Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: a story of Australian life

by Mrs. Campbell Praed

CHAPTER 2

On other occasions also Lady Bridget made McKeith feel that she preferred good fellowship to love-making. She was perfectly charming, always excellent company, and she had a sense of humour which delighted him, but she did not encourage effusiveness. She seemed to want to hear about the Bush a great deal more than she wanted to hear about his feelings towards herself, and appeared anxious to show him that she meant to be a thorough-going 'mate.' The phrase had taken her fancy.

There was not much opportunity however, for exchanging sentimental confidences. Everything was rush and hurry during the few weeks between the engagement and the marriage. It was plain that Lady Tallant wished to get the wedding over before she and the Governor started upon a tour of the important stations in the settled districts round Leichardt's Town, officially contemplated. Bridget had a shrewd suspicion, which she confided to Colin, that Lady Tallant was getting tired of her. Perhaps Bridget did not keep herself sufficiently in the background to please the lady of Government House. Her unpunctuality too often annoyed Sir Luke.

Another reason for not delaying the marriage was that the Leichardt's Land government was expected to go out of office on a Labour Bill, and that an appeal to the country would certainly follow its defeat. In that case McKeith's re-election would have to be considered, and an electioneering honeymoon in one of the out-back districts was an inspiring prospect to Lady Bridget. Then the preparation of a Bush trousseau needed thought and discussion. She had not much money, either, to buy her trousseau with. Bridget would have none of Sir Luke's suggestions of conciliatory letters and cablegrams to Eliza Lady Gaverick on the subject of settlements. She said she did not intend to cadge any longer upon her rich relative, and that she preferred to marry without settlements. Sir Luke was not satisfied with McKeith's views upon the financial question, and had some difficulty in getting him to tie up even the insignificant sum of three thousand pounds in settlement upon his wife. Colin pointed out that his capital was all invested in cattle, and that though things would be all right as long as there were good seasons, a bad one would cripple him, and he would need money to recoup his losses and buy fresh stock. Bridget took his view and Sir Luke frowned, but did what he considered his duty so far as the paltry settlement went. At all events, it was a satisfaction to Colin McKeith's shrewd Scotch mind that nobody insisted upon getting the better of him in the matter. He knew that Bridget never gave it a second thought. She was much more interested in the social and racial problems of this new country of her adoption, and especially in the blacks. What time she could spare from her trousseau she spent in reading books about them, which some of her official friends got her from the Parliamentary Library, and had already learned to think of herself as a 'bujeri* White Mary,' whose mission it might be to compose the racial feud between blackman and white.

[*Bujeri—Black's term of commendation.]

To Colin, knowing now the tragedy of his youth, she did not speak much on this subject. The time went with startling rapidity. The two were borne on the tide of Colin's wild elation and Bridget's more impersonal enthusiasms. They were like travellers steaming through strange seas, not knowing what they were going to find at the end of the voyage and too excited to care.

That was the way of Bridget O'Hara, but it was not the way of Colin McKeith.

Yet his closest intimates would scarcely have known him at this period. He was as a man bewitched, with intervals only of his ordinary commonsense. In these intervals the consciousness of glamour made him vaguely uneasy.

Had Joan Gildea been there she would have seen all this and would have observed signs of over-strain in Bridget—something faintly apprehensive yet obstinately determined. And Joan would have understood that when an O'Hara woman gets the bit between her teeth, she will not stop to look back or to consider whither she is galloping. Bridget kept herself continually on the go. Latterly, even Colin was warned by her nervous restlessness. When they were alone together, which was not long, nor often, her body seemed never still, her tongue rarely at rest. Sometimes her talk was brilliantly allusive; at others it was frothy chatter. One day it really irritated him. She had been fluttering about the sitting-room opening on to the terrace, which Lady Tallant had made over to her guest. An English mail had come in. She read him bits of a letter from Molly Gaverick and made explanatory, satiric comments upon those impecunious, aristocratic relatives who were on the fringe of the London smart set of which Bridget herself had lately formed a yet more outside part.

'Chris Gaverick has gone into the wine business, and they've taken a tiny house in Davies Street, Berkeley Square, and the Eaton Place house pays its rent ... You don't understand? ... No.... Molly and I talked it out when they were married. Of course, it seemed madness, with their means to take a house in Eaton Place. They ought to have had one in Bayswater. But it has answered splendidly. You see, they put their wedding presents into it and let it for the season, and managed to live rent free and have the use of other people's motors and all the going about they wanted without paying even for their food ... and no expense of entertaining, outside a dinner or two at Hurlingham.... Cadging!... In London Society everybody cadges except the millionaires—and they're cadged upon... You see, as Molly said, you can't entertain in Bayswater, or know the right people, and go about to the right houses, which is the most important thing for a poor couple who want to keep their heads up. Now the result is that Chris is able to bring in quantities of clients and gets a commission on all the wine he sells.... What's the matter, Colin? You look quite fierce.'

