“Suppose I lost the lot?”
“You wouldn’t, if you had any sense. Everyone I know in London complains that they can never get a homemade cake. I could give you twenty addresses now. I’d write to them all personally. And if you like, while you’re here, I’ll show you my special maids-of-honour.”
Julia listened to these plans with astonishment: she had never credited her mother-in-law with so much enterprise. But a topic involving capital was not, in her opinion, one to be too closely pursued.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “At the moment I can’t think of anything but Susan. I’m afraid you’ll feel I’ve come to interfere.”
“Of course you have,” said Mrs. Packett. “Not that I blame you. Nor do I blame Susan, though I think she’s behaving most unreasonably. I expect you thought she was locked in her room on bread and water?”
“I expected to find her … worse,” Julia admitted.
“Instead of which I’m feeding them both twice a day on the fat of the land. You’ll see at lunchtime. You’ll see him. Susan made me promise not to speak about him until you’d met, in case I prejudiced you; but you know I disapprove, because she must have said so in her letter. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” agreed Julia, “but she didn’t say why.”
Mrs. Packett looked surprised: “Simply because she’s too young. I’ve nothing against Bryan personally. But no girl should get married at twenty.”
“Then you don’t object to an engagement?”
“Until Susan is twenty-one I do. If they would like to announce their engagement next year, and get married when Susan is twenty-three, I have no objection at all.”
This was a new light on the subject, and Julia considered it thoughtfully. Susan’s birthday was in March—only eight months away—and after a formal engagement the time of waiting could probably be abridged. Then why wouldn’t Susan wait? Why so desperate a measure as the fetching of her mother from London? She wasn’t’—Julia could have sworn it—consumed by the impatience of passion. She was escaping from no present ills. Then why …?
“I can’t understand it,” said Mrs. Packett, meeting her thought. “She’s enjoying the life at Girton, she loves it. Another two years, and one getting ready, shouldn’t seem long to her. And at the beginning she agreed with me; it’s only in the last few weeks that she’s become so—so heady.”
“And the young man?” asked Julia. “Is he willing to wait too?”
“If he is, my dear, he can hardly say so, with Susan clamouring to get married next month.” Mrs. Packett sighed. “Perhaps I’m being selfish. Perhaps, when I say I want her to have her girlhood, I really mean I want to keep her a little longer for myself. You know, my dear, we’ve always been very grateful to you?”
Julia moved uneasily. What a family they were for distributing nonexistent virtues!
“I’m grateful to you,” she said almost curtly. “When I see Susan now I know I could never have done half as well for her. She’s her father’s daughter much more than mine—and a very good thing too.”
The old woman’s glance was suddenly so shrewd that Julia was taken by surprise. “I bet it was she who wouldn’t let Sue come and stay with me!” she thought. And quite right, all things considered: there were some people who shouldn’t mix, however nearly they were related; the tie of the spirit was closer than the tie of the flesh, and in spirit Susan was pure Packett. Julia’s spirit—“If I’ve got one!” she thought suddenly. “If you ask me, I’m all flesh!”
Mrs. Packett put out her hard old hand and touched Julia’s plump one.
“You’re my daughter-in-law, and I’m very glad to see you. Stay with us as long as you can.”
“I’ll stay for always!” cried Julia impetuously; but they were both wise enough to take the sentiment at its true value.
Chapter 8
1
The dining-room at the villa was a small square apartment, always rather dark because of the great jasmine, whose lower garlands drooped over its French window like a natural sun-blind. The light that filtered through was green rather than golden, and Julia, putting her head in from the bright terrace, could at first make out no more than the round table with its white cloth. She had no real business there, but she was hungry and wanted to see how lunch was getting on. The sight of cutlery and glass, laid for three, encouraged her, and so did the carafe of wine. She wouldn’t have said “No” to a cocktail, but the opportunity, if Barton habits still prevailed, was not likely to arise.
“I must just learn to do without them,” thought Julia, as she returned to the seats under the lime tree. “They’re rotten for the complexion, and it’s a bad example for Susan. Besides, anyone who knows about wine says they’re absolute muck.… If I could have one, I’d have a Manhattan.”
With an effort she wrenched her thoughts away and directed them to the surprising metamorphosis of Mrs. Packett. The old lady’s vigour had made a deep impression on her. “She wasn’t like that at Barton,” reflected Julia, wondering. “If she’d wanted me to start a cake-shop then, I might have done it.” Or had Mrs. Packett even then hankered after commercial enterprise, and had she, Julia, been too much wrapped up in her own misery, too unresponsive to all outside impressions, to notice? Julia thought not. It seemed to her more likely that her mother-in-law was of the type, not rare among Englishwomen, in whom full individuality blossoms only with age: one of those who, at sixty-one, suddenly startle their relatives by going up in aeroplanes or by marrying their chauffeurs.…
“Well?” said the voice of Susan. “How do you think Grandmother is looking?”
“Splendid,” said Julia promptly. “Has she been up in an aeroplane?”
Susan looked surprised: “No, she hasn’t. But she did talk—how odd!—of flying to Paris. I thought it might be too much for her.”
