Books: Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land

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

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'Stop,' broke in McKeith. 'If you were on the veranda over there, you
couldn't have seen as far as the steps.'

'Right you are, Boss. But I wasn't waiting on the veranda. When the
lady turned her back, I moved into the yard, and I was standing by that
flower-bush'--Again he jerked his thumb, this time to the centre bed,
and a young bohinia shrub covered with pink blossoms 'If you try
yourself from there, you'll find you can look slick through to the
front garden. That's where I saw Maule step out of--I guessed he'd
come round by the back of the Old Humpey. I guessed too, he thought she
oughtn't to be sitting out there in the damp--She was shivering again
--she'd put a rug that was lying on the steps round her. He just picked
her up in his arms, and carried her right along, and when I stepped
across I saw him take her into one of those rooms at the end of the
front veranda. . . .'

A muffled growl, something like the sound a hunted beast might make
when the dogs had got to touch of him, came from McKeith. Again he
stiffened himself; his lips hard pressed; his eyes on Harris' face. The
Police Inspector avoided his gaze; but he too was watchful.

'You see I was thinking of my prisoner, and wondering if there could be
anything afoot about him. So as I knew there was nobody then--in Mr
Maule's room, I went back and looked in. I wanted to make sure, if I
could, where the key of the hide-house might be. There was a candle
left alight, and I saw the key right enough on the chest of drawers
beside Maule's watch and chain. It never came into my mind then, that
anybody could have used it. I noticed a bit of folded paper under the
watch. That's it, Mr McKeith. There's the proof that I am not lying
about what I saw.'

Harris had taken out of his breast pocket, a piece of newspaper in
which was wrapped the leaf torn out of Maule's notebook, folded and
addressed. He opened it out, and laid it on the office table in front
of McKeith, keeping his own stubby finger on one corner of the sheet.

Still McKeith maintained his difficult self-restraint.

'So you stole--a private communication that had been left in another
person's room, and was intended for his eyes alone?'

'Come now, Boss. You know well enough that a constabulary officer who's
up against tricks to release a prisoner has got to keep his eyes
peeled, and mustn't let any clue to mischief escape him. How was I to
know that there wasn't some plot to cheat the law? How do I know that
there wasn't? That's why I'm showing you the paper. I'm not a French
scholar--I suppose that's French--and as I suppose you are, I'll ask
you to translate what's written there.'

McKeith pushed aside the man's finger, and taking up the paper carried
it to the window, where he stood with his back to Harris, spelling out
Lady Bridget's hurriedly written sentences.

He seemed a long time in getting at the sense of what he read. As a
matter of fact, he had only a limited acquaintance with any modern
languages except his own. He had picked up some colloquial German, and
once when laid up in hospital, had set himself to read Balzac's PERE
GORIOT with the aid of a dictionary. Thus he had acquired a fairly
extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary. But Lady Bridget's veiled
intimation of Wombo's escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic
French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby
Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding
between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover. That
idea drove every other into the background of his thoughts. He did not
care in the least how Wombo had escaped. It seemed clear to him that
Oola had stolen the key after Harris had gone back to his room, while
Maule and his wife were together--together in Lady Bridget's own
chamber. The blood surged to his brain, and his temples throbbed as
though they would burst. In the madness of his jealousy, the words of
the paper, combined with Harris' revelations were damnatory
confirmation of his wife's guilt. He felt now that he had foreseen what
would happen, from the moment that he had surprised the look on Lady
Bridget's face, when Maule had unexpectedly appeared before her. She
had given herself away then. And, a little sooner, rather than a little
later--as might have been the case had he not left them together--the
inevitable had come to pass.

Yes, through the agony of that conviction now brought home to him, a
dogged resolve formed itself in his mind--the determination not to
betray himself or her. It beat upon him with insistent force. Though
his goddess must be dethroned from her shrine in his heart, she should
not be cast down for a vulgar brute like Harris to gloat over her
shame. . . .

'Well, Boss,' the Police Inspector asked with affected nonchalance that
bordered on insolence. 'Can you make anything that's satisfactory to
you out of that?'

McKeith turned, Harris thought he was going to leap upon him in a fit
of blind fury, and started up from his seat by the office table.
McKeith's eyes blazed, his taut sinews quivered; his face was now quite
pallid, and the hand in which he held the piece of paper was clenched
so tight that the veins stood out like thick cords, and the knuckles
were perfectly bloodless.

