Over the Blue Mountains

by Mary Burchell

  It had been difficult for Juliet to express how grateful she felt for this offer of literal and figurative shelter at a time when she needed it so badly. But both brother and sister had smilingly and determinedly put that aside.

  One aspect, however, had not been discussed, and Carol referred to that now.

  “Juliet, what do you want Max to do about your family?”

  “In what way?” Juliet looked slightly startled.

  “Well, he’ll be seeing them in Melbourne, you know. Do you want him to ... tell them about you?”

  “Oh...” She frowned, not much liking the thought of Verity’s and Aunt Katherine’s probable comments on the unfortunate Martin fiasco. “I wish he needn’t say anything about me, but, of course, that’s impossible. It would be ridiculous to make any mystery about it, so I’m afraid he had better tell them, with as little detail as possible.”

  “They’re sure to want you to join them, then,” said Carol, who always expected people to react in the same way as herself.

  Juliet smiled slightly and shook her head.

  “I don’t think so. At least—my uncle might. But not the others.”

  Carol glanced at her with frank curiosity.

  “Do you know your cousin well—the one Max is going to marry, I mean?”

  “Not ... very well,” Juliet said cautiously. “I only traveled out here with her on the plane journey. That doesn’t give you many chances for getting to know each other.”

  “But what you saw you didn’t like?” suggested Carol shrewdly.

  “Ob, my dear, if she is going to be your sister-in-law, you can’t expect me to air my own likes and dislikes,” protested Juliet, with a smile. “I don’t think we should ever hit it off very well temperamentally, but that isn’t any sort of criticism, you know.”

  “No-o. I’m not quite sure why I asked.” Carol frowned, and seemed to examine her own impulse. “I suppose, in my heart or instinct or whatever you like to call it, I’m not entirely happy about this suggested marriage of Max’s.”

  Juliet was slightly at a loss what to say. In spite of her protests, she felt she did know Verity pretty well, and she could not see her making an ideal sister-in-law for this warm, eager, generous-hearted girl. At the same time, she could only make mischief if she expressed any opinion about that.

  So, diplomatically, she simply said, “Is the marriage quite settled?”

  “No. And that, too, rather annoyed me. The way she hesitated, I mean,” Carol said.

  “Hesitated?” Juliet looked astonished. “Why, I thought—” She checked herself. “Do you mean that Verity isn’t sure of her own mind?”

  “Well, her story was that she was more than half-engaged to some man in Melbourne, before she took that trip to Europe. And she told Max she couldn’t agree to become engaged to him until she had seen the other man and cleared things up with him.”

  Juliet was considerably surprised to hear that Verity had had any such scruples. But she said immediately, “I think she was right, though. Don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes! If it was really as she said.”

  “Oh... ” Juliet glanced at Carol with fresh respect for her natural acumen. “You mean that you think it wasn’t?”

  “Well, I may be a suspicious-minded creature—and probably am where my one and only brother is concerned,” Carol admitted ruefully. “But I happen to know that other man. Not very well personally, but he was a business acquaintance of Henry’s father, and we met him once or twice when we were in Melbourne. He’s tremendously rich and influential, Juliet—not at all the kind of man whom you have a vague half-and-half arrangement with and then leave in the air while you drift off to Europe for some months.”

  She hesitated for a moment, but Juliet said, “Do go on.”

  “I can’t help feeling that what is much more likely is that this girl—I’m sorry! Your cousin, I mean—”

  “That’s all right.”

  “That she thinks she has some chance with the other man and wouldn’t hesitate to take him if she could. On the other hand, if, on her return, she finds that any hopes she had don’t materialize, she’ll be perfectly willing to take Max. And, frankly, I think my Max is too good to be treated as a second-best by a girl who can argue that way.”

  “I—see.” Juliet pretended to give serious consideration to what had just been said because, again, she was at a loss to know what she could tactfully say.

  Of course Carol was completely right in her estimate of the situation! Juliet was shocked and almost amused to find that anyone who had never even met Verity could sum her up so well. Knowing her as she did, Juliet could not doubt that Verity had argued on exactly the lines Carol suggested. And, with Carol, Juliet was beginning to feel that Max was too good to be treated like that.

  At the same time, there was nothing she could do that would not rank as mischievous interference.

  “Do you think,” she asked rather diffidently, “he is very much in love with Verity?”

  “Oh—” Carol laughed crossly “—I don’t know. I suppose so. He always teases me when I talk of the things I think important. He says he isn’t the kind to fall violently in love with anyone, but I just think he hasn’t met the right girl yet. Of course, I know lots of happy marriages are built on less than a terrific love affair, and he may be right. But if she is a little bit calculating and he is very well-balanced about it all, are they ever going to strike the divine spark from each other?”

  Juliet smiled and took her arm.

  “Dear, no one can ever say how that will happen with someone else. It’s difficult enough to say when it will happen with oneself. You’ve been frank with me, and I’ll be the same with you. I don’t much care for what I saw of my cousin, but she obviously is what some men like very much. Since I don’t care for her, I should never bring out the best in her—just as I know I was nothing like my nicest when I was with her. But your brother is the kind of man to know exactly what he wants. He is no fool, I am sure.”

