CHAPTER 16

Lady Bridget and Willoughby Maule were alone again. She got up from the

long chair, and as she did so her cigarette case dropped from her lap.

He picked it up and it lay on his open palm, the diamonds and rubies of

her maiden initials glistening on the gold lid. They looked at each

other across it.

'I gave you this,' he said, 'and you have kept it--used it?'

He seemed to gloat over the bauble.

Her fingers touched his hand as she took the case from him, and he gave

a little shiver of pleasure.

'Let me have it; I want another cigarette.' She selected two and gave

him one of them.

They moved to the divan near the fireplace, where some red embers

remained of the log of sandalwood. Its perfume lingered faintly in the

atmosphere.

'That's good,' he said. 'It's like you; the only thing in the

god-forsaken desert that IS like you.'

'Oh, you don't know me--now.'

'Don't I! Well, your husband has given me the chance of knowing

you--better--and I warn you that I shall not scruple to avail myself of

the opportunity.'

She shook her head dubiously. 'Give me a light.'

He stooped and lit his own cigarette, then, bending, held its tip to

her. They both inhaled a few whiffs in silence. Presently, he said:

'I find it difficult to understand McKeith.'

'Don't try. You wouldn't succeed. I observe,' she added, 'that you must

have become rather friendly at Tunumburra?'

'Oh, yes. I can generally get on with open-air men. Besides, I wanted

him to like me. I wanted him to ask me here.'

'Well--and what do you thing of it, now that you are here?'

'Great heavens! What do you imagine that I should think of it! The

whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder--the most horrible

anomaly. You--in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely

beneath you, and with whom you don't get on at all.'

'You have no right to say that.'

'The thing is obvious; though you tried to carry it off before dinner.

Your manner to each other; the lack of courtesy and consideration in

him; his leaving you....'

'Stop,' she interrupted. 'There's one thing you MUST understand. I

don't mind what you say about yourself--I want to hear that--but I

can't allow you to criticise my husband.'

'I beg your pardon. It isn't easy in the conditions to preserve the

social conventions. I will try to obey you. At any rate, you allow me

to be frank about myself.... It was sweet of you to keep this--more

than I could have dared hope for.'

He fingered tenderly the cigarette case on her lap.

'I suppose I ought to have sent it back to you. But I didn't want to.

You see it was not like an engagement ring.'

'No, worse luck.'

'Why, worse luck?'

'The ring would have been the outward and visible sign of an inward and

spiritual bond. If you had been really engaged to me--formally,

officially engaged, you couldn't have thrown me over so easily.'

'I--throw you over! Is it quite fair to put it that way?'

'No, I admit that. Let us be honest with each other--this once.'

'This once--very well--but not at this moment. I daresay there will be

time for a talk by and by.'

'I wait your pleasure.'

'There are some things I should like to understand,' she went on,

'--about you--about me, it doesn't matter which. And, after all, I only

want to know about you out of a sort of perverse curiosity.'

'That's so like you. You always managed to infuse a bitter drop into

your sweetness. And you COULD be so adorably sweet... If only I could

ever have felt sure of you.'

'Where would have been the use? We never could spend an hour together

without hurting or annoying each other. It's a very good thing for us

both that neither cared enough to make any real sacrifice for the

other.'

'There you wrong me,' he exclaimed. 'I did care--I cared intensely. The

touch of your hand--the very sweep of your dress thrilled every nerve

in me. I never in all my life loved a woman as I loved you. That last

day when you walked out of my rooms....'

'Where I never ought to have gone. Fancy the properly brought-up

English girl you used to hold up to me doing such a shocking thing as

to visit you alone in your chambers! ... Oh! Is that Colin back again?'

For Maule had started visibly at the sound of quick steps mounting to

the veranda, and McKeith's towering figure appeared in the doorway,

looking at them.

Lady Bridget turned her head, her cigarette in her hand, and glanced up

at his face. What she saw in it might have made a less reckless or less

innocent woman feel uneasy. She was sure that he must have heard that

last speech of hers about visiting Maule in his chambers. Well, she

didn't care. Besides Colin hadn't the smallest right to resent any

action of hers before her marriage... She did not turn a hair. Maule

admired her composure.

'BON SANG NE PEUT MENTIR,' he thought to himself, and wished they had

been talking in French.

'You look as grim as the statue of the Commander,' said Lady Bridget.

'What is the matter?'

