Richard Le Gallienne - "Old Love Stories Retold"

E. P. Roe - "A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century"

Mungo Park - "Travels in the Interior of Africa Volume 1"

L. Muhlbach - "Joseph II. and His Court"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Lady Bridget in the Never Never Land

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




'Different from your London Life, eh? . . . Your balls and dinners and
big shows and coaching meets in Hyde Park, and all the rest of the
flummery! Different, too, from your kid-glove fox-hunts over grass
fields and trimmed hedges and puddles of ditches--the sort of thing
you've been accustomed to, Lady Bridget, when you've gone out from your
castle for a sporting spree!'

'A sporting spree!' She laughed with a child's merriment, and he joined
in the laugh, 'It's clear to me, Mr McKeith, that you've never hunted
in Ireland. And how did you know, by the way, that I'd lived in a
castle?'

'I was led to believe that a good many of your kind owned historic
castles which your forefathers had won and defended with the sword,' he
answered, a little embarrassed.

'That's true enough. . . . But if you could see Castle Gaverick! My old
Aunt is always talking of restoring it, but she never will, and if my
cousin Chris Gaverick ever does come into it, he'd rather spend his
money in doing something else. . . . But never mind that. . . . I want
to hear about the black gin and the half-caste girls, and if your
mother saved them from the cannibals . . . and why the blacks wanted to
eat their own kind. Dog doesn't eat dog--at least, so they tell one.'

'It's this way. Our blacks weren't regular cannibals, but in the bunya
season they'd all collect in the scrubs and feed on the nuts and
nothing else for months. Then after a bit they'd get meat-hungry, and
there not being many wild animals in Australia and only a few cattle in
those outlying districts, they'd satisfy their cravings by killing and
eating some of themselves--lubras--young girls--by preference, and,
naturally, half-castes, as having no particular tribal status, for
choice.'

'Half-castes!' She repeated, a little puzzled.

'These ones had Chinky blood in them--daughters of a Chinaman
fossicker. . . . We're not partial to the Chinese in Australia--only
we don't eat them, we expel them--methods just a bit dissimilar, but
the principle the same, you see. . . . Anyway, of course we took on the
gin and her girls, and for about a year didn't have any particular
trouble at the station with the blacks--though there was a shepherd
speared in one of the out-huts. . . . That was his fault, however, poor
devil--the old story--but it don't matter. The trouble came to a head
with a black boy, called Leura-Jimmy, that Jerry the bullock-driver
brought up with him and left at the station where he went down to the
township for store supplies--He took me with him--I told you I was
learning bullock-driving. . . .'

McKeith paused, and the dark look came upon his face.

'And Leura-Jimmy?' put in Bridget.

'Oh, he was a fine, big fellow--plausible, too, and could speak pidgin
English--he was never weaned from his tribe, and he was a treacherous
scoundrel at heart. . . . As a precautionary measure, my father forbade
the blacks to come up to the head-station. But Jimmy fell in love with
the eldest of the half-caste girls. She encouraged him at first, then
took up with one of the stock-boys. . . .

'It was the bunya season again, and the girls' old tribe, under their
King Mograbar--a devil incarnate in a brute--I sent him to Hell
afterwards with my own hand and never did a better deed'--McKeith's
brown fists clenched and the fury in his eyes blazed so that he himself
looked almost devilish for a moment. His face remained very grim and
dour as he proceeded.

'Jimmy had got to know through the half-caste girl about our ways and
doings, and he made a diabolic plot with King Mograbar to get the
blacks into the house. . . . Every living soul was murdered . . .surprised
in their sleep . . . My father . . . my mother . . . my
sisters . . . God! . . . I can't speak of it. . . .'

He got up abruptly, jerking his long legs, and went to the further end
of the veranda, where he stood with set features and brows like a red
bar, below which staring eyes were fixed vacantly upon the avenue of
bunya trees in the long walk of the Botanical Gardens across the river.
But they did not see those bunya trees. What they saw was a row of
mutilated bodies, lying stark along the veranda of that head-station on
the Leura.

