Never Too Late Read online

  “I say, John-Arthur,” said Edith as they sat down. “How grown-up do you feel?”

  Mr. Crosse said he hadn’t the faintest idea and what did she mean.

  “Well,” said Edith, having first given an ear to what she still secretly called The Grown-Ups and found them well away on the subject of the newly discovered sewer at Rising Castle, “I mean I really feel quite grown-up now mostly, anyway at the Towers, or when I was with Uncle David and Aunt Rose in New York, but somehow the minute I get home I am un-grown-up again.”

  “Quite normal,” said Mr. Crosse. “Home is the last place where one is grown-up. I’m really pretty independent—I mean I could quite well afford not to live at home and sometimes I wish I did—or do I mean didn’t. But while mother was ill I couldn’t suddenly move out for good and then she died and father was alone. I did have a kind of bachelor lodgings last year at the bank’s temporary offices in Hatch End—”

  “I remember, of course,” said Edith, “and how mother wanted to re-arrange the whole house for nurseries which was rather a work of supererogation as you were a bachelor.”

  “Indeed I remember that,” said Mr. Crosse. “I do adore Lady Graham.”

  “Everyone does,” said Edith, simply as one stating a fact.

  “Everyone meaning Everyone?” said Mr. Crosse.

  “Don’t try to muddle me, John-Arthur,” said Edith, with a kind of appeal in her voice which Mr. Crosse couldn’t quite understand.

  “Far be it from me to be the last man in the world to do so,” said Mr. Crosse sententiously, giving a quick look at Edith who remarked with the primness which it amused Mr. Crosse to provoke: “Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle and that’s Logic because Mr. Carton at Harefield told me so. Or if it wasn’t that it was something else,” she added, beginning to laugh. So Mr. Crosse laughed too and their talk went back to the Old Manor House in Hatch End which belonged to Squire Halliday and had lately been for a short time the home of a branch of the Barchester bank of which Lord Crosse was a director.

  “You know my father has got a long lease of the house from the Hallidays now,” said Mr. Crosse, “and my elder married sister is just moving in. She has some children—I never quite know how many—which I find very expensive.”

  Edith asked why.

  “Being an uncle,” said Mr. Crosse. “Two married sisters with families are extremely expensive. Birthdays and Christ-mases. But some people are born to be uncles.”

  “And some to be aunts,” said Edith. “I’ve got all Emmy’s children—that’s my eldest sister who married Tom Grantly and knows all about cows at Rushwater—and one of Clarissa’s that married Charles Belton at Harefield. But she’s sure to have more. We are highly prolific on the female side.”

  “Ridiculous girl,” said Mr. Crosse, though very kindly. “And how many are you going to have?”

  “Two of each anyway,” said Edith, “but I haven’t decided if I’ll get married or not,” and she looked quickly at Mr. Crosse and away again; rather deliberately, we fear.

  “Nor have I,” said Mr. Crosse calmly, at which Edith had to laugh.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Morland and Lord Crosse were having a delightful talk about books and the wonderful moment when Sherlock Holmes had burst upon their young lives.

  “My parents,” said Lord Crosse, “had the original editions with pictures by Sydney Paget.”

  “I and my brother used to buy The Hound of the Baskervilles as it came out in the Strand Magazine every month,” said Mrs. Morland. “The Strand was a reasonable size then and you could get it for fourpence halfpenny instead of sixpence at some shops, I can’t think why. And now it is dead.”

  “Not quite, is it?” said Lord Crosse. “I have an impression that I saw it at my dentist’s not long ago.”

  “Worse than death,” said Mrs. Morland in her deepest and most impressive voice. “It looks like a Digest now. And why Digest I have never known.”

  Mr. Crosse, on hearing these words rather meanly deserted Edith and plunged into the conversation to ask what Mrs. Morland meant.

  “Exactly what those words always connote,” said Mrs. Morland, thus impressing all her hearers, “though I daresay I am not saying what I mean because I find one mostly doesn’t. I believe,” she added in a very learned way, “that what I mean is lucus a non lucendo. Though exactly what that means,” she added, to the further confusion of the Crosses, “I do not know either.”

