“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,—
JULIA PACKETT.
Don’t send me any more of those postcards, Fred; the servants here are French, and you know what their dirty minds are.
Yours,—
JULIA.
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.
After tracing this vicious circle for perhaps the twentieth time, Julia also remembered that she had no return ticket.
6
Up in the vine Bryan was trying to make Susan quarrel with him. The occasion was purely artificial—a disagreement over the title of a book—but her cool serenity, her perfect control, was a perpetual challenge to him. He wanted to break it down, to see her hot and ruffled; it was the deep impulse to mastery which she would never satisfy. Julia, when she saw Bryan as a pursuer, was right; but she was thinking in physical terms only: if the material pursuit had been all—if by following Susan half across France he could finally have captured her—his attachment would already have worn thin. For a day or two, indeed, the apparent ease of his victory had actually disconcerted and disappointed him; he felt like a man who, setting out to climb some just-accessible peak, finds a funicular railway already installed. The railway, fortunately, did not work; though Susan had accepted him within a week of his arrival at the villa, what now bound him to her was the knowledge that he had never made any real impression on her at all.
“Why can’t you admit you may be mistaken?” asked Susan patiently.
“Why can’t you?”
“Perhaps I am,” said Susan at once. “Anyway, it’s on Grandmother’s dressing-table, and I’ll look when we go in.”
So that quarrel came to nothing. Susan would look, as she promised, and if Bryan was right she would come and tell him at once, and if he was wrong she would wait until he asked. She was perfect, both in justice and in magnanimity.
“The lavender’s nearly out,” said Susan, to change the subject.
They were sitting on a high gravelly slope which some bygone owner of the villa had laid out with long flower-borders; but only lavender now survived, flourishing in a bushy grey-green hedge that was sweetened but not yet coloured by the thick flower-spikes. Susan reached up and broke off a twig.
“Smell,” she said, rubbing it against Bryan’s nose.
He seized her hand and, still holding it, rolled over and buried his face in her palm. The smell of the lavender, the smell of Susan’s warm sun-browned skin, made the blood in his temples drum.
“Susan,” he said, “darling, I’m not going to wait three years.”
“You won’t have to,” said Susan steadily.
“But if they don’t budge?”
“As soon as I’m twenty-one.”
“Even that’s another eight months.”
“Can’t you wait eight months?”
For a long minute Bryan lay still. He was thinking of something Julia had said, and wondering how much of Julia was alive in her daughter. None, Julia had implied; but was she right? What did parents ever really know of their children? Bryan’s thoughts flew to his finances: he had still a traveller’s cheque for fifty pounds—enough to take Susan to Como, or to Rome, or perhaps down to the Riviera.…
He turned over and sat up. That was his mistake.
“Susan—” he said.
He stopped. He oughtn’t to have looked at her. With his face still buried in her palm he might have spoken; but not under that clear level gaze.
“Well?” said she.
“Nothing. It’s teatime. Let’s go down.”
Hand in hand they descended the path. In the nut grove they kissed. But they were not contented.
Chapter 11
1
For some five minutes Julia and Mrs. Packet had the tea-table to themselves. Both were preoccupied, Julia with the devastating problem of her finances, Mrs. Packett, as will be seen, less unhappily.
“I’ve been making a list,” she announced, “of people in town who would like your cakes. I’ve got fifteen names
already.”
“I wish you wouldn’t trouble,” said Julia sincerely.
“It’s no trouble, my dear, it’s a pleasure. You must get out a nice card, and I’ll enclose it with my letter. I believe Kensington would be a good place, because Susan tells me it’s full of flats.”
Julia looked up in surprise.
“I’ve never noticed it,” she said. “I think they’re as sharp in Kensington as anywhere else.”
“They haven’t proper kitchens,” explained Mrs. Packett, not quite taking her daughter-in-law’s point. “Just a sort of cupboard and a sink, and you can’t make cakes in a place like that. I’m sure you’ll do well. Where is Susan?”
“Coming down the path,” said Julia.
