Over the Blue Mountains

by Mary Burchell

  Then there was the shattering blow to her relations—her family, she supposed she might almost call them. And finally the decision to start life afresh in circumstances she had never known before but that she had accepted with blithe confidence.

  Now she came to think of it, Juliet was surprised and slightly appalled to reflect on the impulsive optimism with which she had committed herself to this new situation.

  It was idle to pretend that her aunt would run the household, with Juliet merely an assistant who had time to learn the new circumstances. The whole family seemed to have accepted the idea that she would be the pivot around which the new life would turn.

  I must have been crazy, thought Juliet in a moment of panic. Why do I do these things? There was no more sense in my undertaking this than there was in my rushing off to Australia on the strength of a few kind words from Aunt Katherine.

  But it was too late to think about that now and, firmly quieting her quivering nerves, Juliet grimly determined to tackle the future to the best of her ability.

  The stay in Bathurst was not a long one. The friends with whom Verity was to stay for the time being welcomed her warmly and, having promised to return in a few days, Max departed with Juliet on the last stage of the journey.

  He had had his car sent over from Sydney by now, and as they drove the hundred miles between Bathurst and Borralung, Juliet could not help recalling that other drive with him, when she had supposed she would find Martin waiting eagerly for her at the end.

  She wondered where he was and what had happened to him, though of course—she sighed impatiently—he was no concern of hers now. She had written to him, briefly, from Bakandi, telling him there was no need for him to worry about her—that she had both friends and relations in Australia. And she had, with what enthusiasm she could, expressed the hope that he would be happy.

  There had been no reply. And though perhaps it was better that way, Juliet could not help thinking that he might have sent her one word of regret and good wishes.

  It was early afternoon when they drove into Borralung. And there, outside the combined inn and cafe of the little country community, stood Carol’s car. Inside, they found Carol, drinking tea and eating buttered toast, for all the world as though she had just dropped in for a chat.

  “I shall never get used to the way you all take these distances so calmly,” Juliet exclaimed as she kissed Carol with warm delight. “Here we have come hundreds of miles to a completely unknown place—at least, so far as I am concerned—and the first person we find is you, who have also come miles and miles...”

  “Oh, darling, don’t exaggerate! It was only fifty-four,” Carol protested good-humoredly. “And a lovely drive at that. By the way, I think you’re going to like your house, even though it needs to have a good deal done to it.”

  “Have you seen it already?”

  “Yes. I arrived earlier than I expected, so I drove out to look it over. It’s about a mile outside the town and definitely has possibilities. Have some tea.”

  So they all sat around the table then and drank tea and exchanged items of personal news.

  “What did you mean exactly when you said the house needs to have a good deal done to it?” Max inquired presently.

  “Oh, just plenty of painting and an odd window or two and so on. Nothing we can’t do ourselves,” Carol added encouragingly. “Max is grand with a paint brush,” she said, turning to Juliet, “and I’m not bad. How about you?”

  Juliet admitted that she had never had to test her practical skill in that direction, but added that no doubt she could learn.

  “We’ll put you on the easy bits first,” Carol promised. “And by the way, I brought plenty of blankets, so Max can sleep in the house if necessary, and you and I can come to this place—” she glanced around a little critically “—for a night or two. There seems to be some furniture in the house, Max, so far as I could see by looking through the windows.”

  “Yes. I imagined there would be. But I’m not expecting much of it to be of any use.”

  “We’re having our own stuff moved up here as soon as I’ve looked things over and judged what it necessary—or possible,” Juliet explained. “That’s one of the things I promised to do for Aunt Katherine—send her lists as soon as possible.”

  “Um, ye-es. Elegant town furniture won’t be much good up here, you know,” Carol warned her.

  “I realize that. But we’ll compromise as far as possible, so that the place will still seem a little like home to them when they arrive.”

  Carol agreed sympathetically to this. And then they went out to the street once more, collected from the general store opposite various things that Carol designated as necessary, and then drove out to the house.

  In her heart of hearts, Juliet was secretly a good deal disappointed when she saw the sprawling wooden-frame house from which most of the paint had peeled away. One or two posts of the veranda were downy too, and a couple of windows cracked. And the whole place looked dirty and neglected, as only a house that had stood empty for some time can look.

  But both the others seemed so certain that it was “full of possibilities” that she swallowed her distaste and managed to say with truth that the rooms seemed large and well-proportioned.

  At any rate the setting was quite lovely. A large, overgrown garden seemed to promise productive soil, and a little way behind the house rose a high green hill, on which great clumps of wattle were already throwing splashes of gold among the green of the scrub and the duller shades of the gum trees.

  And, as Max had promised, one could stand on the veranda before the front door and look away over miles of open country to the flat-topped ranges of the Blue Mountains.

  But there was so much to be done indoors that this was no time to linger admiring the view.

  Together they went over the house, listing what needed doing, what needed buying and what must be disposed of.

