Over the Blue Mountains (20 page)

“Did you, Martin? I don’t think I even knew myself then. And anyway—what’s the good of talking about it?”

“Since you are you—no good at all. You could never do to Verity, or any other girl, what I did to you,” he said in a low voice.

“Oh, Martin! I never thought of the two cases being similar. I never thought of it at all. Don’t harrow yourself about that now. I don’t know how you guessed about my ... feeling for Max. But I’m almost glad to have spoken of it to someone. And now it’s all over and I shall try to put even the thought of it behind me.”

“By going to Adelaide with him?” Martin said a little wryly. She bit her lip.

“All right—I know that wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but it was settled before I—I thought. And anyway—” she smiled rather wryly in her turn “—maybe it will do me good to see Verity in her future home with—him.”

“A rather hard lesson, my dear.” Martin tightened his fingers on the hand he was holding.

She said nothing to that, but the answering pressure of her fingers said how hard.

“And when you come back, Juliet?” he said questioningly at last.

“How do you mean?”

“When the present is hard, it’s not a bad thing to look to the future. Have you ever thought further ahead than life with your uncle and aunt?”

“Why—why, of course.” For some reason she felt excited and faintly apprehensive.

“And have I any place in that picture when you look ahead?”

She was silent. In the confusion of her own thoughts and feelings, how could she offer him anything for his security?

And yet her heart reached out to him. He was the man she had once loved. He was lonely, bereft and in need of her. And he understood her as no one else did, and as perhaps no one else would ever understand her again.

“You don’t really have to answer that just now,” he said gently, seeing her distressed, uncertain expression. “Maybe it’s too early for either of us to say much yet. But the strangest thing in this strange life, Julie, is what happens with the passage of time. You probably won’t believe it any more than most of us do at first, but it’s perfectly true that the unbearable tragedy of today gradually becomes the nostalgic remembrance of tomorrow.”

“I know, Martin—I know. It’s just—difficult to say anything now.”

“I understand, my dear. I only ask that one day you will try to feel that perhaps one might put back the clock.”

“That you and I might, you mean?” She looked at him, startled and yet heartwarmingly aware that he was offering her something that would support and comfort her when the loss of Max grew unbearable.

“Think about it, anyway,” he said.

“I’ll think about it,” she promised, And she kissed him quite naturally before she left.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Early the next morning Juliet, Max and Verity left by car for Bathurst. Then from there—and wafted on their way in the friendliest manner by Elmer Lawson who had somehow found time to come to the airport—they flew to Adelaide.

It seemed to Juliet a much longer journey than any of the others she had taken. But this time Max was not her special companion. He naturally sat with Verity, and she sat alone and stared out of the window—sometimes at the clouds floating by beneath her, but more often at the endless scrubland crossed by a very occasional river.

Once, to the excitement of everyone in the plane, they flew over a fire. Verity, curiously enough, seemed less perturbed than most of the others as she looked down on the softly billowing smoke, pierced here and there by wicked, darting little tongues of flame.

Max glanced at her apprehensively. But his theory that her nervous collapse was due to the very thought of another bushfire hardly seemed confirmed by her calm behavior.

Curious girl! I suppose, so long as she has Max safely beside her, she feels ail right,
thought Juliet.

And when they flew on, out of sight of the fire, it was obvious that.it passed out of Verity’s mind, too.

It was early evening by the time they reached Adelaide, and on the long drive in from the airport Juliet thought how monotonous the country was. But as they gradually neared the city, backed by beautiful wooded hills, with Mount Lofty rearing its head into the clouds, her delight in one of the loveliest of all Australian cities was boundless.

“It’s lovely!” She turned a smiling face to Max who, having failed apparently to rouse any very eager reaction in Verity, seemed pleased with her praise.

“It’s rather a beautiful city,” he agreed. “Brilliantly designed in the earlier stages, which helped a lot. Colonel Light, the man who laid it out, decided to make a sort of rectangle of the center, and then to surround that by parkland. Of course the suburbs of the city have long ago spread beyond that wide belt of parkland, but no one can build on that, so that from whatever direction you approach the center of Adelaide, you pass through trees and grass. When we’ve had something to eat, if you girls aren’t too tired, I’ll take you up to what is called Light’s vision—the panoramic view of the city from Montefiore Hill.”

“Juliet can go,” Verity said, with that new inexplicable air of being perfectly accommodating wherever her cousin was concerned. “But I shall be too tired, I think Max.”

