Never Too Late Read online

  Have to remember a lot of things to write books. Can’t think how you do it. And get them published too. Old Lord Pom-fret got his book published. How do people get books published, Mrs. Morland?”

  “Are you writing one then?” said Edith, rather pertly her hostess thought.

  “No, no. Not in my line,” said Lord Stoke. “I was thinking of old Lord Pomfret—this man’s cousin but of a much older generation—Pomfret speaks of him and his wife as uncle and aunt, but that’s not the real relationship. Never mind. Do you remember Lady Pomfret—I mean the seventh earl’s wife—Mrs. Morland?”

  But Mrs. Morland, though she had seen her at various functions, had never met her.

  “She was a countess, every inch of her,” said Lord Stoke. “Port for you, Mrs. Morland? No? And not for Miss Edith I presume. All right, Albert. You can leave the port in front of me. You ladies will not think it uncivil if I drink alone?”

  Mrs. Morland said she would willingly pay sixpence not to drink port on any day of the year. Edith added, rather primly, that it was not a wine for ladies.

  “So that is what you think, young lady?” said his lordship, much amused. “Let me tell you that my dear mother had a glass of port wine and a sweet biscuit at eleven o’clock in the morning every day of her life. Said it was medicinal. So did all her women friends. And how they enjoyed their medicinal drink.”

  “Did Lady Pomfret—I mean the one you were talking about, Lord Stoke, have port at eleven too?” said Edith.

  “Probably,” said Lord Stoke. “But in those days the men didn’t see much of the women till the afternoon in the big houses, especially in the shooting seasons.”

  “Like Disraeli,” said Edith, full of excited interest.

  “Dizzy? Before my time,” said Lord Stoke. “None of our people knew him. Queer bird, but by Gad! he made England respected,” which expletive gave intense pleasure to both his guests.

  “I only wondered,” said Edith, “because IVe been reading j his political novels and it all sounds just like what you were j saying. I mean the women not seeing the men till after lunch, or whatever they called it. Time is very mixing.”

  “Much better plan not to see the women till after lunch,” said Lord Stoke unchivalrously.

  “And much more fun for the women too,” said Edith, “because they could have lovely talks to one another about the men, and laugh at them.”

  “I daresay you are right, my dear,” said Lord Stoke. “You are nearly a woman yourself now. She was Edith too.”

  “Who was?” said Edith, rather perplexed. Mrs. Morland, informed by the novelist’s unaccountable sixth sense that more was going on than she could at the moment grasp, waited for enlightenment to come.

  “Lady Pomfret. The wife of the seventh earl. She was Edith Thorne. The Thornes were one of our very old Barset-shire families, as good blood as any in the county, or outside it for that matter,” said Lord Stoke, fingering his glass of port and speaking rather to himself than to Edith. “She and Pom-fret didn’t get on too well. They lost their only son, Mellings, in some Indian border skirmish, when he was only a subaltern. People said it would bring them together, but it didn’t,” said his lordship with a kind of triumph over people who said things.

  “You don’t mean they quarreled, Lord Stoke?” said Edith.

  “Quarreled? Nothing to quarrel about,” said Lord Stoke. “She hadn’t any money of her own—the Thornes never had much, but they had blood—and Pomfret settled something very handsome on her. She used to go to Italy every winter to the Casa Strelsa. Guido Strelsa, that cousin of Pomfret’s, lent it to her. Now he was a scoundrel, if you like. Turned out of pretty well every gambling hell in Europe. He and Pomfret couldn’t get on at all, but he admired Lady Pomfret and lent her the villa whenever she wanted it. Edith Thome —yes indeed,” and his lordship was silent.

  Edith did not understand and we doubt whether even Mrs. Morland quite understood, so they also were silent. Then Edith remembered that her mother said one oughtn’t to let the conversation come to a complete stop, even if one said something silly. So she summoned up her courage and said: “Lord Stoke, if I had some port—I mean really a very little—could we drink Lady Pomfret’s health—I mean the Lady Pomfret that was Edith?”

  Lord Stoke, coming out of the depths of his silence, listened courteously to his young guest. There was a silence and Edith wished she had not spoken. Mrs. Morland suddenly faced by a side of her old friend quite strange to her, found nothing to say either.

