The Nutmeg Tree

by Margery Sharp

  “You’ve heard that before, I expect,” said Mr. Rickaby, watching Julia’s face. “But what’s a man to say, if it’s true?”

  “That’s just it,” murmured Julia.

  “I don’t say I’m easy,” pursued Mr. Rickaby fairly. “I dare say I’m a bit more complicated than most men. I like all sorts of things—good music, you know, and scenery. I’ve got—well, I suppose I’ve got ideals. But it takes a woman like you to understand.”

  Julia nodded. She had often pondered this question of why wives didn’t understand when women like herself did; and the only conclusion she had reached was that to understand men—to realize the full value of their good streaks, while pardoning the bad—you had to know so many of them. Then when you came across one fellow who was a soak, for instance, you could nearly always remember another who soaked worse; and he in turn might have qualities of generosity or cleverness which raised him above a third man who was a teetotaller. But to know all that you had to have experience, and wives as a rule hadn’t. They knew only one man, where women like Julia knew dozens; but then women like Julia rarely became wives. It was a rotten system, when you came to look at it.…

  “I expect I’ve left something out,” meditated Julia. Her thoughts glanced at Susan, then hastily looked away, just as her eyes would have looked away if Susan had actually appeared among the café tables.

  “Where are you going to-night?” asked Mr. Rickaby suddenly.

  Julia hesitated. The leading-on of Mr. Rickaby, enjoyable as it was, had been the result rather of habit than of design; and she had not yet visualized any definite issue to their encounter.

  “I don’t know.…”

  “You must come to my hotel,” said Mr. Rickaby firmly. “I’m going to look after you now.”

  She pressed his hand. She could hardly do less. And, in truth, she felt very kindly to him. A vicarious gratitude on behalf of that other Julia—the Julia who had been so shamefully used by M. Lucien—swelled her heart. But her brain remained clear.

  “How can I?” she murmured. “Without any luggage?”

  “I’ll see to that too,” said Mr. Rickaby. He was being princely, and he knew it. “We’ll go shopping. We’ll buy you a suitcase and some things to put inside. How’s that?”

  Julia was properly overcome; but her brain went on working.

  5

  Considering that she was a stranger to the town, Julia showed some address in getting to the lingerie-shop first. There was a leather-goods establishment directly in their path, but she got her escort past it by suddenly looking into his face and asking what she was to call him. “Bill,” said Mr. Rickaby. “I couldn’t call you Bill!” said Julia. “It’s too ordinary.” And by the time they had decided that she should call him Ronald, the suitcases were passed. The next danger-point was the actual threshold of the lingerie-shop, but here she was aided by her companion’s own modest nature. “You’ll wait outside?” said Julia; and did not even have to add that she wanted to give him a surprise. Mr. Rickaby simply took out his fat pocketbook and handed her a thousand francs.

  “Do you know,” he said, smiling at her, “you’re an answer to prayer?”

  “So are you,” said Julia; and since those were the last words she ever spoke to him, it was just as well that they made him happy.

  Once inside the shop she took the simple and straightforward line of asking the vendeuse whether there was a back way out. The vendeuse looked through the glass door at Mr. Rickaby, and smilingly said that there was. Julia then bought a pair of very nice garters, to get change, tipped the girl, and was shown out. In the street she asked the way to a garage, and there hired a car, for the sum of two hundred and fifty francs, to take her back to Muzin. It made an awful hole in the money, but she was still over seven hundred up.

  6

  It was curious that, after behaving in so perfectly ladylike a manner, Julia should have been troubled by her conscience. But so it was: as she sat comfortably in the car, her bag plumped out by Mr. Rickaby’s notes, she could not help feeling—well, mean.

  “He asked for it,” she assured herself. “He was having a gamble, and he lost. I hope it’ll be a lesson to him.”

  For some minutes this new view of her conduct—that she had been altruistically and deliberately showing Mr. Rickaby the folly of his ways—brought a certain comfort. But the comfort did not last. In spite of herself Julia could not help picturing him waiting and wondering, and then perhaps going into the shop, and making a fool of himself in front of the vendeuse, and then stamping out again with a hot and angry face. It was all part of the lesson, of course, but men did feel that sort of thing so.…

  To cheer herself up Julia took out the new garters and tried them on. They were black, with silver crescents. She hitched up her skirt and stretched out a shapely but solid leg, and found the effect extremely good. It was just at that moment that the chauffeur turned round to ask a direction.

  “C’est près de Belley, Madame?”

  “Oui, oui,” said Julia, letting down her skirt again.

  “Yes, yes,” said the chauffeur, grinning.

  “You attend to your job,” said Julia.

  She was furious as much with herself as with him, and the incident ruffled her. If it had been Susan in the car he would never have dared. But then Susan wouldn’t have been trying on garters.… “It’s not that,” thought Julia; “it’s just something about me. They see they can take advantage, and they do. Mean, I call it.”

