Lady Bridget McKeith had been married about a year and a quarter.
Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring.
That drear spectre of drought hung over the Never-Never Land.
Lady Bridget stood by the railing of the veranda at Moongarr, looking
out for two expected arrivals at the head-station--that of her husband,
who had been camping out after cattle--and of the mailman--colloquially,
Harry the Blower--who this week was to bring an English mail.
Perhaps the last arrival seemed to her at the moment most important of
the two. The bush wife had long since begun to feel a sort of home
sickness for English news. Yet, had you asked her, she would have told
you that barbarism still had a greater hold than civilisation.
There did not, however, appear to be much of the barbarian about Lady
Bridget. She still looked like an old picture in the high-waisted
tea-gown of limp yellow silk that she had put on early for dinner, and
she still trailed wisps of old lace round her slender shoulders. There
was the same touzle of curly hair, like yellow-brown spun glass or
filaments of burnished copper, which was shining now in the westering
sun. The finely-modelled brows and shadowy eyes were as beautiful as
when Colin McKeith had first beheld his goddess stepping on to
Australian earth.
But for all that, a change had taken place in her--a different one from
the indefinable yet significant change which is felt in almost every
woman after marriage. There is usually in the young wife's face an
expression of fulfilment, of deepened experience--a certain settled,
satisfied look. And this was what was lacking in Lady Bridget's face.
The restless soul within seemed to be peering out through hungry eyes.
She could see nothing human from the veranda except the blue-smocked
figure of Fo Wung, the Chinaman, at work in his vegetable garden by the
lagoon. There was one large water-hole and a succession of small ones,
connected by water-courses, now dry, and meandering from a gully, which
on the eastern side broke the hill against which Moongarr head-station
was built. The straggling gum forest, interspersed with patches of
sandal-wood and mulga, that backed the head-station, stopped short at
the gully, and beyond, stretched wolds of melancholy gidia scrub.
Looking up from the end of the veranda, Lady Bridget could see an
irregular line of grey-brown boulders, jagged and evidently of volcanic
origin, marking the line of gully. These gave a touch of romantic
wildness to the otherwise peaceful scene.
Lady Bridget's gaze went along a track skirting the gidia scrub, and
crossing the lower end of the gully near the lagoon, to the great plain
which spread in front of the head-station. Except for some green trees
by the lagoon, a few ragged belts of gum and sandal-wood or single
isolated trees dotted about, the plain was unwooded to the horizon.
There were also silhouetted upon the sky the grotesque-looking sails of
one or two windmill-pumps. In the foreground the plain was intersected
by lines of grey fencing, within which browsed straggling herds of lean
cattle, mostly along the curve of the lagoon.
Neither plain nor lagoon formed altogether pleasing objects of
contemplation just now, for they spoke eloquently of the threatened
drought. When Lady Bridget had come up a bride, the plain had been
fairly green. The sandal-wood blossoms were out and wild flowers
plentiful. The lagoon was then flush with the grass, and its water, on
which white, pink and blue lilies floated, had reflected the vegetation
at its edge. Now the lagoon had shrunk and the water in the gully was
in places a mere trickle. Of course, the trees were there--ti-tree,
flooded gum, and so forth--but they looked brown and ragged. One
standing by itself, a giant white cedar, which in spring was a mass of
white and mauve bloom and in winter of scarlet berries, had a wide
strip of brown mud between it and the water that had formerly laved its
roots.
Lady Bridget had thought that the rocky gully, the lagoon and the vast
plain made as pretty a landscape as she had ever seen, when she had
first looked upon it in the early morn after her homecoming. Now, as
she paced up and down the veranda--for she was in a restless mood--her
mind went back to that bridal homecoming. They had not arrived at the
head-station till after dusk, but it had been visible from the plain a
long way off, and she had examined it with ardent curiosity through her
field-glasses in the clear light of sunset.
She had seen a collection of rough buildings backed by the forest, and
from different points of view, as they drew nearer, had made out that
the three principal ones formed three sides of a square. Two of
these--the side wings--were old and of primitive construction--slab
walls, bark roofs, and low verandas, overgrown with creepers. Colin
explained that these were the Old Humpey--as he called the original
dwelling house--and the kitchen and store building opposite. Lately,
the New House had been put up at right angles with the old buildings,
and fronting the plain. It had been begun before his trip south and
practically finished during his absence. Colin was very proud of the
New House.
It was made of sawn wood and had a high-pitched roof of corrugated
zinc, turned to gold by the sunset rays upon it. There was a deep
veranda all round the New House, and it was much taller than the wings,
being raised on blood-wood piles, that had been tarred to keep off
white ants, and with a flight of wooden steps leading up to the veranda.
The details of Moongarr head-station became familiar enough later to
its new mistress. Besides the dwelling houses were various huts and
outbuildings. The stock-yards lay on a piece of level ground behind at
the side of the gully, and between the yards and the House stood a
small slab and bark cottage--the Bachelors' Quarters.
Even though glorified by the sunset, it had given Lady Bridget a little
shock to see how crude and--architecturally speaking--unlovely was her
new home. But her Celtic imagination was stirred by the weirdness of
the grey-green gum forest, and of the mournful gidia scrub, framing the
picture.