  “I wish more than ever that you had known my wife,” said Lord Crosse when he had finished laughing—not but that his laughter was very kind. “That was just the kind of way she liked to talk. Her mind worked so quickly that I was nearly always a yard behind.”

  “I think your mind is a bit like that, John-Arthur,” said Edith, eyeing Mr. Crosse in an impersonal way, and then the talk changed to the extreme horribleness of Lord AberfordDury—he who was Sir Ogilvy Hibberd and had been so signally routed by old Lord Pomfret over the matter of Pooker’s Piece.

  “One wouldn’t mind the fellow so much if he would stick to his own business,” said Lord Crosse. “I’m a business man myself and find his various speculations interesting if not always sound. But now he is trying to get onto the West Barsetshire County Council there will be no holding him.”

  “Away with such a fellow from the earth” said Mrs. Morland thereby impressing her hearers, who much to their discredit did not recognize the reference.

  Edith said it would be very nice if Lord Aberfordbury would marry the Dreadful Dowager, by which name Victoria, Lady Norton, was known to most of the county. This was followed by a very pleasant discussion as to which people they didn’t like should be married, whether they wished it or not, to other people equally disagreeable, Mr. Crosse being judged the winner by his proposed union of the Bishop’s wife—supposing his lordship to be dead and buried—to Mr. Harvey of the Ministry of Interference, with the rider that Mr. Harvey’s sister, a determined civil service careerist, should marry the more disagreeable of the two Barchester cobblers in Barley Street.

  As lunch drew to an end Edith, who had answered Mr. Crosse’s last remarks rather vaguely, addressed her host with the words, “Oh, Lord Crosse, could I ask you something?”

  Lord Crosse said he was sure she could.

  “It is just about your butler,” said Edith. “You see he was at the Towers for ages and I think it would be Tact if I called on him in his pantry. Of course I don’t really remember old Uncle Giles, but I know mother had a talk with Peters when she was here last year, so if I had one today I could say she sent him her kind regards.”

  Mr. Crosse remarked aloud to himself “Little Liar.”

  “No, John-Arthur, diplomatist,” said Edith primly. “Peters will like me to come because it’s The Family, and then he will like it if you invite me again.”

  Lord Crosse said gravely that it was an excellent idea and would doubtless improve his own status with Peters. Mrs.

  Morland began to laugh, though very kindly, and Edith felt her cheeks peony-red, though to the unbiased eye of young Mr. Crosse they wore a very becoming pink flush.

  “Look here,” he said, seeing her slight embarrassment, “this would be quite a good moment. He will be putting the silver away. Come along and I’ll present you. May I leave you with my Papa, Mrs. Morland?” to which Mrs. Morland, amused, said By all means and the two went off together.

  “As our young people have deserted us, Mrs. Morland, shall we go to my wife’s sitting-room?” said Lord Crosse. “I keep it much as it was and I should like you to see your own books which gave her so much pleasure,” which suggestion pleased Mrs. Morland greatly and her host took her upstairs to a large pleasant room on the first floor overlooking the garden.

  “This used to be a bedroom, said Lord Crosse, “but when my wife was an invalid I had it made into a sitting-room for her, as it opens into her bedroom. She was able to spend a good deal of time here till the last few weeks. I had that bookcase specially made for her” and he showed Mrs. Morlan
d a book-case near the window, almost entirely filled with her own works.

  “OH! Lord Crosse” was all she could say.

  “I think she had all your books,” said Lord Crosse with some pride. “She bought them as they came out. In fact she had a standing order with her bookseller for two copies every time.

  “Not two!” said Mrs. Morland.

  “Yes, always two,” said Lord Crosse. “Will you have a cigarette?”

  “Oh thank you so much, but I don’t know how to smoke,” said Mrs. Morland.

  “Nor did my wife,” said Lord Crosse, “so I rather got out of the habit myself, except of course for a pipe when I was about the place. Yes, she always bought two copies, one for her bedroom and one for her sitting-room, but she wouldn’t lend them to anyone.”

  “Quite right,” said Mrs. Morland in a firm tone.