'And that,' commented McKeith, 'is an English belted Earl!'

'Irish—there's a difference. And are they belted—really? Isn't it a figure of speech?'

'I don't know, and I don't care.'

'But wouldn't you care to hear Molly's account of their visit to the Duke and Duchess of Brockenhurst to meet the King and Queen of Hartenburg? Molly is very sorry I wasn't there. She says that it would have made everything so much nicer for her and Chris, and that the King might have ordered some wine from his firm.'

She was teasing. He knew it, and it infuriated him.

'Oh, no doubt you're sorry too that you weren't there with the Duke and Duchess, and the King and Queen, and your cousins, the Earl and Countess,' he flung at her.

'They'll be your cousins too—by marriage. And if you ever become a very rich man and take me back to England, you'll have to "Chris and Molly" them and to give him a big order for wine....'

That mollified McKeith.

'And if I wasn't a rich man, and didn't give a big order, they wouldn't care a twopenny damn for me.'

'Molly mightn't—unless by chance you were taken up in high quarters and made the fashion—like Cecil Rhodes and "Doctor Jim," or some new edition of Buffalo Bill. Then she'd call you "one of nature's uncrowned kings." But Chris Gaverick isn't a bad sort, if his wife would let him be natural.... They hadn't got my cablegram about you, Colin, when this was written,' she went on. 'I wish I could have told the Queen myself. I'm sure she would have been sympathetic. And now I don't suppose I shall ever meet her again.'

He rejoined with clumsy sarcasm.

'I see. The Queen of Hartenburg was an intimate friend of yours—the sort of chum who'd have been likely to drop in any day for a yarn and a cup of tea!'

'She often did when she hunted with our hounds in Ireland, and it IS true that the Queen of Hartenburg was quite an intimate friend of mine—for two winters, anyhow. But I assure you, it hasn't made me proud, and if the Queen of Hartenburg bores you, let us talk of something else.'

She gave another glance at the last sheet of Lady Gaverick's letter and thrust it into a pigeon-hole of the writing-table, then came back to the long settee on which he sat. All the time, his gaze had never left her. She saw that he was disturbed.

'What is the matter?' she asked again, and sat down, a little way from him, on the settee. He turned sideways to her, bending forward, one large hand twisting his fair beard. There was a hungry look in his eyes, but his passing ill-humour had melted into a deep, adoring tendeness.

'Biddy—my mate—will you answer me a question—truthfully?'

'I believe I can say honestly, that truth is one of my strong points,' she parried lightly.

'I want you to be serious. I mean it seriously. I want you to tell me what determined you on marrying a rough chap like me? That letter—thinking of you among those grandees, you talking a language that's worse than Greek to me, brings the wonder of it home. As I look at you, the thing seems just incredible.'

'I can't understand why it should seem so surprising.'

'WHY! You know what I mean. It's not only that your birth and bringing up are so superior to mine, and that you had a right to look for a husband in a very different sort of position—I can see plainly that is what Sir Luke thinks....'

'I don't care—a twopenny d-a-m-n—as you said—for what Sir Luke thinks. I've got my own ideas as to the kind of husband most likely to suit me.'

'There's the marvel of it. For you must have had dozens of men wanting you. You are so beautiful.'

'Oh, Colin, I've told you what I feel about the English marriage system. And, PAR PARENTHESE, I'm not beautiful. I don't come up in the least to the artist's standard. My measurements are wrong. I'm too small.'

'That's rot. There's a fascination about you no man can resist—or woman either. I see it in the people who come here.'

'If I happen to have drawn them into what Rosamond used to call my mysterious sphere of influence—which I seem to do without knowing it. I'm not sure, though, that either Rosamond or Luke approve of my drawing the Leichardt's Town people into my mysterious sphere of influence.'

'I think, if you ask me, that Lady Tallant is a bit of a cat, and Sir Luke more than a bit of a prig.'

'No. You mustn't say a word against them.' It was not in Bridget to be disloyal. 'They've given me the time of my life.'

'When you smile like that, you remind me of a photograph of a picture I've seen—a woman, I don't remember her name.'

