The Nutmeg Tree (11 page)

“To inspect me,” observed Bryan from the doorway.

Julia ignored the interruption.

“Sir William, isn't he?” she asked.

“Sir William Waring. He was a great friend of Grandfather's.”

That made him seventy at least, thought Julia gloomily. Men of seventy had no interest for her: they were always, in her experience, either doddering or spry; and the spry were the worst.

“About fifty-one,” said Bryan, who had been watching her face.

Julia ignored him again.

“And have you,” she asked Susan cunningly, “an Auntie as well?”

“Unmarried,” said Bryan.

Susan glanced at him sharply. “Are you meaning,” said that look—and a very Packett look it was—“to make fun of my mother? I do not suspect you,” said that look, “of deliberate impertinence; but aren't you a little forgetting yourself?”

Warm gratitude flooded Julia's breast; it was sweet to be so protected by one's daughter, and for a moment that sweetness was all she felt. Then under her pleasure, marring it, stirred a feeling of guilt, almost of shame. For she didn't deserve such protection: Susan was wrong, and Bryan right. Bryan, because his own thoughts no doubt worked the same way, knew what she, Julia, was getting at: Susan's lovely mind never even suspected it. Yet from all this complication of wrongs and rights emerged one certain good: Susan had, possibly for the first time, recognized and admitted in her lover something alien to herself.

“She's never seen him against his own background,” thought Julia. “It's queer that I should be it.” She looked at her daughter's stern face, and at once Susan smiled. It was the most loving smile Julia had ever received from her. “Let her find
him
out without finding me out too,” prayed Julia selfishly; “I shan't be here long, O Lord!”

“Lady Waring,” said Susan, addressing herself pointedly to her mother, “died about ten years ago. I hardly remember her, except that she was very nice. They never had any children: I expect that was why they made such a fuss of me.”

“It must be dreadful to have no children, with a title,” said Julia seriously. “It seems such waste.”

Susan laughed. Like a good schoolmistress, she knew that severity should be tempered with kindness, and having properly frozen the atmosphere, she now proceeded to thaw it again.

“Uncle William isn't a baronet—he's a mere knight. He was something in the Admiralty, and they knighted him after the war. Will you have roses for your room, or a tangle?”

“A tangle,” said Julia. She still liked the roses best, but she wanted to show her gratitude.

Bryan lounged in and swung himself onto the table.

“What about me?” he asked. “What about my room?”

“You've flowers enough,” said Susan. “You've still the whole bunch we picked yesterday.”

“But I want one now, from you. Give me a rose, Susan.”

Flushed, smiling, very pretty, she broke off a yellow bud. Bryan received it with suitable gratitude. But his eyes were not on Susan; they looked over her shoulder, at Julia, with defiance.

2

That afternoon, immediately after lunch, Julia set out to look at a tree. Both Susan and Mrs. Packett were able to contemplate trees for minutes together, and her natural spirit of emulation made Julia covet the same power. There must, she thought, be something in it: some esoteric connection between garden-seats and the gentility she so much admired. For her daughter and mother-in-law were by no means isolated examples: every real lady Julia had ever met—most of whom, indeed, she had encountered actually at Barton—showed the same idiosyncrasy. On the Tuesday afternoon, therefore, Julia went out to have a whack at it herself.

She had selected her object the day before—a small
mirabelle
plum covered with hard yellowish fruit. Compared with the pines, to be sure, it had something of a twopence-coloured look; but for that very reason Julia felt it would be easier. She could work up to pines later on.

The
mirabelle
was situated on the second terrace, and as she walked up the zigzag path, dragging a garden-chair, Julia conscientiously looked about her. It was very pretty, and all the prettier because the vines were badly neglected. Between their rows the ground was green and sweet with clover and wild strawberry: where the wires had broken, full-leaved garlands, tinted turquoise-blue by sulphate, drooped and mingled with the tall flowering grass. All this Julia saw, and to a certain extent enjoyed; but the chair had a knack of hitting against her ankles, and she determined to put off all serious appreciation until she was comfortably seated. The path wound up: at the second angle it passed through a little grove of nut trees, some springing from the edge of the vine, some from the side of a great outcropping rock. There were steps cut in its base, and by peering through the nut boughs Julia could see the dilapidated shell of a tiny pavilion. But she did not allow it to distract her; she mounted steadily on, growing hotter and hotter, to the second terrace and the
mirabelle
plum.

