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'm concentrating on Art too. Every day I do some inspirational
painting by the sea shore. I've made some studies of Wave-fairies for
the Children's Story Book we planned to do together. It's quite
invigorating to sport about with them in imagination, in a grey-green
stormy sea, out of reach of human banalities. I can feel the cold spray
as I paint and the sense of power and rest in the elemental forces--an
almost Wagnerian feeling of great Cosmic Realities.'

Again Mrs Gildea smiled to herself. How like Biddy O'Hara!

She couldn't be so utterly heart-broken if she was able to practise
deep breathing and concentration--Wealth, Friendship, Art--a pretty
comprehensive repertoire--and to prate on Cosmic Realities and the
Wagnerian feeling!

But presently the tragic note shrieked again. Bridget went on:

'I am in a fever of suspense and misery wondering whether Will's
marriage will come off or if, at the last moment, it will be broken. He
has been obsessing me these last days. He too--I am certain of it--
dreads the Irrevocable, and regrets the rupture between us. I dream of
him continually--such restless, tantalising dreams. And yet my mood is
so contradictory. If the marriage WERE broken off and he stood before
me, free, and offered himself!--

Could I bring myself to face our future together with all its
depoeticising influences, its almost certainty of friction? No.
Something deep down inside me says--has always said--"It would be a
mistake; this is not the real thing: we are not suited to each other;
the attraction might even turn to repulsion." Imagine the agony of
that!

Life goes on here, all dribble, waste and fret--I cannot concentrate,
I cannot paint--the Wave-fairies won't play--Your Bush gobies appeal
more to my present humour. I feel a sort of nostalgia for the wild--
though my nostalgia is mental, and not from any former association. Do
not be surprised if some day you get a telegram saying that I am
coming.'

Another sheet.

'Will was married yesterday. I have just read the account of the
ceremony--I can see it all--the usual semi-smart opulent wedding--palms
lining the aisle, Orange blossom galore. The bride "beautiful in
cream satin and old lace"--Evelyn Mary is simply a LUMP--Pages in
white velvet--The fussy overdressed Bagallay crowd of friends--I hear
there are no "in-laws," And the bridegroom's face--dark, cynical--I
know the sort of miserable smile and the queer glitter in his eyes.--
"I WILLOUGHBY TAKE THEE EVELYN MARY. . . FOR BETTER AND FOR
WORSE. . .TILL DEATH US DO PART ". . . There! I'm a blathering idiot to
mind. . .I ought to be dancing with joy at my escape. Let us end the
chapter. The incident is closed, I'm going for a long tramp by the sea and
shall post this on my way.

Your BIDDY.'

CHAPTER 6

Mrs Gildea was too busy in the next two or three weeks to trouble
herself unduly over Lady Bridget O'Hara's tragic love-affair. She had
to report on the small holders of property in Leichardt's Land and made
a trip for that purpose among the free-selectors in her own old
district. The TWENTY YEARS AFTER letter she wrote about this expedition
for THE IMPERIALIST was one of her best, and for that she was greatly
indebted to Colin McKeith's commentaries.

Old associations with him had been vividly reawakened by this visit to
the home of her youth. She remembered, as if it had been yesterday, how
McKeith, a raw youth of eighteen with a horrible tragedy at the back of
his young life, had been picked up by her father and brought to
Bungroopim to learn the work of a cattle-station. . . . hitherto his
experience, such as it was, had been with sheep in the, then, unsettled
north. Joan was herself a girl in short frocks, three or four years
younger than Colin McKeith, and with no apparent prospect of ever
crossing the 'big fella Water,' as the Ubi Blacks called it, or of
joining the band of Bohemian scribblers in London.

She remembered how quickly Colin had learned his work--remembered how
the shy self-contained lad, with always that grim memory of his boyhood
shaping a vengeful purpose in his mind and making him old for his
years, had developed the flair of the Bush in his hardy Scotch
constitution. She was compelled to own that he had developed, too, some
of the worst as well as the best of those Scotch qualities inherited
from his parents, expatriated though they had been, and from the
staunch clansmen behind them. He had the Scotch loyalty; likewise, the
Scotch tenacity of character which never forgot and very seldom
forgave; the Scotch obstinacy of purpose and opinion; the Scotch
acquisitiveness; a tendency too to 'nearness' in matters of small
expenditure which combined oddly with a generosity amounting almost to
recklessness in large enterprise. It was on the whole not a bad outfit
for a pioneer who meant to get on in his world.

