The Nutmeg Tree (9 page)

“That's not quite what I mean,” said Julia. “I can leave all that to Sue's guardians. But, to begin with, when you met Susan—where were you going?”

“To Paris.”

“How long had you been in Strasbourg?”

“A couple of days.”

“You'd gone straight there from England? You hadn't got off at Paris, for instance?”

“Certainly not,” said the young man virtuously. “I went straight as a die.”

“Well, it's a long way to go for two days,” said Julia. “
Why
did you go there?”

“To visit friends.”

“A girl?”

“As a matter of fact—yes.”

“And she was otherwise occupied, so you came back,” elaborated Julia.

The young man looked at her with interest.

“See here, darling—” (“That's more his style!” thought Julia)—“all that may be just as you say, but it has nothing to do with Susan.”

“It may or it mayn't,” said Julia. “I'm just establishing the facts. Were you going to stay in Paris or move on?”

“I hadn't decided. I never make plans when I'm on holiday.”

“I can understand that,” said Julia thoughtfully, “because I'm just the same. I like to see what turns up.”

There was a long pause while old Mrs. Packett, walking slowly through the heat, passed from the shadow of the house to the shadow of the pines. Even in her unsuitable black gown, and her woolly jacket, she looked so perfectly the lady that Julia was forced to spare her a moment's attention.

“All right,” said Bryan suddenly. “I
was
at a loose end. But once I got here—if you think I'm just after a holiday affair—”

“No,” agreed Julia. “This house—and the people in it—aren't conducive to holiday affairs. I just wanted to know how you got here at all.”

She stood up, smiled pleasantly, and left him. She had given him something to think about, and she had played confidante long enough. But even so, she did not have the last word. The last word, though unspoken, was Bryan Relton's.

“If it comes to that,” said his look, “how the hell did
you?
”

Chapter 9

1

How indeed? wondered Julia, first with apprehension, then, as the days went by, with a secret and amused surprise. For she was getting away with it: that perfectly ordered house, that little world of perfectly bred people, accepted her as a natural inhabitant. She felt rather as a bystander might feel who, inadvertently swept off the curb into some royal procession, nevertheless manages to hold his own between the Ambassador on one side and the Admiral on the other. She had to try hard, of course; she never drank with her mouth full, and never sang in the bath, and always discussed impersonal subjects in a low, ladylike voice. And there were naturally some bad moments: there was that terrible morning, for instance, when Claudia the maid spilt a bottle of scent, and she, Julia, had said what she thought of her; the woman didn't really mind—anyway, she didn't understand half of it—but Susan's face as she paused by the open door! It had been a white mask of distaste, before which Julia and the maid equally shrank. Julia—the maid on one side, Susan on the other, the unfortunate bystander—had dropped an
h
. And then the scent itself, though expensive, had been far from a success: the night Julia wore it at dinner Susan, on some perfectly courteous pretext, got up and opened another window.…

If Mrs. Packett was the Ambassador and Bryan Relton the Admiral, Susan was a Bishop, walking just in front, and now and then turning back with suspicious looks. But by stepping carefully (and avoiding the Admiral's eye) Julia nevertheless hoped to hold her own.

2

The village of Muzin was tiny—so tiny that it had neither church nor schoolhouse of its own. It had not even a post office. To buy stamps, and to receive religious or secular instruction, its inhabitants had to walk a mile and a half to the bigger village of Magnieu. Belley, with its shops and market, its cathedral and promenade, lay even farther—nearly four miles off, along a road for the most part unshaded; so that the occupants of the villa were almost completely cut off from the outside world. Twice a week, however, a hired car carried them into the metropolis for purposes of shopping, and on these occasions Susan, armed with a list from Anthelmine the cook, would exercise her beautiful French on the admiring tradesmen. Everyone from the villa accompanied her as a matter of course, and on the second morning after her arrival Julia, warned at breakfast of the approaching excursion, was ready in her hat a quarter of an hour too soon.

“All agog?” asked Bryan, joining her on the porch.

