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 don't know what to do--I am alone. It's an insult to talk to me in
this way.'

'I want to protect you from insult--I want to take you out of these
miserable conditions--and there's only one way to do that,' he
pleaded.

He took her hands in his and kissed them passionately. 'Oh, I love you.
There's nothing in the world I would not do to make you my wife. Why
should you hesitate? It breaks my heart to see you unappreciated,
neglected, living the sort of rough life that might suit a labourer's
daughter, but which is sacrilege for Lady Bridget O'Hara. A man had no
right to condemn a beautiful, refined woman like you to such a
fate. . . . Well there' as she murmured incoherently, 'I'll not say any
more about that since it hurts you. You see, I respect your wishes. I'll
even go away at once, if you command it, and leave you to form your own
judgment. I will stay in Leichardt's Town--in Sydney--anywhere--
until you have decided for yourself--as I know you must do--how
impossible it is for you to remain here. Then I will meet you wherever
you please, and we will go to Europe together--bury ourselves abroad--
wait in any part of the world you may choose, until the divorce
proceedings are over, and we are free to marry. You need not be afraid
of scandal, the thing can be kept out of the English papers. It's so
far away that nobody will remember you were married to an Australian.
Besides, anything of the sort is so easily got over nowadays. My
darling, why do you look at me with those tragic eyes? It is not like
the old Biddy to be a slave to Mrs Grundy.'

She had been listening, sitting rigid in her chair, her hands still in
his, looking at him in a strange fixed manner, almost like a person in
the first stage of hypnotism. Now she snatched her hands away and gave
a sobbing cry.

'Oh, I'm not the old Biddy. I never can be again.'

'Dear love--believe me, when I promise you that you shall never have
cause for regret.'

He would have taken her into his arms, but she drew herself back.

'Will, you don't understand. And I don't understand myself, I can't see
things clearly. It's all been so sudden--Colin going away--you--
everything. . . . I want to be alone. I want to find myself.'

He moved aside with a slight inclination of his head as if to let her
pass. 'I told you that I would do anything you wish.'

'You mean that--really? Then I wish you to go away at once. You said
you would leave me to decide for myself. I take you at your word, and I
shall write to you, by-and-by. Promise me that you will go.'

'I have no choice. Your will is law to me. But understand, dearest--I
am only waiting.'

'It's good of you not to want to worry and argue. . . . Don't you
understand?--I couldn't bear you to be here when Colin comes back. You
must go to Tunumburra to-morrow.'

'Go to Tunumburra to-morrow?' he repeated blankly.

'It's on the way to Leuraville, and you can take the steamer from
there. I will write to you in Leichardt's Town. Oh, it's quite simple.
The mailman will be here early. You can leave a letter saying that you
are recalled.'

'I understand.' Her definite planning gave him hope that she had
already made up her mind, and that she would join him in Leuraville or
Leichardt's Town. After all, that might be best. 'But I shall see you
again. The mailman is not here yet. I have still a few hours respite.'

She made no answer at first. Then 'Good-night,' she said abruptly, and
flitted like a small white ghost along the dim veranda.

'Lady Bridget!' His voice stopped her. It shook a little, but the
manner was conventional, and she gained confidence from that and turned
irresolutely.

'Lady Bridget. While we've been talking about ourselves, we've
forgotten that unfortunate black-boy. I only want to tell you, that you
may depend on your wishes being carried out. I shall go to my room and
watch my opportunity. Trust me, that's all--in everything.'

'Thank you,' she answered simply. 'I do trust you.'

She came back a few steps, and he met her in the middle of the veranda.
In one of her swift transitions of mood a humorous element in the
situation seemed to appeal to her, and she said with a laugh:--'It's
comical, isn't it? The two tragedies, black and white--we two here--
those two out there!'

Just then the black curtain of cloud, that had been rising slowly and
obscuring the stars, was torn by a strong flash of chain lightning. It
threw up her face in startling clearness and he saw, in strange blend
with the conflicting emotions upon it, the wraith of her old whimsical
smile.

He did not answer her laugh. In truth, the man's nature was stirred to
a more deep-reaching extent perhaps than ever in his life before. It
may have been the flash of lightning recalling a momentary flash of
illumination that had once shone upon his own soul.