“You’ll have a job to stop her flying back,” prophesied Julia, tucking in her feet so that Susan could pass to the second chair. But Susan did not move. She hadn’t come out to talk about her grandmother.
“Lunch is just ready,” she said. “And—he’s here.”
Julia preceded her into the dining-room and saw a young man, deeply sunburnt, who greeted her with a cheerful smile. He wore a blue shirt, tan-coloured trousers, and sandalettes which had once been white.
2
“This is Bryan Relton—my mother,” said Susan from the doorway.
His smile broadened to a grin.
“Bonjour, Madame!”
“Well, I’m damned!” thought Julia. But there was no time to marvel. Her surprise had been patent, but she made a good come-back.
“Bonjour, mon homme,” said Julia blandly. “We’ve met before, Susan, and I thought he was the gardener.”
Susan joined in their laughter, but she was not quite pleased. Bryan was her property, her surprise: she was like a child who has hidden a puppy in the tool-shed, and then finds it gambolling with the grown-ups. The grown-ups couldn’t help it, but it was tactless of the puppy to get out.…
“It’s those clothes,” she said, with a humorous lift of the eyebrows.
“Practical, cheap, and picturesque,” retorted the young man. “Don’t they suit the landscape better, Mrs. Packett, than a gent’s summer suiting?”
“Very much better indeed,” said Julia. “And if you think you’re going to make a fool of me,” she added mentally, “you’ll have to think again.”
They sat down and ate home-grown hors d’œuvres—eggs and radishes, chopped onion, beans in a vinaigrette sauce. The food was excellent, the meal proceeded pleasantly; Susan described the beauties of the neighbourhood, Julia (with expurgation) the incidents of her voyage. The lacunae were necessarily so great that there was practically nothing left to her save the state of the Channel, the emptiness of the Paris train, and the convenience of the wagon-lit; but to Susan at least such uneventful voyaging seemed perfectly natural. Of Bryan, Julia was less sure.
“Poor Mrs. Packett!” he said. “Did
n’t you find a soul to speak to?”
“There was quite a nice woman on board—a schoolmistress, I think,” said Julia.
“Very informative,” said Bryan respectfully. That was the trouble—he was too respectful by half. He aroused Julia’s suspicions; and as luncheon proceeded, so those suspicions increased. In talking to Susan he seemed perfectly natural—affectionate, admiring, anxious to please; whenever he spoke to Julia, and however deferential the words, there was what could only be described as a look in his eye.
“I do so love the country!” announced Julia with enthusiasm.
“I’m sure you do,” agreed Bryan warmly. But the look in his eye said—well, it practically said: “Garn!”
As for Susan, though her gaze turned constantly from her lover’s to her mother’s face, she appeared to see nothing of their intercourse save its pleasant surface. Perhaps that underrunning current was something you couldn’t see unless you could recognize it: the tacit intimacy of two complete strangers who came—how to put it?—out of the same box.
And as her suspicions thus crystallized, Julia felt a pang of sheer dismay.
“I believe he’s the same sort as I am!” she thought. “Now what the hell am I to do?”
3
The first thing, obviously, was to find out more. It was possible that she had been mistaken; but if so, then for the first time in her life her surest instinct had let her down. It had always been her great asset—often her only asset—that she could tell at sight who was her sort and who wasn’t: which of two men at a bar, for example, would stand her a dinner, which of two women in a ladies’ room would put her up for the night. On such knowledge as this, indeed, Julia’s dinners and beds had often depended; her highly successful partnership with Mr. Macdermot had sprung from a single glance exchanged in a railway-train. No speech was possible, the compartment being full; but Julia had been absolutely certain that if she kept close to him at the station something would happen. And it did happen: “Like a lift?” said Mr. Macdermot, as they passed the taxi-rank; “I don’t mind if I do,” said Julia; and after that they were together for four years.
“That’s no reason why I shouldn’t be wrong this time,” thought Julia stubbornly; but her daughter’s answer, when later that afternoon she enquired where Susan and Mr. Relton had first met, struck her as a bad omen.
“In a train,” said Susan.
She spoke calmly and distinctly—so very calmly, with such super-distinctness, that even Julia, who, apart from Mr. Macdermot, had been meeting people in public conveyances all her life—even Julia noticed the effort. Those three words were evidently regarded by Susan as a fence to be taken; with the courage and composure of a gentlewoman she had set her teeth and taken it. But Julia’s calm, as she continued, was merely natural.
“How long ago?”
“About six weeks. It was between Strasbourg and Paris, when I was meeting Grandmother before we came on here. He helped me about my baggage, and we had lunch together. You know how it is when you’re travelling.”
Her mother nodded. The image of Fred Genocchio waved to her from the Gare du Lyon, and in her heart Julia waved back. That was travelling—to knock up against strange men, and leave a little of your heart with them, and receive a scrap of theirs in return, and then go on with your memory by so much enriched and your forearms (if the stranger happened to be a trapeze-artist) blue with bruises.
“And then,” supplied Julia encouragingly, “he asked for your address?”
