Over the Blue Mountains (17 page)

Perhaps she has finally woken up to the fact that I have no designs on Max,
thought Juliet.

Then she forgot about the matter, because the furniture from Melbourne arrived, and there were several busy but exciting days putting everything into place.

Max came over to help with this final stage, and he and Martin worked fairly amicably together under Juliet’s direction. But it was obvious that the two men would never get on particularly well together, and as the weather grew hotter their manner to each other became cooler.

There was no doubt about it, the weather had become very trying by now, especially to Juliet who was not used to such heat. But at last all was in order, and they had only to await the coming of the family.

Max was to fetch them by car from Bathurst, and on the day they were due to arrive Juliet was as nervous and excited as if the entire responsibility of the new order of things rested on herself.

“Dear Juliet, you’ve done your very best. Can’t you leave it at that?” Martin said when, in company with him, she was making a final tour of the house.

“I suppose I should.” She laughed apologetically. “But it does look nice, doesn’t it, Martin?”

“It looks lovely,” Martin said. But he looked at her as he said it. And Juliet had the curious feeling that fate was putting back the clock.

Just about midday there was the sound of a car arriving, and Martin said, “I’ll slip out the back way and leave you to yourselves now. I only stayed to keep you company until they came.”

“Oh, Martin! Won’t you stay and meet them all?”

“Later,” he said. “Let them have the place to themselves.”

And, realizing the wisdom of this, she let him go and went to the front of the house to welcome the others.

Juliet warmly kissed both her aunt and uncle and hugged Penelope. Then she turned to greet the good-looking boy who brought up the rear.

“You must be Andrew.”

“That’s right. And you are Juliet.” He gave her a friendly glance, though he was obviously afraid she might try to kiss him, too.

Juliet avoided this error, however, and rather nervously followed her aunt into the house.

“Why—” Aunt Katherine looked around her “—it’s like the house I lived in when I was a little girl. How nicely you’ve done it over, Juliet, Pretty curtains—” she felt the material “—in a cheap way, of course. But very suitable. Where did you get them made?”

“I made them,” Juliet explained, indescribably gratified by her aunt’s first reactions.

“You must have been busy,” was Aunt Katherine’s sole comment on that. But as she moved from room to room, followed by the others, it was evident that at least the place seemed pleasant and acceptable to her.

“Very nice indeed,” was Uncle Edmund’s verdict, after the most superficial glance around. Then, obviously very tired, he sat down near the window in the sitting room and took no more interest in the tour of inspection.

“It’s wonderful, Juliet!” Penelope hugged her arm. “I like it better than—” She caught her mother’s eye and tactfully changed the sentence to “I like it better than I expected.”

“And what about you, Andrew?” Aunt Katherine consulted her son’s opinion with an anxiety Juliet had never seen her display over anyone else. “Do you like it?”

“Of course. Don’t fuss, mother,” he replied good-humoredly.

And Juliet decided that she might consider the house an outstanding success.

Max seemed to think so, too. Because, having taken little part in the inspection and discussion up to now, he met her glance at this moment and grinned.

“Passed with honors,” he whispered, and patted her shoulder reassuringly.

During the rest of the day there were various discoveries on Aunt Katherine’s part, of course, which drew such comments as, “Oh, dear me no! Quite impossible,” or “We shall have to change
that
!” But on the whole, she was not only satisfied with the house, something about it seemed to give her a definite feeling of happiness.

This was so much more than Juliet had dared to hope that she accepted all minor criticisms with the utmost good humor. And so much improved did her own relations with her aunt seem that it was even not very difficult to explain about Martin.

It was annoying that, once more, Aunt Katherine seemed to have forgotten who Martin was. But, once reminded, she was willing to take him in her stride.

“I hope you haven’t any ... definite plans for the near future, though,” she added. “We wouldn’t want to lose you just yet, you know, Juliet.”

“Oh, Aunt Katherine, there isn’t any question of that! We—he has only recently lost his wife. There’s nothing more than a—a sort of sympathetic friendship between us. Please don’t think anything else.”

Aunt Katherine looked genuinely amused—a rather rare circumstance with her.

“I can never decide, darling, whether you are very naive or very clever,” she said. “You always put the accent in the wrong place. It’s perfectly true that this young man of yours has recently lost his wife. Poor thing. I’m very sorry,” added Aunt Katherine cheerfully. “But the important point is not that the loss is recent, but that it has taken place. He is in circulation again, if you like to look at it that way. Don’t remain in awed contemplation of the recentness of it all (if there is such a word) if you really want him. Otherwise someone else will snap him up again.”

“But, Aunt Katherine—”

“On the other hand,” continued Aunt Katherine, with the peculiar restlessness of which she was capable, “if all this modesty is just a pretty smoke screen, I must say you do it very well.”

Juliet gave a vexed laugh. She and Aunt Katherine would never, never see things from the same standpoint, she knew, and it seemed rather useless to try to explain further.

Besides, Juliet asked herself later when she was alone in her room, did she really know herself just what she felt or what she wanted? All the time she had been more or less alone with Martin she accepted the pleasant, soothing familiarity of it all. She thankfully “marked time” in an existence that had demanded too many vital decisions from her recently.

But now that so much was settled and it seemed necessary to start some pattern of living, what place did she really want Martin to take in her life? Even supposing that he would never feel romantic about her again—though this was a little difficult to suppose when she remembered the way he sometimes looked at her—did she really want to think of
him
that way again?