The beginnings were small, but indicative of the trend of his career.
He contrived, even when he was earning no salary but working only for
his 'tucker,' to get together a horse or two, a cow or two, a specially
good cattle-dog or two, which last he made the nucleus of a profitable
breed. The cows and bullocks he left at Bungroopim when the time came
for him to push out, reclaiming them after they had increased and
multiplied in those pleasant pastures like Jacob's herds in the fields
of Laban.

Not that there was any seven years matrimonial question. There had been
no Leah. Or if Joan Gildea had ever played the part of Rachel in Colin
McKeith's sentimental dreams, those boyish dreams had left no serious
mark upon him. He had gone north to a newly-formed station and had
there out-bushed the bushman in his knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of
cattle and sheep and his amazing faculty for spotting country suitable
for either. Here no doubt his descent from generations of herdsmen had
stood him in good stead.

He sold his knowledge to rich squatters in the settled districts who
employed him to take up new country for them and to manage the hundreds
of square miles and the thousands of stock from which they derived the
best part of their wealth. But he only managed for other men until he
had made enough money of his own to take up and stock new country for
himself.

In a few years he had acquired a moderate-sized herd and established
himself with it on the almost unexplored reaches of the Upper Leura.
Life on that river never lacked dangerous adventure. McKeith's father
had owned a station on the Lower Leura--the bank took it in payment of
their mortgage after the catastrophe occurred. That station had been
the scene of one of the most horrible native outrages in the history of
Australia. The tragedy had set its mark on Colin McKeith. Left a
penniless boy after having worked his way to independent manhood he had
made it his purpose to pursue the wild black with relentless animosity.

All along the Upper Leura to the fastnesses at the river's head where
his new station stood on the boundaries of civilisation he had gone,
mercilessly punishing native depredations.

He had been put on trial by a humanitarian Government for so-called
manslaughter of natives, and had been acquitted under an administration
immediately succeeding it. Afterwards he had at the peril of his life,
made an exploring trip across the base of the northern peninsula of the
colony with the intention, as he phrased it, of 'shaking round a bit.'
He 'shook round' to some purpose, penetrated to the Big Bight, and got
on the tracks of a famous lost explorer. Colin McKeith solved the
mystery of that explorer's fate and had his revenge on the Government
which had impeached him by pocketing the reward which it had offered
any adventurous pioneer following on the lost explorer's steps.

Later, McKeith was given a mission to explore and develop a certain
tract of fertile country between the heads of the Leura and the Big
Bight--the particular Premier instigating the mission being a
far-sighted politician who realised that a Japanese invasion of the
northern coast might eventually interfere very radically with the plan
for a White Australia.

Colin McKeith threw into his own scheme of life a trip to Japan, by way
of India and China. He volunteered, too, for the Boer War, and did a
short term of service with the Australian Contingent in South Africa.

He dreamed more and more of becoming an Empire-maker--a sort of
Australian Cecil Rhodes. But he was wise enough to realise that all
Empire-making cannot be on the Rhodesian scale.

He realised that his personal fortune must first be secured. Without
money one can do nothing. Cecil Rhodes had had the natural wealth of
Rhodesia at his back. McKeith had set himself the task of opening up
the fine country out West, which he knew only needed a system of
irrigation by Artesian Bores to defy drought, the squatters curse. That
object once accomplished--he gave himself with luck and good seasons
five or six years--there would be nothing to stop his becoming a
patriot and a millionaire.

But Colin went slowly and cannily--and that was why the Leichardt's
Land Government believed in him. He had the reputation of never
spending a penny on his private or public ambitions where a halfpenny
would serve his purpose, and he was known to be a man of deep counsels
and sparing of speech. Thus, no one knew exactly what was his business
down south at this time. Only the general remark was that Colin McKeith
had his head screwed on the right way and that some day he would come
out on top.

But that there was deep down a spring of romance beneath that hard
Bushman's exterior, Joan Gildea, herself a romance writer, guessed
easily. And her intuition told her that a little thin bore had been
made in the direction of that vital spring of romance by his
inadvertent reading of Lady Bridget O'Hara's letter.

CHAPTER 7

Joan saw that McKeith was extremely anxious to know more about the
writer of that letter and the progress of that love-affair, though he
had given his word of honour that he would not try to find out her
identity. But he put subtle questions to Joan about her friends in
England and her acquaintance with the higher circles of society in
London. Once, he asked her straight out whether she had heard again
from her typewriting correspondent, and if the Soldier of Fortune had
proved himself a Bounder, as they had suspected?

'Yes,' Joan answered unguardedly. 'I'm thankful to say that he is
married to his heiress.'

The eager light which suddenly shone in McKeith's eyes startled Mrs
Gildea.

