“Here!” cried Julia, vaguely alarmed, “I mustn’t go to sleep!”
The sound of her own voice aroused her; she at once sat up, listening intently, to see whether anyone else had been aroused as well. But all was quiet, and with a sigh of relief she climbed unobtrusively out and began to dry. There were two bath-towels, beautifully large and white, besides a smaller one of linen, with embroidery on the edge; and though it was impossible to make real use of the lot, Julia had such a damn good try that she heard the maid’s slippered feet in the passage, and her own door open and shut, while she was still polishing up her thighs.
“It’s my breakfast,” thought Julia; and, anxious to be in the right place at the right time,—another form of self-effacement,—she hurried on her clothes and hastened back to her room. There was no one there, but rolls and honey had appeared on the breakfast-table; anxious to be found in the right garments, Julia exchanged her dressing-gown for a white piqué frock and hastily powdered her nose. And it was a mercy she did so, for the next moment there was a rap at the door, and behind the door was a coffeepot, and carrying the coffeepot was her daughter Susan.
3
At the first sight of her Julia’s heart leapt up. For Susan was pretty, and pretty in a peculiarly ladylike way. She had the Packett height and slimness, the fair Packett hair, and eyes of that rare clear grey that is unflecked, unshaded, by any tint of blue. There was nothing of Julia in that face, and nothing of Julia in the sweet virginal voice.
“Good morning,” said Susan.
She was still holding the coffeepot (could it be protectively?) so that Julia, poised for an embrace, had to sink as it were back into herself before answering.
“Good morning,” she said, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice. “Good morning, Susan.”
The girl set down the pot (could it be that she felt the danger pass?) and smiled gravely.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m Susan. I hope you didn’t mind my not coming to meet you. But—”
“But it’s so much nicer here,” finished Julia quickly.
“It shocked Grandmother, but I thought you’d understand.” (That was heartening, at any rate!) “And she’s also rather shocked,” continued Susan, smiling again, “because I wouldn’t let her get up to welcome you. She’s sitting up in bed now, waiting for the moment you’ve finished your breakfast. But I had to have you to myself first.”
Such pleasant words, spoken in so grave and charming a voice, filled Julia with maternal joy. But it was a joy still a little constrained: as she sat down to the table, and let Susan pour out for her, the odd feeling of the bathroom surged over her once again. Was this truly her daughter, standing so dutifully over the breakfast-tray? Was this strange bare house one in which she herself had truly a daughter’s rights? It didn’t feel real. Nothing felt real, not even the bread between her teeth, which she had to make an effort to swallow.…
“Are you feeling shy?” asked Susan unexpectedly. “I am.”
Julia beamed.
“Till you said that I was.” Impulsively she got up from the table; but she was still too shy to give her daughter a kiss. Susan, in spite of so much charm, didn’t look the kissing sort; and as the thought crossed her mind Julia felt an added curiosity to hear about Susan’s young man. “Tell me all about him!” cried Julia impetuously; and sat down on the window-seat with ears and heart open.
Susan, however, had her own plans. She smiled affectionately, but with a shake of the head.
“His name is Bryan Relton, he’s twenty-six and a barrister, and he’ll be quite well off. You’ll see him at lunch. Only it’s no use discussing anything now, is it? I mean until you’ve got to know us both, it’s not fair to ask for your opinion.”
Nicely put, thought Julia; but she knew what it meant all the same. “Not fair” meant “no use”; and though the assumption was perfectly sound, such rationality, in a girl in love, struck her as exaggerated. Or was it rather caution? Was Bryan Relton one of those young men for whom nothing much can be said, but who have only to make a personal appearance to carry all before them? So wondered Julia, but not for long; she was too much occupied with observing her daughter. The more you looked at her—and Susan was now sitting close on the window-seat—the more perfect you saw she was. Her beautiful small ears lay flat to her head; her beautiful small hands, brown but perfectly kept, sprang delicately from the wrists as leaves from the slender stem. And then she was so clean! Julia was clean herself, she had a bath every day, so long as there was gas: but Susan’s was the cleanliness of a running stream—something as much and as essential a part of her as her height or her grey eyes.