That had been when he was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife,
and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which
he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and
stupid--except in her love for him--and his sentiments towards her
had been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to
the bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened,
during a spasm of remorseful self-abasement, some nobler quality latent
in the man.

And now--as that flash of lightning illuminated Bridget's face and
made him keenly sensitive to the charm of her personality--her wayward
fascination, her inconsistencies, her weakness, her temperamental
craving for dramatic contrast, her reckless toying with emotion--by a
curious law of paradox, there came back upon Willoughby Maule that
scene with his dying wife, and he had again the flashing perception of
something sacred, unexplainable, to which his own nature could not
reach.

It sobered him. He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to
seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the
memory of it must for ever bind her to him.

But the impulse was past. They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the
interval--it seemed a very long one--between the lightning flash, and
the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.

Then he said mechanically, like one walking out of a dream? 'There's
going to be a storm. Are you frightened?'

'No,' she answered. 'I'm never frightened of storms!' and added,
'besides, Colin would be so glad of rain.'

Before he could reply, she had glided away again and he was alone.

He thought it strange that she should be thinking of her husband and
his material interests just then.

CHAPTER 5

It must have been a little while after midnight when Bridget was
awakened by more thunder and lightning and a confused tornado of sound.
She had been dreaming that Harris was throwing her from the gully
cliffs on to the boulders in its bed--only it seemed to her bewildered
senses that the boulders rose towards her instead of her descending to
meet them. Next she discovered that rain was pattering on the zinc
roof, and that the violent concussions she felt beneath her must be due
to the horns of goats knocking up against the boards of her bedroom.
Ah! she thought, the men had forgotten to pen the goats, and they were
sheltering from the rain in the open space under the floor of the
house. There could be no more sleep for her that night, unless they
were dislodged.

She waited through the din until there came a lull in the storm, then
got up and put on her shoes and a waterproof coat over her nightdress.
It was not the first time by any means that, when sleeping alone, she
had been obliged to rise and drive away stray animals that had been
inadvertently allowed means of entrance.

She went out to the back veranda, which was connected by steps with the
verandas of the other two wings. The moon was full and shed occasional
pale gleams through the scudding clouds. The close heat had given place
to a chill wind and the rain came down intermittently but in no volume
--it could not make much difference to the parched earth. There was not
a light visible anywhere. The goats were still making a noise under the
house.

Lady Bridget got a stick from a heap of sandal-wood boughs stacked
against the veranda, and passing to the front, where the piles
supporting the house were higher, proceeded to belabour an elderly
nanny, who, with her mate, was now nibbling twigs of the creepers. But
she was surprised to see only two or three goats, she had thought there
must be many more. The animals were refractory, and her beatings of no
avail. Now, suddenly, she was seized with a fit of nervous shivering
and realised that she felt physically ill. It was of no use for her to
try and drive off the goats. She sank down on the veranda steps of the
Old Humpey, and afterwards thought she must have fainted.

The sound of Maule's approaching footsteps and his alarmed ejaculation
seemed to bring her to herself. He appeared to have come round the back
of the Old Humpey. He was horrified at the sight of her convulsive
shivering.

'You mustn't stop here,' he exclaimed. 'I was afraid the goats would
disturb you, and I've been getting them out as quietly as I could. Most
of them are shut up in their fold.'

She saw that he was almost fully dressed. With an effort she controlled
her terror, and asked:

'You've not been asleep.'

'Oh! off and on. I've been keeping my eye on Harris' room,' he pointed
across the yard to the kitchen and store-building opposite--at the end
of which Harris had installed himself--to the squat outline of the
slab and back hide house. 'My ear, too,' he went on, 'for Harris'
slumbers are neither silent nor peaceful. When he's not snoring, he
groans and stirs, and the worst of it is that he's got his door wide
open on to the veranda and his bed right across the window that looks
straight at the door of the hide house. I thought I'd take advantage of
the thunder, but it was no good. He was awake and looking out. Now he
has lain down again, and as soon as I hear him snoring I shall try once
more.'

A fresh fit of shivering seized Bridget.

'This won't do,' he said, and went hurriedly into his own room which
opened a few doors down on to the veranda, and coming back with an
opossum rug on his arm and a glass of brandy and water in his hand, he
made her drink the spirits and wrapped the rug round her. Presently the
shivering ceased.

