find his lordship.”

  Mrs. Morland said she would take Miss Graham to the morning-room, so Albert went to look for his employer.

  “It’s a very nice room,” said Edith, “but not so grand as Lord Crosse’s. And look, Mrs. Morland, the books are all in the wrong order here.”

  Anything to do with books, even their outsides, was a magnet to Mrs. Morland, who would sooner have read Bradshaw, or even one of Mrs. Rivers’s novels, than not have a book to her hand.

  “Oh dear,” she said, “indeed they are. What a lovely set of Gibbon in that binding. It always makes me think of the Bible.”

  Edith said was that because the Bible ought to have very beautiful bindings because it was a Great Book.

  “Oh dear me, no,” said Mrs. Morland. “Not of course,” she added quickly, lest she should be disturbing Edith’s belief, “that I don’t think it oughtn’t to have a beautiful binding, because it ought. Only they will put it into that rather scrunchy, floppy, black binding and a cross on the front which is of course quite religious but so unnecessary because people who like to read it wouldn’t mind what it was like outside, and often the edges of the pages all gilded which makes them stick together and you can’t get them undone properly without blowing rather hard, which annoys people.”

  Edith said there was a really old Bible at Holdings and it was so heavy that no one ever used it, which made Mrs. Morland embark upon one of her snipe-flights and wonder if it would be better to have it on a lectern in the drawing-room.

  “Well, not really,” said Edith, “because it has become all crumbling with old age and the cover falls off if you open it. I mean the front cover does, but if you did open it at the wrong end then the end cover would come off. Mother keeps it on a table that Gran used to do her drawing and painting at and no one opens it, so it is quite safe.”

  “What’s that?” said Lord Stoke who had come in while Edith was speaking. “How are you, Mrs. Morland? Well, young lady,” he continued, addressing Edith, “what’s all this about a safe, eh? You can’t do better than Bubb’s safes. Rum name Bubb. There was a feller called Bubb Dodington —queer thing, Mrs. Morland, the way things come back to you—and blest if you can remember anything about them. Haven’t the ghost of an idea who the feller was.”

  Edith rather rashly said they couldn’t really have come back to you if you couldn’t remember anything about them. His lordship, taking these words for some form of acquiescence in what he had previously said, appeared pleased with her support and asked Mrs. Morland who she was.

  “I. Told. You. Lord. Stoke,” said Mrs. Morland, managing by a miracle of tact to keep all trace of impatience out of her voice. “Lady Graham’s youngest girl. Her name is Edith. After old Lady Pomfret.”

  “She was old Pomfret’s wife, the seventh earl,” said Lord Stoke, who was Burke and Debrett rolled into one as far as Baretshire families were concerned. “Handsome woman, she was. This girl of yours is going to be a good-looker, Mrs. Morland. Nice-stepping little filly.”

  “Not. My. Girl. Lord. Stoke,” said Mrs. Morland, who saw that Edith, far from being annoyed at being called a filly, was slightly preening herself. “She is Lady Graham’s youngest girl. She was in America this winter with the David Leslies.”

  “Bone lazy, that David Leslie,” said Lord Stoke. “Living in America. I never lived in America. Never went there in my life. My old mother never went there either. When she wanted to go abroad she went to Cannes, or to Florence. Dull place Florence, all full of people talking about art. So’s Cannes; full of people you don’t know. If I want a change I go up to London to my club. Lot of fellers there I’ve never seen—all the change I want. Well, what’s the matter?” These last words were not directed against either of his guests, though Edith had almost jumped with the suddenness of his question, but to Albert who looked straight into space and said Lunch Was Served My Lord.

  “Come along, come along,” said Lord Stoke. “It’s only the three of us, Mrs. Morland. I’m sorry, my dear,” he added to Edith as they went to the dining-room, “that there isn’t anyone young for you. But I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs. Morland. My sister is not coming. She was up here two days ago hinting that she would like to come, but I couldn’t hear her. She’s gone to Bournemouth for the weekend. She ought to live there. Much better for everyone. And what do you like to drink, my dear?” he went on to Edith having by now quite accepted her as one of the small circle of his friends, which was lessening in the older ranks far too rapidly. “The claret isn’t bad, and there is a nice hock. Don’t care for it myself, but some people do. The port’s all right,” and he mentioned a name and year which meant nothing at all to Edith, so we shall not invent them.

