Books: Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land

R >> Rosa Praed (1851 1935) >> Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land

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'I believe Mr McKeith is coming on ahead with Harry the Blower,' said
Mrs Hensor. 'Look sharp, Tommy, the cattle will be at the yard
directly, and I've got my dinner to cook for the whole lot of them,
seeing that some visitors aren't good enough for the house.'

The woman pointed her last sentence by a malicious glance at the
mistress of Moongarr.

'I suppose that is what your master keeps you here for--to cook for
the visitors at the Quarters, Mrs Hensor,' said Lady Bridget, with
incisive sweetness.

Mrs Hensor flushed scarlet, but she checked an impudent reply. Pulling
Tommy angrily along, she hurried up to the four-roomed, zinc-roofed
humpey and its lean-to kitchen, protected by a bough shade, which lay
between the head-station and the gully, with the stockyard close to it,
and which constituted her domain. It annoyed Mrs Hensor to hear McKeith
called her master. She always spoke of her late husband as having been
the Boss-mate on that--to him fatal--exploring expedition. Also, she
resented having all the bachelors 'dumped down'--as she phrased it--
on her, while the 'Ladyship's swell staff' was spared the trouble. At
present the Bachelors' Quarters was fairly full. Mr Ninnis,
store-keeper and overseer in the owner's absence, abode there
permanently, and just now, there were Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker,
and a young man from Breeza Downs--a combined cattle and sheep station
about fifty miles distant--who had come to help in the mustering and
to collect any beasts strayed from the Breeza Downs' herd.

The gully crossing lay below the boulders of rock at the head of the
lagoon. Presently, two horsemen appeared on the rise. One was McKeith;
the other Harry the Mailman--otherwise the Blower--a foxy, browny-red
little man on a raw-boned chestnut, carrying his mail-bags strapped in
front and at the side of his saddle.

Lady Bridget supposed they had met at the turn-off track just above the
crossing. McKeith was carrying a leather mail-bag, from which he
appeared to have extracted a bundle of letters, with one hand. He held
his bridle and coiled stock-whip in the other. He was listening to the
mailman, who seemed to be talking animatedly. As they neared the house,
he gave the usual COO-EE, that set all the dogs barking, and put the
Chinaman-cook and black-boys on the alert.

The riders passed by the end of the veranda where Lady Bridget stood.
McKeith looked up at her. He seemed preoccupied and angry, and merely
nodded to his wife, but did not take off his hat as he had done in
earlier days--and, somehow, to-day she noticed the omission.

'All right, eh, Biddy?' he called out casually. 'Here's your mail--
I've taken out mine,' and he pitched the leather bag, with the string
cut and the official red seal broken, on to the veranda at her feet. 'I
say--you might bring the whisky out to the back veranda. I daresay you
could do with a nip, eh, Harry?'

'That I can, Mr McKeith. Riding along these plains is dry work. Good
day, Ladyship. I'm a bit behind time, but I lost an hour looking for a
hole to fill my water bag at--And then I could not drink out of it--
for a demed old pleuro bullock had got there first and died in it. My
word, Boss, you'll be in a fix if it don't rain before long.'

McKeith made an angry gesture. He spoke sharply to the horses. The two
men rode round the kitchen-wing and dismounted at the paling fence,
which made the fourth side of the little square. The back veranda of
the new house, with steps ascending to it, in the middle, the Old
Humpey, with its veranda, along one side, the kitchen and store
building along the other, and a rough slab and bark outhouse beyond it.
Native-cucumber vines and other creepers partially closed in the older
verandas. In the centre of the square was a small flower bed with a
flowering shrub in the middle.

Lady Bridget brought the whisky decanter from the dining room to the
back veranda, and McKeith mounted the steps, the mailman remaining
beside them. A canvas water-bag, oozing moisture, hung from the
rafters, and there were tumblers on a table beneath it. McKeith took
the decanter from his wife's hand, too preoccupied, it seemed, even to
notice the little satirical smile on her lips. She was thinking how
funny it seemed that she should be playing Hebe to Harry the Blower.
She soon realised, however, that serious things had happened. As
McKeith mixed a liberal allowance of whisky with water from the
water-bag and handed it to the mailman, he asked curtly:

'This isn't one of your blowing yarns, Harry? You're positive about the
fact?'

'Saw the thing with my own eyes, Boss. As fine a team as ever I'd wish
to own, lying with their throats cut, and the trees black with crows
all round. There was the dray-load all turned over, and two cases
prized open. I bet that the rum-kegs and spirits that couldn't be
carried off, are buried in some handy dry water-hole close by. I saw
two or three empty brandy bottles with the heads of 'em smashed to show
that the rascals had wet the wool before starting off.'

