Books: Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land

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

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'In God's name, Biddy, how did you come to marry that rough brute.'

'IS he a rough brute! It's very rude of you to say so. But do you know,
just for a half minute to-day, I rather thought so myself. I don't
pretend to agree with Colin's methods of treating the Blacks, though
I'm told it's the only way to treat them--you know they did commit
terrible atrocities up here. . . . Still to flog a black man, a wild,
warlike, human creature, seems to me nearly as bad as shooting him. Do
you know--the first thing I ever heard about Colin was that he had a
great many notches on his gun, and that each one meant a wild
black-fellow that he had shot dead.'

'And now he flogs tame ones,' Maule observed quietly. Her brilliant
eyes searched his face for a sign of malevolent sarcasm, but not a
muscle quivered. Her own eyes wavered under his steady look. She busied
herself among the tea things.

'Sugar?'

'Please.'

But she paused, the tongs balanced in her delicate fingers.

'It is frightfully thrilling--life in the Bush.'

'What part of it? The shooting or the flogging?'

She burst out: 'You know I hated that. You know I was furious about the
flogging. You know'--She pulled herself up.

'I know nothing--except that you must have changed enormously in a
very short time to have been thrilled with anything but horror--by
that sort of thing.'

'Yes, I have changed. But it isn't time that changes one. Time never
counts with me. It's only feeling that counts. Oh, of course, I think
it all horrible--about the Blacks up North. They're not allowed on
this station--except one or two half civilised stock-boys--and this
one fell in love and carried off his gin, and brought her here against
my husband's orders.'

'Yes? And you had befriended them--I gathered that. But it doesn't
explain YOU. '

She took up a piece of sugar with the tongs, holding it suspended as
she spoke, jerkily.

'Why should I be explained? As for my finding life in the Bush
thrilling. . . . I was dead sick of falsities when I left England, I
wanted to be thrilled by something real.'

'And you found that--in your husband?'

'Yes; I did. He IS real, at least. He is true to himself. So few men
have the strength of their goodness or the courage of their badness,
when it comes to a big test.'

'Oh! I grant you. Yes; I know that's what you're thinking. I wasn't
true to myself in the big test. . . . But YOU were to blame for my
having been false to the higher ideal.'

'I! Oh--what makes you--' But she thought better of the impetuous
questions that trembled on her lips, and went on in a different tone.

'What does that matter! I'm not saying anything about high ideals. What
is high? . . . . What is low? . . . . You've just got to invoke truth
and freedom--as far as your conception of them goes. . . . And there's
a reason for Colin's hatred of the Blacks.'

'Ah! Is it permitted to ask the reason?'

'His family were all massacred by the natives--father, mother, sisters
--all. Well, one admires a man steadfast in revenge--going straight
for what he wants--and getting it--doing it--in love or in hate. Now
I have answered your question.'

The gesture of her head seemed a defiance. She dropped the sugar into
his tea, and he took the cup from her hands, and slowly drank it
without saying a word.

It was she who broke the silence.

'You provoke me. You make me say things I don't want to say. You always
did.'

'Ah! Then marriage has not changed you so immensely, after all!'

She bit her lip and rose abruptly.

'Do you want any more tea? No. Then come to the veranda and tell me how
it is that Luke Tallant has allowed you to exchange Government House
for the Never-Never?'

He had followed her through the French window.

'I see you haven't heard the bad news.'

'No--what? We only get a mail once a week.'

'I thought McKeith would have broken the shock. He came on, he said, to
do so. Poor Lady Tallant.'

'Rosamond! The operation?'

'She died under the anaesthetic. Sir Luke got the news by cable the day
before I left Leichardt's Town. He wired at once for leave and has
started for England by this time.'

'Oh? poor Rosamond! Poor, poor Rosamond!'

'Is she to be so greatly pitied! She has been saved much suffering!'

Then as Bridget went on murmuring, 'Oh, poor Rosamond, she did love
life,' he added gently. 'Life can be very cruel. . . . I myself have
had cause for gratitude to Death, the great Simplifier. If my wife had
lived she must have been a hopeless invalid doomed to continual pain.'

Lady Bridget gave him a swift look of reproach.

'Oh, do you expect me to congratulate you?' she exclaimed bitterly.
'Yes,' she went on, 'perhaps, to HER Death was merciful--but not to
Rosamond. And Luke did care for his wife. He will be broken-hearted.'

She stood gazing out upon the plain, on which the mist was gathering.
From across the gully sounded the cattle being driven home.

When she turned to him, her eyes were full of tears.