“Just as you like, my dear.” He glanced at her anxiously. Perhaps he, too, felt that the new Verity was almost too good to live. “We’ll postpone that bit of sightseeing for another time.”

“No, no. Take Juliet.” She sounded almost impatiently determined about that. “It may be her only chance. We shall be going on to your place in the morning, shan’t we?”

“That was my idea—yes.”

“Well, then, show her whatever you can while the light lasts. I shall go to bed early.”

“If you are quite sure...” Juliet began doubtfully.

“Quite sure,” Verity said, and again there was that note of impatience in her voice, as though she could hardly bear any interference with her determination that Juliet should go with Max.

No more was said at the time. But, when they had all had a meal at the hotel—a hotel that was surprisingly like the principal hotel in almost any big English country town—Verity insisted on retiring to her room, and Juliet and Max went out together.

He had managed to hire a car from somewhere and, as he drove her slowly through the town and across the Torrens, he pointed out various places of interest: Parliament House, with its splendid marble pillars, the one or two skyscrapers, which flanked the wide sweep of King William Road, and the beautiful buildings of the university.

“This is all very much home to you, I suppose?” she said, glancing at Max in friendly curiosity. And, with a smile, he agreed that Adelaide was the city nearest to his home and heart.

“I think you will like my actual home when I take you—both of you I mean—out there tomorrow,” he said. And then he added with almost boyish enthusiasm, “I’m longing to see what you think of it.”

She could not help thinking that he must be longing still more to see what Verity thought of it. But probably he felt that went without saying.

By the time they reached the magnificent lookout known as Light’s Vision the sun was setting and, while the shadows lengthened, Juliet stood at the foot of the statue of the man in whose mind the idea of a beautiful Adelaide had first taken shape.

No view of Adelaide was more lovely or more comprehensive, Max told her. From the famous cricket Oval almost at their feet to the white towers of the city’s principal buildings, Adelaide stretched before them like a great garden city, much as Colonel Light must have envisaged it more than a hundred years ago.

And there, by a stroke of poetic genius, his statue had been set, looking forever over the city, which was so beautiful because he had been the vision to plan and build for the generations ahead.

“This,” he seemed to be saying, as he stood with hand outstretched toward the lovely panorama, “was my vision.” And on his vision Juliet, like many thousands before her, gazed enraptured.

While they lingered, Max pointed out various distant landmarks. Then as darkness began at last to droop over the city, they returned to the car and drove back toward the hotel.

So brief it had been—and possibly the last time that she would have Max to herself—but every second of it was etched upon her memory.

The next morning, instead of driving straight out to his home, Max took the girls first to see the beautiful Morialta Falls. Down in the wooded valley of the Reserve the fiercest heat of the summer had not yet penetrated, and they were still able to see the famous silver wattles at their best, and the thousand and one trees and flowering shrubs that clothed the rocky sides of the valley.

As they stood finally at the foot of the falls—a trickle now, but occasionally, Max declared, a thundering torrent—Juliet saw him put his arm around Verity and whisper something to her.

She smiled slightly and murmured something in response, and instinctively Juliet moved away and pretended to be examining some curious flowering bush. This was Verity’s moment. Verity’s and Max’s. She stood outside all that—and even the precious hour the previous evening seemed lacking in significance and value now.

They had a forty-mile drive before them when they finally started for Max’s home. But the road was good and the fast car seemed to eat up the distance. Naturally Verity sat in front with Max, while Juliet sat behind and regarded the scenery with all the attention she could bring to bear upon it. She tried not to notice the two in front and stared instead at the miles of farmland through which they passed before the scene began to change gradually to something more like the scrub and occasional trees of the open bush country.

I
don’t know why I came,
she thought desolately once.

But she knew quite well, really. She could resist no offer that meant that she could see Max most of the day—even if she had to see him as the fiancé of another girl.

“Just about there, Juliet,” he said over his shoulder at that moment, and she roused herself to notice that they had just passed through a roughly made gateway and were driving between well-kept fields in which sheep and cattle were grazing.

High box hedges still hid the house from view, but when they had passed between these and swept around the half circle of a gravel driveway, they halted before what might have been a lovely country house in any part of the southern counties of England.

“Why, Max, how
original
!” exclaimed Verity.

And, at the same time, Juliet cried, “Oh, Max, it’s just like home.” And a great lump rose in her throat, which nearly choked her.

“Is that really how you see it?”

He had handed Verity out of the car, and now came around to open the door for Juliet.

She nodded wordlessly.

“Do you mean just like a place in England or just as one’s home should look?” he asked, and there was something almost somber in his expression.