“I don’t wonder he’s wild about her,” thought Julia, returning, though only in silence, to the forbidden topic. “I expect he’s poetical.” She pictured him tall and thin and very serious—the sort that adores once and for a lifetime; and she also pictured him a good deal older than his years, since it is generally to men above thirty that the virginal makes most appeal. “I bet he thinks she’s a sort of angel,” mused Julia, highly approving.…
“What would you like me to call you?” asked Susan suddenly. “You look so young to be called ‘Mother.’”
Julia felt a pang of disappointment. Of course she wanted to be called “Mother”—hadn’t she come all the way from England for that very purpose? She wanted to be called “Mother,” “Mumsie,” “Mummy,” “Mum”; but from Susan’s tone she knew at once that none of these vocables would ever find favour. As before, it was nicely put; but behind the tribute to her appearance Julia divined a shrinking, an embarrassment, which her own warm heart found difficult to comprehend.
Instead of directly answering, she said, a little wistfully, “You can’t think how glad I was to get your letter. I know I’ve never been as much to you as I should—that was my own fault; and it made me so happy that you should still turn to me. I know I’m not really your sort—”
She broke off, for her daughter’s embarrassment was now unconcealed. Susan had got up and was staring fixedly out of the window.
“I think you were perfectly right,” she said rapidly. “You wanted to live your own life, and you did. I’ve no patience with people who sacrifice themselves to other people’s ideas. If you want to know, I’ve always admired you.”
“You—you have been happy with them?” asked Julia anxiously.
“Perfectly happy. Grandmother’s an absolute darling, and so was Grandpa. And, I can’t help knowing it, I’ve made them happy too. I’ve somehow consoled them for losing my father.” She turned back, her face eager. “Will you tell me all about him, please?”
The moment had come—the moment for intimacy, for the long mother-and-daughter talk to which Julia had so much looked forward. But her heart, instead of leaping, sank within her. For when it came to the point—when the image of Sylvester Packett should have sprung fully-formed in her mind—she found she remembered practically nothing about him at all.
4
“He was a first lieutenant in the Gunners—” began Julia carefully; and paused. There had been so many first lieutenants, a lot of them in the Gunners, and they had all been very much alike. Young, tired, reckless in gaiety, but never—never quite all there. Never completely with you, as though they had all left part of themselves somewhere else. You could be out dining with a man, having a perfectly lovely time, and suddenly across the room he would catch another man’s eye, or a man would pause by your table, and all at once they were somewhere else and you were left behind. It had seemed as if war were a sort of fourth dimension, into which they slipped back without noticing, even out of your arms.… So you never really knew them—at least the Julias didn’t—and how could you remember anyone you hadn’t properly known?
“Don’t, if it hurts you,” said Susan gently.
In spite of her self-justification, Julia felt ashamed. She cudgelled her brains.
“He liked the Piccadilly better than Murray’s,” she said at last. “Most of them did
n’t. But then he wasn’t like the rest in lots of ways.”
“No?” prompted Susan.
“He was very serious. And he had very good manners. He was so good to me—” Julia broke off: impossible to tell his daughter exactly how good! And overcome by the effort, and by self-reproach, and by easy yet sincere regrets, she accidentally did the only right thing. She put down her head and burst into tears.
“Oh, don’t!” cried Susan remorsefully. “Please, please!”
But Julia wept on. She might forget Sylvester for years on end, but when she did think about him it was properly. He was the best man she had ever known, he had taken thought for her, he had left her his name and—had she wished for it—the protection of his home. He had married her! No one else …
“Except Fred,” thought Julia.
The events of the previous evening—at the Casino Bleu, in the taxi going to the station—rose incongruously in her mind. She thrust them back, but not before they had given her, oddly enough, something she wanted.
