Books: Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land
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Rosa Praed (1851 1935) >> Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land
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Some of the Leichardt's Town ladies--good, homely wives and mothers
who, in their early married days of struggle, had toiled and cooked and
sewed, with no time to imagine an aspect of the Eternal Feminine of
which they had never had any experience, were perhaps a little shocked,
perhaps a little regretful. One or two others, younger, with budding
aspirations, but provincial in their ideals, were filled with wonder
and vague envy.
A few of them had made the usual trip 'Home,' landing at Naples and
journeying to London, via Monte Carlo and Paris, and these felt they
had missed something in that journey which Lady Bridget was now
revealing to them. Joan Gildea, whose profession it was to realise
vividly such modes of life as came within her purview, felt herself
once more in the blue lands girdling the Sea of Story--It all came
back upon her--moonlight nights in Naples; on the Chiaja; looking down
from her windows on sunny gardens on the Riviera, and the strolling
minstrels in front of the hotel. . . .
As for Colin McKeith who had never been in the Blue Land and knew
little even of the British Isles except for London--chiefly around St
Paul's School, Hammersmith--and the Scotch Manse where he had
occasionally spent his holidays--even he was transported from the
Government House drawing-room. Where? . . . . Not to the realm of
visions such as he had seen in the smoke of his camp fire. Oh no. He
had never dreamed of this kind of enchantment.
A fresh impulse seized the singer. She struck a few chords. A familiar
lilt sounded. Her face and manner changed. She burst into the famous
song of CARMEN. She WAS CARMEN. One could almost see the swaying form,
the seductive flirt of fan. There could be no doubt that had the voice
been more powerful, Lady Bridget might have done well on the operatic
stage.
Yet it had a TIMBRE, a peculiar, devil-may-care passion which produced
a very thrilling effect upon her audience. She got up when she had
finished in a dead silence and was half-way across the room before the
applause burst out. There was a little rush of men towards her.
'Beats Zelie de Lussan and runs Calve hard,' said the Premier who had
made more than one trip to England and considered himself an authority
in the matter.
Bridget skimmed through the groups of admirers, stopping to murmur
something to Lady Tallant who had met her half way; then stopped with
hands before her like a meek schoolgirl, in front of Mrs Gildea and
Colin McKeith--he almost the only man who had made no movement towards
her. Bridget sank into her former seat.
'The last time I sang that was at a Factory Girls' entertainment at
Poplar,' she said. . . 'You should have seen them, Joan: they stood up
and tried to sing in chorus and some of them came on to the platform
and danced. . . . Mr McKeith you look at me as if I had been doing
something desperately improper. Don't you like the music of CARMEN?'
Colin was staring at her dazedly.
'It seemed to me a kind of witchcraft,' he said. . . . 'I should think
you might go on the stage and make a fortune like Melba.'
She laughed. 'Why my voice is a very poor thing. And besides, I could
never depend upon it.'
'Everything just how you feel at the time, eh?' he said. 'You wouldn't
care what you did if you had a mind to do it.'
'No,' she answered. 'I shouldn't care in the least what I did if I had
a mind to do it.'
There was the faintest mimicry of his half Scotch, half Australian
accent in her voice--a little husky, with now and then unsuspected
modulations. She looked at him and the gleam in her eyes and her
strange smile made him stare at her in a sort of fascination. Joan knew
those tricks of hers and knew that they boded mischief. She got up at
the moment saying that people were going and that she must bid Lady
Tallant good-night.
Then the Premier's wife came up shyly; she wanted to thank Lady Bridget
for her singing. It had been as good as the Opera--They sometimes had
good opera companies in Leichardt's Town, etcetera, etcetera.
Lady Bridget made the prettiest curtsey, which bewildered the Premier's
wife and gave her food for speculation as to the manners and customs of
the British aristocracy. She had always understood you only curtsied to
Royalty. But she took it as a great compliment and never said anything
but kind words about Bridget ever after.
Colin McKeith escorted Mrs Gildea to her cab and as they waited in the
vestibule, obtained from her a few more particulars of Lady Bridget
O'Hara's parentage and conditions. But he said not a word implying that
he had discovered her identity with the author of the typed letter.
'I'll come along to-morrow morning if I can manage it, and tell you
about Alexandra City and the Gas-Bore,' he said carelessly as she shut
the fly door. Joan wondered whether he had caught Lady Biddy's parting
words in the drawing room.
'If Rosamond doesn't insist on my doing some stuffy exploration with
her, I'll bring my sketches some time in the morning, Joan, and you can
see whether any of them would do for the great god Gibbs.'
