Free The Nutmeg Tree by Margery Sharp Page A

convenience of the wagon-lit; but to Susan at least such uneventful voyaging seemed perfectly natural. Of Bryan, Julia was less sure.
    â€œPoor Mrs. Packett!” he said. “Didn’t you find a soul to speak to?”
    â€œThere was quite a nice woman on board—a schoolmistress, I think,” said Julia.
    â€œVery 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.
    â€œI do so love the country!” announced Julia with enthusiasm.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œIn 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.
    â€œHow long ago?”
    â€œAbout 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.
    â€œAnd then,” supplied Julia encouragingly, “he asked for your