“I’ve remembered another thing,” she sobbed. “Something that was really him. Whenever he was upset, he used to bite his thumb. Not the nail, you know, but down by the joint.”
With a quick movement Susan stood up.
“You’d like to go in the garden,” she said abruptly. “No—you’d like to see Grandmother. I’ll see—I’ll tell her. It’s lovely in the garden. I’ll tell you when Grandmother—”
Her lips trembled, she seemed to be speaking at random. Suddenly she spread out her hands and looked at them with a kind of awe.
“They got me out of it when I was ten,” she said; and went quickly from the room.
Chapter 7
1
Julia did as she was bid. When she had made up her face—and it needed it badly—she went out by the porch, and down the broken flight of steps, and so found herself on the lower terrace. She had no impulse to explore: her instinct bade her keep close to the house; and a chair under the lime tree at once attracted her eye. It was very comfortable, and by pulling it forward she could rest her feet on the low stone wall. Emotion did not as a rule tire her—it bucked her up; but the emotion of the last hour was different. It had been constrained, not expansive.…
“I’m a fool!” Julia told herself sharply. “Did I expect her to fall on my neck?”
The truth was that she had so expected. After that letter, after her own swift response, the actual meeting with Susan had been an anticlimax. There had been tears, indeed, but tears of the wrong sort; and none shed by Susan. “She doesn’t cry easily,” thought Julia. “She’d never cry before a stranger.…” There was the rub: that Julia, who could get intimate with a trapeze artist after five minutes’ conversation—who was intimate with a salesman after buying a pair of shoes—had talked for an hour to her own daughter, about the girl’s own father and lover, without the least intimacy at all.
“I’m a fool,” thought Julia again. “It’s just because she’s such a perfect lady. And what I need is a good sleep.”
She did not sleep then, but the quiet of the morning, the sunshine, the warm odours that rose from the kitchen-garden below, gradually soothed and raised her spirits. From where she sat she could see no further than the roofs of the village: she was in a little tree-encircled world, strange but delightful in its picturesqueness. A lovely world! Julia had no eye for detail; she could appreciate only such obvious effects as the bright clear green of the tree-tops, the flaming mass of the jasmine against a white wall; but what she enjoyed she enjoyed thoroughly. She liked the oleanders—the pink ones better than the white; she admired the showy intention of the broken staircase; and it also struck her that her own white figure, against the dark blue cushions of her chair, must be making a very pleasant effect.
Here Julia paused. Beneath the agreeable surface of her thought stirred the consciousness of something lacking. What was it? She was very comfortable, she had ceased to worry about Susan, yet that wasn’t enough. She wanted something more. What was it?
“Of course!” thought Julia, surprised at her own obtuseness.
There ought to be a man there. There ought to be a man to enjoy her white frock, to admire her sensibility when she pointed out the jasmine. It wasn’t because she, Julia, couldn’t do without one. She didn’t want a man personally, but because in that lovely place—with its roses and terraces and no doubt lots of little hidden nooks—the lack of one seemed such a waste.
At that moment, a man appeared.
2
Julia admired him greatly. He was young, deeply sunburnt, and dressed in a blue shirt, tan-coloured trousers, and sandalettes that had once been white. Over his shoulder was slung a light jacket, on his head he wore one of the coarse straw hats, shaped like sun-helmets, which Julia had noticed in the village. This, as he approached, he respectfully doffed.
“Bonjour, Madame!”
Julia nodded affably. She hoped he was a gardener, for though obviously not a man to sit on the terrace with, she felt he would be nice to have about. He could carry cushions for her, light her cigarette; perhaps pick for her, and shyly present, bouquets of wild flowers.…
“Bonjour, mon homme,” returned Julia graciously.
