Never Too Late Read online

  Mr. Choyce, as was his laudable custom, was waiting outside the church to greet his parishioners and to him Lady Graham introduced Mr. and Mrs. Carter in form. Just as they were getting into their cars a man, grey-flannelled in compliment to the season rather than the weather, came down the lane.

  “It’s John-Arthur,” said Edith.

  Mrs. Carter greeted her brother with the sisterly words that she and Tommy were going out to lunch and there was nothing at the Old Manor House but the nursery dinner which was probably nearly over.

  “You’d better come with us,” said Mr. Carter. “We’re going to Lady Graham’s and Miss Graham is with us.”

  “Oh, but I’m not invited,” said Mr. Crosse. “I only came over to look you up.”

  “Yes, you are, John-Arthur,” said Edith, looking out of the car. “Do come,” upon which invitation Mr. Crosse at once got into his sister’s car and began to talk to his brother-in-law about the chances that Fox, Sly and Co., would go into liquidation before the month was up. And as we have not the faintest idea what he meant we will say no more about it.

  Owing to the prevalence of pigs and poultry, there was always plenty to eat at Holdings in any emergency, but Edith, since her return from New York, had been so frightfully boring about food storage and a deep freeze that her father had lost his temper and had the largest and most expensive refrigerator that money could buy installed in the old dairy so that there could never be any difficulty about feeding unexpected guests. Not that the refrigerator had to be called upon today, for cook had bullied the butcher into a very large real sirloin of real home-grown beef and to mind he left the undercut on or that would be the last time he would be asked to have tea in the kitchen. So the addition of one more guest to the party was of no consequence and was indeed a good thing, making the numbers equal as it did. And if anyone thinks we have miscounted our numbers and are a man short, such an one is in error, for Mr. Choyce had a standing invitation to Sunday lunch and shortly afterwards turned up on his bicycle which he preferred to his car for short distances, on the grounds that it cost less, could be easily parked anywhere and was good for his figure, though this last was in excellent trim and did not need taking down.

  “Now don’t you forget, Odeena,” said cook to that young woman, “that if Mr. Choyce is here he’ll say grace. So when her ladyship and the rest have sat down, don’t you go making a noise with the plates till Mr. Choyce has finished.”

  After a slight difficulty in arranging the table because of the Carters and Mr. Crosse all being related, her ladyship got them placed to her satisfaction with Mr. Choyce in virtue of his office on one side of her and Mr. Carter as a guest for the first time at Holdings on her other side, while Mr. Crosse was between Mrs. Carter and Edith. Lady Graham was not entirely satisfied with this arrangement, which put Mr. Crosse and his sister next to one another, but reflecting that the ties of consanguinity would prevent their marrying and that at any rate Mrs. Carter even though she was John-Arthur’s sister, was married already, thought it wisest to leave things as they were. And as everyone could easily talk across the round table to everyone else, no one had any fault to find.

  The sirloin of beef was in superb condition. Mr. Choyce, a fine amateur carver, volunteered to deal with it which he did with exquisite skill and taste so that no one could grumble and those who liked fat also had a delicious piece, its outside slightly browned and crackly. The gravy, made by cook’s own hands from proper stock as had set nicely and done in the baking tin the way you get all the richness and no need for browning nor any of them meat cubes made of goodness knows what, was rich and superb. The potatoes were done to a turn under the joint, the sauce was made from cook’s own store of garden horseradish, the French beans were almost too young to be killed though well worth it, the salad picked early that morning and coolly fresh from the fridge.

  “I say, Lady Graham, this is Prime,” said Mr. Carter with his mouth rather too full, but so much heart in his words that Lady Graham overlooked it and said she was sure his father-in-law had very good beef.

  “I wish we had,” said young Mr. Crosse. “Our butcher doesn’t really understand beef. But,” he added, zealous for the honour of his father’s house, “we do get some Southdown mutton that is superb. It eats like sweetbread,” which remark caused his sister to say that whenever she went to stay at Crosse Hall she put on at least half a stone. Not to be beaten in his own parish, Mr. Choyce said that he had partaken of a sucking pig at the Hallidays’ and had been quite unable to eat anything for the next twenty-four hours, partly owing to feeling too full and partly because of the flavor which was so exquisite that he did not wish to spoil the memory of it.

  “What about you, Edith?” said Mr. Crosse. “Did you have something wonderful in New York? A barbecue, or clams, or corn on the cob, or gumbo?”

  Edith, considering these remarks as foolish and on the whole disrespectful to her dignity as a traveller, said coldly that she had not been in the South.

  “I say, you have missed something,” said Mr. Crosse. “When I was in Charleston—” but his sister very lovingly said that no one could care less what he ate in Charleston or anywhere else and could he tell her if father would be in that afternoon, as she had rung up twice and got no answer.

  “I expect no one was in,” said Mr. Crosse. “It’s Peters’s day off and father has gone over to High Rising.”