CHAPTER 11
'And what are you going to do, Biddy? How long are you going to stay
with the Tallants?'
'Until Rosamond gets tired of me--or I feel no further need of the
moral support of the British Throne,' answered Lady Bridget lightly.
'I'm not sure whether I shall be able to stand Luke's Jingo attitude in
regard to Labour and the Indigenous Population--all the Colonial
problems in capitals, observe. He does take his position so
strenuously; it's no good my reminding him that even the Queen is
obliged to respect a Constitutional government.'
Bridget took a cigarette from a gold case with her initials in tiny
precious stones across it, and handed the case to Mrs Gildea who shook
her head.
'Still too old-fashioned to smoke! I should have thought you'd have
been driven to it here to keep the mosquitoes at a distance. . . .
'Do you like my case, Joan? Willoughby Maule gave it to me,' she asked.
'You didn't return it then?'
'Why should I have hurt his feelings? We weren't engaged.' A meditative
pause and then suddenly, 'Evelyn Mary doesn't smoke. Nice girls don't!'
'Biddy, I shall be sorry for Evelyn Mary if the Maules are to live in
London and you go back there again--which I suppose you will do.'
'You needn't suppose for certain that I shall go back.' She savoured
her cigarette slowly. 'I can't go on with that old life, the sort of
life one has to lead with Aunt Eliza and the Gavericks and their set. I
can't go on pushing and striving and rushing here and there in order to
be seen at the right houses and join the hunt after fleeing eligibles.'
She gave a bitter little laugh, and then her tone changed to that
ripple of frivolity in which nevertheless Mrs Gildea discerned the
under-beat of tragedy.
'Besides, even so, it's incongruous--impossible. I've come to the
conclusion that the only things which make London--as I've known it--
endurable are unlimited credit at a good dressmaker--Oh, and one of
the beautiful new motor-cars. You don't mind travelling from Dan to
Beersheba if you can do it in five minutes. But when you've got to
catch omnibuses or take the Tube, dressed in garden-party finery--well
it's all too disproportionate and tiresome.'
Mrs Gildea laughed. 'You must remember that I am out of all your fine
social business--except when I go as a reporter or look on from the
upper boxes.'
'It's abominable: it's stifling,' exclaimed Lady Biddy, 'it kills all
the best part of one. You know I've tried time after time to strike out
on my own individual self, but I've always been brought back again by
my hopeless, hopeless lack of practical knowledge of how to earn a
livelihood. The one gift I'd inherited wasn't good enough to be of any
use--If my mother had only left me the whole of her voice, I'd have
been an opera-singer. But I don't think I could have stood the drudgery
--and I should have hated the publicity of it all. . . . Joan, how did
you ever manage to make yourself independent?'
'By drudging,' said Mrs Gildea dryly. 'Besides, I was born differently.
And I was brought up with practical people.'
'Mr McKeith, for instance. He told me about his having been what he
called a "cattle new-chum" on your father's station.'
'He wasn't exactly a "new-chum." His father had owned a sheep-station
up in the unsettled districts. There was a tragedy--the place was sold
up when Colin was a boy. He wanted to learn how we did things further
south--and besides, he was left without a penny--that's how he came
to be with us.'
'Oh! . . . anyway, he's practical. But it isn't that side of him that
appeals to me. He believes in Missions--in a sort of way.'
Mrs Gildea laughed uneasily. 'So you have discovered the streak of
idealism in Colin. But'--she veered off hastily, 'I didn't want to
talk about Colin McKeith. What I want is to hear about your own state
of mind.'
'My state of mind! That's chaotic. The fact is, I feel in a horrible
sort of transition state. . . . It's just as if one were trying to wind
a skein backwards--taking up one end and finding a confusion of knots;
then, taking up another and after forcing a few of the knots, giving
the thing up in despair. One knows the right end is there, but how to
find it through all that hopeless, woolly tangle!'
'Still, you must have learned something about how to wind your skein
while you've been working through your various enterprises,' said Mrs
Gildea. She took up one of Bridget's sketches which were on the table
and looked at it thoughtfully.
'This is quite charming, Biddy--if only it wasn't too fine for
reproduction. The block would cost more than the thing is worth.'
Biddy made a MOUE. 'Oh, I know. Like me isn't it? Impracticable. But I
COULD do you some illustrations. I drew Rosamond entertaining the
Ministerial Circle last night and showed it to Vereker Wells while we
were waiting for breakfast. He nearly died with laughing. I couldn't
have dared to let Luke see it.'