But suddenly the pitch on his nerves was eased. His eyelids dropped,
and when he lifted them, the eyes were quiet and intently observant.

He moved into his usual office chair.

'Sit down again, won't you, Harris?' he said, and Harris resumed his
former place.

'What were you asking?' McKeith continued. 'Satisfactory to me is it?
Yes, perfectly satisfactory, thank you. . . . I'm only amused--as you
see. . . to find that I was quite right in my suspicions.' And he
laughed in what Harris thought a very odd way.

'Eh? I don't take your meaning.' Harris' manner was distinctly
objectionable.

McKeith gave him a sharp look, and his teeth went over his under lip.
Then, to the man's evident surprise, he laughed again, throwing his
head back so that the muscles of his throat showed under his beard,
working, as it were, automatically. It really seemed as if the man's
mechanical merriment were no part of himself. He was, in fact, gaining
time to propound an explanation which he did not believe in the least,
but which happened to be almost the exact truth.

He answered with an air of ironic indifference.

'Well, you know, I wouldn't go in for the detective line, if I were
you, Harris. You aren't subtle enough for it. You jump too quickly at
conclusions which have nothing to do with the main point. In fact,
you're a fool, Harris--a damned fool.'

Harris' puzzled expression turned to one of extreme indignation. 'Seems
to me, Mr McKeith, that it's you who are--well, damned queer about
this affair. I'm sure I don't know what you've got to laugh at. But if
you've found out who let the black-boy out of the hide-house, I'd be
glad to know, that's all.'

McKeith ceased from his mirthless laughing and his sarcastic bluff. He
leaned forward, facing Harris with his hands on the paper which he had
laid on the table before him. He picked up the other's last words.

'Yes, that IS all. It's the only part of this note which concerns you.
Well, I can tell you that it was the half-caste woman, as I thought,
who let Wombo out of the hide-house. She stole the key from Mr Maule's
room when HE was asleep, and let Wombo out when YOU were asleep--a
longer time perhaps than you imagined, Harris. The black-boy made for
the scrub, and I suppose they were in too great a hurry to think of
shutting the door. Oola sneaked back--they've got the cunning of
whites and blacks put together, those half-castes--and no doubt she
guessed there'd be a hue and cry directly the door was found open. So
she locked it again--and brought the key to her ladyship.'

McKeith seemed to force the last words from between his teeth.

'Well, that's quite simple, isn't it?'

'Now, I shouldn't call it as simple as you make out, Boss. It appears
mighty odd to me that the gin should have worried round after her
ladyship when she might have sneaked back with the key to the place she
took it from. And then there's all the rest--the putting the key back
and fitting in times and all that. . . . Seems to me a bit too much of
the Box and Cox trick--a sort of jig-saw puzzle, d'you see.'

Manifestly, Harris was endeavouring to square probabilities. McKeith
still held himself in.

'I've given you the facts. You can figure out your details for
yourself. I've my own business to attend to, and I must be off on it.'

He got up, and folding Lady Bridget's note, deliberately put it in his
breast pocket. Harris stretched forth a restraining hand.

'Boss, I say--that's important--for my report, you know.'

McKeith's temper burst out.

'Damn your report. I'm a magistrate, and I've taken your report, and
the blacks are in the scrub and you can go and find them for yourself
if you choose. You have no warrant, remember. No, I'm not going to be
bothered any more about that black-boy. What. . . . Not I--with a fire
raging on my run, and not enough hands to put it out.'

'But her ladyship. . . .' spluttered Harris.

'Listen here you. . . .' McKeith's face and attitude were menacing. 'I
came back to find her ladyship down with dengue as bad as could be. It
was on her that night, and if she had to be carried to her room in a
fit of shaking, what business is that of yours? Understand me, Harris.
Don't you go mixing up my wife's name with this beastly black-boy
affair, or you'll have to reckon with me--and I can tell you, you
won't relish that reckoning.'

'There was no offence meant. I only wanted to do my duty,' protested
the Police Inspector, cringing after the way of bullies.

'You'll find opportunity enough for doing that if you ride back to
Breeza Downs and lend the Specials your valuable assistance in
protecting the sheep-owners against the Unionists. And I might remind
you, as I reminded that damned Organiser who's fired my run, that
there's a hundred pounds reward still waiting for anybody who catches
the men that robbed my drays and killed my horses.'