'I think I'll go now.' She said simply. 'Colin will show you your room.
He's there--coming up from the lagoon.'

She went through a French window lower down the veranda into her
bedroom, and Maule descended the steps into the garden and presently
joined his host.

CHAPTER 15

A little later, McKeith having tubbed and changed his riding clothes,
came to his wife's room. He looked very large and clean and fair, and
the worst of his temper had worn off in a colloquy with Ninnis, and the
imparting and receiving of local news. But his eyes were still gloomy,
and his mouth sullenly determined. And he had remembered with remorse
that he should have softened to Bridget the sudden news of her friend's
death. The sight of her now--a small tragic figure with a white face
and burning eyes, in a black dress into which she had changed, deepened
his compunction.

'I am very sorry, Biddy.' He tried to put his arm round her shoulder,
but she drew back.

'What are you sorry for, Colin--that Rosamond Tallant is dead, and
that you forgot to tell me, and let me hear it from--Willoughby
Maule?' She paused perceptibly before pronouncing the christian name,
'Or that you behaved like an inhuman monster to those wretched Blacks,
and refused me the only thing I have asked you for a good time past?'

Her tone roused his rancour anew.

'I think we'll drop the subject of the Blacks; there is no earthly use
in talking about them, I make it a rule never to threaten without
performing, and I'd punish them again, just the same--or more severely
--under similar circumstances.'

'Very well. You will do as you please, and I shall do as I please,
too.'

'What do you mean?'

'Just what I say. I agree with you that there's no use in discussing
things about which we hold such different opinions. Quite simply, I
can't forgive you for this afternoon's work.'

'Biddy, you exaggerate things.'

'Perhaps. But I don't think so in this case. Let me go out, Colin.
Dinner must be ready by now.'

'No. I've got something to ask you first. I want to know why you looked
so upset--as if you were going to faint--when that man came up to you
to-day?'

'Naturally, I was startled. I had no idea he was in Australia.'

'But why should that have affected you. One might have imagined he had
been your lover. Was he ever your lover, Biddy? I must know.'

'And if he had been, do you think I should tell you,' she answered
coldly.

McKeith's face turned a dark red. His eyes literally blazed.

'That's enough.' He said, 'I shall not ask you another question about
him. I am answered already.'

He stood aside to let her pass out into the veranda, and she walked
along to the sitting-room.

Dinner went off, however, more agreeably than might have been expected.
Lady Bridget's manner was simple and to the guest charming. The black
dress, the touch of pensiveness was in keeping with the shadow of
tragedy. But she spoke in a natural way, and with tender regret of Lady
Tallant--questioning Maule as to when he had last seen her, and
learning from him how it had been at Rosamond's instigation that he had
cabled proposing himself as a companion in Sir Luke's loneliness. It
had been only a week after his arrival in Leichardt's Town that the
blow had fallen.

'You know, Tallant and I always hit it off very well together,'he
observed explanatorily, addressing McKeith. 'It was at their house that
I used to meet Lady Bridget during the few months that I had the honour
of her acquaintance in England.'

McKeith looked at his guest in a resentful but half puzzled way. A
spasm of doubt shook him. Suppose he had been making a fool of himself
--insulting his wife by unreasoning suspicions? A vague contempt in her
courteous aloofness had stung him to the quick. And the other man's
easy self assurance, the light interchange of conversation between them
about things and people of which McKeith knew nothing--all gave the
Australian a sense of bafflement--the feeling that these two were
ruled by another social code, belonged to a different world, in which
he had no part. He had been sitting at the head of his table,
perfunctorily doing his duty as host, wounded in his self-esteem--
almost the tenderest part on him, morose and miserable. Now he snatched
at the idea that he had been mistaken, as if it were a life-buoy thrown
him in deep waters. He began to talk, to assert himself, to prove
himself cock of his own walk. And Maule suavely encouraged him to lay
down the law on things Australian, while Lady Bridget withdrew into
herself, baffling and enraging McKeith still more hopelessly. He did
not seem now to know his wife! A catastrophe had happened. What? How?
Why? . . . . Nothing was the same, or could be the same again.

It was a relief when dinner was over. The men pulled out their pipes in
the veranda. Lady Bridget, just within the sitting room window, smoked
a cigarette, her small form extended in a squatter's chair, listening
to, but taking scarcely any part in the conversation. The two outside
discussed local topics--McKeith's failure to trace the perpetrators of
the outrage on his horses. Maule's impressions of Tunumburra--where he
had met McKeith in the township hotel, and the two had apparently, in
the usual Bush fashion, got on intimate terms--the rumours of an armed
camp of Unionists, and the expected conflict between them and the sheep
owners and free shearers at Breeza Downs, whither the Government
specials were bound. Lady Bridget gleaned that Maule had placed himself
under McKeith's directions.

