'Now I'm going to stow away my own traps. My cabin is just facing this and you've only got to call out if you want anything. Eh, but my word! Biddy, it's a fine thing to be marrying from Government House. The Company has done us both proud.'
CHAPTER 4
They were landed at Leuraville on the evening of the fourth day. A tender took them off with the mails—as it happened, they were the only passengers for that small sea-township. Ordinary business folk going north, preferred the smaller coasting steamers which put in at every port. The postmaster, the portmaster, the police magistrate, and a few local notables were waiting to receive them at the wharf. McKeith greeted them all heartily and rather shyly introduced them to his bride. The local men were shy also. They mostly addressed her as Mrs McKeith. The police magistrate—Captain Halliwell, lean, dark, sallow, with a rather weak mouth, but more carefully dressed than the others, and with an English voice, called her Lady Bridget. He was a retired officer of the ROYAL ENGINEERS. She had been told and now remembered that men in the ROYAL ENGINEERS were popularly said either to be religious or cranks. This man was a Christian Scientist which he announced when apologising for not offering the hospitality of his house, a new baby having arrived the day previously, ushered into the world, he explained, by prayer and faith and without benefit of medical skill.
Bridget knew something about Christian Scientists. She plunged at once into faith-healing ethics with the police-magistrate, while Colin saw about getting the trunks off the tender. How odd it seemed to be talking about London and Christian science in a place like this!
Leuraville too seemed part of a dream. But her face soon lost its bewildered look. She became interested in her surroundings, although there was no suggestion here of savage freedom or romantic adventure.
Leuraville showed low and hot and ugly. A red sun near its dropping, drew up the miasmic vapours from the mangrove-fringed reaches stretching on either side of the wharf. Some light crafts were moored about. A schooner was loading up with cattle—wretched diseased beasts. Bridget watched them with shuddering repulsion—being hoisted up and slung aboard with ropes. The men at their task swore so abominably that the police-magistrate stepped up to them and remonstrated on the plea of a lady's presence. Bridget had never heard such swear-words. She was used to the ordinary 'damn,' but these oaths were so horribly coarse. Colin, who was asking local questions of the other men appeared to take it all as a matter of course. The men stopped their work to stare at Lady Bridget. They wore dirty corduroys hitched up with a strap over flannel shirts that were open at the neck and left their brawny breasts exposed. There were other loafers in flannel shirts, hitched up trousers and greasy felt or cabbage-tree hats, and there were two or three blacks of the demoralised type seen in coast townships. Now, one of the bullocks got loose and rushed blindly down the wharf, and Bridget shrieked and clung wildly to her husband's arm until it was headed back again.
Colin laughed at her terror.
'It's all right, Biddy. But how's that for a Bushman's wife. You'll see lots of cattle up at Moongarr.'
Moongarr was the name off his station which was to be her future home.
'I hate cows. Once I was charged by a wild cow and I've been afraid of them ever since.'