McKeith paused a moment before going out by the further door of the
office which looked out on the plain.

'I'll leave you now to run up your horse and make your own
arrangements. As soon as I can, I shall start to help in getting the
bush fire under. You can arrest that Organiser if you are keen on
arresting somebody. Send in when you're saddled up, and if I'm ready
we'll ride to the turn-off track together.'

McKeith went back to his wife's room. She was still sleeping. Then it
was that spasms of mortal agony began literally to rend the man. He
left her side and seated himself on the bed in his dressing-room. He
sat with his arms folded across his chest. His shoulders heaved. Deep
dry sobs shook his huge frame. He would not let a groan escape from
between his clenched teeth, but there was blood on his lower lip where
he had bitten it in the effort to control himself. Presently, he heard
a sound in the next room--a half moan--a name spoken. No, it would
not be his name that she would utter first on her return to
consciousness.

The man got up; stretched his long, lean frame, shuddering as if it had
been on the rack. He drew two deep breaths, braced himself, wiped the
blood from his lip, put on the stony mask which Bridget saw when she
opened her eyes and found him looking down at her.

CHAPTER 8

Next morning, Lady Bridget was better and her mind clearer. There had
been no return of fever, and, though the physical weakness was great
and her temperature--had she taken it--would have been found a good
deal below normal, her fierce determination not to remain helpless any
longer gave her strength to get up and dress. She was not able,
however, to do anything but lie in a half-alive condition in the
hammock at the end of the veranda. All night the fire had blazed, but
more fitfully, and this morning the lurid glare had died down. Only a
murky haze, faintly red here and there, spread over the north-eastern
sky. Small, isolated smoke-clouds rose above the stretches of forest,
and an irregular-shaped tract of charred grass at the edge of the plain
showed how far the flames had encroached upon it before they had been
got under. One might well conceive with what almost superhuman
exertions the beaters had at length accomplished their task. A large
number of cattle had been driven by the fire on to the pasture beyond
the home paddock--a pasture that had so far been carefully nursed in
view of possible later necessity.

Bridget was bushwoman enough to comprehend the crippling effect upon
McKeith's resources of the calamity, had she allowed her mind to dwell
upon that aspect of affairs. But her mind was incapable just now of
dealing with practical issues. She felt utterly weak, utterly lonely.
Although she was glad Maule had gone, she missed his sympathetic
companionship to an extent that she could hardly have thought possible.

As the hammock swayed gently at the slight touch of her fingers on its
rope edge, her imagination drifted dangerously and her senses yielded
to the old drugging fascination. He seemed as close to her as had been
his bodily shape a few days previously. She was conscious of the pull
of his will upon the invisible cords by which he held her. If it were
an unholy spell, it was, now, at least, in her desolation, a consoling
one. He loved her; he wanted her. She knew that he was passionately
eager to devote his life to her. He would wait expectantly until she
wrote. With a few strokes of her pen she might end her irksome
captivity in this wall-less prison of desert plain--this wilderness of
gum and gidia.

As she lay there in the hammock, a child's clumpy boots pattered along
the garden path and Tommy Hensor came up the steps with a big cabbage
leaf gathered in his hand. He opened it out when he reached the veranda
and displayed three Brazilian cherries, the first fruits of a plant
growing in the Chinaman's garden.

'La-ship . . . La-ship! I got these myself. I made Fo Wung give 'em me
for you.'

At any other time the child's offering would have been received, at any
rate, graciously. Now Tommy shrank away, startled by the look on Lady
Bridget's face and the forbidding gesture with which she warned him
off.

'Go away! . . . Go away! . . .' she cried. 'I don't want you.'

Tommy's common, freckled little face crumpled up and his blue eyes
filled with tears. He dropped the cabbage leaf and the cherished
Brazilian cherries and ran down the steps again, blubbering piteously.

Lady Bridget got up as soon as the child had clicked the garden gate
behind him. She was ashamed of the spasm of revulsion that had seized
her. She wanted to cast away from her the dreadful thought his
appearance had suddenly evoked. She picked up the cabbage leaf with the
fruit and flung them over the railings into a flower bed, where the
butcher-birds and the bower-birds quarrelled over them, and the big,
grey bird in the gum tree on the other side of the fence cachinnated in
derisive chorus to Bridget's burst of hysterical laughter.

A little later Maggie came out from the bedroom with some letters in
her hand.

