Over the Blue Mountains

by Mary Burchell

“He was here the weekend of the fire, father,” Penelope said.

  “Oh, that young man.” Uncle Edmund considered him in retrospect. “Seemed rather a sensible sort of fellow.”

  “He is very nice,” Juliet said.

  “He is very rich,” Aunt Katherine said. “Or at least, so I believe. From the little we saw of the family in Bathurst, they must certainly be what is called solid.”

  “So Verity wants to marry into a solid family.” One of those extremely rare moments of humor that sometimes came to Uncle Edmund seemed to visit him at the thought of his indulged elder daughter in “a solid family.” “Well, I suppose she won’t think of asking our advice, so we may as well consider ourselves satisfied with the situation.”

  “But I am satisfied,” Aunt Katherine asserted firmly. “More than satisfied. She will be hundreds of miles nearer to us than if she had married Max. And, to tell the truth, I never could think of Verity as cut out for life in the country.”

  “What about Max?” Uncle Edmund inquired.

  “Well, what about him?” Aunt Katherine wanted to know.

  “It seems the moment to ask if he was very cut up about the broken engagement. Was he, Juliet?”

  “I suppose ... he was, uncle. In fact, I’m sure he was the morning we left. He was very quiet and seemed dreadfully depressed.”

  “He’ll get over it,” stated Aunt Katherine, who had a great talent for believing that things were as she wished they were.

  “It’s to be hoped so,” Uncle Edmund agreed.

  And then, strangely enough, there seemed very little more to explain or add. Juliet felt that the whole thing could hardly be over so simply and so ruthlessly. But Aunt Katherine—and to a certain extent Uncle Edmund, too—were realistic enough to know that when their elder daughter had decided to do something it was as good as done. Repining or advising would be equally useless. Verity had changed her fiancé, and there was nothing to do but welcome the new one.

  “It seems—callous somehow,” Juliet said afterward to Penelope.

  “But I suppose life is callous,” Penelope said a little sententiously. “Look at Martin.”

  Mentally, and with a certain amount of shock, Juliet looked at Martin.

  “What—about him?” she asked rather reluctantly.

  “Well, he hasn’t had much luck or happiness, has he?”

  “N-no. I suppose not.”

  “He is looking forward immensely to your going to see him now you’re back.”

  “Does he know I’m back?” Juliet looked surprised.

  “Yes. I told him yesterday, after your telegram arrived.”

  “Oh? You’ve been going in to see him sometimes then?”

  “Yes. Quite a lot,” Penelope said. And Juliet secretly felt very grateful to her kind little cousin. At least Martin had not been feeling so lonely as he might have done.

  “But it’s you he wants to see,” Penelope continued. “You will go soon to see him, won’t you, Juliet?”

  “Yes—yes, or course. As soon as I have a moment,” Juliet promised.

  But she knew in her heart that she wanted desperately to postpone the interview with Martin, for what, she asked herself, would she have to say to him? She had made him more than a half a promise. How soon would he ask her to redeem it?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Juliet was not quite sure whether necessity or sheer cowardice kept her from carrying out her undertaking to Penelope during the next few days.

  It was true that Aunt Katherine found her plenty to do. But if she had been passionately anxious to make time to see Martin, presumably she could have done so.

  As it was, she thought each day, I must go to see Martin today, but each evening found the purpose still unfulfilled.

  Penelope said no more about it, but Juliet had the curious impression that her little cousin secretly blamed her rather severely for the omission. Penelope was a kind and conscientious girl. Never once while her father was ill had she omitted to visit him when it was possible to do so.

  I suppose she thinks I’m selfish to do less for Martin, Juliet thought. If she only knew—it’s cowardice, rather than selfishness.

  But cowardice could be selfish, too, she remembered after a while. And so, one warm, bright evening, when the actual heat of the day was over, Juliet resolutely set out to walk into town to the hospital.

