Never Too Late Page 6

  Captain Fairweather asked if they could drive him, but he had his own car and went away.

  The rain had now ceased drumming upon the roof and was merely coming down steadily upon the already flooded cricket ground. Most of the guests had given up hope and gone home, while Everard Carter had asked some of the rest to come over to the Headmaster’s house for a glass of sherry.

  “I think we had better be going on to Miss Hampton’s now,” said Mrs. Morland. “She lives in the village. What did you think of her?”

  Edith, rather cautiously, said she looked very kind and she thought she had seen her at a prizegiving once and didn’t she wear rather manly clothes. “Uncle David and Aunt Rose knew one or two of that sort in New York,” she continued, “only their clothes were beautifully cut. I didn’t much care for them. And I don’t think they much cared for me either,” she added, by which words Mrs. Morland was on the whole relieved, for to have had to explain those worthy ladies Miss Hampton and Miss Bent to a young girl was rather beyond her. Not that she need have been troubled, for Edith, with her mother’s excellent worldly sense and a winter in New York with cousins who knew everyone, was tolerably well prepared for most aspects of life.

  So they got into Mrs. Morland’s car and drove out of the School Yard, then to the left, straight on across the bridge over the Rising and to the left again, past the Red Lion. A little further on they came to a strip of grass on the right, beyond which stood a row of four two-storied cottages of mellow red brick surmounted by a stucco pediment on which the words “Wiple Terrace 1820” were still visible. They had been erected, as all friends of Southbridge know (though not Friends in the shape of being a society with subscriptions) by Mr. Wiple, a small master builder, as a permanent memorial to his four daughters and now belonged to Paul’s College at Oxford, who also owned the Vicarage and the presentation to the living.

  As we have more than once noted in earlier volumes of this meandering Chronicle, Wiple Terrace has been famed for its hospitality ever since Miss Hampton, the well-known author of Chariots of Desire, A Gentle Girl and Boy and many other powerful novels on kindred subjects, came to live in Adelina Cottage with her friend Miss Bent. Of the three other cottages Maria and Louisa were at present occupied by Mr. Traill and Mr. Feeder, assistant masters at Southbridge School, and Editha by Mrs. Feeder, the widowed mother of Mr. Feeder. Great harmony reigned in the terrace, its inhabitants seeing eye to eye on the subject of drink in all its aspects, and the only occasions when any slight cloud arose were when Mr. Traill objected to Mr. Feeder’s wireless which could pick up far too many stations and foreign ones at that and far too loud, or when Mr. Feeder said if Mr. Traill put on that blinking record once more he would shoot at sight. As for Mrs. Feeder, she accepted Miss Hampton and Miss Bent as equals and women who knew what was what, exercised towards Mr. Traill a kind of motherly bullying against which he was far too afraid to expostulate, and treated her son as a well-meaning child of arrested development.

  The yellow door of Adelina Cottage was ajar and from inside came a noise of talk. Since we were last within its hospitable walls the owners had made a slight change in the architecture. The wall of the narrow passage from which the sitting-room opened had been removed, so that the room occupied the full width of the house, except for the staircase whose banisters had been screened by matchboarding which went up to the ceiling, with one archway in it so that anyone going upstairs could look through at the people below, rather as Punch looks out of his house at the crowd. About three feet of what had been the partition wall had been left by the front door and a door with a glass top put across the passage, so that with care the visitor could enter, as it were, into a lock; and when the outer door had been shut could be admitted to the drawing-room. Much the same had been done in Editha Cottage at the other end of the terrace and it certainly gave a little more space for guests and bottles.

  Within there was a fire, highly suitable to the season, as seasons seem to have forgotten what is expected of them. Miss Hampton, in a gentlemanly black suit with a white silk shirt and a stock, black silk stockings, and very neat black shoes with silver buckles, came forward to welcome Mrs. Morland and then Edith, whom she had seen occasionally when the Leslie boys were showing their young cousin the sights of Southbridge.