'Lady Bridget and I have been exchanging unconventional reminiscences,'

put it Maule with forced lightness.

McKeith took no notice of either remark, but strode across the room to

the roll-top escritoire, where he usually wrote his letters when in his

wife's company. He extracted a bundle of papers from one of the pigeon

holes.

'This is what I came for. Sorry to have interrupted your

reminiscences,' and he went out again, passing along the back veranda.

Maule had got up and was standing at the fireplace. Lady Bridget rose

too.

'I'm going to bed. We keep early hours in the Bush.'

'What! Already!' he exclaimed in dismay.

'I was up at six this morning. Well, I hope you won't be too

uncomfortable with the white ants in the Old Humpey--they are perfectly

harmless. Your room is next to the office, as I daresay you've

discovered. And you'll find Colin there I suppose, with your friend the

Police-Inspector.'

'Don't call that man Harris my friend. We've had one or two scraps at

each other already. He was pleased to take it for granted that I'm what

he calls a "new chum," and didn't like my shewing him that I knew

rather better than he does what police administration should be in

out-of-the-way districts.'

Lady Bridget nodded. 'Then we're both under ban of the Law. I DETEST

Harris.... Good-night.' And she flitted through the French window

without giving him her hand.

The station seemed in a state of unquietude till late into the night.

The lowing of the tailing-mob in the yard was more prolonged than

usual. And the horses were whinnying and answering each other down by

the lagoon as though there were strangers about. Lady Bridget, lying

awake and watching through her uncurtained windows the descent of the

Southern Cross towards the horizon, and the westward travelling of a

moon just out of its first quarter, could hear the men's voices on the

veranda of the Old Humpey--that of Ninnis and the Police Inspector;

Maule seemed to have retired to his own room.

McKeith was evidently busy upon preparations for his absence from the

station. He must have been cleaning guns and pistols. There were two or

three shots--which startled and kept her in a state of tension. At last

she heard the interchange of good-nights, and the withdrawal of Ninnis

and Harris to the Bachelor's Quarters. Finally, her husband came to his

dressing-room--not along the front veranda, as would have been usual,

but by the back one, through the bathroom. Even this deviation from

habit seemed significant of his mood--he would not pass her window. He

moved about for a time as if he were busy packing. Then came silence.

She imagined him on the edge of the camp bed, so seldom used, smoking

and ruminating.

Whiffs from his pipe came through the cracks of the door between the

two rooms, and were an offence to her irritated nerves. She had grown

accustomed to his tobacco, but, as a rule, he did not smoke the last

thing at night. He had seemed to regard his wife's chamber as a

tabernacle, enshrining that which he held most sacred, and would never

enter it until he was cleansed from the grime and dust of the stockyard

and cattle camp, and had laid aside the associations of his working

day. That attitude had appealed to all that was idealistic in both

their natures, and had kept green the memory of their honeymoon. It

angered her that to-night, of all nights, he should disregard it.

In personal details, she was intensely fastidious, and at some trouble

and cost had maintained in her intimate surroundings a daintiness

almost unknown out-back. Her room was large, and much of its

furnishings symptomatic of the woman of her class--the array of

monogrammed, tortoise-shell backed brushes and silver and gold topped

boxes and bottles, the embroidered coverlet of the bed, the flowered

chintz and soft pink wall paper, the laced cambric garments and

silk-frilled dressing gown hanging over a chair. When service lacked,

and there was no one to wash and iron her cambric and fine linen, she

contrived somehow that the supply should not fail, and brought upon

herself some ill-natured ridiculed in consequence. The wives of the

Leura squatters thought her 'stuck-up' and apart from their kind. If

they had known how much she wanted sometimes to throw herself into

their lives--as she had thrown herself into the lives of her East-End

socialistic friends! But the stations were few and far between, and the

neighbours--such as they were--left her alone.

Letting her mind drift along side-tracks, she resented now there having

come no suggestion from the Breeza Downs women that she should

accompany her husband and share the benefits of police protection,

or--which appealed to her far more--the excitement of what might be

going on there. Of course, though, there was nothing for her to be

nervous about here--she wished there might have been. Any touch of

dramatic adventure would be welcome in the crude monotony of her life.

But the adventure promised to be of a more personal kind.

Suddenly, she jumped out of bed and softly slipped the bolt of the door

into her husband's dressing room. She did it on a wild impulse. She

felt that she could not bear him near her to-night. He should see that

she was not his chattel.... But, perhaps, he did not want to come....