'That I can believe. And I should be murdered by the Leichardt'stonians
if I allowed it to be published. But if you'd come with me through the
Blue Mountains and caricature yourself exploring the Jenolan Caves--
like the "Lady of Quality" in the Dolomite Country I could do something
with that.'
Mrs Gildea alluded to their first and only collaboration as author and
artist.
'Yes, I might. We'll think about it. And if I did perhaps I could make
money enough to keep me out here for a year or two travelling about.'
Joan Gildea looked up in a startled way from the drawing she had been
studying, and asked with some eagerness:
'Biddy, do you really mean that you are thinking of stopping out here
for a year or two?'
'I do. I want to shake myself free from the old clogs. I want to be
honest with myself and with--with the people who ARE honest with
themselves. I've always envied you, Joan. Your life is real at least.
You can put your finger on vital pulse beats. I should like to do as
you are doing, study and learn from a country that has no traditions,
but is making itself. I want to breathe Nature unadulterated--if I
could only reach the reality of her. Joan, I have the feeling that if
one could go right up to the Bush--far away from the Government House
atmosphere and Luke Tallant's red-tapism and the stupid imitation of
our English social shams--well, I think one might touch a more vital
set of heart-beats than the heart-beats of civilization.'
'You are off civilization, Biddy?'
'Yes I am, I've had a horrible time. I was quite reckless and spent far
too much on clothes and things--but that's not what matters--it's the
effect on one's inner self that matters. And now I'm going through the
pangs of revulsion, and just wondering where I can find anything that's
true and satisfying. I believe it may be a kind of birth into a new
life--coming out here you know and all the rest.'
She stopped, her long golden brown eyes fixed Sphinx-like on Joan, who
returned the gaze, but did not answer in words. Biddy went on: 'YOUR
work is practical--not idealistic. I believe the truth of it all is
that the idealists haven't built up on a practical basis. There's too
much POSE. Joan, I do think it's only the pinch of starvation that
knocks down the ridiculous POSE of people.'
'True enough. Your cranks don't get much beyond POSE.--They think they
do, but they don't.'
'Even the ones who believe in themselves--and who are in their way
truly sincere. Joan, do you know, there were moments at the meetings I
went to of those people--Christian Scientists, and my Spiritual
Socialists, and all those philo-factory-girls and tramps, and
philo-beasts, and philo-blacks and the rest of it--Moments when a
ghastly wonder would come over me whether, if we were all stranded on a
desert island with a shortage of food and water, it wouldn't be a case
of fighting for bare existence and of Nature red of tooth and claw.'
'True for you, Lady Bridget. I like the way that's put,' broke in a
voice from the other side of the veranda railing.
Lady Bridget started and looked round, a sudden flush rushing upon the
ivory paleness of her face. If she had not had her back turned to the
garden; if she had not left the gate open behind her, and if the wind
in the bamboos had not then made a noisy rustling, she would have seen
the visitor or heard his steps on the gravel path. Or if she had not
been so absorbed in her subject and her cigarette she might have
noticed that Mrs Gildea had looked up quickly a minute before and given
a mute signal to the intruder not to interrupt the conversation
untowardly.
CHAPTER 12
Lady Bridget recovered herself as Colin McKeith mounted the steps and
made the two ladies a rather self-conscious salute.
'I suppose you know that's a quotation,' she said.
'Weren't you a bit out?' he answered, and repeated the phrase. 'Excuse
my correcting you.'
Bridget shrugged.
'Thank you. But I always thought men of action weren't great readers.
How did you do your reading?'
'Some day--if you care to hear--I'll tell you.'
She looked at him interestedly. 'Yes, I should care to hear.'
'Not now,' put in Mrs Gildea. 'You've come this morning to tell us
about the Gas-Bore at Alexandra City, and, as it's got to go into my
next letter, I shall take some notes. Do look for a comfortable chair,
Colin, and you may smoke if you want to.'
'This is good enough,' and he settled himself after his own fashion at
Lady Bridget's feet with his back against the veranda post and his long
legs sprawling over the steps.
Lady Bridget leaned out of the depths of her deep canvas chair and
offered him her cigarette case.
He eyed it in amused criticism--the dull gold of the case, and the
initials in diamonds, sapphires and rubies set diagonally across it.
'YOUR writing?'
Again the faint pink rose in her paleness.
'No, it's the writing of the person who gave it to me.'
'Was it a man?' he asked bluntly.
Bridget looked at him with slight haughtiness.
'Really, Mr McKeith, I think you are--inquisitive.'
'Yes, I am. And I've Bush manners--not up to your form. Please excuse
my impertinence.'
'I don't mind Bush manners. They're--rather refreshing sometimes. . . .