  Edith hesitated. She did not want wine, which she did not really like, and was wondering if it would be rude to say so when Albert, approaching Lord Stoke, said in a voice modelled on that of Mr. Simnet, butler to Canon and Mrs. Joram: “I have orange juice here, my lord. Also lemonade. And there is iced water if the young lady would like it, or soda water, my lord.”

  Mrs. Morland knew that Albert was an excellent butler, but never before had she so fully realized his gifts. A voice which while perfectly clear did not at the same time imply— as our voice when speaking to the deaf so often does—that our hearer is not only deaf by nature, but also deliberately deaf and broadly speaking a congenital idiot.

  “What? orange juice?” said his lordship, “and lemonade?

  All right, all right, you needn’t shout. I’m not deaf. Which will you have, my dear?” he added with a kind of courtliness to Edith that surprised and pleased Mrs. Morland.

  Edith said lemonade please.

  “All right. Miss Graham will have lemonade,” said Lord Stoke, assuming quite unnecessarily the part of intermediary between his guest and his butler. “And some ice, if youVe got it.”

  “I am glad to say, my lord, that the fridge is in excellent order,” said Albert who felt, not unreasonably, that his lordship was doing him out of his proper position as butler—even if he were single-handed and also his lordship’s valet.

  “You won’t mind, my dear, if I call you Edith, I hope,” said Lord Stoke to his young guest. “I have known your people off and on in the county for a very long time. I had great respect and affection for Lady Pomfret—Edith—who was your grandmother’s sister-in-law. I’m well over eighty, you know.”

  “Are you really?” said Edith. “When is your birthday?”

  “First of October,” said Lord Stoke. “My father was a very good shot, used to be asked to all the Gatherum shoots, so he told his man to call him early and went off in the dog cart with his groom about six o’clock and had breakfast at Framley on the way with Lord Lufton. They had one of the best days they’ve ever had at Gatherum. I forget how many brace. So what with one thing and another he spent the night at Gatherum and sent the groom back to tell my mother to expec
t him next morning about twelve. So when he got home he told the butler to tell her ladyship he was back and the butler said: I’m sorry, my lord, but your lordship has a son and her ladyship and the young Honourable are doing very well.’ ‘Are they, by God?’ said my father, ‘then get me some lunch and bring the ‘64 port and you can open a bottle of the ‘63 for the servants’ hall.’ Now, was it the ‘63? I forget everything now, but I know it was a poor vintage, so the butler gave the servants’ hall a bottle of the poor port and drank the rest of my father’s port himself. My father spotted it though, when he was going through the wine with the butler and the cellar book.”

  “So what did he do?” said Edith.

  “Said he’d never heard such a good story against himself before,” said Lord Stoke, “and old Lord Pomfret—I don’t mean this man’s uncle but his father—said it was the best story he had ever heard.”

  Mrs. Morland said aloud to herself that the sixth earl must have been a relation of Mr. Peter Magnus’s friends, but as neither Lord Stoke nor Edith heard her, and we doubt whether either of them would have picked up the allusion, she kept it to herself.

  Having disposed of the Pomfrets, Lord Stoke went on, via the story he had already told about his own birth, to the Omniums. Mrs. Morland, though not Barsetshire by birth, had so well assimilated the county during her life at High Rising that she could hold her own pretty well, but she had to confess to herself that before Lord Stoke she was but as a child picking up pebbles on the beach. Edith also was listening, fascinated, with all her ears, and trying swiftly to memorize stories that she knew her mother would like. Stories some of which her mother would be able to cap, or supplement, some of which she would add to her hereditary knowledge of families and relationships.

  “Rum thing how blood does tell,” said Lord Stoke. “I was talking to Sir Edmund Pridham and he must be a good ten years older than I am now. I’ve forgotten what we were talking about. Probably about one thing and another as one does. What the dickens was it I was going to say?” he added crossly. “You ought to know, Mrs. Morland. You write books.