“I'm going to bake,” thought Julia, as she set up her chair; and indeed the whole circle of the plain, on whose circumference she was placed, shimmered under a heat mist. In it the roofs and steeples of Belley, the smaller groupings of the villages, showed bright yet insubstantial; here and there, exquisitely distributed over the flat, rose small cone-shaped hills, each neatly girdled by a ring of poplars, and belonging, in that light, less to Agriculture than to Art. It was the landscape of a holy picture, in which saints, not peasants, should have enlivened the foreground; and Julia needed no more than one glance to identify it as a lovely view.

She then settled back in her chair, looked at the time, and gave her eyes and mind to the plum tree. It leaned gracefully towards her, as though sensible of the compliment; its small hard fruit, already faintly speckled, made her think of bird's eggs. They would look pretty in a mossy basket—like plovers'; and Julia wondered when they would be ripe. Would the nuts have been ripe, that she passed in the little thicket? From above they looked no more than bushes, the rock was a mere boulder, the pavilion a toy. Its roof peaked up like the roof of a pagoda: a stray architect, long before the Packetts came, had identified it as late eighteenth-century chinoiserie. But Julia's interest was purely human; what a place, she thought, for assignations! Did Susan ever meet Bryan there, when the house slept and a moon shone through the nut trees? But the bushes about the steps grew thick and undisturbed; Julia very much feared that the pavilion was being wasted. Poor thing, it would probably be quite glad of someone—glad to hear a kiss again, to be filled with delicious stifled laughter and the murmuring of lover's vows.…

“I bet it's seen a thing or two in its time,” thought Julia.

She looked at her watch. She had been sitting there twelve and a half minutes—practically a quarter of an hour. To stay longer, in that heat, would be little short of dangerous, so she folded her chair again and went down into the cool.

She was feeling extremely pleased with herself; but pride, notoriously, goes before a fall.

3

Returning by the front door, she found Susan, Bryan and the postman all in a group on the steps.

“Il y a quelqu'erreur,”
Susan was saying firmly. “Bryan, give it back at once.”

Always ready to join anything that looked like a crowd, Julia paused and craned over his shoulder. The object which Susan so eagerly repudiated was a picture postcard of extreme vulgarity.

“What things they do think of!” began Julia, much interested; and the next moment felt Bryan's elbow hard against her ribs. Susan was standing with a stony and averted face.

Furious with herself, still more furious with Bryan for the very reason that she should have been grateful to him, Julia drew back.

“Perhaps there isn't a mistake after all,” said Susan.

Bryan turned the card over so that Julia could see.

It was addressed to “Mrs. Packard,” and in the space for correspondence was scrawled a tender message from Fred Genocchio.

In spite of herself Julia felt the blood rise till she stood blushing like a schoolgirl. Ardently, violently, did she long to deny all knowledge of the thing; yet she had at the same time an obscure feeling that to do so would be to deny Fred himself. As though he had appeared on those steps in person, and she had cut him.…

So torn, she could not find a word to say; and at last Susan spoke for her.

“C'est bien,”
she said calmly, addressing the postman.
“J'ai mal lu
. Coming up the vine, Bryan?”