'What are your immediate movements to be?' he asked his host.
'Remember, I am ready to fall in with any plans you may have for making
me useful.'

McKeith did not answer at once. He took his pipe from his mouth, and
knocked the ashes out of it against the arm of his chair, while he
seemed to be considering the question. Then, as if he had formed a
definite determination, he leaned forward and addressed his wife in a
forcedly matter-of-fact tone.

'I don't suppose you know much about what has been going on, Biddy. The
same boat that brought up the specials brought a hundred or more free
labourers, and they're on their way up to the different sheep-stations
along the river--a lot of them for Breeza Downs, where Windeatt has
begun shearing. Windeatt is in a blue funk because a report that a
little army of Unionists, all mounted and armed, are camped that way
and threatening to burn down his wool-shed and sack his store. The
burned old Duppo's wool-shed last week.'

'He's a skinflint, and I'm sure he deserved it,' put in Lady Bridget
indifferently.

McKeith check a dry sarcasm. He became aware of Maule's eyes turning
from one to the other.

'Well--' He got up and leaned his great frame against the lintel
between Maule and Lady Bridget. 'The Pastoralist Executive at
Tunumburra have asked us cattle-owners who--are more likely to be let
alone than the sheep-men, to help in garrisoning the sheep-stations;
and I've promised to ride over to Breeza Downs to-morrow and do my
share in protecting the place. Harris and I are going together.'

Lady Bridge seemed more interested in blowing smoke-rings than in her
husband's news.

'I may have to be away several days,' continued McKeith. 'Then there's
the new bore we're sinking--the water is badly wanted--cattle are
dying--I can't run any risk of the bore-plant being wrecked. The men
who are working there must be sent off because we're short of rations--
thanks to those murderous brutes keeping back the drays--and the
muster has to be stopped for the same reason. I won't answer for when I
can be back.' . . . As she made no answer, he asked sharply: 'Do you
understand, Biddy?'

'Yes, of course. I have no doubt, Colin, that you'll find it all highly
stimulating. And perhaps you will be able to shoot somebody with a
clear conscience, which will be more stimulating still. Really Mr
Maule, you are lucky to have come in for a civil war--I heard that in
South America that was your particular interest. Do you carry civil
wars about with you? Only, there's nothing very romantic in fighting
for mere freedom of contract--it seems so obvious that people should
be free to make or decline a contract. I wonder which side you would
take.'

Her levity called forth an impatient ejaculation from McKeith.

'I'm afraid in my wars it's generally been what your husband would
consider the wrong side,' said Maule with a laugh. 'I've usually fought
with the rebels.'

'Then you'd better not go to Breeza Downs. You'd better stop and fight
for me,' exclaimed Bridget.

'That's just what I was about to propose your friend should do,' said
McKeith in hard deliberate tones. He looked straight at his wife--
shoulders and jaws squared, eyes like flashing steel under the grim
brows. The expression of his face gave Bridget a little sense of shock.
She raised herself abruptly, and her eyes flashed pride and defiance
too.

'How very considerate of you, Colin--if Mr Maule LIKES to be disposed
of in that way. HE is to be allowed freedom of contract I presume,
though the shearers are not.'

'You needn't be afraid that I shall strike, Lady Bridget,' laughed
Maule. 'It will suit my general principles to keep out of the
scrimmage. I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs of your
labour question, but I confess that, speaking broadly, my sympathies
are usually rather with Labour than with Capital.'

'Capital!' echoed McKeith derisively. 'It's blithering irony to talk of
us Leura squatters as representing capital. We're all playing a sort of
battledore and shuttlecock game--tossed about between drought and
plenty--boom and slump. A kick in the beam and one end is up and the
other end down. There's Windeatt, who will be ruined if his wool-shed
is destroyed and his shearing spoiled. No rain, and the banks would
foreclose on most of us. Take myself. Two years ago the skies were all
smiling on my fortunes. This last year, it's as if the hosts of heaven
had a down on me.'

'The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,' murmured Lady
Bridget.

'I'm Sisera, am I?' He gave her a fierce look and crossed to the
veranda-railing, where he began cutting tobacco into the palm of his
hand. 'Well, there is something in that. But the stars have never
licked me yet. Sisera was a coward, or they wouldn't have DOWNED him.'