Well, so much the better. In any case, she wanted to show him that she

did not want him. She wondered if he would venture.... She wondered if

he did really care....

He appeared in no hurry to test her capacity for forgiveness.... Or it

might be that the minutes went slowly--laden as they were with

momentous thought. She lay in a tumult of agitation, her heart beating

painfully under the lawn of her nightgown. She had a sense of gasping

wonderment. She felt, as Colin had felt, that something tremendous had

happened--and with such bewildering suddenness--altering all the

conditions between them.

Yet, through the pain and bewilderment, her whole being thrilled with

an excitement that was almost intoxicating--like the effect of an

insidious drug, or the fumes of heady wine. She knew it was the old

craving for sensation, the fatal O'Hara temperament awake and

clamouring. Try as she would--and she did try in a futile fashion--she

could not shut off the impression of Willoughby Maule--the sombre

ardour in his eyes, the note of suppressed passion in his voice. There

was no doubt that this unexpected meeting had restarted vibrations, and

that his influence was a force to be reckoned with still.

If Colin had acted differently--if he had not behaved so brutally to

those poor blacks--if his manner to her had not been so hard and

overbearing. And then his leaving her alone like that with Willoughby

Maule! Of course, he was jealous. He had jumped at conclusions. What

right had he to do so? What could he know? He must suspect her of

horrible things. His questions had been insultingly dictatorial. Now,

he wanted to shew her that he flung her off. He would not put out a

finger to hold her to him. Had he not said something like that before

their marriage! ... It was abominable.

The whiffs of tobacco smoke came no more. He was moving about again.

She heard him in the bathroom. After a minute or two he came to the

door and tried to open it.

'Biddy,' he said. Then in a deep-toned eager whisper, 'Mate!'

She sat up in bed; she had the impulse to go and open the door, but

some demon held her back. She lay down again on her pillow.... The bed

had creaked.... He must have known that she was awake.... He waited a

minute or two without speaking ... knocked very softly.... She was

silent.... Again she heard him moving about in his dressing-room, and,

after a little while, she heard him go out, passing along the back

veranda. He did not return. It was dawn before Bridget dropped into the

heavy morning slumber, which follows a night of weeping.

BOOK III

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF COLIN MCKEITH AND OTHERS

CHAPTER 1

When Lady Bridget awoke, it was then near the hour at which they

ordinarily breakfasted. Finding, when she had dressed, that all was

silent in the next room, she looked in.

It was empty, the bed had not been slept in, but there were signs that

McKeith had got into his riding clothes and that he had packed a valise.

Maule was waiting in the dining-room, and Maggie, the serving maid,

gave a message from McKeith that he had had his breakfast at the

Bachelors' Quarters with Mr Harris and that they were both going to

start for Breeza Downs immediately.

Bridget made no pretence of breakfasting. She told Maule to forage for

himself, and, after swallowing a cup of coffee, made the excuse of

household business--to see if the Chinaman had put up his master's

lunch--if the water-bags were filled--what were to be the proceedings

of the day. She had a hope that McKeith might say something

conciliatory to her before he left. The remembrance of that disregarded

appeal--the word 'Mate' to which she had given no response, weighed, a

guilty load, upon her heart.

But she was sore and angry--in no mood to make any advance or stoop to

self-justification. He was outside the store, where Ninnis was weighing

rations for Harris, and McKeith's and the Police Inspector's horses,

ready saddled, with valises strapped on, were hitched to the paling.

Harris sulkily touched his helmet to Lady Bridget, but McKeith had his

back to her and seemed wholly absorbed in some directions he was giving.

'You'll see to it, Ninnis, that six saddle-horses are kept ready to run

up, in case the Pastoralist Executive sends along any message that's

got to be carried down the river--there's that lot of colts Zack Duppo

broke in, they'll do. And you can get in Alexander and Roxalana from

the Bore pasture, in case the buggy should be wanted--and one or two of

the old hacks that are spelling out there. Of course, her ladyship's

horse mustn't be touched, and you'll see Mr Maule has a proper mount if

he wants it--the gentleman who'll be here for a bit--a friend of her

ladyship's from England--you understand. You'll keep on those new men

for the tailing mob, though I'm not sure they mightn't be Unionists in

disguise. Anyway, Moongarr Bill is a match for them.... And you'll just

mind--the lot of you--that it's my orders to stockwhip blacks off the

place, and that if any Unionist delegates show their faces through the

sliprails they're not allowed to stop five minutes inside the paddock

fence.'