'You don't mean to say that you're thinking of her like that?' she
exclaimed. 'It's no use, Colin.'

'Probably not,' he answered composedly. 'Tell me, how does she take
it?'

'Deadly seriously. She's practising Deep-breathing and Concentration to
try and drive the man from her thoughts.'

'What! Oh, you mean Theosophy and that kind of thing. I went to hear
Mrs Annie Besant lecture once, and I couldn't make head or tail of it.'

'No. You wouldn't. But it was a German Professor who taught B---- No. I
will NOT tell you her name.'

'Anyway, I know that it begins with a "B." And I know that she's got
one relation called Molly, and another called Chris, and a friend whose
name is Rosamond--likewise that Rosamond is the wife of Luke. . . . By
Jove!' He stopped short and looked at Mrs Gildea with sharp
enlightenment.

They were in the veranda of her cottage, and he was seated on the steps
smoking, his long legs stretched out against one veranda post, his
broad back against another. 'Seen the paper this morning?' he asked.

'No. If you pass the CHRONICLE Office, I wish you'd lodge a complaint
for me against the vagaries of their distribution department. Twice
lately I haven't had the paper till the afternoon.'

He pulled it from his pocket, and, leaning across, handed it to her.

'Read the English Telegrams,' he said.

Joan stopped cleaning her typewriter and examined the column of latest
intelligence.

'Good gracious! So they've appointed Sir Luke Tallant new Governor of
Leichardt's Land!'

'Luke!--A coincidence you'll say. No good telling me that. SHE wrote
that "Luke" was hankering after a colonial governorship.'

'Well, he's got it,' replied Mrs Gildea noncommittally.

'And if you read the leading article you'll see that the CHRONICLE is
justly outraged at so important a post as that of Governor of
Leichardt's Land being given to an unknown man who has never served
outside the Colonial Office in London and who doesn't even belong to
the noble army of Peers.'

'That's all nonsense. Luke Tallant's a friend of Chamberlain's, a
thorough Imperialist and a very good man for the post.'

'You know him then?'

'I know OF him.'

'From HER?'

'HER! Has it come to HER! Colin, if anyone had told me that you would
ever be fool enough to fall in love with a woman you've never seen, I
should have laughed outright. You don't even know what she's like.'

'I can see her in my mind's eye, as I used to see the women I read
about by my camp fire. You'd never believe either what a queer
idealistic chap I can be when I'm mooning about the Bush. Don't you
know, Joan'--and his voice got suddenly grave and deep-toned--'you
ought to, for you were a bush girl and you've had men-kind out in the
Back Blocks--Don't you know that when a man has got to go on day after
day, week after week, year after year, fighting devils of loneliness
and worse--with nothing to look at except miles and miles of stark
staring gum trees and black, smelling GIDGEE* and dead-finish scrub--
and never the glimpse of a woman--not counting black gins--to remind
him he once had a mother and might have a wife. Well, can't you see
that his only chance of not growing into a rotten HATTER* is to start
picturing in his imagination all the beautiful things he's ever seen or
read about--the sort of lady-wife he hopes to have some day and in
making such a companion of her that she seems to him as real as the
stars and far more real than the gum trees. So as he'll keep saying to
her always in his thoughts: "I'll keep myself sound and wholesome for
your sake. I'll never forget that I'm a gentleman, so as YOU won't
shrink away from me in horror if ever I've the luck to come across YOU
down here on this Earth."'
[*Gidgee--Colloquial pronunciation of gidia, an Australain tree.]
[*Hatter--A white man who prefers the society of blacks.]

He stopped, fitted another cigarette from the copper case into the
holder and, before beginning upon it, said without looking at Mrs
Gildea:

'I wouldn't spout like that to anybody but you, Joan. My word! Though I
see by your writing that you've a fair notion of how this cursed, grim,
glorious old Bush can play the deuce with a chap--body and brain and
soul--if he doesn't wear the right kind of talisman to safeguard
himself.'

'Yes--I understand. And your talisman, Colin? What was your picture of
the lady-wife? Describe your Ideal and I'll tell you if SHE is the
least bit like it.'

McKeith smoked ruminatively for a few moments, his eyes narrowed. The
lines in his forehead and round his mouth showed plainly. He was gazing
out into space, far beyond the sun-flecked Leichardt River and the
Botanical Gardens, and the glaring city and the range of distant hills
on the horizon.

