The Nutmeg Tree (5 page)

He had no breath to reply—as Julia knew by the superb expansion and contraction of his chest—but his smile said everything. It was all right, he didn't mind; and when at the end of the turn she took her call with the rest his arm slipped through hers and clipped it tight to his side.

“You were grand!” he murmured, while the curtain swung down and up; and at the touch of his cheek, as he whispered, a delicious thrill ran like wine through Julia's body. This, this, she thought, was life! The fouled air was like balmy breezes to her: the people in the audience—good and bad, clean and grimy—were her friends, her kindred, the partakers of her joy. As far as Julia ever felt a communion with nature, she felt it then. And if the nature thus communed with was exclusively human, and therefore (as is commonly believed) less pure, less elevating, than the inanimate, that was the fault of circumstance. The trees and mountains were waiting for her in Savoy.

3

Three hundred miles away old Mrs. Packett sat up and looked at the time. It was half-past ten; she had gone to bed too early. Susan always made her grandmother go to bed early when there was to be anything special next day—and then when the next day arrived, made her stay in bed late.

“Silly foolishness!” said old Mrs. Packett aloud. She stretched herself out between the cool, lavender-smelling sheets: her old body felt tough and vigorous—a bit stiff in the joints, but quite capable of sitting up till a reasonable hour. She had been a trifle nervy that afternoon, no doubt; but who wouldn't, with a resurrected daughter-in-law hanging over one's head. Hadn't she a strange young man practically living in the house already? “I didn't come here to entertain a house-party,” thought Mrs. Packett crossly; “I came here for rest and peace and Susan's French.” But Susan was for once being unreasonable: instead of getting quietly on with her Molière she must needs go and fall in love, and adopt ridiculous martyred attitudes, and write ridiculous letters to a parent she had hardly seen! Mrs. Packett no longer feared Julia; Susan (as no one knew better than her grandmother) was past the malleable stage; but a positive invitation more than any normal woman could resist …

“I let Susan domineer,” thought Mrs. Packett. “It's a bad habit for both of us.” Then, involuntarily, she smiled; Susan's domineering was very sweet. It made one feel—wanted. It kept one up to the mark. Susan was very particular, for example, about her grandmother's hats; she always made straight for the model department, and would look at nothing under two guineas. Once, for a plain black straw with a velvet ruche, she made the old lady pay five. “It's the
line
,” Susan had explained. “It makes you look like a Romney.” Mrs. Packett always submitted. She still had a tendency to woolly jackets, and to bits of embroidery on the chest, but her hats were admirable.…

“Julia never cared,” thought Mrs. Packett suddenly. Julia had never cared about anything. A nice girl in her way, most docile and obliging, but always with an air of being only half alive … and then she had gone off like that on her own and never come back again! So there must have been something in her, something that Barton was suppressing, was inimical to. Mrs. Packett pondered. In her own youth, before she was married off, she had often thought about living her own life and breeding spaniels: had Julia's thoughts run along the same lines? She never got that husband, it seemed; but what had she done with the seven thousand pounds? Just gone on drawing the income? “If I'd been she,” thought Mrs. Packett vigorously, “I'd have started a nice little business.” Perhaps Julia had; perhaps she was even now leaving behind a tea-shop, or a hat-shop, or a high-class florist's; and if so, it was to be hoped that she had a manageress she could trust.

Mrs. Packett dozed, stirred, and woke up again. The villa, like the village at its gate, was very still, and through the open window came a gust of sweet pine-scented air.

“A holiday will do her good,” thought old Mrs. Packett; for somehow, during her nap, she had become firmly convinced that Julia kept a cake-shop. They would have nice long conversations about it: Julia probably had all sorts of new recipes, and if Anthelmine could be got out of the kitchen, they might even try their hands …

“Maids-of-honour,” murmured Mrs. Packett; and on that comfortable thought went finally and peacefully to sleep.

4

Meanwhile, in the taxi between the music-hall and the Gare du Lyon, Julia was receiving a proposal of marriage. Ardent yet respectful (Julia indeed keeping him off with an elbow against the chest) Fred Genocchio offered his hand, his heart, his money in the Bank, and his villa at Maida Vale.