'Right you are, Boss,' responded Ninnis, and there was a change of

grouping, and McKeith strode out to the yard to look into some other

matter, all without sending a glance to his wife.

Presently Moongarr Bill came up, chuckling mysteriously, 'Say, Boss, I

believe there's one of them dashed organising chaps coming down now

from the top sliprails.' And as he spoke, a man rode to the fence,

harmless enough looking, of the ordinary bush type.

He was about to get off his horse in the assured manner of a bushman

claiming the usual hospitality, but McKeith--big and grimly

menacing--advanced and held up his hand.

'No, wait a bit. Don't unsaddle. I'd like first to know your business.'

'I'm an Organiser,' said the man defiantly, 'and I'm not ashamed of my

job. Trades Unions are lawful combinations, and I've come to have a

talk with your men....' He ran on with professional volubility. 'My

object in going round your district is to bring about a peaceful

compromise between employers and employed--Do you see....?'

'Stop,' thundered McKeith. 'I'd have you understand that there's an

organiser on this station already. I'M the Organiser here, and I'm not

taking stock in Trades Unions at present.'

'But you'll let me have a talk with your men?--No harm in that.'

'No, you don't,' said McKeith.

'Well, I can spell my horse an hour or two, can't I?'

'No, you can't. You'll ride off my station straight away.'

'I've been off tucker since yesterday,' said the man, who seemed a

poor-spirited creature. 'Anyhow, Boss, you'll give me something to eat.'

'Yes, I'll do that.' The laws of bush hospitality may not be violated.

Food must be given even to an enemy--provided he be white. McKeith

called to the Chinaman to bring out beef and bread. A lump of salt junk

and a hunk of bread were handed to the traveller.

'Now you be off, and eat that outside my paddock,' said McKeith. 'See

those gum trees over there?--You can go and organise the gum trees.'

The man scowled, and weakly threatened as he half turned his horse's

head.

'Look here, Boss, you'll find yourself the worse for this.'

'Shall I. In what way, can you tell me?'

'You'll find that your grass is burned, I daresay.'

'I'm obliged to you for the hint. I'll take precautions, and I'll begin

by shepherding you straight off my run,' said McKeith. 'Harris, if

you're ready now, come along here.'

The Police Inspector stepped off the store veranda, where he had been

standing, a majestic and interested onlooker. The Organiser--after all,

a mere man of straw, crumpled under his baneful stare.

'You can't give me in charge--you've got no warrant--I've done nothing

to be given in charge for.'

'Some of your people have, though, and here's a bit of information for

any skunk among your cowardly lot,' said McKeith. 'I've offered one

hundred pounds reward for the scoundrels who cut my horses' throats and

robbed my drays on the road to Tunumburra. There's a chance for you, if

you're mean enough to turn informer.'

'I know nothing about that,' said the Organiser.

'Eh? Well, if my grass is burned, I shall know who did it, and so will

this Police Inspector. And I am a magistrate, and will have you

arrested. Get on your horse, Harris, we'll start at once, and ride

alongside this chap till he's over my boundaries.'

Harris unhitched his horse and mounted, but not sooner than McKeith was

he in the saddle. Then McKeith looked at last towards the veranda where

Bridget stood, white, defiant, with Maule at the French window of the

dining-room just behind her.

McKeith took off his hat, made her a sweeping bow, which might have

included his guest, turned his horse's head and rode in the direction

of the sliprails, Harris and the sulky Organiser slightly at his rear.

Bridget never forgot that impression of him--the dogged slouch of his

broad shoulders--the grim set of his head, the square, unyielding look

of his figure, as he sat his horse with the easy poise of a bushman who

is one with the animal under him--in this case, a powerfully made,

nasty tempered roan, one of Colin's best saddle-horses--which seemed as

dogged tempered as its master.

Maule showed tact in tacitly assuming the unexpected necessity for

McKeith's abrupt departure--also that he had already bidden good-bye to

his wife.

Lady Bridget made no comment upon her husband's scant courtesy to his

guest when she rejoined Maule after an hour or two spent in housewifely

business. They strolled about the garden, smoked cigarettes in the

veranda, she played and sang to him, and he brought out his cornet,

which he had carried in his valise, being something of a performer on

that instrument.