  “Oh, really?” said Lord Crosse. “I thought it was a help to authors if one lent one of their books to a friend. I mean it would encourage people to read them.”

  “Now, my dear Lord Crosse” said Mrs. Morland, though to Lord Crosse’s not insensitive ear the word dear sounded slightly ominous, “does it ever occur to you why people write books?”

  “Well, I hadn’t much thought about it,” said Lord Crosse. “I had a sort of idea they wanted to express themselves. Not all, of course, so charmingly as you do.”

  “My dear good man,” said Mrs. Morland with a patience far more alarming than any kind of umbrage, “practically all of us write to educate our children, or help our grandchildren, or supplement our small incomes, or to be able to travel. Not for the sake of Literature.”

  “I’m afraid I’m rather unliterary,” said Lord Crosse meekly and obviously surprised.

  “I don’t think the word literary means anything at all, except names—like the Times Literary Supplement,” said Mrs. Morland firmly. “Of course I don’t know what other people feel like, but when my husband—who was quite nice but really very uninteresting—died, I had to do something, so I wrote books.”

  “But you must always have had it in you,” said Lord Crosse.

  “I daresay I had,” said Mrs. Morland, “but you can have things in you for ages only they don’t come out, so you don’t know they are there. I wrote a story about a dressmaker’s shop, in a kind of desperation, and then Adrian Coates saw it and said it was so bad that it was worth publishing. So after that I wrote a book every year till it got into a kind of habit. About twenty-five there are now, not counting one or two extras that weren’t about Madame Koska.”

  “Now, what were those extra books—those off the record books if you prefer it—I wonder,” said Lord Crosse. “Not of course if you would prefer to remain anonymous, like Lady Silverbridge who goes on writing as Lisa Bedale. What about that Life of Molly Bangs?”

  Mrs. Morland, a middle-aged woman with four grown-up sons and a considerable reputation as someone who could be relied on to produce a Nice Book regularly every year, sat and stared at her host, going gently red in the face.

  “Not if you would rather not talk about it,” said Lord Crosse. “Personally I think it is charming. Just enough solid fact—and your own delightful brand of humour. It was my wife who spotted it as yours. She bought three copies, because she said it would be a Rare Book one day. I mean in a nice way,” he added hastily.

  “It was really because I hadn’t much to do that year,” said Mrs. Morland. “I had done my Madame Koska book. Then I came across Molly Bangs in some old Memoirs and thought she was worth following up. She lived at hack and manger with half the aristocracy. So then I thought Fd find out some more. So I went to London for a bit—I used to have a small flat there—and researched like anything, really just for fun.”

  “But why did you write it under another name?” said Lord Crosse.

  “It all came of the circulating libraries,” said Mrs. Morland.

  “You don’t mean they would have banned it?” said Lord Crosse.

  “Oh no, no such luck,” said Mrs. Morland. “But if you write the same book over and over again as I do, people go on wanting the same book, so I didn’t think it would be safe to write about someone who wasn’t Madame Koska. So I thought Molly Bangs had better be by someone else and I invented Esme Porlock. He was quite a nice man, but a one-book man. He could never do it again.”

  “But could you?” said Lord Crosse.

  “No,” said Mrs. Morland. “But I really enjoyed going to places like the British Museum and the newspaper library at Hendon—that was before the war of course—and just reading and reading and then making notes in an exercise book which I always lost, or I couldn’t read the notes.”

  “ ‘Philip. Ogygia. What did?’” said Lord Crosse, half aloud.

  “OH! do you know ‘Happy Thoughts’?” said Mrs. Morland. “I thought no one read it now.”

  “Both parts. Original editions,” said Lord Crosse. “My wife had one too. That was partly why we got married. Here are hers,” and he took from a shelf two small well-worn books, their red covers and general appearance bearing the marks of much reading. “Haven’t you got them?”

  “I did,” said Mrs. Morland. “I suppose they got lost in some move. I couldn’t have given them away. And anyway I am the only one of the family who would care for them now. Out of date,” at which Lord Crosse made an indignant protest, saying that apart from motors and electric light and a few other slight differences, human nature was exactly the same.

