The Nutmeg Tree (20 page)

Chapter 18

1

A new and remarkable atmosphere now descended upon the villa. When Julia first arrived there she had been struck by its air of lazy peace; all that was now changed. Susan went about looking exactly like the secretary of a committee, always with a pamphlet in her hand or a bundle of foolscap under her arm. Nor did she stop at carrying the things about with her; among the papers turned over by Sir William were the plans of the proposed club; Susan traced them in triplicate (to work out alternative forms of cloakroom accommodation) and pinned them to the billiard-room wall. Whenever Julia looked up from a bridge-hand she saw the words “Lavatories” in red ink. All this businesslike activity, moreover, stimulated Mrs. Packett afresh, and she telegraphed home to an estate agent for particulars of vacant shops in the Kensington district. The agent, also stimulated, telegraphed back, at such length, and detailing such enormous rents, that the old lady, as well as everybody else at the villa, was quite appalled. “What did you say in
your
wire?” they asked; but Mrs. Packett would not tell them. Undaunted, she next entered into correspondence with a number of gentlefolk who were advertising in the
Lady
for “partners with capital.” Some of them wired as well, saying “
OFFER OPEN TWO DAYS ONLY
,” Or “
MANY APPLICANTS WILL YOU CLOSE AT ONCE
?” By such innocent devices did they try to lure Julia into their tea-shops. Mrs. Packett, who was by now having the time of her life, wired back all round saying “
NO SEND PARTICULARS AND BALANCE-SHEET
”—and then the balance-sheets arrived, and she made Sir William check them.

“It's awful,” admitted Julia gloomily; “but what can I do, William? I can't
tell
her.…”

“I suppose not,” said Sir William, looking up from the highly complicated accounts of the Singing Samovar. “But it's rather hard on me. I might just as well be back in Whitehall.”

“Couldn't you make Bryan do them?”

“He can't add. Anyway, he's being roped in to draw up articles of partnership.”

Julia sighed. She hated the idea of yet another link between herself and that objectionable young man, but the fact remained that she and Bryan and Sir William had instinctively grouped themselves into a passively resisting minority. In numbers, it is true, they were superior, but Susan and her grandmother had the moral ascendency. They were Packetts. Julia resented their activities with all her heart, but she had never had a greater respect for her late husband's family.

“Here's Susan now,” she said. “Give me one of those sheets to look at.…”

Susan, however, had not come in search of assistants; she merely wanted to know Mr. Bellamy's private address.

“Because I think I'd better write to him direct, Uncle William,” she said; “then if there are any of my ideas he'd like to use, he can incorporate them with his own. It's no use putting two schemes in front of a committee; they simply start to argue.”

Sir William looked at her with healthy mistrust.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Have you been reading Bacon?”

Susan laughed.

“I'd certainly put a committee at a long table, and not a round one. One can't approve of him, but he did know how to get things done.”

Sir William looked through his diary, found Mr. Bellamy's address, and wrote it down for Susan to take away. She went without lingering, brisk and businesslike; but both Julia and Sir William, instead of getting on with their work, sat gazing after her.

“She doesn't approve of Bacon,” said Sir William at last. “If he were here, she'd certainly tell him so. And of course, she's perfectly right.”

“She's always right,” said Julia. It was wonderful to have a daughter who was always right, but even to her own ears, and as her next words betrayed, the tribute sounded cold. “She's a darling!” said Julia firmly.

Sir William went on with his accounts.

2

The third and youngest member of the minority, Bryan Relton, was having an even harder time than his elders. Like Julia, he had found in the original atmosphere of Les Sapins exactly the air that suited him, and the chill wind of efficiency, which now so steadily blew through it, did not brace him but simply made him shiver. Julia could at least warm herself in the comradeship of Sir William; Bryan was left out in the cold. When Susan first spoke to him of her new hobby he had been quite sympathetic and interested; if she liked that sort of thing, by all means (he felt) let her spend a wet afternoon making out plans. But the thing went on and on! Susan never forgot it! She was too strict with herself to neglect her studies, but the moment they were done she switched straight over to the Mile End Road.