'Ah, but there was Jael to be reckoned with,' put in Maule softly.

'Jael!' McKeith plugged his pipe energetically. 'The more fool Sisera
for not giving Jael a wide berth. He should have gone his way and kept
her out of his affairs.'

A hard little laugh rang from the depths of the squatter's chair. Maule
got up and strolled into the sitting-room, where he seemed engrossed in
the pictures on the wall. Just then Cudgee, the black boy, hailed
McKeith from the foot of the steps.

'That fellow pollis man want'ing Massa. He sit down long-a Old Humpey.'

'All right.'

McKeith looked into the parlour. 'My wife will entertain you, Maule. I
daresay you've got plenty to talk about. I'll see you later.'

Presently they heard him outside speaking to the Police Inspector.
'Come into the office, Harris, and have a smoke and a glass of grog.'

CHAPTER 16

Lady Bridget and Willoughby Maule were alone again. She got up from the
long chair, and as she did so her cigarette case dropped from her lap.
He picked it up and it lay on his open palm, the diamonds and rubies of
her maiden initials glistening on the gold lid. They looked at each
other across it.

'I gave you this,' he said, 'and you have kept it--used it?'

He seemed to gloat over the bauble.

Her fingers touched his hand as she took the case from him, and he gave
a little shiver of pleasure.

'Let me have it; I want another cigarette.' She selected two and gave
him one of them.

They moved to the divan near the fireplace, where some red embers
remained of the log of sandalwood. Its perfume lingered faintly in the
atmosphere.

'That's good,' he said. 'It's like you; the only thing in the
god-forsaken desert that IS like you.'

'Oh, you don't know me--now.'

'Don't I! Well, your husband has given me the chance of knowing you--
better--and I warn you that I shall not scruple to avail myself of the
opportunity.'

She shook her head dubiously. 'Give me a light.'

He stooped and lit his own cigarette, then, bending, held its tip to
her. They both inhaled a few whiffs in silence. Presently, he said:

'I find it difficult to understand McKeith.'

'Don't try. You wouldn't succeed. I observe,' she added, 'that you must
have become rather friendly at Tunumburra?'

'Oh, yes. I can generally get on with open-air men. Besides, I wanted
him to like me. I wanted him to ask me here.'

'Well--and what do you thing of it, now that you are here?'

'Great heavens! What do you imagine that I should think of it! The
whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder--the most horrible
anomaly. You--in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely
beneath you, and with whom you don't get on at all.'

'You have no right to say that.'

'The thing is obvious; though you tried to carry it off before dinner.
Your manner to each other; the lack of courtesy and consideration in
him; his leaving you. . . .'

'Stop,' she interrupted. 'There's one thing you MUST understand. I
don't mind what you say about yourself--I want to hear that--but I
can't allow you to criticise my husband.'

'I beg your pardon. It isn't easy in the conditions to preserve the
social conventions. I will try to obey you. At any rate, you allow me
to be frank about myself. . . . It was sweet of you to keep this--more
than I could have dared hope for.'

He fingered tenderly the cigarette case on her lap.

'I suppose I ought to have sent it back to you. But I didn't want to.
You see it was not like an engagement ring.'

'No, worse luck.'

'Why, worse luck?'

'The ring would have been the outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual bond. If you had been really engaged to me--formally,
officially engaged, you couldn't have thrown me over so easily.'

'I--throw you over! Is it quite fair to put it that way?'

'No, I admit that. Let us be honest with each other--this once.'

'This once--very well--but not at this moment. I daresay there will
be time for a talk by and by.'

'I wait your pleasure.'

'There are some things I should like to understand,' she went on,
'--about you--about me, it doesn't matter which. And, after all, I only
want to know about you out of a sort of perverse curiosity.'

'That's so like you. You always managed to infuse a bitter drop into
your sweetness. And you COULD be so adorably sweet. . . If only I could
ever have felt sure of you.'

'Where would have been the use? We never could spend an hour together
without hurting or annoying each other. It's a very good thing for us
both that neither cared enough to make any real sacrifice for the
other.'

'There you wrong me,' he exclaimed. 'I did care--I cared intensely.
The touch of your hand--the very sweep of your dress thrilled every
nerve in me. I never in all my life loved a woman as I loved you. That
last day when you walked out of my rooms. . . .'

'Where I never ought to have gone. Fancy the properly brought-up
English girl you used to hold up to me doing such a shocking thing as
to visit you alone in your chambers! . . . Oh! Is that Colin back
again?'