  Anger warmed her, and with the subconscious purpose of putting herself in the right, she directed it upon Mr. Rickaby. A man old enough to be her father—very nearly! “The old rip!” thought Julia. If she hadn’t had the sense to come away, goodness knew what mightn’t have happened! The idea that he was still at large in Aix, getting ready, no doubt, to entangle the next thirsty young woman who came his way, was quite distressing to her. She ought to have told the police about him. She ought to have given him in charge. He was a menace to female virtue, and it was no wonder girls went wrong.…

  “All the same,” murmured the voice of Julia’s conscience—and oddly enough it was also the voice of red-haired Louise—“all the same, dear, you did lead him up the path.…”

  Julia rapped on the glass and told the chauffeur to stop. They were just outside the village, and she had no wish to arouse unnecessary comment. When she gave the man his tip he did not touch his cap, but swept it off with a low bow; and though Julia was almost sure this was wrong, she dared not try to rebuke him. She had a strong presentiment that if she opened her mouth, it would be to swear.

  7

  The first person she met in the villa grounds was Bryan Relton. He at once came towards her with an exaggerated air of anxiety relieved.

  “My dear Julia! Where on earth have you been?”

  “For a walk,” said Julia.

  Mr. Relton looked at her thoughtfully, but did not ask where she had gone. Though Julia had no desire to be questioned, the omission for some reason annoyed her.

  “Well?” she said sharply.

  Mr. Relton continued to gaze.

  “You look to me,” he said pensively, “like a cat who’s just eaten the canary.”

  Julia stared at him, speechless.

  “And I don’t believe,” continued this most objectionably perspicacious young man, “that it’s going to agree with you.”

  Julia just managed to get to her room, and then she did swear.

  Chapter 13

  1

  Whenever Julia, after a period of distress, found herself once more in funds, she gave a party; so on the next day, which was one of the villa shopping days, Mr. Rickaby played unwitting host to a second luncheon at the Pernollet. “Of course it’s on me!” said Julia gaily; and for an hour and a half thoroughly enjoyed herself. At the moment of paying, however, she got a nasty jar.

  “What a lovely clean note!” observed Susan idly.

  Julia jumped. It was lovely, fresh and crisp as though it had j
ust been drawn from the bank: a note for five hundred francs. It was hardly probable that Mr. Rickaby should have taken the number; but supposing he bad—and suppose it ever got back to him—and supposing he had it traced …

  “He’d never do anything,” Julia assured herself. “He’d only think I must have a hell of an appetite.…” But as one fear was quieted another took its place; for the first time it struck her that Susan wouldn’t be really pleased to know that Mr. Rickaby had paid for her lunch. Susan never would know, of course—but if she did! The thought turned Julia hot all over.

  Aloud, and quite unconscious of the length of the pause, she said: “I got it in London. I hate dirty money.”

  “Filthy lucre,” remarked Bryan—his tone as idle as Susan’s, but his eyes alert. “Personally I shouldn’t mind how filthy it was, so long as it paid for this lunch. For what I have received, the Lord knows I’m truly thankful.”

  Susan, standing by her chair waiting for Mrs. Packett to get up, opened her mouth and on a second thought closed it again. There was evidently a lecture impending, and Julia, to pay Bryan out, at once provided an opportunity for it.

  “You young ones ought to walk back,” she said firmly. “It’s not too hot and the exercise will do you good.”

  “Yes,” said Susan quickly. “I was just thinking the same thing. Ready, Bryan?”

  He looked at Julia, met a stony glance, and resigned himself to the inevitable. As Julia followed Mrs. Packett into the car she saw the pair of them turn along the promenade and set off at an unnaturally brisk pace.

  2

  “Let’s stop and have a bock,” said Bryan, as they reached the big café.

  “Why? You can’t want one now, after all you had at lunch,” said Susan reasonably.

  “I don’t want one, I should like one,” explained Bryan.

  Susan did not answer, but merely walked on. She was in no mood for frivolity. Bryan, glancing sideways, observed, and felt it a pity, that her profile was at its best when her mouth closed in that quiet inflexible line. How different a mouth from Julia’s with its full lower lip and deep corners! How different from Julia altogether, this slim young Amazon who walked looking straight in front of her, with never an answering glance for the admiring looks commanded by her silver Anglo-Saxon colouring. If only the Julia in her—and surely so vivid a mother must in a daughter live again—could be brought out and allowed to flower! And as always, in the midst of his resentment, Bryan was at once tantalized and enchanted by the vision of a Susan not silvery, but golden; not cold, but warm; of a Susan whom he felt so capable of discovering and of bringing to life—if only the silver Susan would let him.…

  “Why did you say that at lunch?” demanded Susan abruptly.

  “Say what, darling?”

  “About not caring how dirty the money was, so long as it paid for you.”

  Bryan grinned. He knew well enough why he had said it: to get a rise out of good old Julia, because he was morally certain that there was something fishy about that note. Although her previous afternoon’s activities were in detail unknown to him, he had given, without the least loss of appetite, a surprisingly good guess at their general outline; but he also shared Julia’s opinion that Susan would not be pleased.

  “That! I don’t know,” he said lightly. “Just for the sake of saying something, I suppose.”

  “I wish you hadn’t,” stated Susan, frowning. “If you didn’t mean it, it was just foolish; and if you did it was rather rotten.”