“Both,” Juliet said briefly. And she got out of the car without seeming to see his hand outstretched to help her. She felt at that moment that if she touched him she would be lost.

Fortunately he seemed not to notice anything wrong, and they all went into the house together.

Again there was the inescapable impression of a rather luxurious English country house. Dark, rich carpets and ivory enameled paint everywhere, and in the room they first entered, a great bay window with a curving window seat upholstered in glazed chintz. On polished mahogany tables stood great bowls of mixed flowers, and if the eye tired of the scene within, the view from the bay window across sloping gardens to a tiny stream was enough to rest and delight one.

“Max, I don’t know how you ever left this place,” Juliet exclaimed.

“It’s nice to be back,” he admitted in a tone of careful understatement. “How do you like it, Verity?”

“It’s lovely, of course.” Verity glanced around with interest rather than warmth. “What a pity it has to be away in the wilds like this.”

“I should hardly call this the wilds,” Max said dryly. “For Australia, this is very reasonably near to civilization.”

“Oh, for Australia—yes,” Verity admitted. Then she sighed slightly and suggested that they should see the rest of the house.

Max complied at once, and they made a quick, informal tour of the house. But though Verity admired a great deal of what they saw, Juliet knew that there was no bounding joy and affection for the place in her heart.

A dozen times Juliet herself wanted to exclaim with astonishment and delight. But it was not for her to say what Verity obviously could not say. Better to have Verity’s tempered praise stand alone without the contrast of what she longed to say of the loveliest house she had ever seen.

It was going to be a difficult visit, Juliet could see, in more senses than one, and she felt that the best thing she could do would be to leave Max and Verity alone together as much as possible.

And so, except when they met at mealtimes or when Max was out on the estate and Verity obviously wanted her company, Juliet planned to wander in the gardens and see things for herself, and even to go farther afield and explore some of the unsettled country beyond the actual boundary of Max’s land.

On the evening of their second day, in pursuit of this admirable intention Juliet was walking through the rather formally laid out flower garden when she saw Max coming toward her from the house, alone.

Immediately her heart gave that half frightened, half joyous leap that the very sight of him now provoked, and if there had been any reasonable way of avoiding a meeting at that moment she would have done so. But he had seen her and came up to her with a smile, and all she could do was wait for his coming and smile calmly as though he were no more to her than anyone else.

“Exploring the place, Julie?”

It was the first time he had ever used the affectionate shortening of her name, and it reminded her so forcibly and so guiltily of Martin that she had to swallow quite hard before she could reply.

“Yes. I love the gardens. Particularly at this time in the evening when the light keeps on changing.”

“But then you love the whole place, don’t you?”

She knew that deep inner disappointment with someone else’s opinion prompted the eagerness of that. And because she could not disappoint him further with less than the truth, she said, “Yes. I think it’s the loveliest place I have ever seen—anywhere.” And then she added, almost remorsefully, “No one could help loving it.”

He laughed a little ruefully. “I’m afraid Verity can help it.”

“Oh, Max, she is bound to grow very fond of it! It just—just represents a kind of life she isn’t used to, and I think she is taking a short time to adjust herself. Don’t you remember? She said it was lovely when we first came into the house.”

“Yes, but she also added that it was a pity that it had to be in the wilds, or some such phrase.”

“She was tired,” Juliet offered earnestly. “And, you know, she is a city girl by nature. You mustn’t expect her to change all at once.”

She very much wanted to add that she felt sure Verity was trying hard to adjust herself. But that seemed a rather discouraging thought to offer to Verity’s fiancé, so her voice trailed away into silence.

They strolled in silence for a minute or two. Then Max said, so abruptly that the query sounded almost rude, “And what are you going to do with yourself, Juliet?”

“How do you mean? In the next few days?”

“Oh, no. After you go from here.” And she wondered why the words sounded so terribly final when he said them.

“Why, I shall go back to Borralung, of course, to my uncle and aunt.”

“Indefinitely?”

“I—suppose so.”

He bit his lip and gave her a half-vexed glance, as though he thought she was avoiding the issue.

“Well, then—though it isn’t my business, of course, I’ll put it more plainly. Are you going to marry Martin after all, Juliet?”

She was quite silent, watching a bright bird flit from tree to tree without really seeing anything but a flash of color, which seemed to dart backward and forward across the dark confusion of her own thoughts.

She wanted to resist the necessity of putting her intentions into words. Particularly she wanted to resist speaking of them to Max. But something ruthless and inevitable seemed to tell her that this was the moment when, for all their sakes, she must make her position clear.