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

by Mrs. Campbell Praed

CHAPTER 4

A naughty little gust—herald of the sub-tropical afternoon breeze that comes up the Leichardt River from the sea, blew about the typed sheets on the table, and, among them, those of Lady Bridget's letter, as Mrs Gildea laid them down.

While she collected the various pages of manuscript that had been displaced and was bundling them together, with a banana on each sheaf to keep it safe, there came a second snap of the gate and a man's voice hailed her.

It was the voice of a man who sang baritone, and his accent was an odd combination of the Bush drawl grafted on to the mellifluous Gaelic, from which race he had originated.

'Any admittance, Mrs Gildea, except on business, during working hours?'

'Yes, it is working hours Colin, but you happen to be business because you're just the person I'm wanting to speak to, so come along.'

'Good for me, Joan,' and the man came along, clearing the rest of the garden path and the veranda steps in three strides.

He gripped Mrs Gildea's hand.

'You're nice and cool up here, and you get every bit of wind that's going along the river,' he said. 'It's a good thing you kept this humpey, Joan—a little nest for the bird to fly home to, eh?'

'Yes, I'm glad, though it seemed a silly piece of sentiment ... and, as you say, I always FELT the old bird might want to fly home for a bit some day. Well, YOU look cool enough, Colin.'

'This is temperate zone for me after the Leura.... But it's a hot March because we haven't had a proper rainy season, and I'll just stand here and catch the breeze for a minute or two before I sit down.'

He balanced himself on the veranda railing: took off his broad-brimmed Panama hat and mopped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. Mrs Gildea surveyed him with interested admiration.

A big man—large-limbed, bony—a typical Scotcher in that—with thin flanks, a well-set up back and massive shoulders. His face was browny-red all over except where the skin ran white under the hair and there was a ruddier ring round the upper part of the throat. His nose was thin between the eyes, broadening lower, high-bridged and with high cut nostrils, showing the sensitive red when he was enraged—as not infrequently happened. He had large honest blue eyes, intensely blue, of the fiery description with a trick of dropping the lids when he was in doubt or consideration. They were expressive eyes, as a rule keen and hard, but they could soften unexpectedly under the influence of emotion. At other times, according to the quality of the emotion, they glowed literally like blue flames. He was considered queer-tempered, rather sulky, and his face often took on a very unyielding expression.

He had thick reddish-yellow eyebrows at the base of a slightly receding forehead—wanting in benevolence, phrenologists would have said, and with the bump of self-esteem considerably developed. His hair was yellow, pure and simple—the color of spun silk, only coarser, and it would have curled at the ends had he not worn it close-cropped. His moustache and beard were rather deeper yellow, the beard short, well-shaped—the cut of Colin McKeith's beard was almost his only vanity—there was one other, the 'millionare strut' in town—and he had the masculine habit of stroking and clasping his beard with his large open-fingered hand—spatulate tips to his digits, the practical hand—fairly well kept, though brown and hairy.

There were lines in his face and a way of setting his features—that a man gets when he has to front straight some cruel facts of human existance—to calculate at a glance the chances of death from a black's spear, a lost trail, an empty water-bag, the horns of a charging bullock or even worse things than these.

And such experiences had put a stamp on him, and distinguished him from the ordinary ruck of men—these and his undeniable manliness, and good looks.

He smiled as he glanced amusedly from the littered wind-blown papers on the table to his hostess' rather troubled face.

'Well you seem to have a pretty fair show here of what you call "copy,"' he said.

Mrs Gildea met his look with one of frank pleasure.

'That's what I want YOU for.'

'What's the job?' he asked. 'You ought to know that literary "copy" is not much in my line. Now if it had been yarding the fowls or cleaning up the garden, I'd feel more at home as a lady's help.'

'Colin, you take me back to Bungroopim—when it happened to be a slack day for you on the run, and when the married couple had levanted and I'd got an incompetent black-gin in the kitchen—or when the store wanted tidying and you and I had a good old spree amongst the rubbish.'

He laughed at a time-honoured joke.

'Stick sugar-mats and weevilly four-bins; and a breeding paddock of tarantulas and centipedes and white lizards to clear out. I WAS a bush hobbledehoy in those days, Joan. It's close on twenty years ago.'

Joan Gildea gave a little shudder.

'Don't remind me how old I am. There's the difference between a man and a woman. My life's behind me: yours in front of you.'

'I don't know about that, Joan. I've had my spell of roughing it—droving, mining, pioneering—humping bluey along the track—stoney-broke: sold up by the bank and only just beginning now to find out what Australia's worth.'

'That's what I said—you are just beginning. Roughing it has made a splendid man of you, Colin: and who would ever believe that you are four years older than I am. Colin, you ought to get married.'

'The Upper Leura is no place for the sort of wife I want,' he returned shortly.

