Over the Blue Mountains (8 page)

“Oh...” He actually forced a laugh from her at that, though a protesting one. “I think you’re being rather hard on yourself.”

“Do you?” He looked amused, too, then. “It’s not a habit of mine.”

He turned the car off the road at that moment, crossed an earth ramp over a deep ditch, and began to drive along a rutted, distinctly secondary road.

“That was the fire break that we crossed,” he explained. “And this is the beginning of the station.”

“But I don’t see any sort of village or township.”

“Oh, there isn’t one. Carol’s nearest neighbors are about ten miles away in one direction, and nearly twenty miles in the other. That’s one excellent reason why visitors are always welcome.”

“I see,” Juliet said soberly, and she began to have fewer misgivings about her unannounced arrival.

Ten minutes later they were driving past the cottages and outbuildings of what was obviously a considerable farm or homestead, and when they finally arrived at the main building, it proved to be an attractive mixture of country house and farm.

Already people were coming from one or other of the outbuildings, for evidently visitors were an event, as Max had said. And, even as they got out of the car, the front door was flung open, and an eager girl, with soft, dark hair flying, rushed down the steps and flung herself into Max’s arms.

“Darling, darling Max! How wonderful! I didn’t expect you for another two days at least. Henry won’t be home till tomorrow, and the children are in bed, but—” She stopped suddenly, seeing Juliet. “Oh! I didn’t realize...” She smiled apologetically.

“All right.” Max ruffled her hair as though she were a child. “I’ve brought you a visitor. This is—”

“Don’t tell me! You don’t have to.” The girl took both Juliet’s hands and kissed her warmly. “You’re Verity, aren’t you? And just as I hoped you would be.”

“Oh...” Juliet had returned the kiss before she realized the mistake. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not Verity. I’m her cousin, and my name is Juliet.”

“Well—” still holding her hand, Carol turned once more to her brother “—she’s welcome, just the same. If Verity is as pretty as her cousin, you’ve done well, Max.”

“An admirable recovery,” her brother observed, a little sardonically.

But Carol only laughed and said, “The joys of having a brother to be teasing and critical again! Come into the house, Juliet. You must be cold and tired. I may call you Juliet, mayn’t I?”

“Of course. And may I call you Carol?”

“Few people ever call me anything else. Sometimes I almost forget my other name, which is Denver.”

They went into the house together, Juliet feeling for the first time since she had left England that she was really and truly at home. It was difficult to say what it was about this girl that made Juliet feel that she had known her always. There was a likeness to her brother, particularly about the eyes, though Carol’s were kinder. But it was no passing familiarity of that sort that made her seem part of a known background.

The fact was, of course, that Carol was one of those rare creatures who love and know their fellow men and women by instinct, and to her no one was a stranger. Once or twice during the last hour, Juliet had wondered just how she was to explain her presence to Max’s sister. Now she knew no explanation was necessary. She stepped into that warm, lighted hall, and became part of the household.

“Mommy! Mommy!” sounded shrilly from upstairs. “Is that daddy come home?”

“No, darling. Uncle Max.” Shrieks and whoops of joy greeted this intelligence. “And, if you stay quietly in bed, he’ll come up to say good-night to you.”

“May I go up, too?” Juliet asked.

“Why, of course.”

Max, having garaged the car, joined them almost immediately, and together they went up the shallow, not quite even stairs to the square landing above.

In spite of warnings about staying quietly in bed, two eager little heads were popping backward and forward around one of the white painted doors and, at the sight of Max, there was a delighted scuffle, and two small pajamaed figures streaked across the landing.

With surprising dexterity, Max scooped them both up and kissed them. Then he turned to introduce them to Juliet.

The children were not at all alike, lsobel being dark and slight and elfin, and the little boy, with obstinate chin and brilliant blue eyes, being—as Max himself had said—ridiculously like his uncle. Both children accepted Juliet with casual and unquestioning friendliness.

Isobel asked sociably, “Are you going to marry Uncle Max?”

But, when she had been set right on that point—her uncle remarking dryly that she was indeed her mother’s daughter—she sought no further explanation of Juliet’s presence there.

Somewhat to Juliet’s surprise, Carol left Max to see the children safely back into bed, and took her guest into a pleasant room at the back of the house. Here, as on the stairs, the floor boards had an attractive, faintly uneven quality—proof that the world of the standardized and the mass-produced was very far away.

There was nothing at all modern about the room, but the furniture was good and solid, the bed looked comfortable, and the flower pattern on the linen curtains and bedspread was pretty and, in some curious way, timeless.

“Oh, how restful!” Juliet exclaimed, with an involuntary sigh.

“You poor girl! Are you worn-out, then?” Carol asked sympathetically.

“Oh ... no. Not in the ordinary physical sense. But—” Suddenly she wanted to tell Carol what had happened to her, and it seemed such a simple and reasonable want when the other girl was looking at her in that curiously understanding way, that the words came tumbling out almost of their own volition. “You see, I came out here from England to marry someone to whom I had been engaged for more than a year. Your brother—took me to the place this afternoon. And when I got there—he had married someone else.”

“Just ... like that?” Carol’s eyes were enormous in their expression of shocked dismay, and she did not look in the least like her brother now.

“Yes—just like that.” Juliet wondered now if it had been tasteless of her to blurt all this out before she had so much as taken off her hat. She gave a nervous, unhappy little laugh. “It’s almost ... ludicrous, isn’t it?”

“No. It’s not ludicrous at all,” Carol stated firmly. “It’s tragic and it’s shattering, and I can’t imagine how you manage to be so calm and collected about it.”

“I wasn’t calm at first,” Juliet said slowly. “I ... cried.”