But'--again extending and then half-withdrawing her offering hand.
'You'd despise my cigarettes?'
He made an eager movement.
'No I shouldn't. Choose me one, won't you--two--if I may have one to
keep.'
'Why to keep?' She selected two of the dainty gold-tipped cigarettes,
and he received them almost as if they had been sacred symbols. One he
placed carefully, notwithstanding her laughing protest, in a
letter-case which he carried in an inner pocket. She tilted her face
forward for him to light the other cigarette at hers, and he did so,
always with that suggestion of reverence which sat so oddly upon him.
Mrs Gildea watching the pair was immensely struck by it.
He smoked in silence for a few moments, his eyes still apparently
fascinated by the glittering initials on the case which now Bridget
attached to her chatelaine chain. She threw away the end of her
cigarette.
'Well, so you've become the Governor's unconstitutional adviser?' she
said. 'Joan, do you know that Luke Tallant kept Mr McKeith talking and
smoking in the loggia just below my bedroom for hours last night after
every one had gone--I know, because I couldn't get to sleep.'
McKeith had all compunction, 'I'm downright sorry for that, Lady
Bridget. I'd have gone away if I'd only guessed your room was up
above.'
'Oh, it didn't matter. I'd lots to think about--my own shortcomings
and Luke's responsibilities.'
'He takes them--hard,' hazarded McKeith.
'I hope you gave him good advice,' put in Mrs Gildea.
McKeith's lips twisted into a humorous smile.
'Well, I told Sir Luke that I didn't think he need bother himself just
yet awhile over that northern tour of inspection he's talking about.'
'He wants to make a kind of royal progress, Joan, through the
Back-Blocks,' said Lady Biddy.
'It'll mean a bit of stiff riding,' said McKeith, 'but I've offered to
show him round the Upper Leura anyway, and to find him a quiet hack.'
'Rosamond flatly declines the Royal Progress,' said Bridget. 'I'm
coming instead of her.'
'Can you ride?' he asked.
'CAN I ride--Can any O'Hara ride! You needn't find ME a quiet hack.'
'All right,' said McKeith. 'But I wouldn't make sure of that by putting
you on a buckjumper. It's a bargain then, Lady Bridget.'
'A bargain--what?'
'You promise to pay me a visit when the Governor makes his trip north--
when he carries out his notion of establishing military patrols and a
Maxim gun or two to put down Trades-Unionism and native outrages in the
Back-Blocks?'
Lady Bridget looked at him thoughtfully. He had pulled out his tobacco
pouch and was filling a well-worn pipe. 'You won't mind my pipe, will
you--as you're a smoker yourself. Mrs Gildea likes it best--And so do
I.'
Lady Bridget sniffed his raw tobacco and made a tiny moue. 'Well, if
you prefer that--No, of course I don't mind. I see,' she went on,
'that you favour the Maxim gun idea, Mr McKeith. I understand that
you're one of the Oppressors; and you and I wouldn't agree on that
point.'
Mr McKeith returned her look, all the hardness in his face softening to
an expression of almost tender indulgence.
'We'd see about that. I might convert you--but in the Back-Blocks.'
'Or I might convert YOU.'
He shook his head, and then laughed in a shy, boyish way.
'There's no knowing what might happen--but in the Back-Blocks.'
Lady Bridget leaned forward. 'Tell me about them--Tell me about your
life in the Bush and what makes you hate the Blacks.'
'What makes me hate the Blacks?' he repeated slowly and the soft look
on his face changed now to one very dour and grim.
'You do hate them, don't you? Mr McKeith, the Premier told me something
about you last night, which simply filled me with horror. If I believed
it--or unless I knew that what you did had been in honourable warfare,
I don't think I could bear to speak to you again. Now, I'm going to ask
you if it's true.'
'If what is true? Lady Bridget, I'll tell you the truth if you ask me
for it, about anything I've done. But--I warn you--ugly things happen
--in the Back-Blocks.'
'The Premier said that you were the terror of the natives. He told me
about a gun you have with a great many notches on the barrel of it, and
he said that each notch represented a black-fellow that you had
killed.'
'I never killed a black-fellow except in fair fight, or under lawful
provocation. Many a time one of them has sneaked a spear at me from
behind a gum tree; and I'd have been done for if I hadn't been keeping
a sharp look-out.'
'But you were taking their land,' Lady Bridget exclaimed impetuously,
'you had come, an invader, into their territory. What right had you to
do that? You were the aggressor. And you can't judge them by the moral
laws of civilised humanity. They fought in the only way they
understood.'