  In spite of the dust and the neglect, Juliet began to see how the big square sitting room could be made into something very attractive, how the equally big kitchen could be turned into a kitchen-dining room, and how the other rooms could be brightened and freshened and made to look—if not, according to Aunt Katherine’s idea, elegant—at least comfortable and pleasing.

  It was an absorbing task, which stimulated the imagination and enthusiasm of them all, so that they argued a great deal and laughed even more. So interested were they that none of them heard a car drive up outside, and when someone rapped on the front door, they all looked surprised.

  “I’ll go,” said Juliet, who was already beginning to have the subtle, pleasing impression that this house was to be her concern.

  “It’s probably one of the neighbors already come to offer help,” remarked Carol.

  Juliet could see the shadow of a man against the glass panels of the door as she went along the passage. But nothing prepared her for the shock that awaited her.

  She opened the door. And it was Martin who stood outside on the veranda.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Martin!” Juliet leaned against the side of the doorway and stared at him in consternation. “I—however did you find me here?”

  “I went to the address you gave on your letter. Your friend’s husband told me where you were.”

  She wished Henry’s judgment had been equal to saying he knew nothing of her whereabouts. But, of course, he had not Carol’s comprehensive knowledge of the situation, and no doubt he had done what he thought best.

  “I wish—” She pushed her hair back with a nervous gesture. “It would have been better for you not to have come. I—I’m all right here—with friends.”

  “I had to see you, Juliet. I have to see you and talk to you now.” He spoke with tremendous urgency, and she noticed for the first time that he looked worn and even ill, and, in spite of everything, her heart went out to him.

  Here before her was the man she had loved—enough to cross the world to see him. It was not in her to refuse
him a hearing if that was what he wanted.

  “Well, then—come in,” she said. Then she suddenly remembered the others, and the condition of the house. “No, wait a minute.”

  Turning, she went into the back room where Carol and Max were standing amidst the dust and disorder, discussing some question of arrangement.

  “It’s Martin,” she said flatly, and they both turned to look at her in astonishment.

  “Oh, my dear...” Carol caught hold of her hand in sympathy.

  But Max said grimly, “Shall I go and deal with him?”

  “Oh, no. No, he wants to talk to me.”

  “Much better not,” Max warned her.

  “That’s what I think—thought. But—there’s something about him—I can’t explain. I think I must hear what he has to say.”

  The others looked unconvinced, but made no attempt to dissuade her.

  “Would you like us to go?” Carol asked. “Out of the house, I mean.”

  “Oh, no. Please don’t. I’ll go and talk to him in his car.”

  “Don’t let him upset you,” Max said. “And remember there’s no need for you to listen to him a minute longer than you want to.”

  “Just sound the horn and we’ll come out if you want us,” added Carol, and for once in her life she looked grim.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  Juliet went back to Martin and, stepping out onto the veranda, she closed the door after her.

  “We’ll go and sit in your car, shall we?”

  “All right. Juliet—I don’t want to upset you in any way...”

  A dreadful thought struck her and she glanced apprehensively toward the car.

  “You haven’t your—your wife with you, have you?”

  He gave her a startled, indescribably unhappy glance.

  “Why, no—no, of course not.” Then he seemed to make some sort of effort and, though he went several degrees paler, he spoke with a kind of expressionless calm. “She’s dead.”

  “What?” Juliet stopped and stared at him. “What did you say?”

  “She is dead, Juliet. She died a week after we got back from our honeymoon.”

  “Oh, Martin! I’m so terribly sorry.” She put her hand on his arm, and though, from her own reaction, she knew immediately that perhaps it had been unwise to touch him, she could not withdraw it once it was there. “What—happened? Can you tell me about it, or would you rather not speak of it?”

  “No. I want to tell you. That’s one reason that I had to come. I’d done you such a fearful injury, and then this thing happened, almost like a ... judgment. I couldn’t write you. I had to come.”

  “Very well, Martin.” It was she who almost led him to the car, rather than the other way around. “But please don’t say—even think—such things. Maybe you behaved inconsiderately—even badly—to me when you married her without even waiting for me to release you. But you couldn’t possibly know the added complication of my rushing out to Australia like this. What you did was unkind, I daresay, and shabby, but it has nothing whatever to do with your own tragedy. It’s wrong to think so.”

  “I don’t think I really believed it had.” He gave a slight, rather wan smile. “But when you’ve been feeling unspeakably guilty—and then something inexplicably awful happens...”

  “Yes, I do understand.” They were sitting in the car now, and she took one of his hands between both of hers. “Tell me—was it an accident?”

  “No. She caught a chill. She wasn’t very strong. It was pneumonia in no time. And suddenly she... was dead.”

  Juliet bit her lip. The stark, economical sentences seemed to convey the tragedy so much more tellingly than any complicated eloquence.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” she said again. “You know, don’t you, Martin, that I honestly wished you nothing but good in your life with her?”

  “Of course. You’re so terribly generous...” He lightly touched one of the hands that were holding his. “When I got back, Juliet, and found what I’d involved you in because of my selfishness and cowardice, I didn’t know what to do. I was going to write you, of course. I wanted to make sure that you were quite all right. And then ... this happened, and I couldn’t bring myself to write.”