'I don't see that. It isn't as if you were going to stop there always. When you're rich enough you can put on a manager. You've got an enormous piece of pretty good country, haven't you?'

'One thousand square miles—and a lot more to be got for the taking—mostly fair cattle pasture—now that we're going in for Artesian bores. But it means capital, sinking wells three thousand feet and more. It'll be three or four years at least before I can see a trip to Europe—doing the thing in the way I mean to do it.'

'Must you go to Europe for a wife? Aren't Australian girls good enough?'

'I've always meant to try for the best. You taught me that, Joan, I shall follow your example. You were an Australian girl.'

Mrs Gildea's face saddened. 'Well,' was all she said.

'You see,' he went on, and the eyes took their narrow concentrated look and suddenly blazed out as he straightened himself against the veranda post, 'I know something of what marriage in the back block means: and I've studied women—don't laugh—I mean theoretically—from books. I've read history—always managed a couple of volumes or so in my swag—nights and nights, by the light of a fat lamp and a camp fire. I've studied the women of great times—ancient and modern—they're always the same—and I've remarked the type of woman that's got grit—capacity for fine things—You understand all that as well as I do, Joan. Look at the women of the French Revolution for one instance—the aristocrats, you know—well, I've realised that it takes blood and breeding and tradition behind to carry a woman to the block with a sure step and a proud smile ...' Suddenly, he became aware of Joan's gaze, half surprised, wholly interested.... He reddened and pulled himself up gruffly.

'Sentimental rot, d'ye call it?'

'No, Colin, I believe in all that and so do you.'

'Blood and breeding and tradition—all the grand stuff that's been grown in them on the NOBLESSE OBLIGE principle—self-respect, courage, dignity—the stuff that gives staying power as well as the fire for making good spunk.... Not that I'd put a pure-blood racer to haul up logs for an iron-bark fence: any more than I'd set out to plant an English lady of that sort to rough it on the Leura.'

'Well, why not? Do you want your wife to be like a canary in a cage?'

'You know I don't hold with gilded cages and spoiling a woman who is there to be your mate. But all the same, I shan't look out for MY wife until I can afford to give her as good a show as she'd be likely to have if the stopped at home. You see, a real woman must be a sportsman in her way of taking life as much as a man, and I maintain as a general proposition that it's the English lady—even one of your sneered-at "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" lot who makes the best front against battle, murder, and sudden death—if it has to come to that.... Just because,' he went on, 'though she might have been brought up in a castle and never have done a hand's turn that could be done for her, she's still got in her veins the blood of fighting ancestors—men who were ready to lay down their lives for God and King and country and their women's honour—and of women too who'd maybe held the stronghold that had been their husband's reward, and kept the flag flying, when to fail or flinch meant death or worse.... Why, look at your Lady Nithisdales and your Lady Russells and your Maria Theresas....'

'And your Joan of Arc—who was a peasant girl—and your Charlotte Corday....'

'Oh, you beat me there.... And I wasn't intending to fire off a speech anyway.... And anyway, Joan, its awful cheek to think I could ever get the sort of wife I want, but if I can't, I won't have one at all.... I'll have my money's worth. Romance—Ideals—something more LIFTING than beef and mutton and cutting a bigger dash than your neighbour.... See?'

He broke off with a laugh, and the wonderfully vivid light that came into his blue eyes made him look like an ardent youth.

'And you a democrat!' jeered Mrs Gildea. 'You, a champion of the people's rights; you, an Imperialist in the broadest sense of the term! Oh, I really must put you into one of my articles as a certain type of modern Australian. In fact, Colin, that's what I wanted to talk to you about.'

'All right, fire away. We'll drop the marriage question.'

'To be resumed later.' A quizzical look passed over Mrs Gildea's mouth, and then, 'Oh, what a pity!' she muttered to herself.

'What's a pity?'

'Never mind! The English mail's in—as you may see. I'll show you what Mr Gibbs says. He didn't like my last letter. He says he wants bones and sinews, not an artist's lay figure dressed in stage bushman's clothes. There, Mr McKeith, among your other cogitations on the subject of women, you may try to realise that the mission of a lady special correspondent is not all'—she looked round for a metaphor—'Muscat grapes and pineapple.'

'Or cooked-up information from heads of departments; or got-up shows of agricultural, mining and other industries. Or trips to the Bay to see the model island prison in which our weary criminals rehabilitate their enfeebled systems by cool sea-breezes and generous diet. Or ministerial picnics to experimental cotton and sugar plantations the size of your garden to prove that all tropical products can be raised to perfection without mentioning the difficulty in a White Australia of finding the labour to do it.'

'Oh, don't rub it in, Colin. I'm only a special reporter, and even special reporters can't know everything. Now, do just sit down and let me ask you questions. And first of all, do you want a whiskey peg or a cup of tea, or what?—I've had my late breakfast.'

