Lady Bridget made as dignified a retreat as was possible in the
circumstances. She could have slain Mrs Hensor at that moment. She took
the blacks to the veranda of the old Humpey and went to look in the
office for antiseptics, lint and bandages. Chen Sing, the Chinese cook,
came at her call, and rendered assistance with the bland phlegm of his
race. The spear had been pulled out of Oola's arm by the time Lady
Bridget came back with the dressings. In her spasms of East End
philanthropy she had learned the first principles of surgical aid. When
Oola's arm and Wombo's gashed head had been washed and bandaged, the
trouble was to know what to do with the pair.
Now that they were comfortable and out of pain, fed and given tobacco
to smoke and a tot of rum apiece, they had time to remember
superstitious fears kept at bay while they had been running for their
life. Both were afraid to show themselves in the open. On one hand,
there was the terror of McKeith; on the other, of Oola's husband. Lady
Bridget gathered that Oola's husband was a medicine man, and that he
had 'pointed a bone at his faithless wife and her lover.' To 'point a
bone' at an enemy--the bone having first been smeared with human blood,
and subjected to magical incantations--is the worst spell that one
aboriginal can cast upon another. It means death or the direst
misfortune. All that the afflicted one can do is to fly--to hide
himself beyond the sorcerer's ken and the reach of pursuit. For this
reason, Wombo and Oola had fled back to Moongarr. No outside black
dared venture within range of McKeith's gun. Now Wombo and Oola
besought Bridget to hide them from the vengeful furies. There was that
slab and bark hut at the end of the kitchen and store wing. Nobody was
likely at present to want to go into it. The door had a padlock, and it
was used as a store-house for the hides of beasts that had been killed
for the sake of the skins when in the last stage of pleuro. The key was
always kept hung up in McKeith's office.
Here Lady Bridget installed Wombo and Oola. She brought them cooked
meat, bread and a ration of tea and sugar, provided them with a pair of
blankets, and found for Wombo some old moleskins, a shirt, and a pair
of boots, while Oola almost forgot the medicine man's evil spell in her
puzzled delight over a lacey undergarment and a discarded kimono
dressing-grown, which had been part of Lady Bridget's trousseau. That
excitement over, the lonely mistress of Moongarr went back to her own
habitation. She ate her solitary dinner and paced the veranda till
darkness fell and the haunted loneliness became an almost unbearable
oppression. Vast plains, distant ranges, gidia scrub and the far
horizon melted into an illimitable shadow. The world seemed boundless
as the starry sky--and yet she was in prison! She had longed for the
freedom of the wild, and her life was more circumscribed than ever. A
phrase in an Australian poem, that had struck her when she had read it
not long ago came back upon her with poignant meaning. 'Eucalyptic
cloisterdom'--that was the phrase, and it was this to which she had
condemned herself. The gum trees enclosed for her one immense cell and
she had become utterly weary of her mental and her spiritual
incarceration. Oh! for the sting of love's strong emotion to break the
monotony. The most sordid sights and sounds of London streets, the most
inane babble of a fashionable crowd would be more stimulating to her
brain, sweeter in her ears than the arid expanse, the weird bush
noises--howl of dingoes, wail of curlews, lowing of cattle--that a year
ago had seemed so eerily fascinating.
Even her marriage! The romance of it had faded, as it were, into the
dull drab of withered gum leaves. The charm of primal conditions had
been overpowered by their discomfort. Nature had never intended her for
the wife of a backwoodsman. At times she felt an almost unendurable
craving for the ordinary luxuries of civilisation. The bathing
appliances here--or rather, the lack of them--were often positive
torture to her. She hated the food--continual coarse beef varied by
stringy goats' flesh or game from the lagoon. She had come to loathe
wild duck--when the men had time to shoot it. She could never bring
herself to destroy harmless creatures, and was a rank coward over
firearms. Talk of the simple life! Why, it was only since they had got
Fo Wung that there had been any vegetables. And the climate--though the
short winter had been pleasant enough as a whole--was abominable. The
long summer heat, the flies and the mosquitoes! What had she not
suffered the first summer after her marriage! And now the hot weather
was coming again. That was not the root of the trouble,
however--Bridget was honest enough to confess it. The root lay in
herself--in her own instability of purpose, her mercurial temperament.
She had been born with that temperament. All the O'Haras loved
change--hungered after strong sensation. She was spoiling now for
emotional excitement.