  “Could be where women are concerned,” said Carol with sisterly candor. But she pressed the hand that held her arm, and looked consoled.

  Later, Juliet thought a good deal about that conversation with Carol. Twenty-four hours ago she would have considered that if Max Ormathon made a fundamental mistake about his marriage, that was his affair. Now, with the remembrance of his strong and kind support so fresh in her mind, she thought she would be sorry to see him married to the wrong girl.

  And nothing she had seen of Verity suggested that her cousin was the right girl.

  Still, one could never be really wise about the relationships of other people, Juliet reminded herself. She had been mistaken enough even about Martin, heaven knew! It was not for her to say whether or not her cousin Verity would make Max Ormathon happy.

  Late that evening, Carol’s husband came home, and in the first ten minutes Juliet realized why Carol was a happy woman.

  Henry Denver was not a handsome or dashing type. Rather stockily built, he was dark, like his little daughter, but with none of her quick, effervescing spirits. Those she got from her mother. But he was quiet and reassuring, as certain and reliable as tomorrow’s dawn, and the rather slow gravity of his speech and manner was lit from time to time by flashes of unmalicious humor.

  He obviously adored his family and was deeply attached to Max. To Juliet he extended a welcome as warm and unforced as Carol’s, and she knew that here was someone with whom she would always be most happily at ease.

  Family life, of the rich, full, unforced variety, which existed at Bakandi, was something Juliet had never known, and she was delighted to find herself part of it. Isobel was a charming, intelligent child, and teaching her was as much a pleasure as a duty, and the rest of Juliet’s tasks were no more than she might have had if she had been Carol’s sister.

  Now that Henry was home again, and Carol had a little less time for her brother, Max inevitably devoted rather more of his time to Juliet. He offered to teach her ridin
g, assuring her that if she eventually settled in the country, this would be an essential.

  On the whole, Juliet thought she was more likely to have to make her living in one of the big cities. But that did not make her any the less willing to accept Max’s offer and, in jodhpurs borrowed from Carol, she had her first riding lessons.

  Max himself was a bold and fearless rider, but he was a reasonable patient teacher, and Juliet enjoyed those lessons in the cool, bright early mornings. She found in this, as in other things, that he gave her a feeling of security, which no one else had ever done, and she wondered if he had the power to impart to others the complete lack of fear that he seemed to have himself.

  Once, when they were riding home side by side with slackened reins, she said impulsively, “Have you ever been afraid of anything?”

  He laughed and turned his head to look at her with a certain degree of amused curiosity.

  “Apropos of what?” he wanted to know.

  “Nothing special. I was just thinking ... that is the impression you give. That you’ve never really known what fear is.”

  He considered that.

  “I have an inner conviction that I can deal with most things that are likely to come,” he said at last. “So I don’t nervously anticipate an unmanageable crisis—if that is what fear is. I suppose courage, like happiness, is largely a state of mind, Juliet.”

  “But things must sometimes happen as you don’t at all expect. What then? Have you ever been frightened as some—some dismaying truth breaks on you?”

  She was looking ahead as she said that and she did not see the quick glance of sympathetic comprehension that he gave her.

  “Perhaps I have been lucky, Juliet, in not having had my mental or moral courage tried very high,” he said rather gently. “As far as physical courage is concerned—I suppose I have that. But I don’t know that it’s much more to one’s credit than a good appetite or the power to breathe deeply. I’ve never consciously done anything about it. It’s just—there.”

  “It’s very nice to be with, anyway,” Juliet said soberly.

  He laughed at that.

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that the very fact of being with someone who is so steady and unperturbed as you are makes me—one feel safer and happier.”

  He didn’t answer that at once. Then he said gravely, “Thank you, my dear. I hope you will always feel safe and happy when I am around.”

  I shall, of course, thought Juliet. I wish he were not going to marry Verity. She isn’t half—a quarter—good enough for him. Well, perhaps the other man will want her instead—the very rich man—though I’m sure I don’t know why he should, she added to herself, realistically rather than censoriously.

  They were wonderful days, those eight or nine days that she spent at Bakandi while Max was still there, even though at times her personal loss seemed to come back to her with redoubled force, so that she wondered how she could possibly be happy for one moment now that Martin was lost to her.

  The sense of shock that had come to her in that little house in Tyrville never quite left her. Waking or sleeping it was at the back of her mind, and often in her worst moments it blotted out every other feeling. But the fearful emptiness had been filled.

  Juliet discovered—as everyone who suffers a great grief or shock must discover—that life goes on, though the heavens fall. And life for her had gone on in such novel and absorbing terms that, so long as she made a courageous effort to control her grief and keep it for those times when she was quite alone, she found real interest and joy in the new experiences and new relationships that had crowded upon her.

  She was surprised to find how fully she shared Carol’s regret that Max could not be persuaded to stay any longer. He had, he insisted, quite urgent business in Melbourne and, although he appeared to be enjoying the family party quite as much an anyone else, it was perhaps natural that he should wish to see Verity as soon as possible and learn his fate.

