'The husband broke her head with a nulla-nulla, and she loves Wombo and Wombo loves her. I consider that any woman, whether she's black or white, who lives with her husband while she loves another man is committing a sin,' said Lady Bridget hotly.
McKeith stopped in the act of filling his tobacco pouch from a jar on the mantelpiece and looked sharply at his wife.
'You think that, Biddy. I remember long ago you said something of that sort to me. It isn't my idea of morality or of justice. But I'm one with you this far. If I'd ever reason to believe that you loved another man and wanted to go off with him—you might go—I wouldn't put out a hand to stop you. And then....'
'And then?' She had grown very white.
'Well, I think I'd make another notch in my gun first—and it would be a previous one—for myself that time.'
'No, you wouldn't, Colin. Because you know I shouldn't be worth it—and you are not the man to funk.'
'I'm not. But where YOU come in—Good Lord! Mate! What would there be left for me to live for?'
Her heart thrilled to the old term of endearment, to which in their early honeymoon days she had attached a sentimental value. Of late it had fallen into disuse, and when she had heard him on occasions greet the foreman, may be of some stray party of drivers or surveyors with the bush formula: 'Good day, mate!' she had felt with deep aggrievement that she no longer desired the appellative. She had not yet realised that while the word 'mate' in Australese, like the verb AIMER in French, may be used as a mere colloquial term, it implies in the deeper sense a sanctity of relation upon which hangs the whole code of Bush chivalry.
'Oh, Colin!' Her eyes glistened with tears. She felt ashamed of her neurotic fancies and her resentment of his lacks in the matter of conventional courtesies—of his outward hardness, his want of sympathy with her ideals.
He came to her, taking her two hands while keeping his pipe in one of his own so that the whiff of the coarse 'Store-cut' tobacco made her wrinkle her nose and stemmed the tide of emotion. But he did not seem to notice this.