A moon-gleam between two clouds closing on each other showed her his
eyes glowing with sombre passion. She saw that he was holding himself
under stern restraint. Though where they were, the veranda running
between the end of the Old Humpey and the new house, made a kind of
passage so that they were in shadow, there was a possibility of
watchful eyes discovering their whereabouts.

'Will you go back to your room, and I'll get rid of these goats,' he
said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way. 'I supose there isn't a
yard where I could put them, nearer than their own by the lagoon.'

'I don't think so,' she answered dully, and without stirring from where
she crouched upon the steps. When he urged her anew to go back to bed,
she answered petulantly:

'Oh, do let me be. I like the wind and the rain--they're soothing. And
I couldn't sleep now until I know that Wombo is safe in the scrub.'

He made no further protest, but set to work shepherding the goats. She
watched him drive them out of the gate till his dark form and the
piebald shapes he was driving before him were lost in the night. She
knew that it would take some little time to pen them all securely in
their fold. But the night was young yet.

From shivering, the fire of the brandy and the warmth of the fur rug
had turned her temperature to fever heat. She felt keenly excited; the
blood in her veins seemed boiling, and the occasional raindrops and
moist wind were pleasant on her face. She had gone to the end of the
veranda and stood there with long withes of the native cucumber vine
that grew over the Old Humpey swaying around her in the breeze. There
was not a light in the place. Even moon and stars were now veiled. Her
brain raced round desperate and futile schemes for eluding the
vigilance of the Police Inspector. She wished now that she had thought
of asking him to dinner and putting opium into his coffee--that was
the sort of thing they did in novels. She did not know that a less
developed brain than her own was working at this moment to the same
end, on an inspiration from the bush DEBIL-DEBIL, or such savage
divinity as watches over the loves of the Blacks.

She saw what at first she had thought part of the shadow of a
neighbouring gum tree cast on the strip of grass that ran at the back
of the Old Humpey. But the lesser shadow moved, halted, and the greater
shadow was stationary and grew denser as the moon sailed again across a
clear patch of sky.

Then Bridget realised that the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola,
shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin
had halted at the casement window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with
her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the
window ledge and dropped within.

Bridget ran along the grass to the window, and from there watched Oola
move about the room and in the almost darkness fumble among the objects
on the dressing-table. Then Bridget could hear the little click of the
tongue and the guttural note of exultation a black tracker gives when
he comes upon a trail. Bridget drew aside against the wall, so that
Oola, again springing over the window sill, did not observe her. But
Bridget saw the watch and chain with the iron key attached to it which
the gin had stolen, and seized Oola's arm as the dark form crouched
upon the grass again. The gin uttered a smothered shriek. Bridget took
the watch from her hand, detached the key from the chain, and slipped
watch and chain into the pocket of her coat, while Oola, clutching Lady
Bridget's knees, pleaded chokily:

'Mithsis--you gib me key--no make im noise. No tell pollis-man me let
out Wombo. My word! plenty quick he YAN long-a scrub. BA-AL pollis-man
catch Wombo. Mithsis--BUJERI White Mary! You gib it key to Oola.'

The key was in Oola's hand. 'BA-AL me tell,' whispered Bridget. 'you go
quick.'

She, too, bent her body and followed Oola, who sped like a hunted hare
round the comer of the Old Humpey. Now she wriggled in the shadow of
the yard railings. Now she crept stealthily past Harris' window--and--
oh! DEBIL--DEBIL be praised! the Police sergeant's stertorous snoring
was clearly audible.

Blessed, likewise, be the retiring moon and the sweeping clouds! Lady
Bridget, every nerve a-quiver and the rushing blood throbbing in her
temples, also crept noiselessly beneath the window in the wake of Oola,
crawling like Oola, but more to the back of the hide-house into the
shelter of its drooping bark eaves.

Bending cautiously round the slabs, she watched, as the gin, with a
swift wriggling motion like that of a snake, drew herself along the
sunken earth floor beneath the eaves and then, softly raising herself
to the level of the padlock, put in the key. There was a muffled
grating of iron under the gin's hand, as the padlock unclosed and the
hasp dropped, then a creak of the door on its hinges, while it opened
and shut behind the undulating shape in the aperture. Then a low
throaty ejaculation--the black's call of warning. And now with a
quickness incredible, the wriggling movement of two blanket-shrouded
serpentine shapes round the hide-house--in and out among the grass
tussocks and the low herbage, now hidden for a moment by friendly gum
shadows in the dimness, now dark moving blurrs upon the lesser
darkness, and now altogether invisible. . . .