'I've laid holt on your mail, Ladyship, turning out your room. I expect
you forgot all about it.'

Yes, she had forgotten, absolutely; it seemed years since Harry the
Blower had passed by and Willoughby Maule had departed. She languidly
inspected the envelopes. Nothing among them of any importance--except
one.

It was a blue telegraph-service envelope, and had been forwarded on by
the postman from Crocodile Creek, the nearest telegraph station. In the
last fifteen months they had brought the bush railway a good deal
further up the river, and Crocodile Creek was the present terminus.
Thus the road journey was now considerable shorter than when Colin
McKeith had brought his bride home.

Lady Bridget read the several lines of the cabled message over two or
three times before the real bearings of it became clear to her
fever-weakened intelligence.

At last she grasped the startling fact that the cablegram was from her
cousin, Lord Gaverick, and that it had been despatched from London
about seven days previously. This was what it said.

'ELIZA GAVERICK DIED TWENTIETH LEAVES YOU CASTLE AND FIFTY THOUSAND
DIFFICULTIES EXECUTORS YOUR PRESENCE URGENTLY DESIRED WIRE IF CAN COME,
GAVERICK '

Lady Bridget let the blue form drop on her lap. She stared out over the
brown plain and the herds of lean beasts all shadowy in the smoky mist
over the horizon, then round, along the wilderness of gidia scrub, with
its charred patches afar off, from which there still rose thin spirals
of smoke.

Destiny had spoken. Here was the order of release. There was no gaoler
to keep the prison doors locked any longer--except--except--No, if
she wished to break her bonds, Colin would never gainsay her.

Late that night the men came back from fighting the fire which they had
now practically put out. Even in the moonlight they looked deplorable
objects, grimed, covered with dust and ashes, their skins and clothes
scorched by the fierce heat.

They seemed drunk with fatigue, and could scarcely sit their horses.
When they dismounted they could hardly stand.

Their feeble COO-EES at the sliprails brought out Ninnis, who had been
sent home in the afternoon and had been taking some well-earned repose
so as to be ready for the next shift--happily not required. He and the
few hands left to look after the head-station and the tailing-mob held
the men's horses when their riders literally tumbled off them. Ninnis
made McKeith take a strong pull of whiskey and supported him along to
the Old Humpey. For Colin had had strength to say that Lady Bridget
must on no account be disturbed. Ninnis led him to the room lately
occupied by Willoughby Maule, and was surprised at his employer's
vehement refusal to remain in it.

'I'll not stop here. . . . No, I won't go to my dressing-room. In God's
name, just let me stretch myself on the bunk in the Office and go to
sleep.'

He threw himself on a bush-carpentered settle, with mattress and
pillows covered in Turkey-red, which was used sometimes at mustering
times when there was an overplus of visitors. There he lay like a log
for close on twelve hours.

By and by, Lady Bridget, at once longing and reluctant, came softly in
to see how he fared.

A storm of pity, anger, tenderness, repulsion--the whole range of
feeling, it seemed, between love and hate--swept over her as she
looked at the great gaunt form stretched there. Colin was still in
riding clothes and booted and spurred. His moleskins were black with
smoke and charcoal; his flannel shirt, open at the neck, showed red
scratches and scorch-marks on the exposed chest and was torn over the
arms, where were more excoriations of the flesh. And the ravaged face!
How hard it was. How relentless, even in the utter abandonment of
bodily exhaustion! The skin was caked with black dust and sweat. The
darkened thatch of yellow hair was dank and wet. The fair beard,
usually so trim, was singed in places, matted, and had bits of cinder
and burnt leaves sticking to it.

A revolting spectacle, offending Lady Bridget's fine, physical
sensibilities, but a MAN--THE Man. She could not understand that
tornado of emotion which now made her being seem a very battle-ground,
for all the primal passions. She turned away with a sense of nausea,
and then turned to him again with a kind of passionate longing to take
him in her arms--brutal as she thought him, and unworthy of the
affection she had once felt for him--felt still alas!--and all the
romance she had once woven about him. . . . She saw that a fly was
hovering over the excoriated arm and drew the ragged sleeve over its
bareness. Then she noticed the mosquito net reefed up on a hoop above
the bunk, and managed to get the curtain down so that he should be
protected from the assaults of insects. But as she touched him in doing
this, he stirred and muttered wrathfully in his sleep, as though he
were conscious of her tenderness and would have none of it; she fled
away and came to him no more.