“Stay here!” he implored. “Stay here where you belong, Julie, and we'll get married as soon as ever we can. As soon as the week's up the others can go back and we'll have a regular honeymoon. You're the hit of the show, Julie, you're made for it, and I want you so! And you want me, Julie, you know you do!”

She did want him. Her elbow dropped, for a long minute she surrendered to the breath-taking sensation of a trapeze artist's embrace. The motion of the taxi flung them from side to side: first Julia's back, then Fred's, thumped violently against the upholstery; and neither even noticed.

“You'll stay,” said Fred.

His voice broke the spell. Julia's eyes opened, travelled vaguely past his shoulder, and focussed at last on two white patches in the darkness. They were the labels on her luggage, whose superscription she had written in London only twenty-four hours earlier:
Les Sapins, Muzin, près de Belley, Ain
.

“I can't!” cried Julia. “I'm going to my daughter!”

She drew herself away and felt Fred stiffen beside her.

“Your daughter doesn't want you like I do!”

“She does, Fred! She's unhappy, and in trouble, and she's there waiting for me! She hasn't wanted me for years—”

“Then she can get along without you now. Julie, my darling—”

“No,” said Julia.

Her distress was at least as great as his. To know him suffering, in despair, when with one word she could make all well again, was an agony so acute that she could hardly breathe. It was not her nature to deny: if she took lovers more freely than most women it was largely because she could not bear to see men sad when it was so easy to make them happy. Her sensuousness was half compassion; she could never keep men on a string, which was perhaps why only one had ever married her; and now—the bitterness!—when Fred too wanted to marry her, she had to refuse him.…

“Wait!” she pleaded. “Wait till I get back!”

“You won't come back,” said Fred sombrely. “They'll get hold of you. That daughter of yours …”

Julia felt a sudden chill. Hitherto, unconsciously, she had been limiting that daughter's existence, and her own term of motherhood, to the next month; now she looked into the future. To marry Fred Genocchio would be to give Susan an acrobat for a stepfather. An acrobat among the Packetts! It was unthinkable, and Julia sat thinking of it, silent and in misery, while every jolt of the taxi brought them nearer to the Gare du Lyon.

“There's another thing,” said Fred at last. Julia became very still; by the constraint in his voice, by the sudden casualness of his manner, she knew he was about to reveal an inner secret of the heart. “There's another thing,” said Fred. “I've never been able—on the high wire—to do a forward somersault. But I've sometimes thought, if I had a son—perhaps
he
might.”

5

How Julia got herself into the train, and found her sleeper, and tipped the attendant, she never quite knew. From the moment they left the taxi she had chattered aimlessly, unconscious of what she said, unconscious of Fred's replies, unconscious of everything save the pressure of his arm against her side. But she managed it nevertheless; somehow, suddenly, she was standing in the train corridor, and Fred was on the station platform, and there was a sheet of glass between them. He stood superb and statuesque, moveless as a rock—the best-built man Julia had ever seen. Then the earth seemed to slide under her feet as the train moved out; she waved once, foolishly, then stumbled into her compartment and locked the door.

She was tired as a cat, and no wonder.

She was too tired to cry, certainly too tired to lie awake. After a brief examination of the toilet arrangements—whose novelty and neat commodiousness could not fail to please—Julia hastily creamed her face and got into pyjamas. A couple of darkening bruises, one on each forearm, testified to the uncommon power of Mr. Genocchio's grip. They were the only souvenirs she had of him, and even those would fade.…

Julia slid into her bunk and was just preparing for sleep when she noticed a narrow and hitherto unexplored door. Curiosity impelled her to get up and slip back the bolt; she found herself looking not into a cupboard, but into the next (and empty) compartment.

“Handy!” thought Julia.

Then she got back into bed and slept like a log.

Chapter 5

1

Ten minutes before the train stopped at Ambérieu (the time being then twenty-past six) Julia put on her Matron's Model and stood considering the effect.