  “I understand. Don’t worry about that now. And, as I told you, I really am perfectly all right here with friends. And my relations,” she added, as an afterthought.

  “I still don’t understand how it was you came out here.” He passed his free hand over his face and rubbed his tired eyes as though he could not yet cope with all the events that had rushed upon him. “What happened exactly?”

  Juliet looked surprised. Then she remembered that, of course, he had never received the long letter of explanation that she had written him from England.

  “It’s a long story,” she began.

  “Tell me, though.” He smiled at her with a shadow of his old animation. “I’d like to hear. Oh, Julie, it’s good to see you!”

  They both looked startled then. She, at hearing the familiar pet name for her. He, at what was obviously the sudden discovery that life held something good still—and that, moreover, in a quarter from which he had voluntarily cut himself off.

  So, sitting out there in the car with Martin, she told him the story of how she had left England and come to start a new life in Australia. And, as she talked, somehow the events and people she described came not quite real—a tale of something that had happened to someone other than herself. The only completely real thing was that Martin was with her again and that her hand was in his.

  “And so this is now to be your home?” He glanced at the shabby house with some disfavor. “It doesn’t look much of a place, Juliet.”

  “Oh, it will be fine when we’ve mended a few things and painted it up a bit,” declared Juliet. “And, of course, cleaned it throughout.”

  “Quite an undertaking, I’d say.”

  “Ye-es. There’s a lot to do. But Max and Carol are both very efficient, and I suppose we’ll be able to get some sort of help—though I understand that’s not so easy here.”

  “Let me help, Julie,” he said eagerly. “I’d be glad to. Please let me.”

  “But, Martin—” something told her that there was danger here “—there isn’t much we can do today. We’re really just looking the place over and deciding what needs doing.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant—let me stay in Borralung for a while and come out here and work along with your friends to help make a good home for you here.”

  “But—your own work?” she stammered. “You can’t just ... drop everything. I don’t know even that I’d want—”

  “I’ve left my work, Juliet.” He looked bleak again. “I couldn’t have stayed on in Tyrville after all that had happened. I’ll get something else later. No one need ever want for work in this country. I’ll get something quite easily. Only, for the moment, I’d like to—stick around and help you. It seems the least I can do for you.”

  She wanted to say that it was perhaps the most unwise thing he could choose to do for her. But her heart rebelled at the very thought of refusal. Things had happened too quickly for her to be able to exercise much judgment, or to weigh up the wisdom of this course or that. She knew only that by some sort of tragic miracle Martin had come back into her life again, and that, unless she deliberately sent him out of it once more, he would be here with her for a while, at any rate.

  “I don’t know...”

  “Please let me stay, Julie. It will make me feel that you really have forgiven me.”

  “It’s nothing to do with that at all,” she protested in some distress. “If you want me to say I’ve forgiven you—of course I have. I only wondered ... Oh, well—” she dismissed her doubts suddenly “—you stay if it will make you feel any happier. Wait a minute.” She got out of the car. “I’ll go in and explain to the others.”

  It was not quite so easy, “explaining to the others.”

  Carol expressed ready sympathy with Mar
tin in the tragedy that had come upon him but she, as well as her brother, evidently thought it most ill-judged of Juliet to invite him back into her life.

  “Darling, I don’t want to interfere in what is your own business,” Carol said doubtfully, “but don’t you think you’re only asking for heartache for yourself? It isn’t as though you ever had time really to get over him.”

  “I call it impertinence on his part to suggest it,” Max snapped, and looked unusually put out.

  For the first time in weeks, Juliet gave him an angry and resentful glance.

  “It’s nothing of the sort. You just don’t understand. He meant the offer very kindly, and he said—”

  “No, please don’t tell us what he said,” Max put in dryly. “I feel it would make me even less willing to accept the arrangement.”

  “Max, it isn’t for us to accept it,” Carol murmured tactfully. “It’s entirely Juliet’s own affair. Only—” she turned back to Juliet “—we can’t help feeling, dear, as onlookers, that you’re doing something unwise.”

  “Perfectly ridiculous arrangement,” added Max, ignoring his sister’s rather exasperated glance.

  “Well, thank you for your concern for me.” Juliet looked at Carol but not at all at Max. “I do appreciate it. But—I think I’m right in agreeing to let Martin remain. May I bring him in now?”

  “Why, certainly,” Carol said.

  And after a moment Max added, “Certainly,” but in an entirely different tone of voice.

  Really, he was tiresome, Juliet thought angrily, as she went to summon Martin. What business was it of his, anyway?

  Then she remembered how good he had been to her, and how closely associated with that unfortunate chapter in her life. It was inevitable that she should take a rather severe view of the whole thing. She only hoped he would not make himself openly disagreeable to Martin.

  Max, however was far too well-disciplined for that. When Juliet brought Martin into the house with her, both Carol and Max greeted him politely and made him reasonably welcome. Whatever Max’s private opinion might be, he had evidently accepted the indisputable fact that this was essentially Juliet’s business rather than theirs.