Bridget was leaning forward in her squatter's chair, her fingers
grasping the arms of it, her face very white and her eyes staring too,
as though they also beheld the scene of horror.

Presently McKeith came back, pale too, but quite composed.

'I beg your pardon,' he said stiffly. 'Perhaps I should not have told
you.'

'It's--horrible. But I'm glad to know. Thank you for telling me.'

He looked at her wistfully. There was silence for a moment or two.

'And you . . . you . . . where were you?' she stammered.

'Me! I was with the drays, you know. We got back about noon that
day. . . . If we'd been twelve hours sooner! Well, I suppose I should
have been murdered with the rest. . . . The blacks had gone off with their
loot. . . . We . . . we buried our dead. . . . And then we ran up our
best horses and never drew rein for forty miles till we'd got to where
a band of the Native Police were camped. . . . And then . . . we took
what vengeance we could. . . . It wasn't complete till a long time
afterwards.'

He was standing behind Bridget's chair, his eyes still gazing beyond
the river. He did not notice that she leaned back suddenly, and her
hands fell nervelessly to her lap. He felt a touch on his arm. It was
Mrs Gildea, who had come out to the veranda again. 'Colin,' she said,
'I want you to go and bring me my typewriter from the parlour. And then
you've got to dictate "copy," about the Alexandra City Gas-Bore. Please
go at once.'

He obeyed. Mrs Gildea bent over Lady Bridget.

'Biddy! . . . You're not faint, are you?'

Lady Bridget roused herself and looked up at her friend rather
wildly. . . . 'No. . . . What do you take me for? . . . I said I wanted
real things, Joan . . . And I've got them.'

She laughed a little hysterically.

'All right! But we shall give you a taste of real Australia that isn't
quite so gruesome. That some of the tragedy belongs to the pioneer
days. . . . I could tell you things myself that my father has told me.
. . . But I won't. . . . Mind, Colin McKeith is no more of a hero than
a dozen bush boys I knew when I first knew him. Yes, put it there,
Colin, please. . . . And now, if Biddy doesn't mind, we'll proceed to
business, which is my IMPERIALIST Letter. I suppose you haven't brought
back any snapshots of Alexandra City and your wonderful Gas-Bore that
Mr Gibbs could get worked up for his paper?'




CHAPTER 13



That was not the only time Lady Bridget and McKeith met on Mrs Gildea's
veranda. In fact, Biddy, reminiscent of wild sea-excursions along the
shore by Castle Gaverick, developed a passion for what she called tame
boating on the Leichardt River. She found a suitable skiff in the
boat-house--the Government House grounds sloped to the water's edge,
and would row herself up and down the river reaches. It was easy to
round the point, skirt the Botanical Gardens, and, crossing above the
ferry, land below Mrs Gildea's cottage, then climb up the bank and
enter by a lower gate to the garden. Thus she would often turn up
unexpectedly of mornings for a chat with her friend in the veranda
study.

At this time, Colin McKeith contracted a similar habit. He showed a
still greater interest in Mrs Gildea's journalistic work and professed
a strong desire to enlighten British statesmen, through the medium of
Mr Gibbs' admirable paper, on certain Imperial questions affecting
Australia--the danger of a Japanese invasion in the northern waters--
the establishment of a naval base by Germany in New Guinea--the Yellow
Labour Problem and so forth. He would intersperse his political
dissertation with racy bits of description of life in the Bush, and
would give the points of view of pearl fishers, miners, loafers,
officials in out-of-the-way townships, Labour reformers, sheep and
cattle owners--all of which vastly amused Lady Bridget, and was
valuable 'copy,' typed unscrupulously by Mrs Gildea. In fact, she owed
to it much of the success which, later, attended her journalistic
venture. Mrs Gildea thought at first that the 'copy' would be more
easily obtainable in the intervals before and after Lady Bridget's
arrival, or on the days when she failed to come. But, finding that
Colin was distinctly at his best as a narrator with Biddy for an
audience, she artfully arranged to take her notes under those
conditions. This lasted two or three weeks, during which period Sir
Luke and Lady Tallant conscientiously improved their acquaintance with
the new sphere of their labours. They visited hospitals, inspected
public buildings, inaugurated social schemes, and, to the strains of
'God Save the Queen,' performed many other insignificant public
functions, from which, as often as not, their guest, Lady Bridget,
basely cried off.