A demon of reckless gaiety seemed to have entered into Lady Bridget.

Watching McKeith disappear behind the gum trees, she had said to

herself:--'I can be determined, too. I have as strong a will as he has.

He did not choose to say one regretful word. He was too stubborn to own

himself in the wrong. He left me in what--if he believed his suspicion

to be true--must be a dangerous position for a woman--only it shall not

be dangerous to ME. I know exactly how far I am going--exactly the

amount of excitement I shall get out of it all. Neither Willoughby nor

he deserve an iota of consideration. I shall amuse myself. So! No

more.... But he can't know that. He has never thought about ME. He has

thought of nothing but his own cross-grained pride and selfish egoism.

No man of ordinary breeding or SAVOIR-FAIRE would have gone off like

that!'

She forgot in her condemnation of Colin to make allowance for the

primal nature of the man; for a certain kinship in him with the loftier

type of savage, whose woman must be his wholly, or else deliberately

relinquished to the successful rival, and into whose calculation the

subtleties of social jurisprudence would not naturally enter.

Nor did she remember at the moment that Maule had been described by her

own relatives as a person of neither birth nor breeding--a

fortune-hunter--not by any means a modern Bayard. He at least was a man

of the world, she thought, and would appreciate the situation. He had

lost that touch of unaccustomedness--she hardly knew how to describe

it--which had often irritated her in their former relation. In their

talk that day he seemed much more at home than she was in the world she

had once belonged to. He spoke of 'personages' with the ease of

familiar acquaintance. Apparently, he had got into quite the right

set--a rather political set, she gathered. He told her that he had been

pressed to stand for a well-nursed Liberal Constituency, and implied

that but for the catastrophe of his wife's death he would now be seated

in Parliament, with a fair prospect in the future of place and

distinction. Of course, it was the money which had done it, she told

herself, though he had undoubted cleverness, she knew, and, as he

pointed out, his experience in a particular South American

republic--very much to the fore just now in European diplomacy--stood

to his advantage. His marriage had given him opportunity. He alluded

without bad taste to his dead wife's generosity. She had left him her

entire fortune unfettered. He was now a rich man. He explained that she

had had none but very distant relations and that, otherwise, charitable

institutions would have benefited. She had been a very good woman, he

said--a woman with whom nine hundred out of a thousand decent men would

have been perfectly happy. He let it be inferred that he was the

thousandth man. His eyes, not his lips told her the reason why.

Their talk skimmed the surface of vital things--the new awakening in

England; the threatenings of a socialistic upheaval; his individual

aims and ideas--she recognised her own inspirations. He spoke of his

political ambitions. Suddenly she said:

'I wonder why you made the break of coming out to Australia--why you

did not stay in England and follow on your career?'

'There are bonds stronger than cart ropes which may drag a man by force

from the path he has marked out for himself. Surely you must

understand?'

'Really, Mr Maule.'

'Why will you be so formal!' he interrupted impetuously. 'It is absurd.

Women nowadays always call men they know well by a PETIT NOM.'

'Do I know you well! I often think I never knew you at all.'

'That is what Lady Tallant used to say to me, latterly, about you and

myself--that we never really knew each other.'

'Oh, poor Rosamond! It makes me miserable to think of her. You became

friends, then--latterly?'

'She was very nice to me when she came back from Leichardt's Land. And

besides, she was anxious for me to come out to Luke and help him a

bit.... She told me about your marriage. She knew I could settle to

nothing--of course, the world in general thought it was because of that

tragedy--my wife's death--and the child--you understand?'

Bridget nodded slowly.

'Lady Tallant knew the truth--that I was tormented by one ceaseless

longing--after the impossible. I fancy she thought that if I could

realise the impossibility, I might get over the longing....

But--Bridget, it's no use pretending--I did try to do my duty. I think

I succeeded, to a certain extent, in making my wife happy--but there

was always the same gnawing regret....'

'You must put all that out of your head,' she interrupted curtly.

'I cannot. A man doesn't love a woman like you, and, because she is

married to another man, put her out of his head--in two years or

ten--or Eternity, for that matter.'

She laughed joylessly. 'Eternity!' she scoffed.

