“Good.” That rather grim line of his mouth relaxed into something faintly indulgent. “I imagine your—Martin, isn’t it—is feeling much the same.”
“I expect so. I sent him a wire from Sydney last night, so that he’d know roughly when to expect me.”
“Well, that’s Tyrville just below us, so you haven’t long to wait now.”
Juliet stared unbelievingly at the pretty little township in the valley, and ridiculously she felt the tears come into her eyes.
Martin is there,
she thought.
One of those red or green roofs is his—wilt he mine.
And when, five minutes later, they drove along the tree-bordered main street, she thought,
I’ve come home.
“What did you say the address was?”
She told him, though she was herself eagerly looking from side to side, trying.to catch sight of the familiar name that she had written so often on letters during the past year.
“There it is!” they exclaimed together, and he turned the car down the short street, which had pretty, unpretentious wooden bungalows on either side.
“Here you are—number ten.” He stopped the car.
“Oh, thank you so much! And thank you for bringing me.” She turned and held out her hand to him. “Goodbye.”
“Well, I think I’ll wait and see you safely received,” he replied amusedly.
“No—there’s no need.” Nervousness and excitement lent a sudden impatience to her tone. “He’ll be waiting for me...” She cast a glance at the house as she spoke, because she felt Martin might come running out at any moment, and she had no wish for their first rapturous meeting to take place under the faintly cynical observation of Max Ormathon. “And even if he isn’t home, I can wait. Please don’t bother to wait.”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I shouldn’t be carrying out my promise to your uncle if I didn’t see you safely handed over to your fiancé.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” she cried impatiently. “I’m not a parcel of jewelry.”
“You have a certain value nevertheless,” he replied, with that characteristic air of amusement deepening. “Run along, there’s a good child. I’ll look the other way, if you like.”
And, since there was nothing else to be done, and it would be ridiculous to prolong the argument, Juliet jumped out of the car and ran up the short path to the bungalow.
Her hand trembled as she knocked, and her heart began to beat heavily as she heard footsteps approaching.
But they were not Martin’s footsteps, and the door was opened by a woman Juliet recognized immediately as his landlady, from the description he had given of her in one of his earlier letters.
“Good afternoon...” Juliet’s voice sounded shallow and faintly breathless and not much like her usual voice. “Is Mr. Eland in?”
“No. I’m afraid he’s away.” For a moment the woman looked at her with the oddest expression. An expression in which embarrassment and curiosity and—yes, a sort of pity—were mingled. Then she added, as though she knew only one way of carrying out an unpleasant task, “He’s away on his honeymoon. Went two weeks ago. I guess you’re his girl from back home, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER FOUR
For a moment Juliet thought she would faint. She told herself that what this woman had just said could not possibly mean what those words had always meant before. There was some terrible, monstrous mistake somewhere. Or else she was dreaming and would wake up presently in her bed, at home in London.
But, at the thought of that distant, safe place of her own—now lost forever—Juliet felt as though an icy breath of reality pierced mists of illusion that had clung to her for weeks.
This was no dream, after all, no mistake, no fantastic situation from which there would be some equally fantastic but easy escape. She was right in the midst of a real and dreadful problem. One with which she must deal—alone, and at once.
“I don’t think ... I quite ... understand you,” she said faintly at last. “We can’t be speaking of the same person.”
But she knew they were, and the woman at the door quickly dispelled any doubt on that point.
“Oh, yes,” she insisted, embarrassed but firm. “Martin Eland. I knew just as soon as your telegram came, of course, that you couldn’t have got his letter explaining things.”
Even at that moment, in the depths of her despair, Juliet felt her pride revolt at the thought that this perfect stranger apparently knew so much more about her affairs—and Martin’s—than she did herself. But she swallowed her pride, and when the woman said, not unkindly, “Would you like to come in,” she was about to step over the threshold when suddenly she remembered her luggage, left behind in the car—and then Max Ormathon—and then, inevitably, the larger aspect of her own appalling situation.
As that particular chasm seemed to yawn in front of her, again Juliet experienced a wave of sick faintness. But again she fought it down.
“Would you—wait just a minute, please.”
She turned and went rather slowly out to the car once more. Max was still at the wheel, apparently a good deal occupied with a group of children who were playing on the veranda of one of the bungalows opposite. As she came up to the car, however, he turned his head and then made to get out.
“Hello. Shall I bring up the luggage for you?”
“No—wait a moment...” She put out a hand to stop him, and as she did so, she stared at him with more shocked misery in her eyes that she knew. “Could you please wait just a little while? Something has—happened, and I want to hear about it.”