On one such occasion, Joan, arrayed in her best, had patriotically gone
forth on a steaming March day to support their Excellencies, fondly
expecting that, as arranged, Lady Bridget and Colin would meet her. But
Lady Tallant, looking distinctly cross, accompanied the Governor alone.
Bridget, it appeared, had come down, just as the carriage drove up, in
her morning frock and garden hat, saying that she had a bad headache
and meant to spend the afternoon in a hammock by the river bank. As for
Colin, there was no sign of him.

But when Mrs Gildea got home very tired, and hot she was made extremely
angry by hearing the voices of Lady Bridget and McKeith in the veranda
where they were drinking tea and, it seemed, holding a confidential
conversation. Mrs Gildea's gorge rose higher. She had to stop a minute
to try and recover her temper. Here was Biddy disburdening herself to
Colin of her family troubles and short-comings, showing herself and
them in the worst light, singing small to a man with whom it was highly
desirable she should maintain her dignity. Instead of that, she was
deliberately pulling down the barrier of rank and social position which
should exist between Lady Bridget O'Hara and the Factor's son, the
Out-Back squatter--Colin McKeith.

Biddy was saying: 'Oh, but you're as bad as that sort of person who
can't be made to realise that the oldest peerage in Ireland counts for
nothing in comparison with an oil-king's millions and being able to
entertain the right set. . . . And besides, really Mr McKeith, there's
no difference at all between us. You talk such a lot about YOUR
grandfather having been a Scotch peasant. Why! MY mother's father was
an Italian beggar--Ugh! haven't you seen them with their crutches and
things on the steps of the churches?--And my mother sang in the
streets of Naples until a kind musician heard her and had her trained
to be a opera singer.'

'Your mother?'

'My mother! That's where my CARMEN comes from--only that my voice, I'm
told, isn't to be compared with what hers was. . . . But that's not the
worst about my mother. Not that I blame her. I think that a woman has a
perfect right to leave her husband if she has ceased to care for him,
and that it's far more moral to live with a man you love and can't
marry, than with a husband you hate.'

Mrs Gildea cut short Lady Bridget's exposition of her views on morality
before McKeith had time to answer. Her voice was sharp as she went up
the steps and arraigned the pair.

'Really, Biddy, I do call this too bad of you. May I ask how you and Mr
McKeith come to be drinking tea together in my veranda?'

'Sure, and it's by accident intoirely,' answered Biddy, with a
whimsical look and the touch of the brogue she sometimes put on when a
situation became embarrassing.

'A prearranged accident!'

'No it wasn't, Joan. As a matter-of-fact, we were the last persons
either of us expected to meet.'

'Honour bright,' put in McKeith. 'I'd forgotten all about the Pineapple
Products Exhibition, and I just dropped in at Government House to pay
my respects after a pleasant dinner two nights ago--What you'd call a
visit of digestion.'

'And since when, Colin, have you become an observer of social
obligations?' jeered Mrs Gildea.

He grinned, 'Ah! you have me there. Anyway, I asked for Lady Bridget,
and found her down by the boat-shed.'

'And we thought it would be cooler on the water, so he rowed me round
the point. It was the most natural thing in the world that we should
discover we were thirsty, and that we should come up the garden and ask
your old woman to give us some tea. Don't be a cat, Joan. You never
used to be grudging of your hospitality.'