  “It may be. But ours isn’t,” said Mrs. Morland. “When you have grown-up children—who are just as trying as small children and much more expensive—you do change.”

  “I shall not contradict you,” said Lord Crosse. “In fact I was pretty sure before I met you that you would be a person who changed—by which I don’t mean a changeable person,” he added. “You move with the times without effort. I thought my business—a kind of superior banking with which I won’t bother you—kept one abreast of the times. But I feel an old stick-in-the-mud when I think of your versatility.”

  “I don’t think it is very versatile to write the same book every year” said Mrs. Morland, determined not only to face the less agreeable facts of life but to invent them if necessary.

  “I shall not argue,” said Lord Crosse. “I shall merely stick to my own opinion. Thank you for coming up here. I always come and sit in this room with a sense of companionship, though she has left it. There will also now be your companionship,” at which words Mrs. Morland felt a little of that delicious stinging behind the eyes which means that pleasant tears, idle tears, luxury tears are not far away and that one is going to have that heavenly and too rare feeling of the rapture of grief when it has really become nostalgia and will not leave a scar. “Let us go down and see what our young people are doing,” said Lord Crosse. So they went down.

  Meanwhile Edith had managed to have a very pleasant time, beginning with a visit to the pantry where Peters, in his apron, was putting the silver away, giving each spoon, fork, or salt-cellar a caressing massage with the shammy.

  “I’m so glad Lord Crosse has proper silver, Peters,” said Edith, taking the chair that Peters had dusted for her with one of his own Pantry Dusters. “It would be awful to have to do cheap silver.”

  “I believe you, miss,” said Peters. “Like a good coachman having to learn to drive a cheap car when he’s been used to horses. His lordship has quite a good show of plate. Not that I would compare it with what we had at the Towers, miss, but times do change and a baron is not the same as an earl, though a nicer gentleman than his lordship I would not wish to work for.”

  “Do you ever go to the Towers, Peters?” said Edith.

  “I thought it better, miss, to make a Complete Break,” said Peters. “It would be very painful to me, miss, to see his present lordship living in what were the Housekeeper’s Rooms. I understand that his lordship)—and of course her ladyship—are carrying on as one would wish in other ways. His young lordship was over here the other day. I understand t
hat he and Mr. Crosse are trying to improve the flow of water in the Grotto. It is all done by Gravity, miss.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Edith, rather wanting to know how, but feeling that Peters might be embarrassed if he had to try to explain.

  “And when you are next at the Towers, miss,” said Peters, “will you be so kind as to remember me in a suitable way to Miss Merriman. A lady I respect, miss. I’ve never seen anyone, man or woman, as could handle his lordship—I mean the late earl—the way she did, miss. Now, his late lordship, he had a temper, miss. I’ve heard him in the old days curse the coachman up hill and down dale because the carriage was a minute too early. When I say half-past two, I mean half-past two/ his lordship said. ‘Not twenty-nine minutes past two, nor twenty-nine minutes to three. Why do you think I have the stable clock wound and set every week with all the house clocks? And if you can’t bring the horses up punctually you can get another job/ his lordship said. Now, with his lordship you knew where you were,” and he sighed at the thought of general degeneracy.

  “I had a lovely time in New York this winter with Aunt Rose and Uncle David,” said Edith. “They have a marvellous apartment in New York. A flat, you know.”

  “I did oblige young Lord Norton in his flat for two months in the Season before I came here, miss,” said Peters. “But you cannot be expected to do justice to yourself in a flat, especially with a pantry as looked into a well. Why, the other servants there, if servants you could call them which they weren’t worthy of the name, they joked across the well with the Honourable Miss Starter’s maid.”

  “How dreadful,” said Edith. “But Aunt Rose’s apartment didn’t have a well. It was a duplex—like a flat two stories high you know—and beautifully light everywhere.”

  Peters said darkly that wherever there was stairs there was trouble, whether it was the coals or the girls.

  “And the houseman mixed lovely cocktails and wore a white coat,” said Edith.

  Peters said nothing at all, with considerable effect, and it became abundantly clear to Edith that she was not giving satisfaction.