“I hate unpunctuality,” explained Julia. “I think it's so rude.”

“Rude but natural,” supplemented Bryan. “Like so much else. What are you going to do at Belley? Shop with Susan or come pub-crawling with me?”

“Or if you like old buildings,” said Susan from the front door, “there's the cathedral—not very interesting—and a rather charming close, and one of the old gates. Grandmother doesn't walk much, but I'd love to show you them.”

Julia withered Bryan with a glance. Pub-crawling, indeed, when there was a cathedral to be looked at!

“I'll come too,” he said at once. “I'm good on architecture.”

“You're not and you won't,” retorted Susan. “We'll meet you at the Pernollet. Grandmother's taking us all there for lunch.”

“Alleluia,” said Bryan simply.

3

The Pernollet, as becomes a restaurant with a monument to Brillat-Savarin not a stone's throw from its door, is a very good restaurant indeed. It is better, in its kind, than the cathedral, or the close, or the old gateway, so that Julia had perhaps some excuse for preferring it to all three. The hour spent looking at architecture with Susan had not been exactly tedious, but it had been very long, and for the last quarter of it Julia was troubled by her feet. In a way this was lucky, for in order to rest them she had voluntarily sat for ten solid minutes before a stained-glass window, thus surprising and pleasing her daughter very much indeed.

“We'll come again,” promised Susan willingly. But neither surprise nor pleasure could blunt the edge of her critical intelligence; as they finally walked away she was busy with a rather damaging analogy between stained-glass windows and the poetry of James Elroy Flecker. They were both
easy;
and just as there were women at college who couldn't read Milton but adored
Hassan
, so her mother's eyes were evidently shut to a Gothic arch but open to a rose window. Susan was not so foolish, indeed, as to condemn either Flecker or stained glass out and out; she knew that both made excellent steppingstones, as it were, to better things; she only refused to countenance any confusion of the good with the best.

It was a neat analogy, and showed a great deal of intelligence; the only thing wrong with it was that it had nothing to do with the case. It was like Susan herself—strong on logic, weak on human nature. It left out Julia's feet.

So mother and daughter walked up the side of the promenade, Susan thinking in analogies, Julia thinking about her shoes, until they reached the long façade of the Pernollet Hotel. So many cars stood outside that Julia expressed her astonishment.

“They come from Aix,” explained Susan. “People drive over for lunch. If Bryan hasn't got here early, we may have to wait for a table.”

Bryan had been there half an hour, however, and was even then pressing Mrs. Packett to a second
apéritif
. Julia had one too; after so much architecture she felt she deserved it.

“We've ordered lunch,” announced Bryan. “It ends with
fraises des bois
. You've just got here in time for them, Julia. Do you mind my calling you Julia—merely to prevent confusion?”

Julia looked across at the old lady. She herself would have preferred to be called Mrs. Packett—it helped to remind her of her new identity; but if the confusion idea originated with her mother-in-law, there was of course nothing to be said. Before the senior lady could speak, however, Susan had seized on the notion with warm approval. They would all call Julia, Julia; and Julia knew why. “It's to get out of calling me ‘Mother,'” she thought, with a pang. Then philosophy and food came to her aid: it was very natural,—and she could never be really unhappy with a good lunch to eat and a restaurantful of people to look at. The clientele of the Pernollet, moreover, repaid attention; there were the local bourgeois, strong-stomached epicures intent on getting not only the best, but as much of it as possible, to whom a visit to Pernollet was something to be looked forward to for days and remembered for weeks; they sat for the most part in silence, eating steadily; and this silence, and the fact that they mostly wore black, and the amount they ate, somehow gave the impression that they were all celebrating substantial legacies. “Uncle Marius has done his duty; let us all—
Papa, Maman, Tante Mathilde, Monsieur le Notaire
—go and have a damned good lunch.…” As characteristic in their way, and a striking contrast, were the visitors from Aix—youths clad lightly and picturesquely
pour le sport
, gentlemen in English tweed, beautiful ladies looking like illustrations in
Vogue;
if they lacked the bourgeois solidity, they lacked also the bourgeois waistline; in their cars outside were the tennis-racquets and golf-clubs with which they held fat at bay. Their eating was carefree, the bourgeois's careless; and the shade of Brillat-Savarin must have been well content.