Mrs Gildea quickly recovered her usual genial demeanour. She poured
herself out a cup of tea, and remarked that it was refreshing after the
pine-apple syrups and other concoctions she had, as in duty bound,
sampled at the Show. Lady Bridget rattled along with questions about
the Function and the behaviour of the Government House party. Had Sir
Luke been too over-poweringly pompous? Was Lady Tallant really cross?
and had Vereker Wells made any more blunders? and so forth. But she did
not enlighten Mrs Gildea much about her doings with Colin McKeith, and
presently said she must go and make her peace with Rosamond. McKeith
accompanied her--naturally, since he had to row her back to the
Government House landing. There was something in the manner of the pair
that Mrs Gildea could not understand. Of course, Colin was in love--
that she knew already. But was Biddy merely playing with the big
primitive-souled bushman--or was it possible that she, too, could be
in love?




CHAPTER 14



The next time Biddy came, Joan tackled matters boldly.

'Biddy, I've had my marching orders. Mr Gibbs finds Leichardt's Land a
bit stale. I take train to Sydney next week and tour the Riverina, the
Blue Mountains and the country along the railway line to Melbourne. Are
you coming with me?'

Bridget gave a deprecatory laugh. ' I don't know what Rosamond would
say.'

'She'd recognise the necessities of the situation. Besides, you could
come back again.'

'I haven't been here a month. And I don't find Leichardt's Land stale.
On the contrary, I find it extremely stimulating. No, I think the
Riverina and the Blue Mountains will keep, as far as I'm concerned.'

'But I won't keep. Mr Gibb and the drawings for THE IMPERIALIST won't
keep. The question is whether you want to make some money or not?'

'It's the one thing I've WANTED to do all my life, and have never yet
succeeded in doing except when we collaborated in "The Lady of
Quality."

'Here's your chance for a continuation series, "The Lady of Quality in
the Bush." How does that sound?'

'Rather clumsy and long, don't you think? "Lady Bridget in the Bush"
would be more alliterative and catching. Only I should be giving myself
away.'

'I think you're doing that already,' said Mrs. Gildea.

'How do you mean, Joan? I don't see it.'

'Yes, you do. Look here, Biddy. Colin McKeith isn't Mr Willoughby Maule.'

'He's a hundred times better man, Joan.'

'That you needn't tell me; and I'm glad you recognise the fact. But
from the point of view of "The Lady of Quality," would he be a better
husband?'

'You forget, my dear, that I'm not the genuine article. I'm nothing but
a pinchbeck imitation of the real "Lady of Quality." If HIS grandfather
was a peasant, remember that my maternal grandparents were peasants
too. I told him so yesterday.'

'Has it come to that? You go fast, Biddy. But I warn you--Colin
McKeith isn't the man to be trifled with. He knows his own mind. The
question is whether you know yours.'

Biddy nodded her head like a Chinese Mandarin.

'Two months ago you were wildly in love--or, at least, from your
letters one might have judged so--with another man,' said Mrs Gildea.

'No--no--don't call that love.'

'Call it a violent attraction, then. I suspect the man could have made
you marry him if he had chosen. So far as I can understand, you
quarrelled because neither of you would face matrimony on what you
considered an inadequate income.'

'Middle-class respectability--living in Pimlico or further
Kensington,' scoffed Biddy. 'Ordering sprats and plaice for dinner and
pretending they're soles and whitebait. Perambulators stuffing up the
hall; paying your own books and having your gown made at home! No,
thank you. 'Possum skins and a black's gunya--that's Autralese for a
wigwam, isn't it?--appeal to me infinitely more.'

Mrs Gildea threw up her hands.

'Biddy, you haven't the faintest notion how dull and uncomfortable--
how utterly unpoetic--how sordid the life of a struggling bushman can
be.'

'No! You know, Joan, I think that it might be perfectly fascinating--
if one really cared for the bushman.'