The young people, indeed, were close upon them, having run the last few yards in an ebullition of good spirits very pleasant to see. “Dear children!” murmured Mrs. Packett. “Damn!” said Julia softly. She wasn’t damning anyone in particular, least of all Susan; she was just railing at that fate which had planted her down penniless in the one place where being penniless mattered.
“The view’s wonderful to-day,” said Susan. “You ought to go up.”
“I went up after lunch,” said Julia. Susan was evidently trying to show that the incident of the postcard had now been forgiven, and Julia in turn exerted herself to appear bright and affable. She praised the view very highly, and described in some detail the appearance of the mirabelle plum. In other circumstances it was just the sort of conversation she would have enjoyed, but for once the spectacle of her own beautiful behaviour gave Julia no pleasure. She relapsed into silence, and let the others talk on.
It was very hot. Their table under the pines was in deep shadow, but even through those serried branches the sun here and there managed to penetrate. There was a disc of gold in Mrs. Packett’s lap, another on Susan’s hair; the ground from Bryan’s chair to Julia’s was hatched with light and shadow. Presently they were all silent together, and in the pause, from high overhead, came a staccato tap like the tapping of a knuckle on a door.
“There’s a woodpecker,” said Susan softly.
They all listened; the obliging bird at once tapped again. “It might be a call-boy,” thought Julia. Ah, if only it were! If she were only back in a dressing-room somewhere—perhaps with bananas on her head—what would it matter that she hadn’t a penny in her pocket? There would be other girls to borrow from and boys in front, and maybe one particular boy waiting to take her out to supper! “I’d eat fried fish and be grateful,” thought Julia, from the heart. Nostalgia overwhelmed her: she wanted to be back among her own kind, among people who expected you to be broke, who took it as the natural thing, who were mostly broke themselves and so could understand. “Fried fish!” thought Julia passionately. “I’d eat winkles on a pin …”
“One of these days,” Bryan was saying, “we ought to go over to Aix.”
Susan raised her eyebrows.
“What for?”
“Oh, just for the ride. To amuse Julia.”
The sound of her own name brought Julia back to the present. But even the thought of an excursion could not cheer her. It would only mean spending money.…
“I’m very well here,” she said. “I like the quiet.”
“Anyway, you’d hate Aix,” Susan assured her. “It’s full of visitors rushing about in cars. All those casino towns are the same.”
Julia sat up. A casino—and a casino within reach! Hope, never long absent from her, fluttered back into her breast—no modest olive-bearing dove, but a peacock spreading its gorgeous tail. With five francs, at a casino, you could make a fortune! You could break the bank and come home a millionaire! Julia knew nothing about gambling save that beginners always won, and that it was a good plan (if you weren’t a beginner and so lost) to pretend to shoot yourself, and wait till the croupiers had stuffed your pockets with cash, and then get up and walk off. Either way was money for jam, and Julia was so starved for excitement that she almost hoped the second course would be necessary. But she wouldn’t shoot herself: she would pretend to take poison—an aspirin would do—and drop down in a graceful appealing pose. She could see herself doing it. And perhaps the man who found her would be not a croupier but an American millionaire, and in that case she would let him bring her back to life, and he would fall in love with her and drive her about in a car the size of a house and a motor-coat like the Disgusted Lady’s. If he were the right kind of American—no, an English peer would be better—she might even marry him, and so give Susan a titled stepfather.
So Julia’s peacock spread its magnificent tail, and Julia, lost in contemplation of it, had been some minutes alone with her daughter before she realized that both Bryan and Mrs. Packett had taken themselves off.
“Have you talked to Grandmother yet?” asked Susan abruptly.
2
“About Bryan? Yes, of course I have.” In spite of herself Julia could not quite repress a sigh. She didn’t want to talk about Bryan, she wanted to go on with her beautiful dreams, to visualize more distinctly the English peer, to rehearse scraps of her conversation with him. What was Bryan to her, beside that noble and fascinating figure? However, she knew her duty; and in any case, Susan would not have let her escape it.
“Of course I have,” said Julia again.
“And can you do anything? Is she beginning to see how—how silly it is?” asked Susan eagerly.