  “Here!” said Lord Stoke, at which word of power Albert immediately appeared. “The special port and clean glasses.”

  Albert, already in his mind improving his lordship’s words for repetition in the servants’ hall, went to get the wine. Edith, feeling something she could not understand, looked to Mrs. Morland for guidance, but Mrs. Morland, though she thought she could guess what was happening, also thought it wiser not to try to explain. So she smiled at Edith in a way that to Edith’s quick eye and mind evidently conveyed what she wished to convey and both guests sat silent. Albert came back bearing a bottle as an acolyte might have borne the Grail and set it before Lord Stoke. His lordship poured out a little for himself, ceremoniously went through the ritual of tasting and told Albert he could go, which Albert did with a mixture of willingness to get to the servants’ hall and tell the company what was happening and unwillingness to leave a scene which—or so he afterwards said—was nearly as good as Glamora Tudor’s new film “They Loved too Well” where someone called Treestarn drank wine out of an empty goblet and gave the rest to the heroine whose name was Essolda, just like the Essoldo cinema in Barley Street.

  “I should like to give you some of this port, Mrs. Morland,” said Lord Stoke. “You will never taste anything like it again” for which Mrs. Morland felt truly grateful, for like many good women she found all ports exactly alike and the good ones just as nasty as the bad ones.

  “And you too, young lady,” he added, kindly pouring only half a glass for Edith. “I should like you both to drink the health of a very great lady: Edith Thorne.” He raised his glass and drank. Mrs. Morland, who of course was by now almost in tears with emotion, repeated the name and drank and Edith followed her example, perplexed, vaguely feeling that something rather solemn and special was happening and at the same time forming a determination not to tell her mother about it if she could avoid the question, because it seemed rather private.

  Then there was a short silence which somehow reminded Edith of the silence on Armistice Day, broken by Lord Stoke who said in quite an ordinary voice: “And now, young woman, we’ll drink your health and you must come again to Rising Castle. Get Mrs. Morland to bring you.”

  Mrs. Morland, relieved that Lord Stoke had returned to normal life, drank Edith’s health willingly and then Edith said she thought they ought to drink Lord Stoke’s health, which appeared to give his lordship considerable pleasure.

  “We must go now,” said Mrs. Morland. “I have to take Edith over to Hatch End. We are going to meet Lady Graham there and call on Lord Crosse’s married daughter who has taken the Old Manor House.”

  “Good house,” said Lord Stoke, who knew more about the dwellings of Barsetshire inside and out than any other man alive. “Belongs to the Hallidays. They’re good stock too. Always stuck to the farm. How are your father’s pigs, young lady?”

  This question brought everything back comfortably to earth, and Mrs. Morland said again that she and Edith must really go.

  “Well, my dear, it was good of you to come and see an old man,” said Lord Stoke to Edith. “Enjoyed my talk with you. Pity Edith—Lady Pomfret—couldn’t have seen her namesake. She would have got on with you. We used to think she was too good for Pomfret. Artistic and all that sort of thing. But it’s queer as you get older,” said his lordship, who could not but remember such things were, “you forget so much and then you remember more than you thought you knew. Wait a moment. There’s something I’d like to show you. Come this way,
” and he took them back to the morning-room, went to a small mahogany cabinet, fished a long chain with a bunch of keys at the end of it out of his trouser pocket and unlocked a drawer. In it were several rather shabby little red leather boxes. He took out one and opened it. Inside lay a necklace of small baroque pearls in which many colours were faintly adumbrated. He took it out and undid the little clasp, set with rose diamonds.

  “It belonged to someone called Edith,” he said. “I gave it to her, a great many years ago, but she gave it back to me. Pearls need wearing, you know, Miss Edith. So you wear them and tell your mother they belonged to her uncle’s wife who was Edith Thorne. She’ll know what I mean.”

  By this time Mrs. Morland, whose sympathetic mind felt the scene deeply, was quite ready to cry if encouraged. But as Lord Stoke appeared to be genuinely pleased by Edith’s pleasure, and Edith herself, though slightly bewildered, was in the seventh heaven of delight, Mrs. Morland suppressed her wish for a delightful cry and said how the pearls were just right for Edith.