  “High Rising?” said Mrs. Carter. “Who on earth lives there?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Morland who writes the thrillers,” said Mr. Crosse. “She and father have made quite a friendship lately. You know mother loved her books.”

  “So do I,” said Mrs. Carter. “Father is a beast not to take me too.”

  “Perhaps you weren’t asked,” said her husband, though quite kindly; “and anyway you wouldn’t have got such a good lunch. Would it be grossly rude, Lady Graham, to ask for a third helping? It’s a thing I’ve not done since I was a schoolboy back for the holidays,” and far from thinking her guest rude, Lady Graham was delighted and said it reminded her of when her three boys were all at home for the holidays and James ate twelve sausages at breakfast for a bet with his brother John and then ate a thirteenth just to show.

  “I think it is such a good plan for him to go to lunch with Mrs. Morland, because then he can meet George Knox who writes all those historical books and call on Lord Stoke at Rising Castle,” said Lady Graham, who looked upon any expedition as a jumping-off point for visiting as many friends as possible, whether convenient to them or not—just as her mother Lady Emily would have done.

  “I don’t think he knows Lord Stoke properly,” said Mr. Crosse. “Only at the Barsetshire Archaeological and things of that sort. Besides Mrs. Morland is going to show him a book she once published under another name and perhaps give him an autographed copy,” which led to a conversation about people who wrote under other names like Ouida and that man who writes thrillers under six different names only I’ve forgotten what they are, which last contribution was from Mrs. Carter.

  “And that gifted woman who wrote the thriller about Richard the Third,” said Mr. Carter, “only I don’t remember her name. She had three, I think,” and so the talk drifted on in a highly intellectual way, each talker knowing perfectly well what book by which author he or she meant, but never being able to remember the author’s name or pseudonym and rarely able to describe the plot clearly.

  “Do you know, Mr. Choyce,” said Lady Graham, drawing the Vicar aside as it were from the conversation, “we never asked Caxton about the Old Manor House pew. But we were so much interested in your sermon that we quite forgot.”

  “I thought you might forget, Lady Graham,” said the Vicar, without rancour or disappointment, as one stating an ineluctable fact. “So I had a talk with Caxton myself and as far as I can make out the pew really belongs to Squire Halli-day because he is the Lord of the Manor here. I didn’t like to bother Halliday because he gets tired so easily, but I asked George to find out,”
/>   “He is a good boy,” said Lady Graham. “When I say boy he is as old as John-Arthur there,” and she looked across the table to where young Mr. Crosse was racing Edith with cherries, when you put the tip of the stalk between your teeth and eat the stalk and the cherry up into your mouth as quickly as you can, which is as a rule not very quickly. “Somehow,” she went on “those young men who were in the end of the war are younger than their age as well as being, alas, much older than their age,” and if anyone thinks it was affected to say alas, let us tell such an one that it can be done without affectation and is splendidly disconcerting to the person one is talking to and gives one a chance to go on talking oneself.

  “I know, Lady Graham, I know,” said Mr. Choyce. “I sometimes think they have missed a part of their youth and are trying to recapture lost time without knowing it. I will go up and see Halliday soon, on one of his good days. When he isn’t in pain he remembers very well.”

  “So did darling mamma,” said Lady Graham, “except at the very end when she wanted to see papa—she meant the Lord Pomfret who was her father—and then she thought Martin was his own father, my eldest brother who was killed in the first war. Perhaps it is like that in heaven, which I am sure will be a most confusing place, though of course perfectly delightful, rather like going abroad only worse. How we are to know who anyone is I don’t know, but I am sure it will all be arranged quite perfectly,” and her ladyship sank into a kind of glorious vision of The Hotel Paradise and Jerusalem with carpets of rainbows and plenty of celestial servants and all one’s nicest friends and relations.

  Mr. Choyce, feeling that heaven might perhaps be different for different people, did not like to correct Lady Graham, nor indeed could he have corrected her on any very definite grounds as after all what do the wisest of us know about what comes next. He was roused from these thoughts by his hostess adding, in what for her was almost an unkind voice: “But if Victoria Norton or that odious little Mr. Holt are there, I shall have to go somewhere else.”

  “If you mean the Dreadful Dowager,” said Mr. Choyce, for by that name was Victoria, Lady Norton, known all through Barsetshire, “I am all with you. But who is—or was—Mr. Holt?”

  “Oh, a dreadful little man who used to come to Rushwater and be a selfish bore,” said Lady Graham, who hardly ever said an unkind word about people she knew. “And he was odious to people who could not answer back, like Merry. You remember Miss Merriman who was mamma’s secretary?”

  Mr. Choyce said of course he did and had admired her more than he could say when she was with Lady Emily at Holdings, but now alas he saw her but too rarely.

  “That is because she is always at the Towers,” said Lady Graham, “but I must get her over here when Sally is in London. We will make a plan,” and Mr. Choyce felt, as he had often felt before, that there was in Lady Graham something approaching the angelic, by which no one would have been more surprised than Lady Graham herself.