“Grand sight, isn't it?” murmured Bryan Relton.

Julia nodded. One of the visitors in particular was holding her attention—a young woman so exquisitely appointed, and so consciously superior, both to her host and to the Pernollet, that Julia had christened her the Disgusted Lady. She wore a huge white motor-coat, cut with the utmost elegance out of the coarsest linen, which—with an air of wishing to retain as many protective layers as possible between her person and her surroundings—she refused to take off. Julia was sorry for this, since she wanted to see what the Disgusted Lady wore underneath, but the gesture filled her with admiration. A string of pearls, a white buckskin sandal, were the only accessories visible: the Lady's head was bare, either because her fair Grecian curls were too beautiful to cover, or else, and more probably, because in the whole of France there wasn't a hat she would be seen dead in. Julia could just picture her at the milliner's, flinging model after model aside and sweeping disgustedly out. That such was her practice was evident from her companion's face, which wore a permanent expression of mingled pride and apology. He was a neat little man, about fifty, but he had no other character than that of being the Disgusted Lady's appendage.

“What a dreadful woman!” observed Susan, under her breath.

Julia looked round in surprise. She hadn't thought the Lady dreadful at all. A Terror, of course—but then a Terror of such magnificence!

“The one in the white coat,” said Susan.

“It's a very nice coat,” said Julia foolishly.

Bryan laughed.

“It was the very
best
butter,” he said; and for some reason this idiotic remark made Susan laugh as well. Julia could see no joke whatever, but was only too glad to join in. In another moment she might have started to explain, and so made a fool of herself: for what she wanted to convey was at once so vague and so complicated as to be beyond her powers of expression. She felt, roughly speaking, that while the Disgusted Lady was probably a very disagreeable and useless person, she also made the world a more interesting place. She was a fascinating specimen of humanity, just as the mosquito is a fascinating specimen of dipterae. She repaid to the spectator the trouble she gave to her intimates. In short, she was worth having. “It takes all sorts to make a world,” thought Julia.

But it was no use saying that to Susan.

4

Susan was a prig. Not an objectionable prig, not a proselytizing prig, but a prig from very excess of good qualities. Like all the right-minded young, she wanted perfection; the difficulty was that her standards of perfection were unusually high. Exquisite in her own integrity, she demanded an equal delicacy and uprightness from her fellows. If they didn't come up to her standards, she would have no more to do with them. If she couldn't have the whole loaf, she would eat no bread at all. In Julia, who could extract nourishment from a crust, or even from a crumb, this attitude produced at first something like awe, then something like irritation. She found her daughter a paragon; she also, as has been said, found her a prig.

“She can't help it,” thought Julia loyally, “she's been so beautifully brought up.”

The latter part of this sentiment she expressed to Mrs. Packett, and the old lady was pleased.

“Everyone likes Susan,” she said. “She was the most popular girl at school—they all wanted her to stay with them—and now it seems to be the same at college. She's always being put on committees.”

Julia could well believe it. Susan was the committee-woman born—just, tactful, and graciously dignified. She ought to be an M.P.

“I used to be so glad,” continued Mrs. Packett, her words chiming with Julia's thought, “that all the Suffragette business was over, so that if Susan ever went in for politics she could do it in a graceful and ladylike manner. We once heard her speak at a debate, and her grandfather said she had a positively masculine mind.” Both Julia and Mrs. Packett were the kind of women pleased by such a remark. “If Bryan ever became Lord Chancellor, she'd make a splendid hostess for him.”

Julia did not answer; not because she disagreed, but because in the first place she was very sure that Bryan would never become anything of the sort, and in the second because she was by this time a little tired of talking about other people. She wanted to talk about herself for a bit; but apart from the difficulty of finding a listener, she was not, in that company, a suitable topic.