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

by Mrs. Campbell Praed

CHAPTER 4

Maule's and Lady Bridget's TETE-TETE dinner was an embarrassed meal, with Kuppi and Maggie hovering about the table. The man's eyes said more than his lips, and the woman sat, strained and silent, or else uttered forced commonplaces.

They were alone at last on the veranda, with night and the vast distances enfolding them. The air was close and hot, the sky banked with storm clouds, and, occasionally, there were flashes of sheet lightning and low growls of thunder. Before long the head-station was very quiet. Harris had inspected the hide-house and, having assured himself of the safety of his prisoner, had retired to the veranda room, making a great parade of keeping his door open, his gun loaded, and his clothes on, ready for any emergency. Joe Casey had gone to his hut, the Chinaman and the Malay boy to theirs, and Maggie, the woman servant, to her own tiny room wedged in between the new house and the kitchen wing.

But it was all early. At that hour, Maule laughingly reminded Lady Bridget, the dining world of London would scarcely have reached the dessert stage.

She would not waste time on banalities.

'I've been waiting to tell you something. My mind is quite made up. I can't go on like this any longer. You must go away to-morrow.'

'To-morrow!' he echoed in dismay.

'Yes. I've thought it out. You don't know the country, but the mailman will be here to-morrow, and he can show you the road.'

'You are very kind.... Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?'

'Surely you understand. You made me a scene yesterday. You'd go on making me scenes.'

'And you?'

She gave a hard little laugh. 'Oh! I—don't want to play any more.'

'You call it play! To me it's deadly earnest. I let you go once. I do not mean to let you go again.'

'But you are talking wildly. Don't you see that it is impossible we can be friends.'

'Oh! that I grant you. We must be everything to each other—or nothing.'

In spite of her cold peremptoriness he could see that she was deeply agitated. That fact gave him courage. His voice dropped to the tender persuasive note which had always affected her like a spell.

'My dear—my very dearest.... We made a great mistake once. Let us forget that. Death has opened the gate of freedom—for me, at least—and I can only feel remorseful thankfulness. We have again a chance of happiness. We will not throw it away a second time.'

'You seem to forget that if you are free I am married.'

'What a marriage? Call it a mad adventure.'

'That may be,' she said bitterly. 'But it doesn't alter the fact that I did care very much for my husband.' She brought out the last words with difficulty.

'DID care. You put it in the past tense. You don't care for him any longer. It would be astonishing if you did. One has only to see you together.... Oh, Biddy, it was so like you to rush off to the other side of the world, and ruin your life for the sake of some strange impracticable idea! I can follow it all....'

'You are mistaken,' she put in.

'I think not. You married in a fit of revulsion against the conditions in which you were living—the hollow shams of an effete civilisation—that's the correct phrase, isn't it? And—well, perhaps there was another reason for the revulsion.... And you thought you had found the remedy for it all. Oh! I admit that he is very good looking, and, of course, he worshipped you—until he had you secure, and then he reverted to the ways of his kind. "Nature's gentlemen" usually do....'

'Be silent, Will,' she exclaimed vehemently. 'You don't understand.'

'My dear, your very anger tells me that I do understand. Why! naturally your imagination was set on fire. The Bush was painted to you in its most glowing colours. No doubt, as you said, it's a Garden of Eden in good seasons. Wonderful vegetation, glorious liberty—no galling conventions—vast spaces—romance—and the will o' the wisp wealth of the Wild. Confess now ... are not my guesses correct?'

'Yes—partly.' She spoke with reluctance. 'But I remember that YOU used to talk to me about the joys of the Wild,' she added with sharp irony.

'Oh, yes, I know it all. I've been there myself. And it's only when El Dorado proves a delusion that one begins to hanker—I did before I met you—for the advantages of civilised existence.'

'Well, you have secured those. Why not go and enjoy them as I'm asking you to do.'

'They have no value for me, unless I may share them with you. Bridget, I can give you everything now that you once asked for.'

'With your wife's money?'

He drew back sharply. 'Ah! You CAN hit a man!' and there was silence for a few minutes. Then he leaned closer to her, and his fingers touched the gold cigarette case which lay on the arm of the squatter's chair in which she was sitting. He went on in a changed manner.

'Poor Evelyn left her fortune to me, knowing the truth. She was a noble-souled woman. I was not worthy of her. But unworthy as I may have been, Bridget, I deserved better of my wife than your husband deserves of you. At least, I did not deceive her.'

'What do you mean? Colin did not deceive me. That, at all events, is not one of his faults towards me.'

'Has he told you, then, why he keeps on his station that insolent woman and her yellow-haired blue-eyed boy?'

Bridget started visibly. He saw that his shaft had struck the mark. But she answered calmly:

'I don't know what you want to imply. I thought you knew that Mrs Hensor's husband was killed on one of Colin's expeditions, and that he looked after her and her boy on that account.'

'Oh, yes, I've heard that story. But it seemed common gossip at Tunumburra that there was another—less creditable—explanation.'

She turned fiercely upon him. 'You have no right to make such an abominable accusation.'

'I only mention what I heard. I went about a good deal there in bar saloons, and to men's gatherings. Naturally, I was interested in the district where, by the way, McKeith does not appear to be over popular. Of course, I attached no great importance to the gossip then. It only made me wonder. Oddly enough, to-day when I was out with the tailing mob, one of the men repeated it—I need not say that I stopped him. He said he'd had it as a fact from a man who was a long time in your husband's employ—a man called Steadbolt.'