  At this point Lady Graham felt as a hostess that Mr. Choyce was having too long an innings and turning to Mr. Carter asked him earnestly what he thought of the Holdings pew.

  “Do you know, I didn’t really think very much,” he began.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” said Lady Graham. “Was it the cushion on the seat? I do so know those long cushions, so full of knots. No one has ever unripped them and picked over the inside since the war.”

  Mr. Carter said he didn’t quite get her, by which he meant understand.

  “Well, in the chapel at the Towers,” said Lady Graham, “all the long cushions were stuffed with horsehair and every two years they were all taken into the vestry and unripped and all the horsehair taken out of them and teased.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” said Mr. Carter. “Teased?”

  “I am too old-fashioned,” said Lady Graham, looking at Mr. Carter with a kind of reproachful yet loving forgiveness. “What I should have said was that they were unripped and then all the horsehair taken out of them and—”

  “I am so sorry,” said Mr. Carter. “What a fool I am. Of course. The horsehair was taken out and teased.”

  “I knew you would understand,” said Lady Graham, gratified. “Before the war the village women did it here and they all had to tie handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses because of the dust from the horsehair, but now they borrow our big vacuum-cleaner and do the cushions in the pews.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Carter. “The dirt comes out but the horsehair stays knobbly. As soon as I get a free weekend I’ll have the cushions out of the Old Manor House pew and teased within an inch of their life. Seldom have I had such an uncomfortable morning. Not since my prep, school when Bullard Major put some nice prickly horse-chestnuts into my knickerbockers just before prayers and first they gave me hell—sorry, Lady Graham—and then they fell out and I got a whacking and two hundred lines for brawling in chapel.”

  “If you don’t mind a little gossip,” said Lady Graham, “Hetty Scatcherd who lives with her brother who is an artist at the end of the village is very good at anything of that sort.”

  Mr. Carter said he loved gossip and wanted to learn all he could about Hatch End as he had come to live there.

  “Don’t worry, Carter,” said Mr. Choyce who had overheard the end of this talk. “You will hear about everything from Hetty Scatcherd till you wish you were at Jericho, or even further. She can mend and darn quite beautifully, so your wife might find her useful. But don’t let her iron anything. She scorched my surplice quite dreadfully and though the patch she put in was a work of art, it is not what it used to be. I keep it for when the Bishop comes—which luckily is but seldom,” he added, which made even the Carters laugh, for though they were not up in Hatch End gossip they heard a good deal of talk from the Close in one way and another and were anti-Palace to the core.

  “I am so much relieved to hear you say that,” said Lady Graham. “Of course one should not judge people lightly—”

  Mr. Choyce said he had never yet heard Lady Graham say anything kind about the Bishop, and if that was judging people lightly he was all for it. He then begged her ladyship’s forgiveness.

  With raspberry fool and cream and cook’s special sponge-fingers and coffee the meal came gently to an end. The 1 Carters thanked Lady Graham in a heartfelt way for the lunch and the talk and before they knew where they were Mr. Carter had promised to speak for the Boy Scouts and Mrs. Carter for the Women’s Institute and both had pledged themselves to join the local Conservative Association and mentioned, in a very modest way, the gratifyingly large subscription they would like to give, after which they went home, slightly exhausted, but having enjoyed their visit very much.

  Edith invited Mr. Crosse to go up the river in the canoe and see if the young swans were about, so that Lady Graham and the Vicar were left peacefully alone. The Vicar said he ought to be going.

  “Do stay a little,” said Lady Graham. “I found some of darling mamma’s lovely drawings that I want to show you. I thought I had gone through everything of hers, but you remember how she used to put things away like a squirrel and I found these at the bottom of a pile of old photograph albums from Rushwater that Martin and Sylvia gave me.”

  The Vicar, who like most men had a respectful adoration for her ladyship, said he would like it of all things, so they went to the large drawing-room, known as the Saloon, which was now in an almost permanent state of shut-up-ness in the winter on account of the difficulty of heating it, but during the summer was kept open and aired.

  “Now, I ought to know where I put those drawings of mamma’s” said Lady Graham, “because I put them there specially so that I could find them, but I can’t. This is an old Visitors’ Book from Rushwater,” she added. “I really ought to give it back to Martin, but as I know a lot of the people in it, I won’t. Will you make a little room at that table, Mr. Choyce. Oh, thank you,” for with quick skilful movements the Vicar had folded back the faded green velvet cloth that lay over the table, shifted a pile of books
, boxes, pieces of material, and other non-disposable odds and ends to one end, dusted the cleared part with the end of a dust sheet off a neighbouring chair, and was standing to attention, ready for the next job.

  “Chairs, I think,” he said and brought them forward.

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Choyce,” said her ladyship sitting down, “and now we can have a really comfortable time. These are after the first war when we still thought everything would be all right for ever. This is a shooting party. Darling mamma always had a photographer over from Bar-chester when there was a shooting party and everyone had to be photographed whether they liked it or not. That is partly why they all look so cross, especially darling papa because he hated being photographed. Here he is, Mr. Choyce.”