For Maule had started visibly at the sound of quick steps mounting to
the veranda, and McKeith's towering figure appeared in the doorway,
looking at them.

Lady Bridget turned her head, her cigarette in her hand, and glanced up
at his face. What she saw in it might have made a less reckless or less
innocent woman feel uneasy. She was sure that he must have heard that
last speech of hers about visiting Maule in his chambers. Well, she
didn't care. Besides Colin hadn't the smallest right to resent any
action of hers before her marriage. . . She did not turn a hair. Maule
admired her composure.

'BON SANG NE PEUT MENTIR,' he thought to himself, and wished they had
been talking in French.

'You look as grim as the statue of the Commander,' said Lady Bridget.
'What is the matter?'

'Lady Bridget and I have been exchanging unconventional reminiscences,'
put it Maule with forced lightness.

McKeith took no notice of either remark, but strode across the room to
the roll-top escritoire, where he usually wrote his letters when in his
wife's company. He extracted a bundle of papers from one of the pigeon
holes.

'This is what I came for. Sorry to have interrupted your
reminiscences,' and he went out again, passing along the back veranda.

Maule had got up and was standing at the fireplace. Lady Bridget rose
too.

'I'm going to bed. We keep early hours in the Bush.'

'What! Already!' he exclaimed in dismay.

'I was up at six this morning. Well, I hope you won't be too
uncomfortable with the white ants in the Old Humpey--they are
perfectly harmless. Your room is next to the office, as I daresay
you've discovered. And you'll find Colin there I suppose, with your
friend the Police-Inspector.'

'Don't call that man Harris my friend. We've had one or two scraps at
each other already. He was pleased to take it for granted that I'm what
he calls a "new chum," and didn't like my shewing him that I knew
rather better than he does what police administration should be in
out-of-the-way districts.'

Lady Bridget nodded. 'Then we're both under ban of the Law. I DETEST
Harris. . . . Good-night.' And she flitted through the French window
without giving him her hand.

The station seemed in a state of unquietude till late into the night.
The lowing of the tailing-mob in the yard was more prolonged than
usual. And the horses were whinnying and answering each other down by
the lagoon as though there were strangers about. Lady Bridget, lying
awake and watching through her uncurtained windows the descent of the
Southern Cross towards the horizon, and the westward travelling of a
moon just out of its first quarter, could hear the men's voices on the
veranda of the Old Humpey--that of Ninnis and the Police Inspector;
Maule seemed to have retired to his own room.

McKeith was evidently busy upon preparations for his absence from the
station. He must have been cleaning guns and pistols. There were two or
three shots--which startled and kept her in a state of tension. At
last she heard the interchange of good-nights, and the withdrawal of
Ninnis and Harris to the Bachelor's Quarters. Finally, her husband came
to his dressing-room--not along the front veranda, as would have been
usual, but by the back one, through the bathroom. Even this deviation
from habit seemed significant of his mood--he would not pass her
window. He moved about for a time as if he were busy packing. Then came
silence. She imagined him on the edge of the camp bed, so seldom used,
smoking and ruminating.

Whiffs from his pipe came through the cracks of the door between the
two rooms, and were an offence to her irritated nerves. She had grown
accustomed to his tobacco, but, as a rule, he did not smoke the last
thing at night. He had seemed to regard his wife's chamber as a
tabernacle, enshrining that which he held most sacred, and would never
enter it until he was cleansed from the grime and dust of the stockyard
and cattle camp, and had laid aside the associations of his working
day. That attitude had appealed to all that was idealistic in both
their natures, and had kept green the memory of their honeymoon. It
angered her that to-night, of all nights, he should disregard it.

In personal details, she was intensely fastidious, and at some trouble
and cost had maintained in her intimate surroundings a daintiness
almost unknown out-back. Her room was large, and much of its
furnishings symptomatic of the woman of her class--the array of
monogrammed, tortoise-shell backed brushes and silver and gold topped
boxes and bottles, the embroidered coverlet of the bed, the flowered
chintz and soft pink wall paper, the laced cambric garments and
silk-frilled dressing gown hanging over a chair. When service lacked,
and there was no one to wash and iron her cambric and fine linen, she
contrived somehow that the supply should not fail, and brought upon
herself some ill-natured ridiculed in consequence. The wives of the
Leura squatters thought her 'stuck-up' and apart from their kind. If
they had known how much she wanted sometimes to throw herself into
their lives--as she had thrown herself into the lives of her East-End
socialistic friends! But the stations were few and far between, and the
neighbours--such as they were--left her alone.

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