Again the scene in front of Fig Tree Mount Hotel flashed before Lady Bridget, and Demon Doubt rose up clothed now in more material substance. Her voice shook as she answered, though she tried to be loyal:

'Steadbolt was discharged from my husband's employment. He is another of Mrs Hensor's rejected suitors. That speaks for itself.'

'Strange that Mrs Hensor should reject so many suitors without apparent reason,' said Maule.

Bridget did not seem able to bear any more. Her head drooped upon her hands, her shoulders heaved convulsively.

'I don't know what to do—I am alone. It's an insult to talk to me in this way.'

'I want to protect you from insult—I want to take you out of these miserable conditions—and there's only one way to do that,' he pleaded.

He took her hands in his and kissed them passionately. 'Oh, I love you. There's nothing in the world I would not do to make you my wife. Why should you hesitate? It breaks my heart to see you unappreciated, neglected, living the sort of rough life that might suit a labourer's daughter, but which is sacrilege for Lady Bridget O'Hara. A man had no right to condemn a beautiful, refined woman like you to such a fate.... Well there' as she murmured incoherently, 'I'll not say any more about that since it hurts you. You see, I respect your wishes. I'll even go away at once, if you command it, and leave you to form your own judgment. I will stay in Leichardt's Town—in Sydney—anywhere—until you have decided for yourself—as I know you must do—how impossible it is for you to remain here. Then I will meet you wherever you please, and we will go to Europe together—bury ourselves abroad—wait in any part of the world you may choose, until the divorce proceedings are over, and we are free to marry. You need not be afraid of scandal, the thing can be kept out of the English papers. It's so far away that nobody will remember you were married to an Australian. Besides, anything of the sort is so easily got over nowadays. My darling, why do you look at me with those tragic eyes? It is not like the old Biddy to be a slave to Mrs Grundy.'

She had been listening, sitting rigid in her chair, her hands still in his, looking at him in a strange fixed manner, almost like a person in the first stage of hypnotism. Now she snatched her hands away and gave a sobbing cry.

'Oh, I'm not the old Biddy. I never can be again.'

'Dear love—believe me, when I promise you that you shall never have cause for regret.'

He would have taken her into his arms, but she drew herself back.

'Will, you don't understand. And I don't understand myself, I can't see things clearly. It's all been so sudden—Colin going away—you—everything.... I want to be alone. I want to find myself.'

He moved aside with a slight inclination of his head as if to let her pass. 'I told you that I would do anything you wish.'

'You mean that—really? Then I wish you to go away at once. You said you would leave me to decide for myself. I take you at your word, and I shall write to you, by-and-by. Promise me that you will go.'

'I have no choice. Your will is law to me. But understand, dearest—I am only waiting.'

'It's good of you not to want to worry and argue.... Don't you understand?—I couldn't bear you to be here when Colin comes back. You must go to Tunumburra to-morrow.'

'Go to Tunumburra to-morrow?' he repeated blankly.

'It's on the way to Leuraville, and you can take the steamer from there. I will write to you in Leichardt's Town. Oh, it's quite simple. The mailman will be here early. You can leave a letter saying that you are recalled.'

'I understand.' Her definite planning gave him hope that she had already made up her mind, and that she would join him in Leuraville or Leichardt's Town. After all, that might be best. 'But I shall see you again. The mailman is not here yet. I have still a few hours respite.'

She made no answer at first. Then 'Good-night,' she said abruptly, and flitted like a small white ghost along the dim veranda.

'Lady Bridget!' His voice stopped her. It shook a little, but the manner was conventional, and she gained confidence from that and turned irresolutely.

'Lady Bridget. While we've been talking about ourselves, we've forgotten that unfortunate black-boy. I only want to tell you, that you may depend on your wishes being carried out. I shall go to my room and watch my opportunity. Trust me, that's all—in everything.'

'Thank you,' she answered simply. 'I do trust you.'

She came back a few steps, and he met her in the middle of the veranda. In one of her swift transitions of mood a humorous element in the situation seemed to appeal to her, and she said with a laugh:—'It's comical, isn't it? The two tragedies, black and white—we two here—those two out there!'

Just then the black curtain of cloud, that had been rising slowly and obscuring the stars, was torn by a strong flash of chain lightning. It threw up her face in startling clearness and he saw, in strange blend with the conflicting emotions upon it, the wraith of her old whimsical smile.

He did not answer her laugh. In truth, the man's nature was stirred to a more deep-reaching extent perhaps than ever in his life before. It may have been the flash of lightning recalling a momentary flash of illumination that had once shone upon his own soul.

That had been when he was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife, and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and stupid—except in her love for him—and his sentiments towards her had been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to the bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened, during a spasm of remorseful self-abasement, some nobler quality latent in the man.

And now—as that flash of lightning illuminated Bridget's face and made him keenly sensitive to the charm of her personality—her wayward fascination, her inconsistencies, her weakness, her temperamental craving for dramatic contrast, her reckless toying with emotion—by a curious law of paradox, there came back upon Willoughby Maule that scene with his dying wife, and he had again the flashing perception of something sacred, unexplainable, to which his own nature could not reach.

It sobered him. He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the memory of it must for ever bind her to him.

But the impulse was past. They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the interval—it seemed a very long one—between the lightning flash, and the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.

Then he said mechanically, like one walking out of a dream? 'There's going to be a storm. Are you frightened?'

'No,' she answered. 'I'm never frightened of storms!' and added, 'besides, Colin would be so glad of rain.'

Before he could reply, she had glided away again and he was alone.

He thought it strange that she should be thinking of her husband and his material interests just then.