  Edith then went to say how do you do to her other hostess, Miss Bent, for Lady Graham, whatever her more involuntary shortcomings as a parent may have been where her dearly loved youngest daughter was concerned, had brought her up with very good manners—as indeed she had done with all her offspring. We may add that her three sons, all of whom were following their father in the army, had each separately told her that her insistence on behaviour had been of the greatest help to him in his career. And we think that these same good manners are going to continue to help them all through their careers whether purely military, military-administrative, or military-political; or even on Boards of Directors when they retire.

  “We are pleased to see you,” said Miss Bent, who was looking quite her worst in a sage-green djibbah. And as few of our young readers will know what a djibbah is (or was when we were stout but comely, in our far off youth when King Edward the Seventh was on the Throne) it is a dress with no shape at all, usually made from a kind of loosely woven material in art shades, with pieces of flowered art silk in similar or contrasting tones (both of which are equally horrid) as a kind of yoke in front and behind, with extensions down each arm. The sleeves are short. The whole dress—in the beautiful words of the poet Rossetti unclasped from neck to hem—is calculated to show off even the slimmest and most elegant figure to great disadvantage, especially when worn, as Miss Bent was wearing it this evening, with a kind of undershirt of yellow butter muslin with long baggy sleeves. She was also strung with some half dozen of her collection of bead necklaces, some of wood, some of glass, which clanked majestically as she moved. And then in came Louisa and Maria in the shape of Messrs. Traill and Feeder, both gentlemen with a bottle at each side like John Gilpin, followed closely by Mr. Feeder’s mother, whose glittering eyes, bony figure, and claw-like hands covered with rings, interested Edith very much.

  “Spanish dry sherry,” said Mrs. Feeder, setting a bottle down on the window sill. “Dry isn’t the word. Lifts the skin off your teeth. Who is your charming friend, Miss Hampton?”

  Edith looked round to see who the charming friend was and found it was herself, which surprised her very much and she smiled at Mrs. Feeder who seemed to be very kind in spite of her witch-like aspect.

  “Gin, It., French, Whisky, Sherry,—name it,” said Miss Bent to Mrs. Feeder.

  “Vermouth for me,” said Mrs. Feeder. “One third French, two thirds It. I never mix my drinks.”

  An expression of shame and anguish passed over Miss Bent’s face.

  “Hampton,” she called across the room. “Have we any 1 French vermouth? I am sure there was a bottle yesterday.”

  “I finished it with Mr. Wickham,” said Miss Hampton, “when he came in to say he couldn’t come today. My fault, Bent; my fault.”

  “No, Hampton,” said Miss Bent, not to be outdone in generosity. “The fault was mine,” which Mrs. Robin Dale, had she been present, would at once have recognized as a quotation from her favourite poet, Lord Tennyson. “You asked me to order some at the Red Lion. I forgot,” with which noble words she metaphorically bared her bosom for the sword of outraged friendship to be sheathed in it.

  “And you write perhaps?” said Miss Hampton to Edith. “All the Young write.”

  Edith said only poetry and on being pressed she recited her juvenile poem about the Bishop and the fish in the Palace pond that used to come for bread when a bell rang, but this Bishop had been so stingy that he took away the bell; and how Edith’s brothers had found it and put it in its place and the Bishop was ashamed to take it away again. Mrs. Morland sat and wondered a little at her guest, but then she remembered that Edith had had a season in New York which seemed to her to explain everything, though she
could not have said why. And in any case the child was being perfectly natural and not in the least conceited, so let her go on.

  But Edith, though very willing to do what her hostesses wished, was beginning to feel tired and would gladly have gone back to High Rising but it would not be polite to say so. The talk went on and on, largely about people and things she did not know about and there were plenty of odds and ends to eat, but nothing really satisfying. Even what Nurse used to call, rather threateningly, A nice bowl of bread and milk would have been welcome. But there was not so much noise as there would have been at a party of the same size in New York, so she decided to try to keep awake and listen to other people talking.

  “I tried to ring you up just after tea,” said Mrs. Feeder to Miss Hampton, “but they said the line was engaged. I tried again, but no luck.”