McKeith cursed in his throat. 'No sign of my men?'

'Scooted clean out of the scenery--the whole lot. I reckon that's what
they shook hands on with the Union chaps, and that the natural
consequences of absorbing your grog will be another woolshed or two
burned down before long. Here's your health, Boss, and the Ladyship's.'
And the mailman gulped down his 'nobbler' and turned to remount the
lean chestnut, which was standing hitched to the palings, observing
cheerfully:

'Well, so long, Sir. Go'day, Ma'am. This sort of argufying ain't going
to carry my mail-bags along the river.'

'Go up to the Quarters and ask Mrs Hensor for a feed,' called McKeith.
'And look here, Harry, you can tell them at the Myall Creek out-station
as you go by, to have two good horses ready in the yard for me. I'm off
to Tunumburra to put the police on to those devils straight away.'

'All right, Boss. You'll find it will take some tall calculatin'
though. Them Unionists are getting too strong for the police to tackle.
Windeatt up at Breeza Downs is in a mortal funk, and sending word
everywhere for a squad of Specials to protect his woolshed.'

'It seems,' said Lady Biddy to her husband, when the mailman had gone,
'that there might be some use after all for Luke Tallant's Maxims.'

'It seems that Jim Steadbolt has been taking his revenge,' he answered,
'and that I must be in the saddle in an hour's time. Mix me a drink,
Biddy, and order in some grub, while I go and have a bath.'

He looked as if he needed one. The dust of the drafting camp was caked
upon his face and clothes. His was the appearance of a man who had been
riding hard after stock and sleeping, between his blankets only, under
the stars.

Lady Bridget mixed him his drink and went to see Chen Sing in the
kitchen. When she came back, Colin was in the front veranda. He had
tumbled the rest of the letters and papers out of the mail-bag, and was
hastily and eagerly scanning the last LEICHARDT'S TOWN CHRONICLE.

'Any news, Colin?'

'I don't know, I was looking to see if the Government were going to act
against the strikers--I see they are sending troops.'

'And is Luke Tallant coming at the head of them, in official uniform,
to read the Riot Act?--if there is a Riot Act in Australia. I'd like
to see Luke maintaining the supremacy of the British Crown on the
Leura.'

He looked up at her in vague rebuke of her levity, and there was
suppressed tenderness in his eyes, notwithstanding his preoccupation
with his own troubles.

'No, no. But there's something in the paper about Lady Tallant being
ill and having an operation. Poor chap! He wouldn't have been bothering
much about strikes in the Never-Never and the supremacy of the British
Crown, any more than I should in similar circumstances. . . . Well,
there! I must go and bogey*.'
[*Bogey--in Black's language, 'bathe out of doors']

Sudden compunction overswept Bridget.

'Oh, Colin! You would care. . . really. . . even though they had cut
the throats of your four best dray-horses?' But he had disappeared into
a little veranda room, against which a corrugated iron tank backed
conveniently, and in a minute she heard the splash of water.

She picked up the paper and looked at the English Intelligence before
examining her own letters. It was quite true. There was a paragraph
stating that Lady Tallant's health had not improved since her arrival
in England, and hinting at the likelihood of an operation being
advisable. Bridget reflected, however, that Sir Luke would probably
have received a cablegram by this time, one way or other--which would
have put him out of suspense, and, presumably, there had been no later
bad news.

A letter from Molly Gaverick confirmed that item of the English
Intelligence. Rosamond Tallant's condition was certainly far from
satisfactory. Molly, however, seemed much more taken up with a recent
illness of Eliza Countess of Gaverick than with that of Lady Tallant.
Being a tactless and absolutely frank young person, she had no scruple
in proclaiming her hope that 'old Eliza' would make Lord Gaverick her
heir. This was the more likely, wrote young Lady Gaverick, because the
old lady had lately quarrelled with her own relatives, and never now
asked any of her stuffy provincial cousins to share the dulness of
Castle Gaverick and of the house in Brook Street. If she did not leave
her money to Chris Gaverick, there was not, conceivably, anyone else to
whom she would leave it.

'By the way,' Molly continued, as if it had been an afterthought 'Old
Eliza is immensely interested in you and your cow-boy husband--
ranch-owner is what, I suppose, I ought to call him. She asked Mrs
Gildea so many questions about you both that Joan read her your account
of your honeymoon journey through the Bush, and all the rest of it. How
you can endure such a life is incomprehensible to me--but Aunt Eliza
says it shows you've got some grit in you, and that evidently your
husband has cured you of a lot of ridiculous nonsense--I am quoting
her, so don't be offended, and you needn't show this to Nature's
gentleman, which is what Aunt Eliza calls him. I can't help feeling
though, that it's rather a pity you didn't wait a bit before taking the
Irrevocable Step. I don't know whether you ever heard about Mrs
Willougby Maule's death--eleven months after their marriage.'