“But it isn't the Mile End Road!” said Susan, in answer to one of her lover's complaints. “It's India Dock Lane.” And she showed him the exact spot on a sketch-map. Bryan looked at it sulkily; to him the Mile End Road—or, for the matter of that, India Dock Lane—was less an actual locality than a frame of mind.

“If you're not interested,” said Susan suddenly, “I wish you wouldn't pretend to be.”

“Of course I'm interested, if you are.”

“That's exactly what I mean. You're working up an interest just because of me.”

“But that's being in love,” pointed out Bryan. “Didn't you know?”

To his astonishment—for he rather expected a quarrel—Susan abruptly folded away the plan and asked him to come for a walk. They climbed the heights above Magnieu, up to the statue of the Virgin, and returned through woods. The views were magnificent, the conversation pleasantly light; but Bryan could not help feeling like a puppy being taken for a run.

3

With remarkable promptitude Mr. Bellamy replied; and Sir William, who happened to see the envelope, expressed his opinion to Julia that Susan was in for a bad quarter of an hour. For Mr. Bellamy had the habit of endorsing all suggestions which did not appeal to him with the one word “Rot!” He did it chiefly to relieve his feelings, and always meant to rub it out again if the papers were to be returned; but he was also absent-minded, and the habit had already lost him a philanthropic peer.

“He won't call Susan's scheme rot,” said Julia indignantly, “because I'm sure it isn't.” And as it happened she was right; Susan came out into the garden with a radiant face.

“I've had a compliment, Uncle William;” she announced gaily. “Mr. Bellamy says I'm the first woman he's had to deal with who's got average common sense.”

Julia looked at her daughter with wonder. If that was what Susan called a compliment …!

“You ought to be highly flattered,” said Sir William. “I suppose that's the highest praise he's ever been known to give.”

“It was the cloakroom arrangements for the girls,” continued Susan. “I'd got in half as many lockers again, and no overcrowding. They're going to begin converting next month, Mr. Bellamy says, and if I'm in town he's asked me to go and see him.”

“Then I'm only sorry you won't be,” said Sir William “You might prevent his insulting the architect. We haven't had a libel action yet, but I expect one at any moment.”

Susan gazed thoughtfully at the vineyard. Her longing was so evident that Julia marvelled again: from the expression on the child's face she might have been thinking about a hunt ball, or a new dance frock. It was really quite peculiar! But it was encouraging as well, and as soon as Susan had gone away—her visits were never long, because she had so much to do—Julia sat up with a pleased and maternal countenance.

“What's he like, William?”

“Who, my dear?”

“This Mr. Bellamy, of course. The one Susan's so struck on.”

Sir William looked at her with appreciation.

“You've a wonderfully active mind, Julia. Have you been crying in the front pew already?”

“Certainly not,” retorted Julia. “I've never cried at a wedding in my life.” She paused, and with her usual honesty added, “Not that I've been to many. They don't seem to come my way.” And at that she had to pause again, while a fine blush—the first for twenty years—overspread her face. For how dreadful if he should think … if she should seem to be suggesting!

“My dear—” began Sir William.

“About this Mr. Bellamy,” said Julia hastily. “Tell me what he's like.”

Sir William considerately did so.

“An untidy-looking beggar,” he said. “Unmarried, about thirty. Too honest to be popular, but highly intelligent.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“In a hungry sort of way I suppose he is. Rather like a Victorian curate gone Communist. I believe his father was an Oxford don.”

Julia sighed, half regretfully, half with relief. Though the young man sounded pretty dreadful to her, he seemed also to have most of the qualities Susan approved. It was a pity he was so far away.

“I ought to warn you,” added Sir William, “that as Susan's trustee I should be forced to disapprove. If he ever makes two hundred a year, that will be his limit.”