Lady Bridget knew that in five minutes, once they could be upright
again, the fugitives would have reached the gully, and after that the
gidia scrub. Then security from the terrors of a white man's gaol would
be almost assured to them.

Lady Bridget waited--waited, it seemed to her an eternity, in reality
it was barely over the five minutes she had mentally given the two
blacks for their escape. That five minutes had been full of alarms, and
she could feel her heart thumping, so tense was the strain. She had to
consider the possibility of Harris being awakened; also, of Maule's
return and an attempt on his part to free the hide-house prisoner. Also
there was the danger of the clouds breaking before she had done her
work.

She heard a movement of the sleeper in his bed below the open window
opposite. Harris might have been aroused, and perhaps have stirred
without awakening. . . . But the snoring had ceased. . . . She did not
think, however, that he could be fully awake. . . . Presently the
snoring recommenced.

She crept very slowly along the earthen floor, drawing her hands along
the slabs as she went. A splinter from one of them ran into her finger
--but that did not matter. Now she touched the door, which lay back
towards her, for the blacks had not waited to close it. She pushed it
very softly, holding her breath at the creak of the hinge and listening
intently for the recurrent snore which sounded through the window only
three paces from her.

At last the thing was done--the padlock fastened, the key turned in
the lock, and now in her pocket. She dropped flat on the earth, her
cloak drawn lightly between her knees, and wriggled snake-like, as Oola
had done past Harris' windows, then pushed herself on hands and knees
along the ground, squeezing her body against the palings of the yard,
till she reached the Old Humpey on the opposite side. Once round that
corner, she got on to her feet, feeling sick and giddy but intensely
relieved. She leaned against the gum tree which had protected Oola, and
now realised that it had been raining in a driving gust and that she
was wet to the skin.

The bleating of a kid, which had been left under the house and had
found its way into the yard, startled her anew. She thought that she
heard sounds in the wing near the hide-house--steps on the veranda.
Was Harris stirring? Had he discovered the flight of his prisoner?

She waited again till all was quiet. By this time, there was a watery
radiance just overhead. She looked towards the lagoon, but there was no
sign of Maule. She felt the shivering begin again, though her head
seemed burning, and she could hardly think collectedly. Her chief idea
was to get back to bed.

But she was able to reason to herself that Maule must somehow be
informed of the escape. She did not think he could have got back yet to
the spot where he had left her. Or he might come straight to his room
and miss the key and his watch. In any case, these must be restored to
the place from which Oola had taken them.

She lifted herself to the window-sill as Oola had done, and in a moment
was inside the room. It had been an easy enough business, only that in
clutching the window frame, the jagged end of the splinter she had run
into her hand caught and tore her flesh. The room was of course empty.

She lifted a candle--which, with matches, stood on the dressing table
--and put back the watch and chain, and the key now separate from them.
That fact would show Maule that it had been tampered with. But she must
find some more exact means of conveying what had happened. Premature
action on his part might give the alarm. Her brain worked in flashes.
She had vivid ideas, which in her fevered state she could not hold
properly. She must write to Maule. A notebook that he must have taken
from his pocket lay on the table also. She tore out a leaf--paused--
She must write so that only he would understand. An accident might
happen to the paper.

There must be no definite statement to implicate him or herself. Some
words in French occurred to her. She wrote them down and continued the
note in that language. At the close she begged him to act so that there
should be no ground for suspicion--reminded him of his promise to go
away on the morrow--said she would write to him at the Post Office at
Leuraville. She did not sign the sheet, but folded it across--
addressed it to Maule and laid it under the watch on the table.

A fresh spasm of shivering seized her. Suddenly she remembered the
opossum rug she had left. She opened the door leading from Maule's room
into the veranda, and went out. She stood bewilderedly, looking across
the faint-lit yard to the dim veranda of the kitchen wing opposite, as
she fought against the sick faintness that threatened to overcome her.
Then she walked along the veranda to the place where she had parted
from Maule. The rug was lying there, and she threw it round her, and
waited on the steps with chattering teeth and shaking limbs.