She had been racking her brain since receiving the cablegram as to what
answer she should return to it.

After that pitiable sight of her husband, Bridget moved restlessly
about the house, with intervals of lassitude in the hammock, for she
still felt weak and ill. But quinine was keeping the fever down, and
she resolved that her husband should not again be required to nurse
her. She did not go into the Office any more, but busied herself in a
defiant fashion upon little cares for his comfort when he awoke. He
should see that she did not neglect her house-wifely duties--at least
while she remained there to perform them. The qualification was
significant of her mood.

Thus, she gave orders that the veranda of the Old Humpey should be kept
free from disturbing footsteps, and saw that the bathroom was in order,
and a change of clothing set ready for him when he should awake. Also
that there should be a meal prepared.

He did not wake till the afternoon. She heard him go straight in to
take his bath, and hastened to have the dining room table spread. But
she saw him go out of the bathroom--all fresh and more like himself--
and cross the yard on his way to the Bachelors' Quarters, making it
clear to her that he wished to avoid the part of the house she
occupied. Bridget went back to the front veranda in a cold fury,
pierced by stabs of mental pain. She watched him from the end of the
veranda go into the living room of the Quarters, and thought bitterly
that he would ask Mrs Hensor for the food he required. No doubt too, he
would obtain from Mrs Hensor, information as to how she herself had
been getting on during his absence, and Mrs Hensor would give him a
garbled report of her own dismissal from the sick room. . . . How dared
he--oh! how DARED he treat her, Lady Bridget, his wife, with such
cruel negligence, such marked insult!

It did not occur to her that he might wish to see Ninnis, who, when at
the station, was usually about this time, in his office at the back of
the Bachelors' Quarters.

After a time, she heard Colin's voice again in the yard, and his step
on the Old Humpey veranda. He came now by the covered passage on to
that of the New House, and advanced towards her.

He only came, she told herself, because it would have seemed too
strange had he continued to ignore her existence.

And he was conscious of her resentment. By a curious affinity, his own
spirit thrilled to the unquenchable spirit in her. Qualities in himself
responded to like qualities in her. He admired her pride and pluck. Yet
the two egoisms reared against each other, seemed to him--could he
have put the thought into shape--like combatants with lances drawn
ready to strike.

He believed that it was love which gave her strength--love, not for
him, but for that other man whose influence he was now convinced had
always been paramount, and who with renewed propinquity had resumed his
domination.

Certain phrases in that letter he had read long ago on Joan Gildea's
veranda, and which had been haunting him ever since Willoughby Maule's
re-appearance, struck his heart with the searing effect of lightning.
He felt, at the first sight of her there on the veranda, before she
turned full to him, a passionate yearning to take her in his arms, and
cover her poor little wasted face with kisses--to call her 'Mate'; to
remind her of that wonderful marriage night under the stars. But when
he saw the proud aloofness of her look, his longing changed to a dull
fury, which he could only keep in check by rigorous steeling of his
will against any softening impulse.

So his face was hard as a rock, his voice rasping in its restraint,
when he came near and spoke to her. 'You have not had any more fever?'

'No.'

He put two or three questions to her about her health--whether she had
taken the medicine he had left for her, and so on, to which she
returned almost monosyllabic replies, sufficiently satisfactory in the
information they gave him.

'That's all right then,' he said coldly. 'I thought it would be, though
I didn't at all like leaving you in such a condition.'

'Really! But it doesn't seem as if you had felt any violent anxiety
about me since you came back. I heard you go to the bathroom a long
time ago, and I saw you going up to the Quarters.'

He did not appear to notice the latter implication.

'I had to sleep,' he said curtly. 'I was dead beat.'

'Yes, I saw that,' she answered.

'A-ah!' The deep intake of breath made a hissing sound, and he flushed
a brick red. 'You came and looked at me?'

'I went into the Office.'

'I didn't want you to see me. You must have loathed the sight of me. I
was a disgusting object.'

She said nothing.

If he had glanced at her he would have seen a piteous flicker of
tenderness pass over her face--a sudden wet gleam in her eyes. And had
he yielded then to his first impulse, things might have gone very
differently between them. But he kept himself stiffened. He would not
lift his eyes, when she gave him a furtive glance. The expression of
his half averted face was positively sinister as he added with a
sneering little laugh.

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