What with anger, mortification, and sentiment—the emotions called forth, in that order, by Bryan, Susan, and Mr. Genocchio,—Julia was glad to be left alone. The card now lay, in theory still unclaimed, on the stone balustrade; she took it up and bore it to her room. Fred had not written much, only four words; but a whole sonnet sequence could hardly have affected her more.
“Still thinking about you, Fred.”
He was still thinking about her! Despite her incredible hard-heartedness, amid the excitement and bustle of his professional affairs, he still thought of her! In her gratitude for the sentiment conveyed Julia almost forgave the tactlessness of the vehicle. For after all, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't
dirty
. He probably just chose it to try and cheer her up a bit, in case she was feeling blue.…

“Then he shouldn't have,” thought Julia, veering round again. “What business has he to think I'm not being happy? Conceit, that's what it is. Sheer conceit. He probably thinks I'm crying my eyes out for him!”

Then she sat down and cried hard.

4

From her seat under the pine trees old Mrs. Packett watched Susan and Bryan going up through the vine. Susan was a little ahead, walking as usual as though all gradients were alike to her; Bryan, his hands in his pockets, loped easily behind, taking long strides over the rough places, lagging on the smooth. They made a charming pair, thought Mrs. Packett: she had just said so, in the letter she was writing to Sir William.

My daughter-in-law [continued old Mrs. Packett] seems to like him too; but she is very properly reserving her opinion, and I think she agrees with me that Susan is too young. It has all turned out
perfectly smoothly;
as you know, I was
apprehensive
(about Julia coming here), but I am glad to say that I was wrong. I feel sure that you and she between you will be able to make Susan see reason. I want you to get on with her, William, and knowing your prejudices I am going to warn you now not to be put off by her appearance, which is a little
florid
. But she is really most pleasant and amiable, quite contented in this very quiet place, and I have a feeling that everything will turn out well. When I look ahead a few years D.V. and see Susan married, and perhaps great-grandchildren, and Julia with her nice little cake-shop, which I shall run up to town to inspect, I feel myself to be a very lucky old woman.

Such was Mrs. Packett's view of the situation; and by a curious coincidence the amiable Julia, having wiped her eyes and blown her nose, was even then presenting the very same view to a very different recipient.

5

She wrote:—

Dear Fred,—

Thank you for your card, though I won't say it wasn't a bit common, but I know you meant well. This is a lovely place, large house and gardens and a private vineyard with most lovely views. My daughter is the loveliest girl you ever saw, so fair and distinguished, and a real daughter to me. I am having a thorough rest and holiday, and enjoying it very much. How is Ma? Poor old bird, she wasn't half done up, was she. I often think of you all, and hope you are all having every success and the hand you all deserve.

Yours sincerely,—

J
ULIA
P
ACKETT
.

Don't send me any more of those postcards, Fred; the servants here are French, and you know what their dirty minds are.

Yours,—

J
ULIA
.

When it was finished she looked at his card and addressed an envelope to the Casino Bleu and to the house at Maida Vale. She had no French stamps, but there were some in the billiard-room; Susan and Mrs. Packett kept books of them, in the writing-table drawer.

Julia stepped out into the corridor and there paused. Could she just
take
a stamp, or ought she to pay for it? A lady, undoubtedly (thought Julia) would leave the money. She went back and fetched her bag; and on opening it in the billiard-room made the alarming discovery that when she had sent her letter to Fred Genocchio she would have only five francs left.

For almost the first time in her life Julia's courage failed. To be penniless in London was nothing; even in Paris—full of English and Americans as it was—she would not have despaired; but to be penniless among the Packetts! It was a blow so great that her knees absolutely gave under it. She sat down on the nearest chair, her bag still open on her lap, and contemplated the disaster with terrified eyes.

She ought to have thought, of course. She ought to have realized. But she had been so taken up with simply getting there, so unused to looking more than a week ahead that—well, that she just hadn't. And even if she had, from whom could she have borrowed? Who—more to the point—could she borrow from now? Involuntarily, Julia shook her head: if the sources had been dry when she left London, it would take more than long-distance work to make them flow afresh. Personality, that was what did it; and you couldn't, at least Julia couldn't, put personality into a letter. She had to be
there
. If she were only there now, she felt, she could borrow blood from a stone.

She could borrow from anyone in the world except Mrs. Packett, and Susan, and Bryan Relton.

Only the world, to all intents and purposes, had at the moment no other inhabitants.