“Of course you cried,” Carol exclaimed, and Juliet felt suddenly that she loved this girl because there were genuine tears in her own eyes for the distress of someone she hardly knew. “Any girl would have cried. I know I would have. I hope Max was kind and understanding.”

“He was very kind and—” Juliet smiled faintly “—I think astringent is more the word.”

“Oh...” Max’s sister laughed deprecatingly. “I know what you mean. But it’s rather a pose of his not to have any deep feelings, you know.” She went over and drew the curtains against the darkness of the evening. “Tell me frankly—would you rather have something to eat up here and do a private little moan on your own, or will you come down with Max and me?”

“I’d much rather come down. Unless you want to have one evening to yourselves.”

“Oh, no. You’ll fit in all right,” Carol said cryptically. “I just thought you might not want to be with strangers when you felt badly.”

“You don’t seem like a stranger,” Juliet told her simply.

“I’m glad,” Carol said. And, if she noticed the unconscious distinction drawn between herself and her brother, she did not remark on it. “Just come down when you’re ready. I think I hear Max bringing your luggage.”

“Oh, I could have brought it myself...” Juliet began.

But Carol said, “Not at all. Here he is.” And Max came in with a couple of suitcases, which did not seem to be giving him much trouble.

“Juliet has explained everything to me,” Carol informed him comprehensively, “and—”

“What—in ten minutes?” her brother asked incredulously.

“Of course, Essentials never take more than a matter of minutes,” Carol assured him, with some truth. “It’s details that fill up the hours. Anyway she is going to have a wash and tidy up then she is joining us for a good meal, and we’ll talk over practical plans for her future later.”

Max gave her an amused glance of mingled admiration and protest.

“Did I tell you that my sister is a very unusual young woman, Juliet?” he said, with a slight lift of one eyebrow.

“You probably thought I would find that out for myself without being told,” Juliet replied with a smile.

“I don’t know what you two are talking about,” declared Carol, with an air of genuine surprise.

At this her brother laughed and, putting an arm around her, took her off with him, leaving Juliet to her own thoughts, which, if they were inevitably melancholy, at least were tinged now with gleams of new hope and interest.

It was impossible to be in this house and be despairing. And with this cheering reflection she began to change for her first dinner at home with Max Ormathon and his sister.

When she came downstairs, Juliet found that, apart from what were obviously the kitchen regions at the back of the house, two large rooms led off from either side of the hall. In one of these there was a light and, when she went in, Juliet found that it was a dining room, with a table all ready set for a meal, in a charming if informal style. No one was there, however.

But from another room beyond she could hear the quick, eager voice of Carol, punctuating the deeper, more considered tones of her brother.

She hesitated for a moment to go in and break up the first tete-a-tete that brother and sister had had together, and as she did so, she heard Max say, “Of course I’m fond of her, my dear. I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me otherwise
—
”

“But you’re so
cool
about it!” came Carol’s protest.

Max laughed—a lazy, unperturbed, teasing laugh.

“I tell you—I don’t tear myself to ribbons about these things, the way you do. Or that poor girl upstairs,” he added reflectively.

“Oh, Max! Was she terribly upset?”

“I’m afraid so. And the awkward thing is—”

At this point, Juliet became aware of the fact that she was eavesdropping and, returning quietly to the hall, she made a fresh entry into the dining room, taking care to clear her throat very audibly as she came.

Carol appeared immediately in the doorway of the other room and said, “Come on in, Juliet! It’s nice and warm here. And Max will fix you a drink.”

Juliet thought she had never seen a pleasanter room. Books in white painted shelves covered the whole of one wall, and before a big wood fire, low, comfortable chairs were drawn up. As she sat down in one of these, Max brought her a glass of pale, dry sherry, with the remark “Home produced. But don’t dismiss it for that. The best Australian wines don’t usually travel well enough to find their way overseas. Tell me how you like that.”

Juliet sipped the sherry with enjoyment and, though no connoisseur, pronounced it excellent.

“We were talking about you just before you came in,” Carol announced, and when Juliet looked slightly taken aback, she added, “Oh, we weren’t being nasty and gossipy. I mean that we were just discussing future plans for you.”

“ ‘Plans’ is altogether too definite a word,” Max protested. “I was explaining, Juliet, that I doubted if you would want to go back to England right away. But, of course, I may be quite wrong.”

“I couldn’t go back yet,” Juliet explained quite simply. “Not until I’ve earned and saved up enough for my fare back.”

“Oh...” Carol looked understanding. “It’s like that, is it?”

“Very much so.”

“I imagine that your uncle would advance the money for your return if you very much wanted to go,” Max said.

“Oh, I couldn’t let him do that!” Juliet’s cry of protest showed her feelings more eloquently then the words. “They are almost ... strangers to me, really, you know. I have no claim on them. And, anyway, I had the impression—I’m not quite sure why—that my uncle had enough worries of his own, without being asked to provide a large sum for an over-impulsive, little-known niece.”

Max Ormathon looked at her thoughtfully.

“Financial worries, do you mean?”

“I ... don’t know. I hadn’t really worked that out. I only felt that—” she groped for words “—he was, in some way, at the end of his tether.”

“Funny you should say that. I thought—” Max Ormathon stopped suddenly and evidently decided not to develop that subject. Instead, he took Juliet’s breath away by asking calmly. “Would you have any objection to my advancing the money for your fare? Always supposing, of course, that you do want to go home.”

“
You
advance it?” Juliet looked incredulous. “But I—you couldn’t possibly mean that. It’s a very big sum.”

“My bank balance will stand it,” he assured her with a smile.

“Yes, I know—I mean, I’m sure. But—thank you
very
much—but I couldn’t dream of accepting such a thing from someone I hardly know.”