It wasn't good. The hat was all right in itself, and value for money; but it didn't suit Julia. Perhaps the events of the previous day had left too many traces: there was a faint old-pro look about her, something hardy and cheerful, but a trifle worn.…

“I need my sleep,” thought Julia, tilting the hat further. It was of fine brown straw, mushroom-shaped, with a bunch of ribbons in front, but the angle at which Julia wore it was foreign to its nature. A dowager at a fête, who had been given champagne instead of claret-cup, might indeed have achieved the same effect; only it was not the one Julia sought. She took the thing off, planted it squarely on her head, and tried again. Under the straight brim her round black eyes stared in good-humoured astonishment; the full mouth, the soft chin, had no business to be there. “You're right,” said Julia to her reflection, “but I'm damn well going to wear it all the same. Don't you know it's the sort of hat she'll be looking for?”

Before the thought of her daughter all else fled. The train was slowing down already; Julia seized her smaller suitcase and hurried into the corridor. She meant to get down the steps at once and be ready on the platform, so that when Susan rushed up there would be no impediment to their embrace—and also so that the label on her suitcase would be properly displayed. For Julia was not relying on filial instinct alone: she had prepared a special piece of cardboard, seven inches by four, with MRS. PACKETT printed in block capitals. Thus not even a stranger could help knowing who she was; and as things turned out—as they so often turned out with Julia—it was a stranger who first addressed her.

“Mees' Packett?”

“Go away,” said Julia sharply. He was a very little man, and she looked straight over his head, scanning the platform. No rushing daughterly figure was in sight; the few passengers and their friends were already melting away. Julia was not exactly uneasy, but she could feel uneasiness round the corner.…

“Mees' Packett?” implored the man again. “Mees' Packett, Les Sapins, Muzin?” He was holding something out to her, an envelope, which did indeed bear her name; and as Julia looked at it her heart lightened. This time at any rate she knew the hand.

Dear Mother,—

I am so very glad you have come, but I'm not meeting you because six-thirty
A.M.
at a railway station is such a ghastly place for reunions. The man who gives you this is the station chauffeur, he will bring you to Muzin, and if you like you can have a bath and some more sleep before breakfast.

Affectionately,—

S
USAN
.

Julia folded the note away, indicated her luggage to the chauffeur, and followed him out of the station to where the car stood waiting. The freshness of the grey morning air made her shiver: as she powdered her nose again, scrutinizing her features in the little glass, she felt that Susan had perhaps been wise.

“Very sensible indeed,” said Julia aloud. To her surprise, she sounded as though she were trying to convince someone. “And very
thoughtful
,” added Julia angrily. Then she folded her coat over her knees and appreciated the landscape. Her dominant impression was that it went up. Just for a moment she closed her eyes; and when she reopened them, the car had come to a stop.

2

They appeared to be in a farmyard. Poultry fluttered round their wheels, a dog barked, and over the half-door of a stable a horse looked at them intently.

“Qu'est-ce que c'est?”
called Julia, rapping on the glass.

“Muzin,”
called back the chauffeur.

Julia looked at the horse, the horse looked at Julia. Directly over its head, fastened to the wall, was a very old sign advertising Singer Sewing Machines.

“Ah!” exclaimed the chauffeur with satisfaction; and leaning from his seat he hailed a group of three men, all bearing agricultural implements, who had suddenly materialized in his path. They wore coloured shirts, blue trousers, and straw hats vaguely moulded in the shape of sun-helmets. These gave them, to Julia's eye, an odd air of tropical explorers; but they were evidently (and on the contrary) natives.

“Bonjour, messieurs,”
called the chauffeur.
“C'est ici Les Sapins?”

The eldest of them indicated a narrow opening between two barns. Through there, said the gesture, and up—but up!—one would find Les Sapins. The car moved slowly forward, crawled through the narrows, crossed a square with a fountain in it, and then climbed up—up—by two more lanes (or farmyards) until it was stopped by a tall iron gate. This the chauffeur opened; and as its leaves swung apart Julia saw on the farther side the first stately outposts—huge, dark, majestic—of an avenue of pines.