No, Bridget had not heard. Molly Gaverick was an uncertain
correspondent, and, no doubt, Joan Gildea and Rosamond Tallant, if they
had known of the event, had thought it wiser, in writing to her, to
suppress the news. For a moment, Lady Bridget sat meditating, and all
the blood seemed to rush from her brain to her heart--she could almost
hear her heart pounding. Then she went on again with Lady Gaverick's
letter.

'It was a motor accident--nothing serious at the time, but the baby
was born prematurely, and she lingered a week or two, and then died. I
must do him the justice to say that he seemed to feel her death very
much. It looked as though, after all, the marriage had been quite a
success. Her money gave him a lift and they were going out a good deal
in the political set. She left her quarter of a million to him,
ABSOLUTELY. I heard that some remote Bagallys were going to contest the
will, but they found that they hadn't a leg to stand upon. I wish now
that we hadn't been so sniffy about W.M. As Chris observed with
unconscious cynicism, there's a good deal of difference between a
penniless adventurer and the possessor of quarter of a million.
Unattached men with money can be so useful. As soon as Rosamond Tallant
gets better--if she does--I'll make her ask him to meet us. I know he
used to be a great friend of Luke's. . . . '

CHAPTER 10

Lady Bridget had read so far when the door of the bathroom opened and
McKeith came out, clean again in fresh riding gear, and with a valise
ready packed and strapped in his hand.

The noise of the cattle became much louder, though the mob was not yet
in sight.

'I wish I hadn't got to go off before the branding,' he said. 'These
Breeza Downs people always want to claim every cleanskin*. You might
tell Ninnis and Moongarr Bill, Biddy, to keep a sharp look-out. And now
let me have my grub--I'm sorry, dear, to have you hurry up your
dinner.' He strode along to the dining-room, too absorbed in his own
annoyances to notice his wife's face or to ask any questions about her
letters.
[*cleanskin--unbranded calf]

Lady Bridget gathered them up and followed him. The Malay boy waited at
table with the assistance of a servant girl from Leuraville, the only
female domestic--with the exception of Mrs Hensor--on the
head-station.

McKeith swallowed his soup and ate the savoury stew prepared by the
Chinese cook with the appetite of a man who had been all day in the
saddle. Lady Bridget, who was an extraordinarily rapid eater, as well
as a fastidious one, had finished long before he was half-way through.
She sat silent at first, while he growled over the outrage upon the
horses. Then suddenly visualising the poor beasts lying stiff in
congealed blood, and the mailman's exaggerated description of trees
black with crows, she flamed out in wrathful horror, and was as anxious
as her husband that the perpetrators of the crime should be brought to
justice. He seemed pleased, and a little surprised at the ebullition.

'I thought you weren't taking it quite in, Biddy. I am glad you think
like me, though I expect yours is the humanitarian view and mine's the
practical one. This touches my pocket, you see. Well, anyway, you won't
be so keen now on defending the Unionists.'

'I think they've got as much right to fight for their principles as we
have for ours, but I don't think they've the right to torture horses,'
she rejoined. Her sympathy with oppressed shearers and dispossessed
natives struck always a jarring note between them. His long upper lip
closed tightly on the lower one, and he hunched his great shoulders.

'Well, that sort of argufying won't muster the cattle,' he observed
drily, plagiarising Harry the Blower. She changed the subject.

'Did you have a good muster?'

'Oh, fair! Between three and four hundred head. The water is running
still up in the range. We should have done better if that skunk Wombo
hadn't bolted.'

Lady Bridget leaned forward with interest.

'Oh! Then he HAS gone after the black-gin. Brave Wombo!'

'I wouldn't care a cuss whether he went after the black-gin or not;
she's a half-caste, by the way, and all the worse for that. And he
might stop with her, if it wasn't that he knows the country, and can
spot the gullies where the cattle hide. I've no use for sentiment--
especially black sentiment--when it's a case of a forced sale to keep
me going. My heavens! there's only one thing, Biddy, that could break
me, and it's drought. I believe we're in for a long one, and unless I
can make sales quickly and get money to sink new bores on the run,
things will go hardly with me. Harry the Blower spoke naked truth for
once in his life.'