'Mona Lisa—La Gioconda. I know—I've been told that before.'

'Yes, that's it. Mona Lisa. People have written about her.'

'Reams. Some day I'll read you what Pater says of her, unless you've read him already—by your camp fire.'

For he had talked to her, as he had talked to Joan Gildea, about his readings and his dreamings under the stars in the Bush.

'Eh! you shall teach me about these new writing chaps. I don't understand your up-to-date theories. I've always gone in for plain facts—standard reading—history—great thoughts of great minds—old books brought out in people's editions. I'm up a tree—downright bushed when you begin upon your queer ideas—all those new-fangled religions and notions—Theosophy, spooks—about the earth being alive, and thoughts making a sort of wireless telegraph system—I do believe in that, though—to a certain extent. And your Brotherhood of Man! Bosh! We're all like a lot of potatoes thrown into a sack and shaken about by circumstance. And the big ones come to the top, and the little ones—because they're little—sink to the bottom. I've always wanted to be one of the big potatoes, and mean to be.'

Bridget laughed. She had a ringing laugh when she was amused.

'Oh! go on, Colin. I grant that you're a very big potato and I'm a very little one.'

'You know I didn't mean it that way. You're the biggest potato in the whole bag as far as mind goes, and you make me feel the smallest. You're so wonderful that the marvel of your being contented to marry me is a bit staggering. And that brings me back to my question, which you haven't answered.'

'How have I brought myself to the incredible enterprise of marrying an Australian bushman? Do you know?'—she became suddenly serious—'I have asked myself that question once or twice, and I haven't been able to answer it.'

The light of adoration in his eyes faded a little.

'I've been afraid of that,' he said slowly. I've been afraid that you might be rushing into the business without reasoning it out—weighing all the sides of it.'

'If I were, it would only be the way of the O'Haras.'

His blue eyes became more troubled.

'I've been afraid of that,' he repeated. 'Bridget—suppose—my dear, suppose it was to turn out a mistake.'

'Well, I've made so many mistakes in my life and lived through them that one more wouldn't matter,' she rejoined lightly.

'This one would matter—because it would be irretrievable. Suppose that you were to find that you couldn't put up with the Bush life—I've told you that you are letting your imagination and your enthusiasm run a bit away with you, and that there may be hardships you don't reckon on. For though it all looks to me plain sailing now, and I hope it will only be a year or two before I can put on a manager, and give you the home and the climate that are more suited to you, one can't tell in Australia that there may not be a drought or that a cattle boom may not turn to a slump—do you see?'

'I shan't mind in the least, Colin—that is, I shall mind immensely, but if there comes a drought it will be quite exciting helping you to drag out the poor, thirsty beasts, when they get bogged into the waterholes as you were describing the other day.'

He laughed.

'YOU—helping to drag out bogged beasts! Why! they'd drag you in.'

'Well, there are other things. Riding! I could help you to break in horses. All the O'Haras are good on horseback'—at which he laughed immoderately and told her that when she had seen one, Zack Duppo, on a buckjumper, she would not be keen to try that game. But it might amuse her to help cut out a few tame bullocks on a drafting camp if she had a good old station mount that knew its work.

She shuddered. 'I love horses, but I should run away from the first bullock that looked at me. I'm frightened of beasts, and, on second thoughts, I should not want to pull out bogged ones. And I loathe cooking—domestic work—in a house. It would be different out of doors. You've promised to teach me the first time we camp out how to make—what do you call them—johnny-cakes?'

'Ah! The first time we camp out together. If you knew how I've dreamed of that. Biddy, I've got plans in my mind for that—' He caught her two hands in a fierce grasp, and as he looked at her, his eyes full of love, he would—greatly daring—have held her close to his breast and kissed the provocative lips, as yet almost virgin to his. But she made a shrinking movement, and he, acutely sensitive, dropped her hands, and the love that had flamed in his eyes gave place to the dour look she did not know so well.

'Why do you always keep me at a distance?' he said, and drew abruptly away from her.

'Dear man, you mustn't be importunate. It—it's constitutional with me. I've always hated love-making at close quarters.'

'Always! Does that mean that you've been in the habit of letting men kiss you?'

'Colin, you are rude—brutal.'

'D'ye think so? It seems to me that I'm only as Nature made me. Biddy—if you feel like that now—how will it be when you're my wife?'

She flushed a little, but as her way was, evaded him.

'Perhaps I shall have grown more used to it all by that time.'

'The time is not so long—only a fortnight from now. And when you hold me off from the touch of your hand—the feel of your lips—well, it makes me wonder....'