'Really cared! Have you EVER really cared for any man? COULD you ever
really care?'

'That's what I've been asking myself. It would have to be someone quite
different from all the other men I've liked--something altogether
above the ordinary man, to make me REALLY care.'

'You said that Mr Willoughby Maule was different from any man you'd
ever met. Each man you've ever fancied youself in love with has been
different from all the rest.'

Lady Bridget laughed rather uneasily.

'How tiresomely exact you are, Joan! Of course, they were different.
Everybody is different from everybody else. And I attract marked types.
Will was more marked and more attractive--as well as attracted--
that's all.'

'His attraction doesn't seem to have been as strong as self-interest,
any way,' said Joan, with deliberate terseness.

The girl's small, pale face flushed to deep crimson for a moment.

'Joan, you are cruel! You know that was the sting! And it wouldn't have
stung so if I hadn't cared. Sometimes I feel the maddest desire to hurt
him--to pay him out. I never felt like that about any of the others--
the ones I really did ALMOST want to marry. And then--at other times
I'd give ANYTHING just to have him again as he used to be.'

'I'm certain you weren't really in love with him,' exclaimed Mrs
Gildea.

Bridget seemed to be considering. 'Wasn't I?--I'm not so sure of that.
No--' she went on impetuously, 'I was not REALLY in love with him. He
had a magnetic influence over me as I told you. Perhaps I might get a
little under it again if he were to appear suddenly without his wife--
it turns me sick to think of a married man having a magnetic influence
over me. . . . Even if there was no wife--now. So, when you've
idealised a person and can't idealise him any more: C'EST FINI. There's
nothing but a ghost to come and make you uncomfortable sometimes--and
that CAN'T last. . . . Besides, I've been breathing the strong clear
air of your gum trees lately. It's a case of pull devil--pull bushman.
Do you see?'

'I see, my dear, that you're idealising Colin McKeith, and let me tell
you that a bushman is very far removed from the super-man. Oh, Colin is
a fine enough specimen of a pioneer in a rough country. But his rough
life, his bush surroundings, and all the rest--why, he'd jar upon you
in a hundred ways if you were alone with him in them. Then--he's not
of your order--though I hate the phrase and I hate the kind of man.
All the same, Biddy, you may pretend to despise the men of your own
class, but I fancy that, after a spell of roughing it with Colin on the
Upper Leura, you'd hanker after something in them that Colin hasn't and
never will have. . . . And then,' Joan's swift imagination carried her
on with a rush, 'you don't know in the least the type of man he is.
You'd have to give in to him: he'd never give in to you. He's
domineering, jealous, vindictive and reserved. Before a month was out
you'd quarrel, and there would be no chance of your ever making it up
again.'

'I must say, Joan, that for a friend of his you're not an enthusiastic
advocate.'

'It's because I'm so fond of Colin that I hate the thought of your
making him miserable. Anyway, however, you're bound to do that.'

'I don't see why.'

'If you flirt with him and then drop him, he'll suffer, though he'll be
too proud to show it. And as for the alternative, it's out of the
question. You must see that it would be sheer folly.'

'I've committed a great many follies,' said Bridget wistfully.

'But, so far, none that are quite irrevocable.'

'Well, he hasn't asked me yet to commit this one.'

'You're leading him on to it. Biddy, it is abominable of you to
encourage him as you do--coming here with him that day. . . . And you
let him take you riding. . . .'

'Yes, he knows now that I CAN ride.'

'And he's at Government House nearly every day--I can't think what
Lady Tallant is about to ask him so often to dinner.'

'She likes him because he takes Luke off her hands. You know we've
nick-named him the Unconstitutional Adviser.'

'That's rubbish. You sing to him.'

'What harm is there in my singing to Colin McKeith?'

'As if you didn't know well enough that you're perfectly irresistible
when you look at a man while you're singing those Neapolitan things.
Biddy, it won't do. Give it up.'