  “All right, I’m just a fool,” agreed Bryan amiably. “Let’s try going across-country.” He wanted to get off the highroad, among trees, into the shelter of a hedge: he had the firmly-rooted masculine conviction that all female criticism was best met by kissing.

  Rather to his surprise, Susan nodded. They turned aside, taking one of the lanes that wound to the right over a little hillock. On its summit rose the abandoned shell of a fine new villa; there was no water on that hilltop, as the impetuous architect had belatedly found out. “What an idiot he must have been!” thought Susan absently. She had no patience with people who leapt before they looked—who staked everything on a view, without considering the water-supply; and since she was now (so to speak) considering a water-supply herself, she did not respond to the pressure of Bryan’s hand. She knew already that he could supply her with the view.

  “You’re not a fool,” she said seriously. “And things like that—they worry me, Bryan. The things that slip out when you’re not thinking.”

  He let go her hand and regarded the landscape with an air of exasperation.

  “Darling, if you expect every word I say to be weighed in the balance first—”

  “You know I don’t. I should hate it.”

  “—or if you expect me to talk all the time as though I’m on oath—”

  “I don’t!” cried Susan again. “It’s not that at all!”

  “Then if you want to know,” finished Bryan angrily, “I think you’re making an absurd fuss over nothing.”

  They broke off, aghast. But to Bryan, who had often wished to provoke just such a scene, the moment was not without its compensations. He enjoyed, fiercely, the pleasure of letting his irritation get the better of him. He enjoyed Susan’s wide gaze of distress, and the faint colour that stained her throat. Then the savage moment passed, and his heart dropped like lead.

  “Susan—darling—”

  “It’s all right,” said Susan quietly. She too had recovered herself; she could meet his imploring gaze with a smile. “Only—only if you feel like that, and I feel so differently, it seems pretty hopeless.”

  “Nothing’s hopeless, if you’ll stick to me,” said Bryan urgently. He meant it. His penitence was so great that he felt capable of any sacrifice—more, of any long laborious toil—that would reinstate him in her graces. Susan turned away her head. To her also it was a moment for self-examination.

  “I know Julia thinks I’m a prig,” she said slowly.

  “Damn Julia!”

  For some reason Susan’s expression immediately relaxed. Her next words came more easily, almost impetuously, as though a confidence withdrawn had been suddenly renewed.

  “If I am, I shall be one all my life. That’s what I want you to understand, Bryan: if you find me too—too difficult now, I don’t believe I shall ever be easier. I can’t pretend. I can’t behave as though things aren’t important, when I know they are. Things you think are too little to worry about. I’ve tried—it does sound priggish, and I know it—to set a guard about myself.…”

  There was a long silence. They were both too much moved for speech; they were both suddenly humbled, Susan before the vision of a perfect integrity, a holiness of the mind, Bryan before the reflection of it through Susan. It was the deepest emotion he had known, and so strange to him that he could not understand, but only feel. His words, when at last they came, and inadequate as they were, had at least sincerity to strengthen them.

  “You’re the best thing there ever was, Susan. You make me feel one of the worst.”

  She reached out behind her—she was now walking a little in front of him—and felt for his hand. He took it and plunged on.

  “You’ve got such hellishly—such heavenly—high standards. You—you’ll have to haul me up to them.”

  “Can I, my dear?”

  “If you want to, you know you can. Only—pull hard.”

  She drew him close beside her, and they finished their walk like lovers.

  3

  That night, for the first time since her arrival at Muzin, Julia was unhappy. She told herself three fortunes, and each was worse than the last: she was going to have trouble in old age, and be jilted by a fair stranger, and suffer disappointment in her plans. Nor was she in the least surprised, for everything was going wrong already. Her successful raid on Aix had produced totally unexpected consequences, and so had her scheme for the discomfiture of Bryan Relton. He and Susan had returned to the Villa trailing positive clouds of glory: th
ey spent the whole evening walking up and down the terrace discussing his career. “It can’t last,” thought Julia; but when she looked at her daughter’s face she almost doubted. Susan was so strong-minded! But even if she gained complete ascendency, if she managed to hold Bryan’s nose to the grindstone and turn him into a pillar of the law, she couldn’t change his nature. He might behave like a solid pillar for year after year, but one day he would crack, and then down would come all Susan’s firmly-built house. “Perhaps it’s that lunch,” thought Julia, quite aghast at her own gloomy prescience. “Rich food never did agree with me.…” But she knew she was fooling herself; rich food as a rule was just what she throve on. However, she went to her room and took a soda-mint, and either that or her long night’s sleep did her good. She woke up still feeling melancholy, but only gently and sentimentally so; and since it was an instinct with her always to make the most of any emotion, she slipped out alone and bent her steps towards the ruined pavilion.

  Chapter 14

  1

  It was more dilapidated than Julia had thought—doubly so, indeed, for even the repairs were themselves in need of repairing. A sheet of zinc under the roof no longer kept out any but the mildest weather; in every wall long zigzag cracks split the superimposed plaster. There were seedlings between the boards, cobwebs under the beams; and the only elegant thing there was a little slender grey-green lizard that fled at Julia’s step.