She gave a little alarmed shiver.

'Don't wonder, Colin. Don't worry.... And oh! before everything, don't drive me—it isn't safe with an O'Hara woman. I can see that you don't understand women—of a certain type.'

'Oh! I grant you women haven't stood for a great deal in my life, and the few I've known well have been of the humble, human sort. But I do know this, Bridget'—his face softened—'I do know that a proud, sensitive woman—which is what you are and what I love you for being—is like a thoroughbred mare, out the first time in harness. You must keep your hands tight on her and let her go her own pace. I can tell you, too, the cart-horse kind that has to be driven with a whip and a "gee-up" all the time wouldn't be the type for me.'

She laughed gain, but shakily. There was an appeal in her voice.

'Colin, you've told me a lot about breaking in young horses, and how patient one has to be with them. Be patient with me.... Now, I'll try and answer your question—truthfully. I only know in a very confused sort of way WHY I want to marry you.... I think you must understand what a lonely sort of life I've led, really—and what a dreadful muddle I've made of it—Well, I've told you how I hated everything. And though I can laugh, and be interested, too, in Molly Gaverick's way of looking at things, and in her determination not "to be out of the swim"—I was just as determined myself, when I had the mood to be in it—and though one side of me hankers after the push and the struggle and the worldliness—yet the other side of me revolts against it, and longs to be washed clean of all the sordid social grime. There! I've felt about marrying you that it would be a new baptism into a bigger, fresher, purer life—do you see?'

'Yes—I see.' His tone was doubtful. 'You've tried it before—that idea of bigger interests—a different kind of life—in other ways, Biddy, haven't you?'

'Oh! in ever so many ways. Of course, that wasn't only in the sense of love—hero worship, you know. It was the schemes, ideas, plans for living in the higher part of one. Tolstoy, Prentice Mulford—that kind of thing.... Colin, you blame me for not GIVING; yet, all my life, I've been blamed for giving too freely.'

'For giving too freely!' He repeated sharply.

'You mustn't misunderstand me. I said it hadn't only to do with men making love to me—my ideas about a different life. It was my general attitude—expecting to meet something great and being disappointed.... Of course, I've suffered—suffered horribly—in my heart—in my pride. And I've often found that my attitude towards things brought me into difficulties. The average person, if it's a man—supposes that because one has such ideas one must be a kind of abandoned creature. And, if it's a woman, that one has some mean, ulterior motive. I've always seemed to be looking for largeness and finding only what was small. You attracted me because you're like nature—big, simple, elemental.'

'Now, what the deuce do you mean by elemental?'

'Primal, unadulterated—closer to the heart of life and nature. It's a sort of cosmic quality. You are large—your surroundings are large.'

He laughed, only half comprehending, gauche in the expression of his deep-hearted satisfaction.

'One thousand square miles, two thirds of it fair grazing country in good seasons, and will be first-rate when I've worked out my artesian bore system. Plenty of space there for a woman to swing her petticoats, in—your riding skirt it'll have to be.'

'There! You see!' she cried. 'COULD one be mean or small in such conditions? It's glorious, the thought of riding over one thousand square miles—and tapping Mother Earth for your water supply! It will be just what I said—a new baptism—a washing in Jordan. But you will be patient, Colin; promise me that you will be good to me, and not ask too much—at first.'

There came a note into her voice which intoxicated the man with hope and joy. But he restrained himself. He would not frighten her again.

'Good to you! Biddy—you know you're sacred to me—I'll do everything—I'll be as patient as you could wish until you get so used to me that everything comes naturally. You understand? So long as you'll trust me and open your heart to me, I'm not afraid that you won't love me, my dear, in the end.'

'I WANT to love you, Colin.'

She moved a little closer to him and put her hand up, timidly, to his shoulder. His breath came quickly, but he did not lose his self-control. He knew that he must go gently with her. She drew her hand down his coat sleeve and let it rest like a snowflake on his—a contrast in its smallness and whiteness to the great brown hand beneath. She looked at that, smiling whimsically, and he saw her smile, and reddened. But he did not know that she found a pleasure in the sight of his hand—scrupulously kept, the nails as well trimmed as a bushman's nails can be, while showing the traces of manual labour.

'How ridiculous they are together!' she said softly 'But I like your hand, Colin. It's different from the other men's hands.'

He was glad she said 'the other men's,' and not 'the other man's'. Through all the gusts of passionate tenderness that went out to her, there was always rankling the thought of 'that other man.'