'Lady Bridget, there are moral laws, which all humanity--civilised or
savage understands. I'm not saying that no white man in the Bush has
ever violated these laws, I'm not saying that the Blacks hadn't
something on their side. I'm only saying that in my experience--it was
the black man and not the white man who was the aggressor. And when you
ask me what made me hate the Blacks--well--it isn't a pretty story--
but, if you like, I'll tell it to you some time.'
'Tell me now,' she exclaimed, 'Oh, Joan . . . Won't your notes keep?'
Mrs Gildea had got up, a sheaf of pencils and a reporter's note book in
her hand.
'Yes, for a few minutes. But I've just remembered something I've got to
refer to in one of Mr Gibbs' letters. Don't mind me; I'll be back
presently.'
McKeith seemed to take no heed of her departure; his eyes were fixed on
Lady Bridget; there was in them a light of inward excitement.
'Please go on,' she said, 'I want so much to hear.'
He thought for a few moments, shook the ashes from his pipe and then
plunged into his story.
'I've got to go back to when I was quite a youngster--taken from
school--I went to St Paul's in the Hammersmith Road--just before I
was seventeen. You see before that my father had scraped together his
little bit of money and we'd been living in West Kensington waiting
while he made out what we were all going to do. He wasn't any great
shakes, my father, in the way of birth, and fortune. I daresay, you
guessed that, Lady Bridget?'
She tossed her head back impatiently. 'Oh what DOES that matter! Go on,
please.'
'He'd been a farmer, Glasgow way'--McKeith still pronounced it
'Glesca,' 'and my mother was a minister's daughter, as good a woman and
as true a lady as ever breathed. But that's neither here nor there in
what turned out a bad business. Well, we all emigrated out here, and,
after a while, my old dad bought a station on the Lower Leura--taken
in he was, of course, over the deal, and not realising that it was
unsettled country in those days. So the whole family of us started up
from the coast to it. . . . He drove my mother and my two sisters just
grown up, and a woman servant--Marty--in a double buggy, and Jerry
the bullock driver and me in the dray with him and taught me to drive
bullocks. There were stock-boys, two of them riding along side.
'It took us three and a half weeks, to reach the station, averaging
about thirty miles a day and camping out each night.
'I'd like you to camp out in the Bush sometime, Lady Bridget, right
away from everything--it'ud be an experience that 'ud live with you
all your life--My word! It's like nothing else--lying straight under
the Southern Cross and watching its pointers, and, one by one, the
stars coming up above the gum trees--and the queer wild smell of the
gums and the loneliness of it all--not a sound until the birds begin
at dawn but the HOP-HOP of the Wallabies, and the funny noises of
opossums, and the crying of the curlews and native dogs--dingoes we
call 'em. . . . Well, there! I won't bother you with all that--though,
truly, I tell you, it's the nearest touch with the Infinite I'VE ever
known. . . . Lord! I remember the first night I camped right in the
Bush--me rolled in my blanket on one side of the fire, and Leura-Jim
the black-boy on the other. And the wonder of it all coming over me as
I lay broad awake thinking of the contrast between London and its
teeming millions--and the awful solitude of the Bush. . . . I wonder
if your blood would have run cold as mine did when the grass rustled
under stealthy footsteps and me thinking it was the blacks sneaking us
--and the relief of hearing three dismal howls and knowing it was
dingoes and not blacks.'
'I'd have loved it' murmured Bridget tensely. 'Go on, please.'
'Well, I've got to come to the tragedy. It began this way through an
act of kindness on our journey up. We were going through the
bunya-bunya country not far from our station, when out of the Bush
there came a black gin with two half-caste girls, she ran up and
stopped the buggy and implored my mother's protection for her girls
because the Blacks wanted to kill and eat them.'
'O . . . oh!' Biddy made a shuddering exclamation.
'Didn't I say the Blacks hadn't everything on their side--I ought to
explain though that in our district were large forests of a kind of
pine--there's one in this garden,' and he pointed to a pyramidal fir
tree with spreading branches of small pointed leaves spiked at the
ends, and with a cone of nuts about the size of a big man's head,
hanging from one of the branches.
'That's the bunya-bunya, and the nuts are splendid roasted in the
ashes--if ever that one gets properly ripe--it has to be yellow, you
know--I'll ask Joan Gildea to let me roast it for you. Only it wouldn't be
the same thing at all as when it's done in a fire of gum logs, the nuts
covered with red ashes, and then peeled and washed down with quartpot
tea. . . .'
'Quartpot tea! What a lot you'll have to show me if--if I ever come to
your station in the Back-Blocks.'
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