Julia hesitated. Here was an opportunity, if she wanted one, to clear up the whole situation—to disclaim the rôle of ally and range herself definitely on the other side; but by doing so she would lose whatever influence she possessed. At present she was free, so to speak, of both camps; and so uncomfortably situated, with one foot in each, she feared she should remain a little longer.
“It isn’t silly at all,” Julia said (speaking from the Packett camp). “At any rate” (she changed over) “from her point of view. You are very young, Susan, and you haven’t finished at college—”
“I could take my degree after I was married,” said Susan quickly.
Julia thought this a very odd idea indeed. But it gave her hope.
“Only it wouldn’t be the same, would it? You couldn’t live in—”
“In residence,” prompted Susan.
“—in residence, then, and have all the fun you do now? Why can’t you wait, Sue?”
“I don’t want to,” said Susan obstinately.
It was her only argument; on it her beautiful mouth closed in a stubborn line.
“If you’re thinking of Bryan—” began Julia again.
“Of course I’m thinking of Bryan. No one else does. No one else seems to realize that they’re asking him to wait three years too.”
“Oh, well,” said Julia easily, “I expect he’d manage.”
All at once, for one moment, Susan’s composure cracked.
“I’ve no doubt he would,” she said tartly; and with the colour high in her cheeks got up and walked away.
Julia sat on alone. “So that’s it!” she was thinking. “So that’s it!”
3
She was very sorry for Susan. She was sorry for any young girl who discovers that her lover is not perfect in fidelity; and though in this case it was undoubtedly a good thing that Susan should begin to see Bryan as he was, Julia at that moment felt more sympathetic to her than ever before. She was sympathetic, she was sorry; but she neither sympathized nor sorrowed long. Susan and her troubles could wait: the immediate problem was how she, Julia, was going to get to Aix.
Her five francs, the foundation of her prospective fortune, must be preserved intact; and for some moments Julia toyed with the idea of revising her attitude to a family excursion. If they all went together Mrs. Packett would pay for a car, and the question of transport would thus be solved; on the other hand, such a plan would considerably hamper her own freedom of movement. She might not be able to reach the casino alone, and Julia had no intention of poisoning herself in the presence of her daugh
ter. Susan would simply produce an emetic.
“I’ve got to get there by myself,” thought Julia, “and I’ve got to get there free …”
For perhaps half an hour she sat pondering, while the garden cooled and the hillside began to glow. A great dragonfly swooped among the rosebushes: in the perfect stillness the creak of returning ox-wains, on the Magnieu road, was distinctly audible. But Julia’s thoughts were exclusively urban; she had returned in spirit to the shifts and manœuvres of her London life. The present terrain was unfamiliar to her; she could see no further than Belley; she did not even know in which direction her Tom Tiddler’s ground lay.…
But it has been mentioned before that Julia was very resourceful, and by the time the last of the sun had faded from the vine her plans were cut and dried. She had remembered, in a beautiful heart-lifting flash, the string of cars outside the Pernollet Hotel. They came, Susan had told her, from Aix; to Aix they would doubtless return; and if she couldn’t get a lift from a well-fed Frenchman—well, she wasn’t the good old Julia she used to be.
Chapter 12
1
At twelve o’clock the following morning Julia began to listen for the lunch-bell. Its punctual sounding was of great importance to her: if the meal was over, as it usually was, by half-past one, she would have an hour and a half for the four-mile walk into Belley, since the patrons of the Pernollet would hardly get away before three. Coffee was the danger-point. On dull days they took it in the dining-room, and never sat more than ten minutes; but if the day were fine they adjourned to the garden, where Mrs. Packett at least had a tendency to linger. And the day was fine, blue and golden, with a light breeze. Julia was glad in a way, since it enabled her to wear her white linen suit (to which, before she left, she planned to add a large yellow taffeta bow); but she couldn’t help fidgeting. Mrs. Packet, instead of coming straight out, went to her room; they had to wait for her; and when she did come Susan, always particular, sent the milk back to be heated afresh.
The Nutmeg Tree Page 9