In spite of the detaining hand, he got out of the car, and stood looking down at her. Big, dominating and somehow faintly consoling.
“What’s the matter, my dear? Has there been some sort of accident?”
“No,” Juliet said slowly. “No, it wasn’t even accidental. It was quite—deliberate. He has ... married someone else.”
“Oh, God! I’m sorry.”
She could not imagine why she had told him—baldly like that, as though he had a right to know and were someone in whom she would naturally confide. But there was no doubting the sincerity of his dismayed sympathy.
“Look here, would you like me to come in with you now?”
His hand was under her elbow, and though the touch was quite light, it gave her the curious feeling that there was still something between her and ultimate disaster.
She did not even stop to think about the humiliation of having to hear the truth from a stranger, in front of someone else who was also virtually a stranger. She only knew that Max Ormathon’s presence was something to be thankful for in the welter of dismay and bewilderment that had swept over her.
“It would be very kind—” she began softly and in a voice that trembled slightly.
“Come along,” he said, without giving her time to finish, and he accompanied her into the house.
The woman, who had watched all this rather curiously from the doorway, led the way into a conventionally furnished but quite comfortable sitting room.
“Sit you down,” she urged, and she shook up a couple of cushions unnecessarily and glanced a little nervously at Max Ormathon.
“This is Mr. Ormathon, a friend of my uncle and aunt,” Juliet explained with an effort. “And you must be Mrs. Jarvis, I suppose.”
“Yes. That’s right.” Mrs. Jarvis seemed pleased to find something on which they could agree wholeheartedly. “I’m real sorry about this business. It must be a shock for you, coming out from home and all. But he did write to tell you about marrying this other girl, and she’s a sweet, pretty girl, and not the kind who’d want to hurt anyone on purpose. But—you know how it is.”
This last remark was addressed to Max Ormathon, presumably on the assumption that he was the more worldly and less personally involved of the two, and would thus be able to look at the situation more objectively.
“I’m afraid I don’t know how it was in this particular case,” was the rather disagreeable reply. “But if you mean that people do protest about not wanting to hurt others, while at the same time proceeding to do so without loss of time, of course I can only agree with you.”
Mrs. Jarvis looked faintly puzzled. But went on almost immediately, and with a touch of enthusiasm.
“Well, anyway, you could see it was a case of love at first sight with both of them. And of course people do change their minds. I know I changed mine twice before I married my husband, and many’s the time I’ve wished there’d been an opportunity to change it again.”
“Most interesting,” Max Ormathon said coldly, in a tone that successfully dried up the stream of reminiscence that was obviously threatening to break loose. “But if there’s nothing more that Miss Andlers wishes to ask...” He looked inquiringly at Juliet, and she struggled to think of something that she did want to ask.
But what was there? What was there, even, that one could say? Martin had done this terrible thing to her, and the details seemed immeasurably unimportant.
“Perhaps you’d like his address?” Mrs. Jarvis prompted helpfully. “Then you could write to him.”
“Yes,” Juliet agreed. “I think—I’d like his address.”
But even as she said that, she wondered what in the world there was left to write about. There was no question of reproaching or unbraiding him. The very idea was abhorrent. Everything between them was utterly and irrevocably finished. Why write about it now?
Even if she had known beforehand—even if he had written in time and she had received the letter—she could have done nothing but release him. He had merely anticipated—with heartless haste, perhaps—her inevitable agreement.
By no hint or process of reasoning could he have foreseen her own ridiculously impulsive departure for Australia, since, as seemed obvious now, he could not have received her letter before he left for his honeymoon. She might as logically blame her own impulsiveness as his indecent haste for her present predicament.
But there was one thing she thought she would like to be sure about.
“Do you know,” she asked, a little huskily, “if Mar—if he received a letter from me just before he went away?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure.” Mrs. Jarvis was not committing herself so far. “But there are one or two I’m waiting to send on to him when he gets settled at the new address. There’s an English one among those, I think.”
“Might I see it?” Juliet asked with an effort.
“Surely you can.” Mrs. Jarvis went away with an air of obliging haste, and the two left behind in the small clean, highly polished room maintained complete silence. For, again, what was there left to say?
She returned in a few moments, holding Juliet’s letter in her hand.
“This is it,” she said.
“Yes—that’s it,” Juliet agreed heavily. Then she could say no more because, suddenly, there was a dreadful tightening of her throat as she saw again, in these unbelievable circumstances, the letter that she had written with such high hopes and such golden anticipation. She remembered exactly how she had felt as her pen ran on, line after line, page after page, detailing that first wonderful encounter with the Australian relations.
That thick envelope, with the familiar English stamp seemed to epitomize the ruin of all her hopes.