Susan's mother smiled indulgently. She knew perfectly well that if both Susan and she were set on a thing, Sir William wouldn't have a chance.

4

Although, by comparison with her daughter and mother-in-law, Julia at this time appeared completely idle, such an impression was deceptive. She had one constant, unguessed-at occupation. She was being good.

She had often wanted to be good before. She had a great admiration for goodness; she loved it sincerely and humbly, as a peasant loves a saint. If she had never been good before it was not because her spirit was unwilling, but because her flesh was so remarkably weak. She needed help—all the help she could get; and if help now came from a wholly personal and emotional source, from the fact that she loved Sir William, Julia was not proud enough to reject it.

Whether Sir William loved her in return she was not yet sure; but he at least liked her, and she could not bear that even his liking should have an unworthy object. She now knew what had made her send back Mr. Rickaby's money; it was the first instinctive step in her new direction. Looking back on her behaviour at Aix, Julia was seized by so severe a fit of remorse that for some moments she believed it to be indigestion; then she took comfort from the thought that only genuine repentance could have produced such a strong effect. If you repented, that was enough. You were forgiven and could start again. Julia wished passionately that she were a Roman Catholic, so that she could make one enormous confession—from the heart, holding back nothing—and then be told she was all right. She ought, she knew, to be able to believe that by herself, out of pure faith; but she wanted telling. They might make her do things in penance—wear a hair-shirt, for instance: Julia would have welcomed one. She did give up sugar in her tea and coffee. And she carefully and conscientiously examined her wicked heart.

It wasn't, she decided tentatively, all bad. She could not remember being really unkind to anyone, or mean to another woman. She hadn't been a gold-digger. Her two great faults were not having remained at Barton, and—and the Mr. Macdermots. They were black. “But I've repented!” cried Julia to herself. “I'll never do anything like that again!” And she made a great, a soul-shaking resolution: that if nothing happened about Sir William, she would tell Mrs. Packett all, even how she had lost her money, and ask to be taken back to Barton for the rest of her virtuous life.

Julia did not regard this prospect exactly with gladness; but then she hadn't been good very long.

Chapter 19

1

The next afternoon found Julia ridiculously unhappy because Sir William wouldn't be in to tea. He was driving Susan over to Belley to collect some books ordered through the local librarian, and the whole trip shouldn't have taken more than twenty minutes; but just as they were starting, and just as she, Julia, had refused to accompany them, Mrs. Packett most officiously suggested that they should stay and take tea out. This meant an absence of at least an hour, and Julia, too self-conscious to change her mind, had been suffering ever since from a sense of injury. It was idiotic, and she knew it; but to such an imbecile condition had love reduced her.

The conversation at the tea table did nothing to raise her spirits.

“Has Susan told you of her new idea?” asked Mrs. Packett. “She wants us to go back a week early.”

“Why?” asked Bryan suspiciously.

“To watch them convert that club, of course,” said Julia.

“Not only for that, my dear. She thinks it would be so nice,” explained Mrs. Packett, “if we could all look for your shop together.”

For a moment Julia was speechless. She would never have credited her daughter with so much duplicity. And yet—was it? Was it not rather just one more example of Susan's wonderful gift for tactful organization? She honestly believed, no doubt, that such a scheme would be acceptable all round; but to Julia, whose time lately had all been spent in managing Susan, it came as something of a shock to find Susan managing
her
.

“And I must say,” continued Mrs. Packett, “that a week in town sounds very nice. We could go to the theatres, Julia dear; if Susan's too busy we could go by ourselves, in the evening. Susan always takes me to a matinee, in case I'm tired at night; but I'd lie down beforehand, after lunch.”

“Of course we'll go!” cried Julia, suddenly touched. “And to a night club afterwards, if you like!”

The old lady looked wistful.

“I don't know about that, my dear. But we'll have dinner first, at one of the large hotels. Just a glass and a half of champagne each.…”

Bryan whistled.

“I think I'd better come too and keep an eye on you,” he said. “It sounds to me as though you'll want bailing out.”