'I'll have a smoke, please. Been swearing off store baccy now I'm down from the Bush. I'm trying hard to smoke cigarettes like one of your English toffs.'

He pulled out a copper cigarette case with some hieroglyphical letters and numbers stamped on it, which he regarded with a humorous smile.

'Only cost a shilling, but now I've my brand across, it looks fine. You know that by the Brands Act you've got to have a number and two letters on every head of stock—My brand's the Mark of the Beast 666 C.K. See?'

He fixed his cigarette into a new amber mouthpiece, made a wry face, and began to smoke.

'I don't think much of your quality of cigarettes,' said Mrs Gildea. 'On the whole, I prefer your tobacco.'

'All right. Give me my pipe any day—' And he pitched away the cigarette and produced an ancient pipe, which he filled with tobacco from an india-rubber pouch and lighted. 'Now, fire away.'

'Not for a little bit yet. You must read my rejected article and my official instructions, and then you'll have some grasp of the subjects I want information upon. Here they are—Mr Gibbs first.'

She handed him her editor's letters and pushed a small pile of manuscript towards his elbow.

'There. It will take you about a quarter of an hour to digest all that; and meanwhile, if you don't mind the noise, I shall go on typing something I've got to send off by to-morrow's mail.'

She settled herself at the typewriter, her back partially turned to him. The subject matter of what she was doing took all her attention. She worked hard for about ten minutes, hearing sub-consciously the rustle of papers under his hand and one or two faint ejaculations and a queer little laugh he gave once or twice as he read.

Presently he said:

'I say, there's a mistake here. I've gone through your editor's letters. He's sound; I think I can help you to get at what he wants. But these other sheets have got mixed up with something else. I thought at first it was a story you'd given me, and I went on reading and got interested; and now I see it must have been written by some young woman friend of yours'—if it's meant for a letter.'

Mrs Gildea turned with a dismayed exclamation.

'Good gracious! You don't mean to say that I've given you her letter?'

'Is it really a letter? Do women type letters? It reads to me much more like what the heroine of a novel would be supposed to say than an ordinary everyday girl. If that's a flesh and blood woman I'd like to know her.'

Mrs Gildea took from him the three typed pages he had in his hand. They were certainly part of Lady Bridget's letter—almost the whole of it, for only the end and the beginning ones were missing. In her hurried rearrangement of the wind-scattered sheets she had put these into the wrong bundle. She ran her eye anxiously over the badly-typed slips, which, with their marginal corrections and smart, allusive jargon of a world entirely removed from Colin McKeith's experience, might easily have misled him into the belief that he was reading literary 'copy.' Of course he knew that Joan Gildea wrote novels as well as journalistic stuff.

He read her thoughts.

'You needn't worry. There isn't the least clue to her identity—I suppose that's what you're afraid of. Not a surname anywhere—I couldn't have imagined a woman would write like that—give herself away—as she does. But it's fine all the same. There'd be nothing small about that woman, Joan. Do you know how it ended?'

'I don't know yet. But I can guess.'

'Eh?' He blew out rings of smoke with less than his usual deliberation. 'D'ye think she'll marry the chap?'

'No—she never does.'

'She's a flirt, then?'

'Bid—' Mrs Gildrea swallowed the rest. 'SHE would scorn such a commonplace suggestion. Do you remember that novel of Hardy's, THE WELL-BELOVED? She's like the man there, who was always in love with the same Ideal—under different forms—until he found that he'd made a mistake, and then the game began all over again.'

McKeith ruminated. 'SHE'S like that, is she? ... The fellow is what you'd call a bounder?' he exclaimed suddenly.

'So I imagine.'

'But she's in love with him—she must be, or she wouldn't write like that?'

'You don't know her. She can't do anything by halves—while she's doing it.'

'By Jove, that's what I like. There's a woman who'd never hang on the fence. And her ideas about love and all that: it's splendid.'

He brooded again a few moments, while Mrs Gildea sorted her papers afresh; then he exclaimed:

'It strikes me, she's one of the sort I was talking about just now.'

'Well, she WAS born in a castle.'

'I guessed it.... You won't tell me her name?'

'How could I—I ask you? After you'd read that!'

'No. All right. You can trust me not to find out.'

'Besides, she would never do for you.'

He laughed quizzically. 'Well, I'm a barbarian, and it's possible I may some day be a millionaire. But I'm not such a conceited cad as to imagine a woman like that would ever fall in love with ME!' His voice sank almost to a reverential tone. 'The only thing I do know is that if I got the chance, I'd show her I was strong enough to carry her off to my wigwam and she could do what she pleased afterwards. I'd be her slave so long as she cared for me—and I'd never live with a woman who didn't.'

'My dear Colin, you're not likely to get the chance. Please forget that you ever read that letter.'

'No, I can't do that; but as she's in London and we're over here, it's not much odds anyway. Well, have you found the right sheets? Give them to me if you have and then we can come to business.'