  She said nothing to her aunt of where she was going and, since she had not been able to find Penelope, she said nothing to her, either. But as she walked along the grass verge of the dusty road, she tried to decide what she would say to Martin. Or, rather, how she could put what she had to say.

  For at last there was no uncertainty in Juliet’s mind. The past few days had told her beyond doubt. She could not, for pity or friendship, or even for the sake of other days when she had loved him, link her life with Martin’s again.

  If she had loved him at all anymore she would not have been able to keep away, knowing that he needed and wanted her. Instead, the feeling that finally impelled her to come was that of affectionate duty only, and one could not build a married life on that.

  She hated the thought of having to tell him so, and see the dismay in his eyes. But that was better and more honest than to let him go on hoping where there was no longer hope.

  It was Max she loved. And Max whom she had loved-for long enough now. While he had belonged to Verity she had hidden the fact even from herself. The prohibition no longer existed. And while she could neither hope nor expect that Max would ever mean anything real in her life, just to admit to herself that she loved him was a relief and a richness beyond expression.

  Maybe it’s foolish to love where there is no future, Juliet thought soberly. But it’s wrong to plan a future where there is no love.

  It sounded simple and dignified and wonderfully straightforward when she put it that way to herself. But when she entered the hospital, knowing that in a matter of minutes she would have to be telling Martin much the same thing, she felt her heart beat apprehensively.

  She remembered very well where he was. She remembered the little ward where she had stood in the doorway before and watched him for a minute or two before he actually saw her. Perhaps if she could do the same again, she might be able to judge his mood—to decide which was the best and kindest way to tell him what she had to say.

  Juliet reached the ward and glanced in through the glass panels of the door.

  Each bed had its little quota of visitors. And Martin had a visitor, too. Beside his bed sat Penelope. She was saying something in that reflective way of hers, and he was watching her with amusement and affection and a sort of quiet happiness that Juliet could not remember having seen on his face before.

  Then he looked up and saw her, and he raised his unbandaged hand in delighted greeting.

  Juliet came forward into the room, and Penelope got up immediately.

  “Hello, Juliet,” she said quickly, and she was evidently glad to see her cousin. But in her clear gray eyes there was a curious apprehension, too, as though she knew by instinct what Juliet had come to say.

  “Hello, dear. I didn’t know you were here.” Juliet spoke quite calmly, then she turned to greet Martin.

  “Penelope comes most days to see me,” Martin said with a smile. “She’s my very good little friend.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that.”

  “But I’ll go now,” Penelope exclaimed, still speaking in that quick, slightly breathless way, which was unlike her.

  “Don’t go because I’ve come,” Juliet said pleasantly, and she knew that even now she had a cowardly impulse to put off the evil moment.

  “I’ll go and see Mrs. Dryden. She’s an old lady I’ve got to know in the ward across the passage. She had no visitors and will be glad to see me. But I’ll come back,” Penelope said, and, glancing at her, Juliet saw that she was addressing Martin.

  “Yes. Come back,” he told her with an indulgent smile.

  And then Penelope went away, and
they were alone together. At least, as alone as it was possible to be in a hospital ward, however small.

  “You look lovely, Juliet.” He leant back against the pillows and looked at her with great pleasure. “I haven’t seen that dress before, have I?”

  “I—don’t think so. Tell me about yourself, Martin. Are you getting on all right?”

  “Very well indeed, thank you. I shall be out in another week.”

  And wanting to know what the future is to hold, she thought.

  “I’m so glad. I ... thought of you often.”

  That was true, of course. But not quite in the sense in which he would probably take it.

  “Penelope told me the news from time to time.”

  “Oh—yes.”

  She felt helplessly that there was only one piece of news that mattered, and that she would have to tell him.

  “She told me, too, about Verity.”

  “About Verity?”

  “About her breaking her engagement to Max Ormathon and then linking up with some other fellow.”

  “Oh—did she?”