  “It was My Doing,” said Miss Bent, suddenly taking the stage like the villainess who was Misled in youth by a Deceiver but really has a heart of gold and foils his latest wicked design by sacrificing her life to save the honour of a pure girl. “I know Hampton cannot bear the telephone when we have a party. She is too sensitive. So I cut it off.”

  Mr. Traill, much interested, said he had always wondered how people cut a telephone off, because he understood that if you cut the line with a pair of scissors you got a frightful shock unless you wore rubber gloves.

  “Quite simple, my dear man,” said Miss Bent. “I took the receiver off in the bedroom. You know we have one there. Hampton might want to ring her publisher up.”

  It did occur to several of those present not only that one’s publisher might find it inconvenient to be rung up at night when he was not at the office, though inconvenient was not quite the word as you could not miss what you did not know you had lost, but that if you left the receiver off for a matter of several hours the exchange might begin to take an interest in you and even feel annoyed; but no one liked to disillusion Miss Bent.

  Mrs. Morland said she gave the girl at the exchange an advance copy of her latest book every year and it worked wonders.

  “Hampton could not do that,” said Miss Bent in a reverent way. “Never has she Paltered,” which impressive words left her hearers speechless, all except Mrs. Morland, who said in a rebellious undertone that you could only palter with something; not palter just by itself. As it was obvious that Miss Bent thought palter to be the equivalent of bribe, a general effort was made to change the subject.

  “Do tell me,” said Mrs. Morland to Miss Hampton, “do you work out your books beforehand or do they come to you in a flash?”

  Miss Bent, casting a look of reverent admiration at her friend, said it was a privilege to see genius at work and to be privileged to guard and shelter it, and then wished she had not used the word privilege twice; for the extra “d” the second time could not really be counted.

  “Dear woman,” said Miss Hampton to Mrs. Morland, paying not the slightest attention to her friend’s tribute, “you and I are Makers; in the beautiful old sense of the word which is applied to those who create by the living word; or in these times by the written word.”

  “I have heard Hampton repeat a sentence aloud as often as ten times,” said Miss Bent, “before she put it on paper, the better to get the exact sense, the feeling, the emotion of the written word.”

  “I wish I could do that,” said Mrs. Morland to Miss Hampton with a kind of frank good-natured envy. “Now I could not possibly say one single word aloud. I get an exercise book and a pencil and sit down in great rage and annoyance and make the pencil write something. It doesn’t matter what, just something.”

  “ ‘A sunset touch,

  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one’s death,

  A chorus-ending from Euripides’ ”

  said Mr. Traill. And as the whole company were struck silent, he added “Browning.”

  “A great thinker,” said Miss Hampton, “but not much knowledge of human nature. Now Shelley, in the Cenci—”

  “And then what do you do next,” said Mrs. Feeder with great presence of mind, at the same time casting a basilisk eye on Mr. Traill.

  “Well, I don’t really know” said Mrs. Morland. “But really it is Miss Hampton’s turn because she was going to tell us about how she works.”

  “I find,” said Miss Hampton graciously, “that Mr. Traill’s quotation is not inapt. One thing leads to another. For instance, it was reading Keats’s beautiful and moving lyric, In a drear-nigh ted December, that gave me the title of one of my best-selling books, ‘A Gentle Girl and Boy’.

  “Hampton does not say,” said Miss Bent reverently, “that it was Blake who inspired what I still think her finest book. You tell them, Hampton.”

  “As I can never follow the tune to which ‘Jerusalem is now sung,” said Miss Hampton, “on account of its not beginning at the beginning, it is difficult to explain exactly.”

  Her audience, not at all sure of her meaning, were silent.

  “Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” said Mrs. Morland. “Most tunes begin with the beginning, but in Jerusalem it doesn’t seem to. I mean, when the preface, or introduction, or whatever you call it is over I can never get in quickly enough with ‘And,’ which seems a silly word to begin a song with. But it does wander a good deal in the middle too. What was the book, Miss Hampton?” But Miss Bent, shocked by such ignorance, leapt into the breach and said it was the book which got the Prix d’Immondices in Paris, Chariots of Desire, about the sex life of lorry-drivers.