Well, the little human drama of the Blacks' camp had taken her out of
herself for an hour or two. It had been so funny to see Oola stroking
the lace frills of Lady Bridget's old petticoat and looking up at Wombo
with frank coquetry as she mimicked the 'White Mary's' gestures and
gait. Lady Bridget meant to stand by the savage lovers. She would not
allow Colin to treat them badly when he came back.
Ninnis, the overseer, broke upon her restless meditations. He was a
rough specimen, originally raised in Texas, who, after knocking about
in his youth as a cow-boy in the two Americas, had come to Australia
about fifteen years previously, had 'free-selected' disastrously, and,
during the last five years, had been in McKeith's employ. He was
devoted to his master, but he looked upon McKeith's marriage as a
pernicious investment. His republican upbringing could not stomach the
'Ladyship,' and he persisted in calling Lady Bridget Mrs McKeith. He
considered her flighty and extravagant in her ideas, and was always
divided between unwilling fascination and grumpy disapproval. To-night
he was in the latter mood and this incensed Lady Bridget.
'I've been writing up the log,' he began in a surly, aggressive tone,
'and I thought I'd better make a note of Wombo and that gin having come
to the head-station, in case of there being trouble with the Blacks.'
'Why should there be trouble with the Blacks?' she asked, in manner
equally unconciliatory.
'Well, ye know--though, I daresay, it wouldn't seem of much consequence
to you--Wombo's gone agen the laws of the tribe, and that's a serious
matter. If they know he's skulking here under protection, they'll be
spearing the cattle, and the Boss won't like that.'
'I'll explain to Mr McKeith,' said Lady Bridget haughtily.
'Well, I reckon it's best not to keep them on the head-station against
the Boss's orders,' persisted Ninnis.
Lady Bridget set her little white teeth. 'Naturally, Mr McKeith's
orders don't apply to ME--as I had to tell Mrs Hensor.'
'Mrs Hensor knows the Boss better than most people,' said Ninnis, at
which Lady Bridget flashed out.
'We need not discuss that question, Mr Ninnis.'
Ninnis' jaw stiffened underneath his shaggy goatee.
'Well, I guess you know your own business, Mrs McKeith, and it's up to
you to square things with the Boss.'
Lady Bridget reared her small form and bent her head with great
stateliness.
'But I'll just say, though,' went on Ninnis, 'that I hear Harris of the
police is coming along. And what Harris doesn't think he knows about
the heel of the law being kept on Blacks--and every other darned unit
in the creation scheme'--muttered Ninnis in parenthesis--'ain't entered
in the Almighty's Log-book.'
Ninnis expectorated over the veranda railings--a habit of his that
jarred on Lady Bridget.
'Well, what about Harris?'
'He's had his eye on Wombo and would be glad of an opportunity to best
him--on account of a little affair about a colt Wombo rode for him at
the last Tunumburra races--and lost the stakes--out of spite, Harris
declares.'
'Oh, I know about that--and I told Mr Harris what I thought about his
treatment of the Blacks. But he can't punish Wombo if I choose to have
him here. I don't think Mr McKeith would bring Harris to Moongarr--he
knows I can't bear him.'
'Well, I reckon that's up to you to square with the Boss,' repeated
Ninnis surlily. 'I'm told Harris is on the look-out for desperate
characters going along the Leura--these unionist organisers--dropping
in at stations on pretence of getting rations and spying out the land,
and calling on the men to join them. There was a boundary rider from
Breeza Downs to-day--caught us up with the tailing mob and fetched back
their new chum and Zack Duppo, leaving us awful short-handed--so that
if Joe Casey doesn't fetch in the milkers so early to-morrow you'll
know it's because I've had to send him out herding. They're doing their
shearing early at Breeza Downs with shearers Windeatt has imported from
the south, and he wants police protection for them and himself.'
Lady Bridget laughed.
'Harris and his two constables will have enough to do if they are to
protect the district.'
'That's just what Windeatt has been clamouring about. Now the
Government have sent up a military patrol, I believe. But they say it
isn't strong enough, and all the able-bodied men on the Leura are
enrolling as specials. No doubt, that's what been keeping the Boss. You
may be sure if there's fighting to be done--black or white--he'll be in
it.'
Lady Bridget angered Ninnis by her apparent indifference, and he bade
her a cross good-night. Had it been anybody else she would have
encouraged him to stay and talk. As it was, she resumed her lonely
pacing, and did not go to her room till the whole station was abed.
When at last she went to sleep she dreamed again vividly of Willoughby
Maule.