“Maybe you’d like it back again,” Mrs. Jarvis suggested.
Juliet took the proffered letter because that was preferable to leaving it for Martin to read in embarrassment and regret.
But she shuddered a little as she thrust it into her handbag. Then she turned helplessly to Max Ormathon because she suddenly felt the last of her own initiative drain from her.
He seemed to understand immediately that, if any decision were to be taken, he would have to take it.
“I don’t think we need trouble you any further, Mrs. Jarvis,” he said, getting up. “Obviously there is nothing to be done by remaining here. Thank you for your help.”
Mrs. Jarvis followed them to the door, saying, rather unnecessarily, that she was that sorry, but there it was.
The light pressure of Max Ormathon’s hand on her arm guided Juliet to the car, but she would have gone with him anyway, as she would have gone with anyone who proposed a definite course of action at that moment.
She had expected to stay in this place and make her home, but now there was no room for her and she must go. But where she could go, or what in the world she was to do next, were matters with which her mind simply refused to grapple.
As they drove away, she sat up very straight in the seat beside Max Ormathon, but she shut her eyes so that she should see no more of the pretty little township that had meant so much to her in anticipation, and nothing at all in reality.
“Relax,” he said briefly at last. And obediently she slumped back in the seat—and then the tears came.
He allowed her to cry without interruption for a while. Then he handed her his large, clean handkerchief, in place of a damp little wad to which she had reduced hers, and said, “He isn’t worth so many tears. You’ve paid him too handsome a tribute already.”
“It isn’t a question of ... tribute,” she returned impatiently, but she had to stop crying in order to reply. “It’s more that ... I don’t know what on earth I’m to do next.”
“Events have decided that for you,” he pointed out. “You’ll have to come with me, and stay with my sister for the moment.”
“But—” She looked at him in astonishment over his own handkerchief. “I can’t just wish myself onto a stranger like that.”
“Don’t make difficulties,” he advised her with a smile. “You have enough ready-made ones already. My sister isn’t exactly a stranger and in any case, we are quite used to welcoming the unexpected visitor in these parts. Carol will probably be glad to have another girl for company. Her husband is out a good deal on the station, and she is often alone with the children for days.”
“Oh—she has children?” Faint interest crept into Juliet’s tone.
“Yes. Isobel who is seven, and Peter, who is four and a half.”
He spoke, Juliet could not help thinking, with the exactness of an uncle who found his niece and nephew interesting.
“Perhaps,” Juliet suggested diffidently, “I could be of some use to your sister with the children while I—I am discovering what to do next.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Juliet secretly wondered whether his confidence on that point was due to an intimate understanding of his sister or just sheer masculine obtuseness.
Juliet had had too many shocks and disappointments lately to indulge in any easy hopes, and she knew quite well that Max Ormathon’s sister might be anything but pleased to see her. But at least there was a prospect of a roof over her head during the next few days. And that would give her time to think of something—almost anything—as an alternative to the humiliating and dreadful possibility of having to appeal to her relations for help.
They were descending rapidly now toward the plains through the darkening afternoon, and to Juliet the scenery no longer seemed beautiful and exciting and friendly. The brief winter sunshine had gone, and the deepening shadows on the mountains made the scene melancholy and obscure.
Like my own future,
Juliet thought, and then told herself not to be self-pitying.
The first numbing effects of the shock were beginning to wear off and, with the immediate problem of a temporary home solved, Juliet found her thoughts turning restlessly to the pain and misery of her actual loss.
Martin! Martin no longer part of her life, the central point of her future. Martin married to another girl. For a while, a sort of despairing rage seized her. She recognized it as cold, blind jealousy and tried to fight it down. But, even when she had thrust it from her, there was little to take its place but an aching sense of loss—the absolute nothingness of life without Martin.
“We shall be there in about a quarter of an hour,” Max Ormathon’s voice said coolly at that point. And, snatching at the relief of any distraction, she exclaimed almost feverishly, “Shall we? I’m so glad. Tell me something about your sister before we arrive.”
“She is rather younger than I am,” he began obligingly, in a matter-of-fact tone that was steadying. “But we have always been very close to each other in feeling. Even her marriage made little difference to that. She and Henry are exceedingly happy together, and they are kind enough to keep a place always ready for me in their family life. No bachelor brother can ask more.”
“No, indeed. And the children? You’re very fond of them, aren’t you?”
“As far as my type is ever fond of anyone,” he replied, rather unexpectedly. “The little girl thinks me wonderful, and Peter is curiously like me to look at. Both facts flatter my ego, I suppose. It’s difficult not to like children who do such pleasant things to one’s pride.”