  “I altered the words slightly of course,” said Miss Hampton. “Blake wrote ‘chariot of fire.’ I altered this, substituting ‘desire’ which occurs two lines earlier, for ‘fire.’ ”

  A kind of hum of approval rose from her audience, chiefly, we think, because no one had the faintest idea what to say. Mrs. Morland, looking at Edith, suddenly realized that the child was tired, and no wonder. So she thanked Miss Hampton and Miss Bent very much for the party. Edith, almost stumbling with boredom, said good-bye as politely as she could and Mrs. Morland took her away.

  “I am so sorry, my dear,” she said as they drove back. “I am always amused by those women and I forgot you must be tired.”

  “Not really tired,” said Edith. “Please, Mrs. Morland, don’t think I wasn’t enjoying myself, because I was. But I did feel so sleepy” at which Mrs. Morland laughed, very kindly, and sped on through the evening to High Rising. Here Stoker was waiting for them with all the fresh village news.

  “Not now, Stoker,” said Mrs. Morland. “Put some hot milk in Miss Graham’s room. She is going to bed at once.”

  “Oh, good-night and thank you for a lovely day, Mrs. Morland,” said Edith, almost tottering as she spoke. And what was more, she meant it. When Mrs. Morland went up, half an hour later, Edith was fast asleep.

  “Nice girl,” said Mrs. Morland aloud to herself, “Very nice girl,” and then she settled herself to her writing.

  CHAPTER 3

  On Sunday morning Edith was woken at nine o’clock by Stoker with breakfast on a tray.

  “Oh!” said Edith, sitting up as quickly as possible. “Have I overslept myself?”

  “Now, don’t you commence to worry,” said Stoker, setting down the tray on a chair. “Young heads need plenty of sleep. Take it while you can get it, because you never know what’s coming. That’s what my mother always said to me and I didn’t pay no attention, but when father took to coming home at three in the morning the worse for drink then I knew what mother meant. And she knew,” Stoker added darkly. “Now you put that woolly round your shoulders and sit up. Here’s another pillow. Still there’s much to be thankful for in this life and we may as well be thankful for it here as only the Lord knows what the next life will be. Same thing all over again, I dessay, but if I meet father there I’ll tell him a thing or two. Last time I saw him was when the police fetched me and mother, the day after Easter Monday it was, to see him at the mortuary. Tes, that’s him all right,’ I said, ‘and a good riddance of bad rubbish.’ The
Benefit Society buried him and it was a lovely funeral. Mrs. Morland says don’t you hurry to get up. She’s writing some of her books, poor thing, and church is at eleven.”

  She then laid the tray across Edith’s legs and went away.

  Edith, who in spite of her New York season was still younger inside than she appeared from outside, ate her breakfast with a good appetite, reflecting upon the events of the previous day and the peculiar but not unattractive party she had been to. It then occurred to her that while everyone had been very nice the men had paid no attention at all to her. Not that she was in the least mortified by this, but her American experiences had conditioned her (dreadful word, but useful and probably passing into English Usage) to attention from men, and she had been distinctly gratified by the number of her beaux and the flowers they so richly sent on every occasion or even on none at all. But on reflection she had to confess that Mr. Feeder and Mr. Traill, though very nice, were not exactly beaux. More like uncles, though this com-parsion would have been indignantly rebutted by both gentlemen. And then she put the tray on a chair and presently was surprised to wake up again and find Mrs. Morland in the room.

  “Oh, good morning, Mrs. Morland,” she said sitting up. “I’m awfully sorry. I must have gone to sleep again.”

  “Quite right too, at your age,” said Mrs. Morland. “It’s ten o’clock now. I thought we would go to church at eleven and then go on to Lord Crosse. He doesn’t lunch till half past one, so we shall have plenty of time. The Vicar is rather dull, but he does read the morning service properly.”