'Oh! but there's sure to be rain soon. It looked so like it last
night,' she answered lightly.

'LOOKED so like it! Yes, and ended in wind and dust. Sure sign of
drought! I must be off. . . . Here, give me the LEICHARDT LAND
CHRONICLE, and don't expect me till you see me. . . . And by the way,
Biddy, I hear there's a Unionist Organiser going the round of the
stations and pretending to parley with the masters. Don't you be
philanthropic enough to let him open his jaws--I've told Ninnis he's
to be hounded off before he has time to get off his saddle.'

'Colin, you are unjust all round. You were very unjust to Wombo. Why
shouldn't the poor black-boy marry as well as you or anyone else?'

McKeith gave a hard laugh.

'I'm not preventing him from marrying. I only said I wasn't going to
have his gin on my station.'

'You wouldn't listen when he told you that he didn't dare go back to
his tribe--because his gin's husband threatened to kill him.'

'My sympathies are with the gin's husband. What business has Wombo to
steal another man's wife?'

'The husband broke her head with a nulla-nulla, and she loves Wombo and
Wombo loves her. I consider that any woman, whether she's black or
white, who lives with her husband while she loves another man is
committing a sin,' said Lady Bridget hotly.

McKeith stopped in the act of filling his tobacco pouch from a jar on
the mantelpiece and looked sharply at his wife.

'You think that, Biddy. I remember long ago you said something of that
sort to me. It isn't my idea of morality or of justice. But I'm one
with you this far. If I'd ever reason to believe that you loved another
man and wanted to go off with him--you might go--I wouldn't put out a
hand to stop you. And then. . . . '

'And then?' She had grown very white.

'Well, I think I'd make another notch in my gun first--and it would be
a previous one--for myself that time.'

'No, you wouldn't, Colin. Because you know I shouldn't be worth it--
and you are not the man to funk.'

'I'm not. But where YOU come in--Good Lord! Mate! What would there be
left for me to live for?'

Her heart thrilled to the old term of endearment, to which in their
early honeymoon days she had attached a sentimental value. Of late it
had fallen into disuse, and when she had heard him on occasions greet
the foreman, may be of some stray party of drivers or surveyors with
the bush formula: 'Good day, mate!' she had felt with deep aggrievement
that she no longer desired the appellative. She had not yet realised
that while the word 'mate' in Australese, like the verb AIMER in
French, may be used as a mere colloquial term, it implies in the deeper
sense a sanctity of relation upon which hangs the whole code of Bush
chivalry.

'Oh, Colin!' Her eyes glistened with tears. She felt ashamed of her
neurotic fancies and her resentment of his lacks in the matter of
conventional courtesies--of his outward hardness, his want of sympathy
with her ideals.

He came to her, taking her two hands while keeping his pipe in one of
his own so that the whiff of the coarse 'Store-cut' tobacco made her
wrinkle her nose and stemmed the tide of emotion. But he did not seem
to notice this.

'No, you're not going to put that theory into practice, Mate. . . . I'm
not afraid. So we'll leave it at that. And now what's this about the
black-boy to do with my being unjust to that Organiser? There's no
beastly sentiment in his case. He's out to make money, that's all.'

'You won't hear what he's got to put forward on his side any more than
you would listen to poor Wombo.'

'No, I won't. I'm not taking any--either in gins or in organisers. Let
'em show their faces here, and they'll pretty soon become aware of the
fact.'

Lady Bridget took away her hands and moved to the veranda. Outside,
McKeith's horse was waiting. He strapped on his valise, finished
ramming the tobacco into his pipe, then going behind his wife, bent
downward and hastily kissed her cheek. She did not turn her head.

'Good-bye, Biddy. Don't you go worrying over the blacks or the
Unionists. And if you're dull and want a job there'll be a spice of
excitement in helping to tail that mob of scrubbers. I had to hire two
stray chaps, we're so short-handed.' He went down the steps to the
outer paling. Still she made no response, though now she turned and
watched him vault into the saddle. She also saw his face lighten at
sight of Mrs Hensor's boy with the great pawpaw apple. Tommy Hensor was
a favourite with the Boss.

'Bless you, boy, it's as big as yourself. Take it back to the Quarters
and tell your mother to give you a slice, or perhaps her ladyship will
cut it for you.'

He trotted off in the direction of the gully and of the roar of cattle.
Lady Bridget could see the heaving backs of the mob, and could hear the
shouts of the stockmen as they rounded the beasts to the crossing.
Tommy Hensor looked up pleadingly to her, holding out the pawpaw apple.
His yellow hair flamed to gold in the sunset, his blue eyes were as
bright almost as Colin's. Lady Bridget shook her head.