  Somehow Juliet found herself unable to answer by anything but short, pointless question or comment, and she felt so ashamed of herself that she looked away, unable to meet Martin’s eyes.

  It was then that he laughed. Not teasingly, but gently and rather indulgently.

  “My dear, don’t be so distressed. Do you think I didn’t realized immediately that this would alter things vitally for you? And me.”

  “Oh, Martin!” She looked at him then, and suddenly it was not difficult to tell him. “That isn’t really what altered things. I mean, you mustn’t imagine that Max thinks of me in—in any romantic way. For all I know, I may never see him again. But whether I do or not, I—I love him and—I can’t think of anyone else in that way.”

  “I see.” He spoke gravely, rather than tragically, and he accepted her verdict without question, she saw.

  “Are you—are you terribly disappointed?” she asked in a low voice at last.

  “Darling, if I said no, it would hardly be flattering to you, and if I said yes it wouldn’t be quite the truth, because, of course, disappointment always has an element of surprise in it. I don’t think that, in my heart, I ever expected you to come back to me, Julie. I’ve had a lot of time to lie here thinking, you know, and to realize that ready-made solutions for our problems don’t exist.”

  “You mean—” she put out her hand and touched his “—that even from your point of view, it wouldn’t have been a solution to marry me after all?”

  He smiled and patted her hand with his bandaged one.

  “It might have been—I don’t know. If you’d loved me still in the old way, and if Ormathon hadn’t ever come on the scene, it probably would have been—eventually. But there was really not much in my idea that because I had lost my wife and you had lost the man you really wanted we might console each other. Life doesn’t fit neatly like a jigsaw puzzle in that way.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” She looked down at their hands, and in that moment she knew how much she would always like Martin. “I wonder what finally made you see things so clearly.”

  “Penelope, I think,” he said with a smile. “That’s a sweet, sane child, if ever there was one, Julie.”

  “Oh, she is a darling! And so ... wise for her age.”

  “Yes, sometimes she is like a grown-up. But sometimes she is very much a child, too. She is like you in many ways, but very individually herself, as well.”

  “She gives her friendship rather rarely, Martin. You’re a good deal privileged.”

  “I realize that. And it makes me—I suppose happy is the word. It’s surprising that such a young creature—a schoolgirl, really—can give such a rare thing as happiness. But she does.” And he smiled again, that curiously gentle, indulgent smile.

  “Oh, Martin—” Juliet drew a long breath “—I’m so glad to have had this talk. I felt so guilty because I’d left the issue so clouded when last we saw each other. I was afraid I had given you an entirely wrong impression. But I hardly knew myself—”

  Her voice trailed away, and she flushed with the impossibility of explaining what she had known or not known about Max and her feelings for him.

  “I know, my dear. Don’t blame yourself any more,” Martin said. “If there’s any sort of balance struck between you and me, it isn’t your record that needs excusing.”

  “Please, dear Martin, don’t blame yourself any more for what happened when I first came to this country. If it hurt at the time, it brought its compensations. Just remember that and forget the rest.”

  He didn’t answer that in words, but he put up his hand and patted her cheek with great tenderness.

  Then Penelope came back into the room, and though she approached the bed a little hesitatingly, they both turned to smile at her with such pleasure and affection that her rather troubled face cleared.

  “I must go, my dears.” Juliet got up. “But you stay a while longer, Penelope, if you want to.”

  “All right. I’ll stay.”

  It was easy to say good-night—casually, affectionately but unsentimentally. And though Juliet knew that Penelope’s anxious eyes were on her, she felt that she acquitted herself satisfactorily.

  “I’ll come again soon,” she said, and she meant it.

  And then she went away and left them together.

  As she walked home, Juliet thought, How odd that I should think in those terms—that I left them together. And yet that was how it was.

  No need to exaggerate anything so light and delicate and indefinable, of course. But how naturally the deeply scarred Martin turned to the schoolgirl who was so like his first love. Perhaps one day...