'Well,' he said at last, slowly, 'you can laugh at me if you like, but
I'll tell you how I see HER. She is tall--got a presence, so that if
SHE'S there, you'd know it and everybody else would know it, no matter
how many other women there might be in the place. Most big men take to
their opposites. Now, though I'm a big man I've never fancied a snippet
of a girl. Five foot seven of height is my measure of a woman, and a
good ten stone in the saddle--What are you laughing at, Joan? I'm out
there, I suppose?'

Mrs Gildea controlled her muscles.

'No, no, not in the least. In fact, your description fits the Ideal
Wife perfectly. Go on, Colin. Five foot seven and a good ten stone. How
is the rest of HER? Fair or dark--her hair now--and her eyes?'

'Her hair--oh, it isn't fair--not yellow or noticeable in colour--
like those dyed beauties you see about. Her hair is dark, soft and
cloudy looking. And she's got a small head set like--like a lily on
its stem--and her hair is parted in the middle and coiled smoothly
each side and into a sort of Greek knot. . . . '

'In short, she's a cross between the Venus of Milo and the Madonna.'

Mrs Gildea was smiling amusedly.

'Perhaps. . . . Something of that sort. Dignity and sweetness, you
know--those are what I admire in a woman. But not too much of the goddess
or of the angel either. I shouldn't want always to have to load up with
a pedestal when we shifted camp, and the only shrine I'd keep going for
her would be in my heart. It's a Mate I'm wanting, as well as an
Ideal. . . . Now you're laughing again.'

'No, I'm not. I agree with you entirely--and so would SHE.'

'There! You needn't tell me. I shouldn't wonder if I'd got the second
sight where SHE'S concerned.'

Again Mrs Gildea smiled enigmatically.

'I shouldn't wonder, Colin. But you haven't finished your personal
description. What about the colour of her eyes?'

'Now I don't believe I could say exactly the colour of her eyes any
more than of her hair. They're the kind, to me, that have no colour.
Soft and melting and sort of mysterious--Deep and clear and with a
light far down in them like starlight reflected in a still
lagoon. . . . I say, Joan, you remember the old Eight Mile Water-hole on
Dingo Flat--middle of the patch of flooded gum and she-oak--that the
Blacks used to say had no bottom to it? HER eyes seemed to me a bit like
that water-hole--No bottom to her possibilities.'

'That's true enough,' assented Mrs Gildea. 'There's no bottom to HER
possibilities.'

'I could tell it from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about
things--but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery,
and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I
read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything
for a man she really loved.'

He had a way of lowering his voice when he spoke of love--as if he
felt it a sacred subject; and this in him surprised Joan. She was
discovering a new Colin McKeith. She answered softly.

'Yes. I think she would--IF she really loved him.'

'What I haven't been able to make out is whether she did care--does
care--for that chap. You see, that would make a difference.'

'A difference! How? What do you mean?'

'I mean that I don't believe I should feel about her as I do if I
wasn't going to meet her. Look here, Joan, you've as good as told me--
and if you hadn't, I'd be pretty thick-headed not to have put two and
two together--that the Luke of her letters is Sir Luke Tallant, our
new Governor. Well, if she was staying with him in London, and his wife
is a friend of hers, why shouldn't she come and stay with them out
here?'

The idea had already presented itself to Mrs Gildea, but she tried not
to show that it had, or that there had ever been any question of the
sort in Bridget's mind. Colin had not read the opening sheet of her
letter.

'I suppose more unlikely things than that have happened,' Joan said
neutrally. 'But really, Colin,' she went on with strenuous emphasis, 'I
can't understand this phase of you. You--a hard-headed Bushman, to be
dreaming romantic dreams and falling all of a sudden over head and ears
in love with--with a figment of your imagination--just because you
happen to have read by mistake some sentimental outpourings of a woman
you know nothing about and who would never forgive me if she knew I'd
let you see her letter.'

'She won't know--You have my word of honour that I'll never give you
away over that letter--not under ANY circumstances, so you can set
your mind at rest on that score, Joan. And as to my falling in love
with--a figment of my own imagination'--he spat the words out
savagely--'we'll see how far your remark is justified when She does
come out and I recognise her--as I am convinced I shall do directly I
set eyes on Her.'

Mrs Gildea burst into rather hysterical laughter, which manifestly
offended Colin McKeith.

'We'll drop the subject, please,' he said stiffly. 'And now, Mrs
Gildea, I'm quite at your service for any information you desire about
the Big Bight country and the probability of a Japanese invasion so
soon as our future Commonwealth comes to crucial loggerheads with the
Eastern Powers on the question of a strictly White Australia.'