'I can't do that, Joan.' She spoke with a strange earnestness. 'Don't
you see that it's giving me a chance.'

'Of forgetting Mr Willoughby Maule!'

'Yes. . . . But it's more than that.'

'More than that. . . . Do you mean . . . can you mean that you could
love Colin McKeith--for himself?'

'Love is a big word, Joan. I've never said to any man--"I love you."'
She spoke the words now as if she were uttering a sacred formula. Her
voice reminded Mrs Gildea of something--the same note in the voice of
Colin McKeith when he, too, had spoken of love. Yet what she had said
was true. Bridget had talked often enough of falling 'in love'--which
she had always been at pains to define as a mere transitory condition--
not by any means the 'real thing,' and she had freely confessed to
violent attractions and even adorations. But, as she had sometimes
solemnly stated, she had never 'loved.'

'I can't explain,' she went on. 'I know you think me a heartless,
emotional flirt. Yes, I am. I admit it. But there's a locked door in
the inner chamber--a shrine that no one has desecrated. The Goddess is
there, waiting--waiting to reveal herself.'

'And so--all the rest have been--experiments?'

'No, The Quest of the Ideal through the Forest of Illusion. I've often
thought, Joan, there was a lot in the motive of that novel of Thomas
Hardy's THE WELL BELOVED. But I seem to be mixing up my metaphor, and
it's time I went back to Government House.' She got up and began
putting on her gloves.

Mrs Gildea laughed hysterically. Somehow, she could not imagine Colin
McKeith producing the golden key and masterfully taking possession of
Lady Bridget's locked shrine. She could only think of him as tricked,
deceived and suffering hideously at the end. She stammered out her
fear, beseeching Biddy to be merciful, but Biddy's mood had changed,
and she only smiled her Sphinx smile.

'I think he's quite able to look after himself,' she said. 'And if he
isn't, sure, he must take the consequences.'




CHAPTER 15



Mrs Gildea could get nothing more out of Lady Bridget. She attacked
McKeith in a more tentative manner, but Colin was doggedly reticent. He
was taking the thing hardly. His way of facing a serious situation was
by setting his teeth and saying nothing. After these unsuccessful
attempts, Joan made opportunity, before leaving, for a private word on
the subject with Lady Tallant. But Rosamond Tallant treated the matter,
at first, very lightly.

'Dear Mrs Gildea, you needn't worry, it's only Biddy's way. She must
have some excitement to keep her going. If it isn't one thing, it's
another. In London, I tried to interest her in Society, or Politics,
and the Opera--and now Luke is trying to interest her in Colonial
questions--but she always drifts back to--Men. She can't help it. And
the funny thing is, I don't believe that in her heart she is capable of
a serious attachment.'

'I'm not so sure of that,' answered Mrs Gildea.

'If so, she has had plenty of opportunities of proving it. But I wasn't
ever afraid even of Willoughby Maule. I was certain that would fizzle
out before real harm could come of it. And mercifully it did. He's
married a woman with a quarter of a million and the right to dispose of
it absolutely as she pleases. I heard that she signed a will on her
wedding day, leaving it all to him in the event of her death. Too great
a temptation, wasn't it? Though I do think if Biddy had chosen she
might have kept him in spite of Miss Bagalay and her money. As it is,
Colin McKeith, or else the novelty of it all out here--has driven him
out of her head. I felt sure of that when I asked her to come. You
needn't worry about her.'

'It's not so much about Biddy that I'm worrying as about my old friend,
Colin McKeith,' said Mrs Gildea. 'It isn't fair that he should be made
a victim.'

'Oh, well, it isn't altogether Biddy's fault that she attracts all
types of men.' And then Lady Tallant made exactly the same remark as
Lady Bridget. 'I think Mr McKeith is quite able to look after himself.
I don't pity him in the least. Didn't somebody say of Lady Something or
Other that to love her was a liberal education?'