Then, as dusk crept closer, and the great plain, along which the tired
horses plodded, became one illimitable shadow out of which rose strange
sounds of beasts and eerie night cries of birds, the spell of the
wilderness renewed itself and she felt herself enveloped in world-old
mystery.
She remembered how the lights of the head-station against the forest
blackness had looked like welcoming torches and how she had roused
herself out of her weariness at the last spurt of the equally weary
buggy horses. Then the jolt in the dark over the sliprails, the slow
strain of the wheels up the hill, the cracking of Moongarr Bill's
stock-whip, and the sound of long drawn COO-EES. Also of dogs barking,
of men running forward. Then how Colin had lifted her down and half
carried her into the parlour. She remembered her dazed glance round and
the rushing thought of how she could soften its ugliness. Yet it had
looked welcoming. A log fire blazing, the table spread, a Chinese cook
in baggy blue garments--pigtail flowing; a Malay boy; her bewildered
question--was there no woman in the establishment? Then Colin's
strident call from the veranda--'Mrs Hensor. Where's Mrs Hensor!' And
the appearance presently of Florrie Hensor--youngish, tall, a full
figure; black hair, frizzed and puffed, a showy face, red cheeks,
redder lips, rather sullen, flashing dark eyes--who had received Lady
Bridget almost as if she had been her equal, and of whom the bride had
at once made an enemy by her frigidly haughty response. From the first
moment, Lady Bridget had disliked Mrs Hensor. But she had felt a vague
attraction towards the little yellow-headed, blue-eyed boy clinging to
Mrs Hensor's skirts. As for any uneasiness on the score of Steadbolt's
insolent insinuations, she had absolutely dismissed that from her mind.
Yes--that bridal homecoming--how strange it had seemed! How rough
everything was! How impossible the whole thing would have appeared to
her had any fortune-teller in Bond Street prophesied the end of her
marriage journey!
And how, in the first moment of settling down, she had laughed with
Colin at the thought of what Chris and Molly Gaverick, and 'Eliza
Countess' would have said! But with what dauntless energy she had
worked in transforming her new abode and in making it reflect her own
personality. She had felt really grateful, she said, to the Union
delegates for having enticed away the builders before the inside
furnishings were complete. Soon they got hold of a bush carpenter, and
she was provided with occupation for a good many months.
Lady Bridget had been very happy in those early days. Colin had seemed
so thoroughly in the picture--strong, chivalrous, adoring--like a
Viking worshipping his conquered bride. The romance of it all appealed
tremendously to the Celtic blood in Bridget. It was her nature, when
she gave, to give generously. She had become genuinely in love with her
bush husband during that wonderful honeymoon journey.
Ah, that journey! What an experience! If she could have written it down
as a new adventure of 'The Lady of Quality,' how the great Gibbs would
have jumped at her 'copy!' Well, she had practically done so in her
letters to Joan Gildea--now back in her London flat. But the true
inwardness of the adventure was a thing never to be put into words.
No sign yet of the men. Lady Bridget ceased her restless pacing and
swung herself slowly to and fro in a hammock at the end of the veranda.
As she swung she traversed over again in her imagination the stages of
that honeymoon journey.
Two hundred and twenty-five miles of it, after the first camp out. Many
more nights under the stars. Then out of the gum forests they had gone
through the great western plains, covering ground fairly easily, for
McKeith had arranged to have fresh horses on the road, and they always
drove a spare pair ahead of the buggy. Occasionally they stopped at a
head-station. Once at night they pulled up at a bush house, and a
strange old man had put his head out of a window and shouted to them in
the darkness. 'If ye've come to see me, I'm drunk,' he had said, 'and
if you've come to drink, the rum-keg's empty, but ye'll find a pint pot
outside and a little water in the tank.' And then he had shut the
window again and refused further parley.
They had camped, hungry, in the paddock--for provisions had run out,
and on that account, and because the horses had strayed in the night,
they had to go again to the house. The old man, sober and ashamed,
captivated likewise by Lady Bridget's beauty and charm, apologised
almost on his knees--he made Biddy think of Thackeray's picture of Sir
Pitt Crawley proposing to Becky Sharp. Old Mr Duppo, it was--the father
of Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker, who had recently been breaking in
colts at Moongarr.
They stayed till the horses were found. Mr Duppo had a housekeeper--now
if Mrs Hensor had been like that housekeeper there could have been no
cause for jealous scandal. An aged dame, long, bony--dressed in a short
green petticoat and tartan jacket, with a little checked shawl over her
head and pinned under a bearded chin. She poured tea out of a tin
teapot and leaned over her master's chair at meal times to carve the
salt beef.
Lady Bridget sketched the pair. The old man roared over the sketch, but
the housekeeper bore her a grudge for it, and afterwards had not a good
word for the 'Ladyship' who had slipped out of her proper sphere into
the Never-Never country.