'No, I don't want you this evening, Tommy. Take that back to your
mother.'

She settled herself in the hammock and read Molly Gaverick's letter
over again. Then she read one from Joan Gildea. Joan was in the full
swing of London journalism again. She gave Bridget rather fuller news
of Eliza Countess of Gaverick, and dwelt at some length upon the old
lady's interest in Bridget's wild life and in Bridget's husband.

'You may be sure,' wrote Joan, 'that I had nothing but good to say of
Colin, and oh! Biddy, dearest, how rejoiced I am to know that he is
making you so happy. I could read between the lines of all your amusing
descriptions and sketches of "the Dream-drive." I had my doubts and my
fears, as I never concealed from you, but I believe that you have found
the true, well-beloved at last.'

There was a good deal, too, in the letter about Rosamond Tallant, who
was in cheerful spirits, it seemed, in spite of the impending
operation, and would not hear of Sir Luke's asking for leave to be with
her--and so on--and so on. Not a word about Willoughby Maule and his
bereavement--which, after all, could not be so very recent. Why had
Joan never mentioned it? Was she afraid of rousing regret and of
awakening painful memories.

* Cleanskin--Unbranded calf.

CHAPTER 11

McKeith's absence was longer than he had expected. Lady Bridget heard
from Harry the Blower on his return round with the down-going mails
that the little bush township of Tunumburra had become the scene of a
convocation of Pastoralists called to concert measures against the
threatened strike. The mailman reported that the district was now in a
state of great commotion, and the strikers, gathering silently in armed
force, prepared to defend their rights against a number of free
labourers whom the sheep-owners were importing from the South. The men
who had killed McKeith's horses were, according to the mailman,
entrenched in the Range, awaiting developments. It was thought that
nothing would happen on a large scale until the arrival of the free
labourers and the troops, which it was said the Government was sending.
Harry the Blower talked darkly of marauding bands, ambushed foes and
perilous encounters on his road, all of which waxed in number and
blood-thirstiness after the manner of Falstaff's men in buckram. But
nobody ever took Harry the Blower's yarns very seriously.

It would have been natural for Lady Bridget to work herself up into a
state of humanitarian excitement--the O'Hara's had always espoused
unpopular causes--but since the arrival of the English mail a curious
dreaminess had come upon her. She spent idle hours in the hammock on
the veranda, and would only rouse herself spasmodically to some trivial
burst of energy--perhaps a boiling water skirmish against white ants,
or a sudden fit of gardening--planting seeds, training the wild
cucumber vines upon the veranda posts, or watering the shrubs and
flowers within the rough paling fence that enclosed the house and
garden. A new-made garden, for ornament rather than for use, for the
staple produce was grown in the Chinaman's garden by the lagoon. Young
passion-fruit vines barely concealing the fences' nakedness, a mango, a
few small orange trees now in flower. A Brazilian cherry, two or three
flat-stone peach trees and loquets--all looking thirsty for rain--
that was all. The Old Humpey, as it was called, had creepers
overgrowing its roof, a nesting-place for frogs, lizards, snakes--and
Lady Bridget, brave enough for doughty deeds, could never overcome her
terror of horned beasts and reptiles. McKeith's office, where he
entered branding tallies and posted the station log, was in the Old
Humpey, and two or three bachelor bedrooms opposite the wing with
kitchen and store. But Lady Bridget lived chiefly in the new house--
less picturesque with its zinc roofing and deficiency of green
drapings, but, being built on sawn lengths of saplings, more or less
fortified against snakes. In front there was a great vacant space
between the ground and the floor of the house--pleasant enough in
summer, when a gentle draught could find its way through the cracks
between the boards, but cold in winter, though the northern winters
were not sharp enough or long enough for this to be a serious
discomfort.

Nor, when Lady Bridget slept alone in the new house, did she mind much
the dogs and harmless animals that couched under the boards, they gave
her a sense of companionship. But there was a herd of goats--some of
them old and with big tough horns--which McKeith had started in his
bachelor days to provide milk when, as sometimes happened, the milch
cows failed; also to furnish savoury messes of kid's flesh--a pleasant
change from the eternal salt beef varied with wild duck. Occasionally
it happened, especially in mustering times, that nobody remembered to
pen the goats in their yard by the lagoon, and on these occasions they
would get under the house, and the noise of their horns knocking
against the floor of her bedroom would so effectively destroy Lady
Bridget's chances of sleep that she would rise in the night and drive
them into their fold. These were incidents which added variety to the
monotony of her life in the Bush.

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