  Juliet laughed at herself for being a sentimentalist. But in her heart she thought more happily of Martin because she had left Penelope at his side.

  It was later than she had intended when she reached home, and the moment she came into the house her aunt called, “Is that you, Juliet?”

  “Yes, Aunt Katherine.” She came into the room where her aunt was. “Did you want me?”

  “Well, I wondered where you were.”

  “I went to see Martin at the hospital. I’m sorry if you needed me.”

  “I didn’t need you exactly, dear. But something rather awkward has happened. You hadn’t been gone ten minutes when Max arrived,” Aunt Katherine said, as though he might have been the milkman.

  “Max! Oh, no! No. And I missed him,” Juliet cried in bitterest disappointment.

  “No, you didn’t,” Aunt Katherine returned a little irritably. “He’s in the garden with your uncle now. That’s what made it so awkward. He insisted on staying to speak to you. I suppose it’s something about Verity. And I thought we had that all so tidily settled, too,” she added plaintively.

  “He is here? Max is here?” Juliet said softly, turning away to look out of the window, so that her aunt might not see how absurdly she was flushing and paling.

  And there he was, strolling in the garden with her uncle. No hundreds of miles divided them, no impassable gulf of awkward relationship. He was there, a few yards away from her, and, even as she gazed at him, he looked up and saw her.

  He said something to her uncle, who nodded to him immediately and came toward the house.

  Without noticing that Aunt Katherine had made some remark, Juliet went out on the back veranda, and as her uncle came up to her, he said, “Go and have a talk to Max in the garden, there’s a good girl. There’s something he wants to discuss with you, I understand.”

  It was as Aunt Katherine said, of course—something to do with Verity. But as she went toward him her heart was light and eager, for he had come all those hundreds of miles and was beside her again.

  “Oh, Max—” she said, and held out both her hands to him. He took them and stood smiling down at her.

  “Aunt Katherine said you wanted to see me—to tell me something about Verity.”

  “No. Not ab
out Verity. To ask you something about yourself,” he said, still looking at her.

  “But, Max—you couldn’t have come all this way just to ask me something! Why didn’t you write?”

  “I had an idea I might plead my cause better in person.”

  “Oh—” She looked at him doubtfully, and it struck her that though he was smiling his eyes were anxious.

  “I thought you would never come,” he said impatiently. “And now that you’re here, I hardly know how to begin.”

  “Oh, Max, I’m sorry. If I’d known—I was at the hospital seeing Martin.”

  Somehow, the moment she had said that, she knew it was a mistake.

  “Oh, you’ve been to see Martin?”

  “Yes. There was something very important that I had to tell him.”

  To her utter amazement, she saw him actually go pale, and she exclaimed. “Max, what is it?”

  He drew her arm through his for answer and strolled slowly with her toward the end of the garden and the open country beyond.

  “Juliet,” he said at last, “do you remember once asking me if I was ever afraid?”

  She wrinkled her forehead in an effort to remember.

  “Yes. It was one morning we went out riding together at Bakandi.”

  “Some such time. And I told you then—Oh, I’ve forgotten what I told you. Some nonsense about always feeling that I could deal with whatever situation came. Well, that’s wrong, Juliet. I can’t deal with the situation that’s right here in front of me. And, my God, I’m afraid at last!”

  “But of what, my dear?” She hardly knew what she had called him—only that he was in distress and that she must console him.

  “Of words, I suppose,” he said with a short laugh. “Of what you are going to say when I ask—without the slightest right to ask—what was the important thing which you had to tell Martin?”

  “Oh—” Suddenly an immense sense of excitement began to stir in her, something between a premonition and a realization, something that was like that never-to-be-forgotten moment when she had stood beside him by the Pyramids that morning and waited for the dawn to come rushing up the sky.

  She put her hand on his arm and felt the muscle hard under his sleeve.