  “Oh, THANK you, Lord Stoke,” said Edith. “But I hope,” she added rather anxiously, “that the Edith who wore them wouldn’t mind. I shall tell mother all about it. Thank you again most awfully’ and almost unconsciously she took Lord Stake’s hands and put up her face to be kissed, which his lordship immediately did with great good humour.

  “Now, wait a moment,” said Lord Stoke, as Mrs. Morland showed signs of wishing to get away. “Tell your mother, my dear, that these pearls are insured. I’ll get my lawyer to have them insured in your name and send you the papers. Then if you lose them you’ll be able to buy something else.”

  “But I don’t want to lose them,” said Edith. “I shall wear them always. Clarissa has some diamonds that mother gave her, but I don’t like diamonds. I simply love the pearls, Lord Stoke.”

  “You would be very silly if you didn’t, young lady,” said Lord Stoke. “Come again, my dear. And mind you don’t get married without my permission. Bring the young man here when he turns up. Perhaps he has turned up?”

  “Oh no,” said Edith. “I am excessively heart-free,” which remark, primly made and—we may add—perfectly truthful, made Lord Stoke laugh in a loud though very kind way.

  “And now you’ve got the pearls out of the old man, off you go” he said, in high good humour. “Good-bye, Mrs. Morland. Come and see me again before long and if you have any more guests like Miss Edith, bring them too. But let me know a day or two beforehand and I’ll make sure that Lucasta doesn’t come. Tiresome woman. Can’t think why Bond married her, but he always was a bit of a fool. Young Bond isn’t a fool, nor’s his wife. Now I’m going to read the Times,” and without waiting for more good-byes he went back to the gun-room, sat down in a large, shabby leather arm chair and began to read the deaths, for like most of us as we get older he took a deep and even malicious pleasure in seeing that old Hoskins, or Lord Lundy, who were several years his junior, had been weak-minded enough to hop the twig.

  “Oh thank you, Mrs. Morland, for taking me to see Lord Stoke,” said Edith. “Now when he comes to Holdings I shall feel he is a little bit mine.”

  “Wasn’t he at all yours before?” said Mrs. Morland, mildly puzzled.

  “Oh no, he was mother’s,” said Edith. “They all are,” but these words were spoken, as far as Mrs. Morland could tell, in perfect affection and simplicity. All the same, she felt, it would not do the child any harm to spread her wings. Lord Stoke had shown her bits of a new world; perhaps she would explore some more by herself.

  “And now I really must attend to the traffic,” said Mrs. Morland as they turned into the main road, so Edith sat silent for a time, partly thinking what a nice time it had been and partly how nice it was to be going home again.

  The present tenant of the Old Manor House was, as we know, Lord Crosse’s elder daughter, but so far she has been nameless; partly because there are already far too many people in Barsetshire and partly, we think, because we have not yet invented it. But as it became known at Hatch End that real gentry were going to live in the house once more, after its period of neglect, it also became known that her name was the Honourable Mrs. Carter but her husband owing to not being, as his wife was, the offspring of a peer, was not an honourable and only Richard A. Carter Esq., this last being contributed by the postman who prided himself on knowing how people did ought to be spoke to or addressed on an envelope and if there was a man as saw as many envelopes as he did in the year, he’d give sixpence to that man. So short a time had Mrs. Carter been in the village that people had not yet begun calling and Lady Graham was the first to welcome the new-comer. To this end she had driven herself to the village where she proposed to do a little shopping and then meet Edith with Mrs. Morland at the Old Manor House and take her daughter home.

  When she got to the Old Manor House she put her car into the little gravel semi-circle which lay back from the road, opposite the house, went up the stone steps and rang the bell. The door was opened by a girl in a very neat print dress which reminded Lady Graham in a nostalgic flash of the proper servants that she remembered in her girlhood.

  “Pliss?” said the girl.

  “No, Lady Graham,” said that lady. Then light suddenly burst upon her.

  “Was it the Mixo-Lydian Ambassador, Madame Gradka, who sent you here?” she asked.