The young man grinned. The change was so sudden—the flash of white teeth so altered, while illuminating, his countenance—that Julia received quite a shock. Though the hat was still in his hand, he now looked scarcely respectful at all: his regard was frankly admiring. He looked her over, evidently liked what he saw, and gave her what was practically a glad-eye. The French were like that, Julia knew, and one had to make allowances; but in a gardener it was—well, unsuitable.
“Go and get on with your work!” she said sharply. “Allez-vous en!”
He went at once (but apparently unabashed) towards the kitchen-garden gate; and in spite of her disapproval Julia could not help acknowledging that his figure, in its gay foreign clothes, lent a touch of picturesque interest to the landscape. Though not tall, he was very athletic: when he reached the gate he did not open it, but vaulted over. Julia heard his voice uplifted in French, apparently addressing one of the maidservants; a woman called back, a dog barked, and then all was still again.
“I bet he’s a terror in the village,” thought Julia.
The incident had quite woken her up, and she had just decided to go for a walk round the house when Susan reappeared at the other end of the terrace. Julia went towards her, and when they had met—not calling out, vulgarly, from a distance—Susan gave her message.
“Would you like to come and see Grandmother? I’m afraid I’ve been a long time, but she’d gone to sleep again.”
“I nearly slept, myself,” said Julia, as they walked up the steps. “It’s so lovely and peaceful.”
“I do hope you won’t be bored here,” said Susan.
“I’m never bored where there’s scenery,” returned Julia grandly. “I just love a nice view.”
Susan smiled, but did not look particularly reassured. “Grandmother’s room has the best view of any,” was all she said; and opening the door she ushered Julia in.
3
Mrs. Packett was sitting in bed wearing a very smart boudoir-cap and a woollen cardigan. She smiled as Julia came in, and held out her hand; but she also had a complaint to make, and with the frank egoism of age at once made it.
“I have been to sleep again,” she announced severely. “Of course I go to sleep if Susan forces me to have breakfast in bed. It’s very bad for me, and there are crumbs among the clothes.”
“You’ll be up in ten minutes,” said Susan consolingly. “Claudia’s seeing to your bath now.”
“I wanted to get up early,” insisted Mrs. Packett. “I wanted to be up to meet you, Julia, but Susan wouldn’t let me. She’s not going to let me lunch with you either, because—”
“Grandmother!”
“Go away, Susan.” Mrs. Packett watched her granddaughter out of the room and went on where she had left off. “—Because she wants t
o put this young man through his paces all by herself. I’m supposed to be a disturbing influence—like in table-turning. As you’ll very soon find out, my dear, Susan does anything she likes with me.”
Julia smiled.
“Not altogether. You know why I’m here?”
“Of course I do, and I’m very glad. Draw that curtain back and let me have a look at you.”
Julia did as she was told and let in a burst of sunlight not only on herself but also upon Mrs. Packett. The old woman stood it well; her plump weather-browned face was fresh and lively, her small grey eyes looked interestedly on the world. Age suited her. As a girl she must have been pretty; in middle life, as Julia remembered her at Barton, she was scarcely distinguishable against the general background of well-bred dowdiness; now she had emerged again, complete and individual, with her prejudices elevated to principles and her dowdiness ripened into distinction. “She’s tough,” thought Julia admiringly.…
“You’ve put on weight,” remarked Mrs. Packett. “But you look well. What have you been doing with yourself all this time?”
Julia paused. The figure of Mr. Macdermot (and of many another) passed rapidly before her inward eye. The day at Elstree when she fell into the fountain (five times in three hours) was fresh in her memory. So were several other episodes, all as poignant and interesting at the time as they were now unsuitable for relation.
“Nothing much,” she said. “I’ve just been living in town.”
“You don’t keep a cake-shop?”
“A cake-shop?” Julia was surprised. “I’ve never thought of it.”
“I have,” said Mrs. Packett energetically. “I was thinking of it only last night. It would just suit you—and you’ve got the capital.”
Here was some of the thin ice Julia had been dreading. She cut a daring figure on it.
The Nutmeg Tree Page 5