Lady Bridget had read so far when the door of the bathroom opened and
McKeith came out, clean again in fresh riding gear, and with a valise
ready packed and strapped in his hand.
The noise of the cattle became much louder, though the mob was not yet
in sight.
'I wish I hadn't got to go off before the branding,' he said. 'These
Breeza Downs people always want to claim every cleanskin*. You might
tell Ninnis and Moongarr Bill, Biddy, to keep a sharp look-out. And now
let me have my grub--I'm sorry, dear, to have you hurry up your
dinner.' He strode along to the dining-room, too absorbed in his own
annoyances to notice his wife's face or to ask any questions about her
letters.
[*cleanskin--unbranded calf]
Lady Bridget gathered them up and followed him. The Malay boy waited at
table with the assistance of a servant girl from Leuraville, the only
female domestic--with the exception of Mrs Hensor--on the head-station.
McKeith swallowed his soup and ate the savoury stew prepared by the
Chinese cook with the appetite of a man who had been all day in the
saddle. Lady Bridget, who was an extraordinarily rapid eater, as well
as a fastidious one, had finished long before he was half-way through.
She sat silent at first, while he growled over the outrage upon the
horses. Then suddenly visualising the poor beasts lying stiff in
congealed blood, and the mailman's exaggerated description of trees
black with crows, she flamed out in wrathful horror, and was as anxious
as her husband that the perpetrators of the crime should be brought to
justice. He seemed pleased, and a little surprised at the ebullition.
'I thought you weren't taking it quite in, Biddy. I am glad you think
like me, though I expect yours is the humanitarian view and mine's the
practical one. This touches my pocket, you see. Well, anyway, you won't
be so keen now on defending the Unionists.'
'I think they've got as much right to fight for their principles as we
have for ours, but I don't think they've the right to torture horses,'
she rejoined. Her sympathy with oppressed shearers and dispossessed
natives struck always a jarring note between them. His long upper lip
closed tightly on the lower one, and he hunched his great shoulders.
'Well, that sort of argufying won't muster the cattle,' he observed
drily, plagiarising Harry the Blower. She changed the subject.
'Did you have a good muster?'
'Oh, fair! Between three and four hundred head. The water is running
still up in the range. We should have done better if that skunk Wombo
hadn't bolted.'
Lady Bridget leaned forward with interest.
'Oh! Then he HAS gone after the black-gin. Brave Wombo!'
'I wouldn't care a cuss whether he went after the black-gin or not;
she's a half-caste, by the way, and all the worse for that. And he
might stop with her, if it wasn't that he knows the country, and can
spot the gullies where the cattle hide. I've no use for
sentiment--especially black sentiment--when it's a case of a forced
sale to keep me going. My heavens! there's only one thing, Biddy, that
could break me, and it's drought. I believe we're in for a long one,
and unless I can make sales quickly and get money to sink new bores on
the run, things will go hardly with me. Harry the Blower spoke naked
truth for once in his life.'
'Oh! but there's sure to be rain soon. It looked so like it last
night,' she answered lightly.
'LOOKED so like it! Yes, and ended in wind and dust. Sure sign of
drought! I must be off.... Here, give me the LEICHARDT LAND CHRONICLE,
and don't expect me till you see me.... And by the way, Biddy, I hear
there's a Unionist Organiser going the round of the stations and
pretending to parley with the masters. Don't you be philanthropic
enough to let him open his jaws--I've told Ninnis he's to be hounded
off before he has time to get off his saddle.'
'Colin, you are unjust all round. You were very unjust to Wombo. Why
shouldn't the poor black-boy marry as well as you or anyone else?'
McKeith gave a hard laugh.
'I'm not preventing him from marrying. I only said I wasn't going to
have his gin on my station.'
'You wouldn't listen when he told you that he didn't dare go back to
his tribe--because his gin's husband threatened to kill him.'
'My sympathies are with the gin's husband. What business has Wombo to
steal another man's wife?'
'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.
'No, you're not going to put that theory into practice, Mate.... I'm
not afraid. So we'll leave it at that. And now what's this about the
black-boy to do with my being unjust to that Organiser? There's no
beastly sentiment in his case. He's out to make money, that's all.'
'You won't hear what he's got to put forward on his side any more than
you would listen to poor Wombo.'
'No, I won't. I'm not taking any--either in gins or in organisers. Let
'em show their faces here, and they'll pretty soon become aware of the
fact.'
Lady Bridget took away her hands and moved to the veranda. Outside,
McKeith's horse was waiting. He strapped on his valise, finished
ramming the tobacco into his pipe, then going behind his wife, bent
downward and hastily kissed her cheek. She did not turn her head.
'Good-bye, Biddy. Don't you go worrying over the blacks or the
Unionists. And if you're dull and want a job there'll be a spice of
excitement in helping to tail that mob of scrubbers. I had to hire two
stray chaps, we're so short-handed.' He went down the steps to the
outer paling. Still she made no response, though now she turned and
watched him vault into the saddle. She also saw his face lighten at
sight of Mrs Hensor's boy with the great pawpaw apple. Tommy Hensor was
a favourite with the Boss.
'Bless you, boy, it's as big as yourself. Take it back to the Quarters
and tell your mother to give you a slice, or perhaps her ladyship will
cut it for you.'
He trotted off in the direction of the gully and of the roar of cattle.
Lady Bridget could see the heaving backs of the mob, and could hear the
shouts of the stockmen as they rounded the beasts to the crossing.
Tommy Hensor looked up pleadingly to her, holding out the pawpaw apple.
His yellow hair flamed to gold in the sunset, his blue eyes were as
bright almost as Colin's. Lady Bridget shook her head.
'No, I don't want you this evening, Tommy. Take that back to your
mother.'
She settled herself in the hammock and read Molly Gaverick's letter
over again. Then she read one from Joan Gildea. Joan was in the full
swing of London journalism again. She gave Bridget rather fuller news
of Eliza Countess of Gaverick, and dwelt at some length upon the old
lady's interest in Bridget's wild life and in Bridget's husband.
'You may be sure,' wrote Joan, 'that I had nothing but good to say of
Colin, and oh! Biddy, dearest, how rejoiced I am to know that he is
making you so happy. I could read between the lines of all your amusing
descriptions and sketches of "the Dream-drive." I had my doubts and my
fears, as I never concealed from you, but I believe that you have found
the true, well-beloved at last.'
There was a good deal, too, in the letter about Rosamond Tallant, who
was in cheerful spirits, it seemed, in spite of the impending
operation, and would not hear of Sir Luke's asking for leave to be with
her--and so on--and so on. Not a word about Willoughby Maule and his
bereavement--which, after all, could not be so very recent. Why had
Joan never mentioned it? Was she afraid of rousing regret and of
awakening painful memories.
* Cleanskin--Unbranded calf.