  “Pliss, yes,” said the girl. “Her mother which is dead is cousin to my father’s sister which is dead too, God be thanked,”

  “Was she not a nice person then?” said Lady Graham.

  “Bog! if it is nice you are sayink you misconstruct yourself,” said the girl. “It was the upside-down of nice which she was. Schwenk I call her, which is a peeg which is becomm dead and eaten of fat flies. They are so fat because of all the meat they have eaten weech is becomm bad and so is thrown out to the little river.”

  “Gutter, I think you mean,” said Lady Graham kindly. “Not a river like the Rising.”

  “So, I thank you,” said the girl. “Now shall I know that a large river is a river and a little stream is a gutter. Pliss, which name do you have?”

  Lady Graham, finding her well meant efforts at education not very successful, gave her name to the girl and followed her along the black and white marble flagged hall to the long drawing-room which ran from the front to the back of the house and was now full of the afternoon light. With real pleasure she saw that both understanding and money were being given to the house. The paint was fresh, the mahogany doors well polished and their ornate brass handles newly rebrassed (or whatever one does with brass). The window curtains at the turn of the shallow stairs were warm apricot velveteen or plush or whatever that material is now; the handsome brass lantern hanging from the hall roof had been renovated and looked like gold; an oriental rug in the hall was not too wide to hide the beauty of the flags, nor so narrow as to look stingy and of just the right amount of faded-ness, for one not to feel one oughtn’t to walk on it. The words “a haunt of ancient peace” floated into her ladyship’s mind and as gently floated away before she could pin them down.

  “Lady Graham is comm,” said the girl, opening the drawing-room door. “You will be house-mistress to her, yes? I shall prepare tea.”

  “Thank you, Dumka,” said her mistress. “How kind of you to come, Lady Graham. Father said you were coming sometime and your husband knows Dick, I think. At least Dick J was under him at the War Office for a bit. I do hope you will like the house.”

  “Indeed I do,” said Lady Graham, looking round the drawing-room which was blooming under the hands of people who loved it and could pay for its caprices. “What * lovely curtains. They are the same as the curtains on the stairs, aren’t they?”

  “Aren’t they divine?” said Mrs. Carter. “They are really quite old. My husband’s great-uncle I think it was, who was an archdeacon, married a Lady Sibyl Somebody, and they had lots of money and went to Italy a lot and brought back lots of things and the stuff for these curtains. I say, would you like to see th
e house? I adore seeing people’s houses.”

  “If it wouldn’t tire you I should love it,” said Lady Graham. “I did go over the house when your brother was looking after that branch of the bank here, but he only used it in the week and it was really more like camping.”

  “Good old John-Arthur. I never knew anyone who took less care of himself,” said Mrs. Carter. “I’m always telling him he ought to marry, but he hasn’t. Never mind; better late than never. Do come upstairs,” and she led the way, stopping at every few steps to point out some beauty of the house, or some beauty she and her husband had added to it, or were just going to add. To Lady Graham’s fastidious eye, which was also the eye of a sensible woman of the world, all was good. Money had been spent in the right way, on the right things. Nothing looked too new, everything looked fresh and clean.

  “When I think what it was like when I saw it last year—” said Lady Graham, leaving her sentence unfinished. But her hostess understood and said it certainly had been a bit of a headache, still it had been fun to do.

  “And I’ll tell you who has been awfully helpful,” she said. “That nice Mr. Halliday, our landlord. His daughter—Sylvia Leslie at Rushwater—is rather a friend of ours and she put in a word for us. Her brother was nice but he’s a bit stuffy, isn’t he? I mean he’s not awfully keen on parties and things.”

  “Poor George Halliday. I expect he is too tired by the end of the day,” said Lady Graham. “He is running the whole farm now his father is so ill, and the cows and the pigs. Of course he’s got one or two labourers, but be bas to do the thinking as well as the work.”

  “We did go over to Hatch House one day,” said Mrs. Carter, “and I liked Mrs. Halliday awfully. But it was a bit of a depresser to see old Mr. Halliday sitting in his chair and not always quite knowing what one said. If daddy got like that I really don’t know what I’d do.”