There were plenty of other small adventures which would have made the
hair of Lady Gaverick and her friends stand on end. A dream-drive
indeed, full of sort of 'Alice in Wonderland' episodes. Bush life Out
Back--a jumble of odd characters and situations. Fencers' camps,
cattle-drivers' camps, bullock-dray camps. There had been a baby born
unexpectedly under the tilt of a bullock-dray, on one occasion, the
night before McKeith's party appeared on the scene, and Lady Bridget
had a trunk down from the buggy, and there in the road tore up some of
her fine-laced smocks and petticoats to provide swaddling clothes for
the poor little scrap of mortality. And there were tramps 'humping
bluey' on the track likewise, and diggers carrying their picks. Bridget
liked seeing Colin hail-fellow-well-met with them all--sharing tucker
and quart-pot tea. She wished that her socialistic friends of the old
played-out civilisation could see this shrewd, practical humanitarian
of the Bush.
They came very close to each other in those long days of the
dream-drive. He talked to her as he had never talked before, and as he
talked rarely afterwards. He drew aside curtains from recesses of his
real nature, the existence of which she had not suspected, and, in
truth, at a later time, doubted. Then, if in broad sunlight the shy,
rough exterior of the man would close suddenly over those secret
chambers, when evening came, it would seem as though the camp fire
illuminated them once more.
After the first time or two, he allowed her to boss the camp 'lay-out.'
It was she who spread the blankets on Wombo's beds of grass tree tops
and dry herbage. Wombo and the 'big feller White Mary' (the adjective
used metaphorically as expressive of distinction) made great friends in
those days--out of which friendship sprang, alas! in due time, certain
tragic happenings. It was Lady Bridget who would set the billy boiling
and who, after one or two failures, succeeded in making excellent
johnny-cakes. She remembered her first performance in that line under
the eyes of a small group of admiring spectators--her husband 'just
waiting to see how the new-chum cook shaped,' and, as he said the
words, she, glancing up from the sheet of bark and the dough she was
kneading, caught a look in his face which was something she could never
in all her life forget. And Moongarr Bill with the horses' reins over
his arm, and the two black-boys agape, beady eyes twinkling, white
teeth glistening, emitting their queer guttural clicks of approbation,
and an occasional 'My word! Bujeri you, Lathy-chap,' the nearest they
could get to Moongarr Bill's accepted form of address. There was joy,
glory to Lady Bridget in this playing of the squaw and fending for her
man, ceasing to be the goddess and becoming the primal woman.
And the sports, and songs, and stories by the camp fire! Moongarr
Bill's yarns, Colin's exploring tales, Wombo's and Cudgee's dances and
corroboree-tunes--strange, weird music that had a fascination for Lady
Bridget. She, too, would get up and sing CARMEN'S famous air, and the
Neapolitan peasant songs of her mother's youth. Never, for sure, had
the gaunt gum trees echoed back such strains as these.
But time came when all the romance of barbarism seemed to have fizzled
out and only cruel realities remained--when work and worry turned
McKeith from the worshipping lover into the rough-tongued, irritable
bushman--when his 'hands' deserted him, his cattle died and things
generally went wrong, and when he showed himself something of the
hard-headed, parsimonious, ill-conditioned Scotch mongrel that
Steadbolt had called him. When, indeed, he seemed to have forgotten
that Lady Bridget O'Hara had graciously permitted him to worship her,
but had not bargained for being treated--well, as many another out-back
squatter--treats his help-mate. Then Bridget would tell herself
bitterly that it might have been better had she married a civilised
gentleman. There would sometimes be scenes and sometimes sulks, and
those times no doubt accounted for the hungry look in Lady Bridget's
eyes and the slight hardening of her mouth.
She was loyal though, in spite of her many faults, and 'game' in her
own way--and when Colin came out of his dour moods, she was generally
ready to meet him half way.
For, through all, the memory of the dream-drive honeymoon lingered. And
the bit of bark, sapless, brown, curled up by the heat into almost a
tube, and partially eaten by white ants--before the desecrating assault
had been discovered and the termites' nest destroyed with boiling
water--was still cherished as a sacred symbol.
While she swung in the hammock the memory pictures came and went like a
cinematograph show--the dream-drive presently merging into an
electioneering trip through McKeith's constituency a few weeks after
her bridal homecoming.
The 'Lady of Quality' might, had she been so minded, have also made
spicy capital out of the humours of that political contest--in which,
unhappily, the Labour Party had triumphed. Steadbolt had had his say on
the occasion, and there had been a free fight--Lady Bridget was not
present, and only heard darkly of the occurrence--when Steadbolt had
got the worst of it in an encounter with his late employer.
But all that was but a small side-show, and not likely to affect in any
great measure Lady Bridget's life. Except that the loss of McKeith's
seat in the Legislative Assembly made it no longer necessary for him to
spend at least part of the winter session in Leichardt's Town. Nor
would Lady Bridget have the opportunity to resume her old intimacy at
Government House. In any case, however, she was not destined to see
more of her old friend in Australia. A few months previously, Lady
Tallant had developed symptoms of grave disease--it was said that the
Leichardt's Land climate did not agree with her, and she had gone back
to England, leaving Sir Luke to perform his duties without her help.