After that Colin pointedly abstained from allusion to the Ideal Wife
and to Joan Gildea's Typewriting-Correspondent, as he had called her.
He was very busy himself at this time in connection with a threatened
labour strike that was agitating sheep and cattle owners of the Leura
District. Likewise with a report he had been asked to furnish of a
projected telegraph line for the opening of his 'Big Bight Country'.
Colin McKeith appeared to be deep in the confidence of the Leichardt's
Land Executive Council and to have taken up his abode for the winter
session in the Seat of Government, though he seemed to regard his
recent election for a Northern constituency as an unimportant episode
in a career ultimately consecrated to the elucidation of far-reaching
Imperial problems.

Joan Gildea found him excellent 'copy,' and the great Gibbs
cablegrammed, in code, approval of her lately-tapped source of
information.

She almost forgot Bridget O'Hara in her absorption in colonial topics.
But three weeks before the expected arrival of the new Governor of
Leichardt's Land a cablegram was shot at her from Colombo which made
her feel that there was no use in setting oneself against Destiny. This
was the wire:

EXPECT ME WITH TALLANTS BIDDY.

She said nothing to Colin McKeith about the message--partly because
his movements were erratic and he was a good deal away from Leichardt's
town just then. Thus Mrs Gildea did not know whether or not he had read
the flowery description telegraphed by a Melbourne correspondent who
interviewed Sir Luke Tallant and his party at that city and wired an
ecstatic paragraph about the beautiful Lady Bridget O'Hara who was
accompanying her friend and distant relative, the Honourable Lady
Tallant.

Anyway, McKeith made no references to the newspaper correspondent's
rhapsodies when he paid Mrs Gildea a short visit two or three days
before the landing of the new Governor. But his very reticence and
something in his expression made Joan suspect that he was puzzled and
excited, and would have been glad had she volunteered any information
about Lady Tallant's companion. Joan, however, kept perverse silence.
In truth, she felt considerably nervous over the prospect. What was
going to happen when Colin McKeith set eyes on Bridget?

Joan Gildea was a simple woman though circumstances had made her a
shrewd one, and she had all the elementary feminine instincts. She
believed in love and in strange affinities and in hidden threads of
destiny--all of which ideas fitted beautifully on to Bridget O'Hara's
personality, but not at all on to that of Colin McKeith.

CHAPTER 8

The first dinner-party given by Sir Luke and Lady Tallant at Government
House included Mrs Gildea and Colin McKeith.

These two met in the vestibule as they emerged respectively from the
ladies' and gentlemen's cloak-room. Both held back to allow certain
Members of the Ministry to enter the drawing-room before them, which
gave opportunity for an interchange of greetings.

'Well!' both said at once, and the tones in which the monosyllable was
uttered and the glances accompanying it held volumes of hidden meaning.
'I haven't seen you since the Governor arrived,' Joan went on. 'Where
have you been all these three weeks?'

'At Alexandra City, close on the desert, where they bored for water and
struck ready-made gas--the whole place now is lighted with it. If you
like, I'll give you material for a first-rate article upon an uncommon
phenomenon of Nature.'

'Thank you. I shall be grateful. Colin'--hesitatingly, 'I did think
you'd have come and looked after an old friend at the big Show in the
Botanical Gardens when the Governor made his State Entry.'

'State Entry! Good Lord! Sir Luke Tallant has got a bit too much red
tape and too many airs about him to suit the Leichardt'stonians.'

'You WERE there, then?'

'Started for Alexandra City that afternoon.'

'But you saw--Colin did you see--the Tallants and--their party?

His face changed: it looked positively angry, and his jaw under the
neatly trimmed, sandy beard, protruded determinedly. But at that moment
a footman came towards them, and Mrs Gildea was handed on to an
imposing butler and ushered through a wide palm-screened doorway into
the large inner hall which had a gallery round it and the big staircase
at one end. Joan saw that the room, formerly stiffly furnished and used
chiefly as a ballroom, had been transmogrified with comfortable lounge
chairs and sofas, beautiful embroideries, screens, a spinet and many
flowers and books into a delightful general sitting-room. It seemed
quite full--mostly of official Leichardt'stonians. Joan looked for the
new Governor and his wife, or at least for Lady Biddy, but none of them
had yet put in an appearance. A handsome, fair-moustachioed young
aide-de-camp, looking very smart in his evening uniform with white
lapels, was fluttering round, his dinner list in his hand, and
introducing people who already knew each other. He looked distinctly
worried, so did the private secretary--sallow-faced, of a clerkish
type, and obviously without social qualifications--who was also
wandering round and trying ineffectively to do the right thing. The
aide-de-camp rushed forward to shake hands with Joan, exclaiming in a
relieved undertone:

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