The Nutmeg Tree by Margery Sharp Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    â€œBonjour, 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.
    She was there.
    3
    The villa of Les Sapins, as originally constructed at the time of the First Empire, was a small white building partly of two stories, partly of one. It jutted squarely from the hillside, the upper or front door opening on a terrace at the foot of the vine, the lower door upon a terrace over the kitchen-garden. Below were the dining-room, the kitchen, and the larders; above a salon and three bedrooms. This accommodation had sufficed until about 1890, when a new owner of convivial tastes added a billiard-room and two more bedchambers. He built straight along on the flat, thus turning the original square into a rectangle; and besides elongating the terraces to suit, he joined them by fine stucco staircases, one at either end of the house. With the construction of these staircases the glory of Les Sapins reached its height; and it lasted but two years. The jovial owner went bankrupt, the villa stood empty, or was rented and neglected by a succession of summer tenants; until it finally passed into the hands of an English spinster named Spencer-Jones, who put in a bath. Miss Spencer-Jones knew Mrs. Packett; and Mrs. Packett took it for the summer of 1936.
    Even in decadence, the place was charming. A great Virginia jasmine, dropping fed waxen trumpets, concealed the worst deficiencies of the roof. In the deep shadow of the embowering pines the walls still looked white. Tubs of oleander flanked the broken steps, a great lime tree spread shade and perfume over the lower terrace; the rosebushes looked like summer-houses, the summerhouse like a rosebush.
    But the glory of the place was the view. From the top of the vineyard, which mounted directly behind the house, one looked straight across a vast circular plain,—mountain-girdled, dotted with villages, varied by little hills, cultivated over every foot,—whose centre was the tiny bishopric of Belley. It was the joke of the village that the back door at Les Sapins was two hundred feet higher than the front; and the pride of the villa that from it one could see Mont Blanc.
    4
    High up amongst the topmost trees, on the morning of Julia’s arrival, stood a tall, fair girl in an old mackintosh. She had been there since six, watching the Ambérieu road as a beleaguered garrison watches for the relieving force; yet as the car at last appeared her expression did not clear. She had called in, not a known ally, but a strange power. By that impulsive letter, posted as soon as it was written, she had invited a stranger to her inmost councils; had tacitly given word to throw down all defences, expose every weakness, in return for a reinforcement whose strength she did not know.
    â€œHave I been a fool?” asked Susan Packett of the pine trees.
    There was naturally no answer. But as the gates clanged open, as the car nosed up the avenue, Susan turned her back on the house and began to climb higher and higher, towards the bare rocks.

Chapter 6
    1
    Under the roses of the porch Julia was received by an elderly