In a minute or two, he joined her. She saw by the fitful moonbeams that
he was wet and muddy--truly in a worse plight than herself. She could
hardly speak for the rigor. Seeing her condition, he took her up in his
arms, and carried her along the veranda towards her own room. The clasp
of his arms, the warmth of his body, even through his wet clothing
helped her to steady herself. She continued to tell him of the great
achievement.

'Wombo has escaped--I saw Oola taking the key out of your room. Harris
was asleep--snoring. She let Wombo out, and I locked the door of the
hide-house again afterwards, and put the key back in your room. It's
all right--nothing can be found out till the morning. They're safe in
the scrub by now.'

'Well, I'm thankful for that at any rate,' he answered. 'But at this
moment I cannot think of anything or anyone but you. My dearest--I'm
so afraid of your being ill--what can I do?'

'Nothing. I have sal volatile in my room--stuff to take for a cold. I
only want to get off my wet things and go to bed--I can sleep now.
Don't be frightened about me.'

She staggered when he put her gently down inside her own door, but
recovered herself courageously, lighted her candles, laughed at her own
disordered appearance, bade him go at once and look after himself.

He kissed her hand reluctantly.

'Till to-morrow.'

She looked at him alarmedly. 'Will! But you have promised me. You are
going away to-morrow.'

He did not reply. His eyes were roving round the chamber, dimly lighted
by the two candles. He was observing the feminine details the
untidinesses so characteristic of her; the daintinesses, equally
characteristic--all in such odd contrast with inevitable bush
roughnesses. He noticed the silver and ivory on the dressing-table; the
large silver-framed photographs--an autographed one of the Queen of
Wartenburg--Molly Gaverick and Rosamond Tallant in Court veil and
feathers, Joan Gildea at her type-writer--the confusion of books, the
embroidered coverlet on the large bed, the bush-made couch at its foot
upholstered in rose-patterned chintz on which she had seated herself.

'You have GOT to go,' she urged. 'WHATEVER happens, you are leaving
here with the mailman to-morrow. . . . Promise--on your word of honour
--that NOTHING shall hinder you.'

'Of course, I shall keep my promise, though it breaks my heart to leave
you like this. But I know--I feel that the parting will not be for
long. . . . Yes. . . .' as she slowly shook her head and a strange
fateful look shadowed the feverish brightness of her eyes. 'I COULDN'T
leave you if I didn't feel certain of that.'

'Oh, I'm tired out. I'm tired--dead tired--' Her face was ghastly,
her lips like burning coals. 'I can't argue any more. And now it's
good-night--good-bye.'

'Not good-bye. At least there will be time to-morrow for that.'

'You MUST go--Good-night.'

He left her, but waited in the veranda, reassuring himself by the sound
of movements on the other side of the closed door. When all was silent,
and the candles extinguished, he went back to his own room.

He saw on the dressing-table his watch and chain with the key detached
beside them--a confirmnation of the truth of what Lady Bridget had
told him. But she had forgotten to tell him of the note she had left
also, and, naturally, he did not look for it. Had he known and looked
he would have discovered that the note was gone.

CHAPTER 6

Lady Bridget always looked back upon the next few days as a confused
nightmare. She awoke in the grip of fever--that malarial kind which is
common in Australia--tried to get up as usual, but fell back upon her
bed, faint and dizzy. Her brows ached. She had alternations of burning
heat and icy coldness. There came active periods in the dull lethargy
which is often a phase of fever, and from which she only roused herself
at the spur of some urgent call on her faculties. One of these was
Willoughby Maule's anxious message of enquiry conveyed by Maggie, to
which she had the presence of mind to return the answer that she had
caught cold, and was staying in bed for the present, but would no doubt
be quite well shortly. Also that she was sorry not to bid him good-bye,
but begged that he would not think of postponing his departure.

She heard as in a dream the sound of the mailman's arrival, and
presently, of the saddling of horses in the yard, and then the
CLOP-CLOP of their feet as they were ridden past her end of the house
to the Gully crossing. There were two horses. So Maule had left the
head-station with Harry the Blower, as she had bidden him do. She was
conscious of relief.

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