It’s all too recent—too sudden,
Juliet told herself impatiently.
Whatever Aunt Katherine says, I don’t want to rush into decisions—or even to form definite hopes.

But, meanwhile, she was very glad that Martin made a good impression on the family when he met them and, in their various ways, they all seemed willing to absorb him into the new life.

Without consulting Juliet, he found work with a land agent from Bathurst, who had a small branch office in Borralung. And on at least three or four evenings out of the week, he called in to see Juliet and her family. Sometimes he sat and played chess on the veranda with her uncle, sometimes he talked to Penelope and Andrew—with both of whom he was soon on excellent terms—and sometimes he and Juliet went out walking in the countryside.

They were curiously peaceful and pleasant days, those first summer days with the family in the house at Borralung, and Juliet sometimes wondered why it was that, in spite of everything, she still felt restless occasionally, as though she were waiting for something of immense importance to happen.

Once she half owned to this feeling when she was exchanging confidences with Penelope, who still seemed to her the one of her relations closest to her, in spite of the disparity in their ages.

“I expect,” Penelope said shrewdly, “that it’s just that so much has happened to you in the last few months. You’ve got into the habit of expecting a sensation every other week.”

Juliet laughed. “Maybe you’re right.”

“And, in a way, I suppose there’s nothing to look forward to at the moment until Verity’s marriage comes along.”

“That’s a good way off still.” Juliet spoke rather quickly.

“Yes. Though Max is going to Adelaide next week to see about taking over his place again and having the house put in order. I suppose that’s brought him and Verity to the point of discussing concrete plans.”

“I ... suppose so.”

“I hope she knows what she’s doing.” Penelope spoke with an air of gravity that made her seem older than she was.

“Why, Penelope! She’s a very lucky girl. What do you mean?” Juliet exclaimed in surprise.

“Just that, although I know she’s very lucky indeed from the point of view of Max as a person, and his position and everything—can you really see Verity contented and happy on a country estate?”

Juliet thought she could not really see Verity contented and happy in any circumstances.

“But—she knows exactly what she is taking on, Penelope. She must have weighed up all that.”

“Of course. But when she weighed it all up, what had she to set it against?”

Juliet gave her shrewd little cousin a disturbed glance.

“You mean it was Max—or nothing?”

“I mean that what Verity really wanted was a rich, indulgent husband who lived in town and liked traveling to Europe and that sort of thing. Max will be a rich, not too indulgent husband who lives in the country and has done all the traveling he wants to do for some time. I’m wondering how it will work out, that’s all.”

“Well, they seem quite—I mean, very happy together,” Juliet said firmly.

“I know. I was surprised when we came through Bathurst to see how—happily Verity seemed to have settled. She isn’t a naturally happy person, Juliet. But you’re perfectly right, she did seem like someone who had found what she wanted. I expect it’s going to be all right.”

“I’m sure it is.” Juliet found herself at great pains to insist on this. “They’ll both be here for the weekend, and you’ll see for yourself.”

“Oh, are they both coming?” Penelope looked pleased, not because she felt the lack of company herself, but because she knew her father was always less depressed when Max or his elder daughter appeared.

“Yes. There was a letter from Aunt Katherine this morning. Verity wants to bring one of the Lawsons with her. They were those friends of Max with whom she stayed when she was first in Bathurst, you remember.”

“I remember. Girl or man?”

“Oh, a man of course,” Juliet said rather naively. Then they both laughed, because it was impossible to imagine Verity showing much interest in a girl friend. “You will have to come and share my room, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t mind a bit. Then Verity can have mine, and Max can go in with Andrew. Which will leave a room free for the Lawson man. Rather a lot of work for you, won’t it be, Juliet?”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” insisted Juliet in her turn. “These people were very good to Verity when she was first in Bathurst. One can’t be anything but hospitable in return.”

“I wonder why he wants to come. They are pretty well-to-do, aren’t they, and have a very lovely house in Bathurst? ’’

“Yes. I saw it when we first left Verity there. Maybe he wants to come and see how the simple country folk live,” Juliet said with a laugh.

But when Elmer Lawson turned up, along with Verity and Max, there was no question of his standing aloof from the general family life. He was a gay, lively young man who was prepared to address himself with great charm to Aunt Katherine or to come into the kitchen and help with the washing up.

Indeed, Juliet’s respect for him went up to a very high level when she found that not only was he determined to help himself, he contrived to make Verity do so, too—and that with a reasonably good grace.

“A firm hand, that’s what she needs,” he told Juliet, in front of Verity. And Verity only laughed.

Really, if she goes on like this, I shall begin to grow fond of her,
thought Juliet amusedly.

But she was glad of all the assistance there was. It was an indescribably oppressive weekend. Even on the Friday evening, when the three arrived from Bathurst, it was hot and airless enough, but by the time they rose on Saturday morning, the sky was like a dull lid over their heads.

Not a leaf or a blade of shriveled grass seemed to stir, and the only sign of activity was the ceaseless rustle and chatter of the cicadas.

Juliet remembered then what Martin had said about them—how they became maddening when it was very hot. But she tried hard to ignore them—and also to ignore the way her thin dress clung to her as she moved about at half her usual pace.

“How strange the sky looks, Max.” She was standing on the back veranda with him in the early afternoon, looking out toward the hill behind the house, and she thought she had never seen anything so menacing as the grayish yellow of the sky with the dark hill standing out in relief against it.

“Yes. I don’t like the look of it at all.” Max had been rather silent all the morning, and she thought he seemed vaguely depressed—a most unusual condition with him.

“Do you think there is going to be a storm?”