  On the day before his departure, Henry rode into the nearest post station to bring back letters and newspapers. And only when she heard him announce that he was going did Juliet realize how much of her rather inexplicable present content was due to the fact that she had been completely cut off from the outside world.

  There was something self-contained and all-sufficient about life at Bakandi, and she had been able to enjoy it wholeheartedly because her mind had simply abruptly cut itself off from everything that had once made up her world.

  Now, the very mention of letters and newspapers stirred recollections and familiar thoughts in her mind, and a little restlessly she told herself that she could not go on forever in this delightful isolation.

  It was teatime by the time Henry returned, that pleasant, sociable hour of the evening when most Australians have their principal meal of the day. He greeted them all and sat down at the table before he offered any comment on his journey. Then, as Carol set a delicious-smelling grill in front of him, he turned to Max and said abruptly for him, “Is Edmund Burlett, of Antipodean Consolidated, anything to do with the girl you want to marry?”

  “Why, of course. He’s Verity’s father. Why?”

  Henry shook his head slightly.

  “Rather bad business, I’m afraid. The company’s gone broke and, from all accounts, he had some sort of stroke.”

  “What? Uncle Edmund!”

  It was Juliet who exclaimed in horror, and at the sound of her voice Henry turned to her in some dismay.

  “My God, I’m sorry, Juliet! I forgot that he was related to you, too.”

  “Never mind about that,” Juliet exclaimed, brushing the apology aside. “Tell me—what did you say?”

  “Yes. Give us some more details, for heaven’s sake,” Max said, pushing away his plate and resting his arms on the table.

  “It’s all in the papers.” Henry indicated the small bundle of newspapers he had brought in. “The story of the bankruptcy was in yesterday’s morning papers, and there’s a little bit in the stop press of the evening paper.”

  “About ... his having ... a stroke, you mean?” Juliet inquired anxiously. “It wasn’t fatal, was it?”

  “No. At least, not at the time of the newspaper report.”

  “But how terrible for them all! Whatever will they do?” For a moment Juliet had a very clear recollection of her aunt’s half-real helplessness in the face of emergency.

  No one seemed to have any answer to offer. But Max, looking grimmer and more purposeful than Juliet had ever seen him look before, said, “I won’t waste time going all the way by car tomorrow. I think I’d better make an early start and drive back to Sydney, and then try to get on the evening plane to Melbourne.”

  “Oh, do let me come with you,” Juliet exclaimed impulsively.

  They all looked at her in astonishment, and Carol said, “Do you think that’s necessary, dear?”

  “Of course it is! They are my own people.”

  “But you did say,” Carol reminded her, “that they were almost like strangers.”

  “Not now this dreadful thing has happened to them,” Juliet explained, with earnest simplicity. “It’s such a stunning disaster for them, and Aunt Katherine isn’t in a state to tackle a crisis. I do really think I should go, only—only...”

  She stopped and blushed suddenly as she remembered her limited resources.

  But someone else had remembered them, too, it seemed. “Very well. I’ll see that you get there all right,” Max told her. “I think perhaps you’re right, and that you should come with me and see what there is to be done.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Juliet said, privately making a fervent vow to repay Max for this, too, somehow, one day.

  “It will mean a very early start for us,” Max told her.

  “I don’t mind. But, oh, Carol—” she turned to the other girl apologetically “—I’m sorry to be upsetting all our lovely arrangements, just as they were working so well.”

  “Don’t worry about that,
” Carol told her. “All I’m thinking—”

  When she stopped abruptly and her brother asked rather impatiently, “What’s your objection, Carol?”

  “No real objection,” his sister said. “Only—don’t let them all exploit Juliet, even if they are in a bad way, will you?”

  “No one is going to exploit Juliet while I’m around,” Max replied dryly.

  And Juliet wondered why on earth it thrilled her so much to have him say that.

  An anxious examination of the newspapers disclosed little more than the essentials, which Henry had told them. Juliet gathered that her uncle was the chairman of the Investment Company concerned, and when she read how far-reaching the disaster was, she felt that there was no wonder that her uncle had looked harassed and at the end of his tether when she saw him in Sydney.

  It was hard to visualize just what this would mean to her relations. One could not imagine Aunt Katherine—or Verity, either, for that matter—without plenty of money in the background of their lives.

  “Just how complete do you imagine their financial ruin must be?” she asked Max anxiously.

  “I couldn’t say, my dear. But I’m afraid there isn’t often much salvaged from a crash of this sort.”

  “How lucky for Verity—” began Carol. But a look from her brother made her lapse into rather shamed silence.

  Afterward, however, she said a little defiantly to Juliet, “I don’t care how haughty Max chooses to look about it. I think Verity is darned lucky to be more or less engaged to him.”

  “Perhaps,” Juliet offered hopefully, “the other man will feel protective and want to come to the rescue.”

  “Not he!” Carol declared. “He isn’t that sort at all, if I’ve read him aright. No—” she sighed deeply “—I’m afraid Max’s fate is sealed.”

  “Oh, Carol! Don’t put it like that.”