“No!” said Susan. “Of course he didn’t. But we were talking about France, and the various parts, and I mentioned Muzin. And then a week later—he turned up here.”
Julia looked at her daughter with interest. The ice had thawed: Susan was in a positive glow. “How pretty she is!” thought Julia; and it seemed wonderful to her that so slight a cause should have produced so great an effect. But no doubt to a young girl like Susan the adventure had been both romantic and remarkable in the extreme—enough to make her fall in love with anybody. And the young man was attractive as well. That sort was, mused Julia unkindly.
Aloud she said, “He’s been here nearly five weeks, then? Hasn’t he anything to do?”
“He’s a barrister,” said Susan quickly. “They can take long holidays. And this is a special one, before he really settles down to work. It’s doing him so much good!”
“Where is he staying?”
“At the lodge. At least, it isn’t really our lodge, it’s let out, with the vine. But Grandmother arranged it.”
“Your grandmother?” said Julia, startled. “I suppose she wanted to know all about him?”
Susan glowed again.
“That’s the wonderful part. She did know. Bryan’s father—Sir James—used to know Grandfather. He actually came to Barton once. It’s years and years ago, almost before the War; but Grandmother remembers him perfectly.”
Julia opened her mouth and shut it again. Oddly enough, she remembered Sir James too.
4
Her recollection of him was very clear indeed. Without even closing her eyes she could see a dressing-room at the Frivolity—the cramped, old-fashioned sort, rather dirty—six girls in various stages of pleasing disarray, and on the one sofa a large recumbent figure. The figure was that of Sir James. The six girls were discussing whether to get someone to chuck him out, or to let him sleep it off. Julia, always kind-hearted, had been for the second course: she had rashly guaranteed that if they left him there during the last part of the show he would be able at the end of it to leave under his own power. And then over the senseless form an argument arose: Julia, said one of the girls, was notoriously maternal; but where would they all be if his wallet was missing? Whereupon Julia, with a fortunate blow, laid the girl out upon Sir James’s chest. An animated scene indeed! … And so different from the one immediately before her eyes that Julia felt a momentary doubt of her own identity. Could she really have taken part in that rowdy passage? And yet if she tried she could still feel, pressing against her ears, the cardboard bananas of her vegetable headdress. The girls had been—for some long-forgotten theatrical reason—the dessert: her opponent wore grapes, piled high in a basket, and very fragile.…
The curious thing was that Sir James never woke. He simply put up an arm and drew his unexpected bedmate into a more comfortable position. He also (still in his sleep) addressed her as “Wendy”: and since this happened to be the name of the leading lady, recrimination soon gave way to happy conjecture. They were twenty seconds late for their call, and got no end of a blowing-up about it.…
It will thus be seen that Julia had every reason for changing her mind and shutting her mouth. She had also a good deal to think about. If there was anything in heredity, it seemed to her, considerable light was thrown upon the young Bryan’s conduct—and a light in which that conduct assumed other and less fair hues than those distinguished by Susan. All that family, thought Julia—perhaps unfairly—were born pursuers. If Bryan had met Susan in a country drawing-room, and been invited to call afterwards, he would probably have lost all interest; but to meet her in a train, to see her vanish into the blue just as he had begun to get going—that was very different! Circumstance, by supplying the coquetry Susan lacked, had made her desirable.
“I want you to get to know him,” Susan was saying earnestly. “I want you to talk to him by himself. You’ll carry so much more weight with Grandmother than I can, because she thinks you’re more experienced.”
Julia’s tenderness, as she looked at her daughter, was not unmixed with irritation.
“It’s just possible that I am,” she said. “You can’t learn without living.”
“But some things you don’t need to learn,” said Susan steadily. “You know. Will you talk to Bryan if I fetch him now? He’s in the vine.”
Julia nodded. It was plain that the day had already been mapped out for her—for her, and for everyone else in the Villa des Sapins. Bryan awaited his cue in the vine, Mrs. Packett lunched alon
e in the billiard-room, exactly as Susan bade them. Only Susan herself seemed to have freedom of movement; and she now used it to bring the most important of her puppets from the wings and plant him firmly in the centre of the stage.
“Enter Juvenile Lead,” thought Julia, as she watched Bryan come down the staircase alone. Her own rôle being merely that of confidante, she sacrificed elegance to comfort and put her feet up on the low wall.
5
Armed with her private information, Julia entered on the engagement with a good deal of confidence. Nor did the young man, as he deferentially took his seat beside her, seem at all uneasy. “He’s got all his father’s cheek!” thought Julia; and a moment after was shocked by her unfairness. Why shouldn’t the boy be easy, when his conscience was clear? Weren’t his intentions honourable? Didn’t he want to marry Susan? “I can’t help it, I know his sort,” thought Julia vaguely, and thus, though she did not then pursue it, again touched the clue to her distrust. Bryan was waiting for her to begin.
“I’m going to ask a lot of impertinent questions,” said Julia amiably.
The young man’s attitude became if possible more deferential than before. It was almost too deferential to be true.
“I’ll supply anything you like, Mrs. Packett, from a birth certificate to a banker’s reference.”
“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?”
The Nutmeg Tree Page 6