They were in the veranda after luncheon, she swinging slowly in the

hammock, playing with a cigarette, he smoking likewise, scarcely

attempting to suppress the stormy feeling in his face and voice. For

her, the crude brown-grey landscape rose and fell with the motion of

the hammock, and jarred with the exotic memories he evoked. She had

been called back to the varied emotional interests of her girlhood, and

realised, in a rush, how deadly dull was life in the arid wastes of the

Never-Never. Nothing more exciting than to watch the great parched

plain, with the dry heat-haze upon it, getting browner every day, and

the shrinking lagoon and its ever widening border of mud. Nothing, when

she turned her eyes to right and left, but ragged gum trees and black

gidia forest. What a dead blank wilderness it was!'

She gave a little gasp as if for breath. He seemed to read her thoughts.

'Do you remember Rome--and the Campagna, that first day we went to

Albano?--And our walk through the woods down to Lake Nei?--It was then

I first knew that I loved you.'

'Will--if you are going to stay here you mustn't talk like that. It's

not playing the game.' She spoke pleadingly.

'Does your husband play the game?' Maule retorted. 'Is it playing the

game to leave you here alone with me, when he must know--or at least,

guess--how things have been between us?--Do you think I didn't notice

yesterday that he suspected me--suspected us both? I should have been a

blind mole not to see by his face and manner how he felt. Upon my soul,

he would have no defence--if....'

She stopped him with a gesture.

'I must ask you again not to discuss my relations with my husband; they

do not concern you.'

'Do they not!' And as she rose abruptly from the hammock, 'I beg your

pardon,' he added humbly, 'I will do my best not to offend again.'

He got up too and stood, his back against the veranda railings.

'Lady Bridget, you mustn't be angry with me. I suppose I am a little

off my balance, you must remember that this is--for me, a rather

staggering experience.'

'Shall we go for a ride?' she asked suddenly. 'I don't suppose you have

much idea of what a wild western station is like.'

'Oh, I'm fairly well acquainted with life on big pastures,' he answered

lightly, taking her cue. 'You would be surprised, perhaps, at the list

of my qualifications as an "out-back squatter."--I'm a bit of a

rancher--had one in the Argentine--a bit of a doctor--a bit of a

policeman--I was in charge once of a constabulary force out in British

Guiana. That's where I got a rise off Harris--a bit of a law breaker,

too--in fact a bit of everything. Yes, I should enjoy a ride round here

with you immensely.'

'Then do you mind looking for Mr Ninnis, the overseer, you know.'

'Yes, I know Ninnis. Had a yarn--as he'd say--with him last night while

your husband was talking to Harris. Ninnis doesn't get on well with

Harris--another point of sympathy. We're quite friends already. Ninnis

and I--he's been in South America, too.'

'You'll find him somewhere about the Bachelors' Quarters, and I'll go

and put on my habit,' she said.

Lady Bridget appeared as Maule and Ninnis were finishing saddling the

horses. Ninnis had stayed near the head station, and was keeping a

sharp look-out for bush fires, he said. Otherwise, there appeared to be

no elements of disquiet. Lady Bridget noticed with surprise that Ninnis

seemed to defer to Maule, which was not his usual attitude towards

strangers. She attributed this to a community of experiences in South

America, and also to Maule's undoubted knack of managing men.

CHAPTER 2

They rounded the lagoon and skirted the gidia scrub. Maule was on a

Moongarr horse, Bridget rode a fiery little chestnut. Maule had already

had opportunity to admire the famous O'Hara seat. They had hunted

together once or twice on the Campagna, that winter when they had met

in Rome. It was difficult to avoid retrospect, but Bridget seemed

determined to keep it within conventional limits. They found plenty,

however, to talk about in their immediate surroundings. Perhaps it was

the effort to throw off the load on her heart that made Bridget gaily

confiding. She drew humorous pictures of the comic shifts, the almost

tragic hardships of life on the Leura--how she had been left

servantless--until Ninnis had got up Maggie from the Lower Leura--when

the Chinamen decamped during the gold rush. She described the

chivalrous SUNDOWNER who had on one occasion helped her through a

week's washing; and Zack Duppo the horsebreaker, whose Christmas

pudding had been a culinary triumph, and the loyalty of faithful Wombo,

who had done violence to all his savage instincts in acting as

house-servant until the advent of the Malay boy Kuppi. She told of her

first experience of a summer out West. The frying of eggs in the sun on

a sheet of corrugated zinc, so intense was the heat. The terror of

snakes, centipedes, scorpions. The plagues of flies and white ants.

Then how, during the servantless period, in utter loneliness and

Colin's enforced absence at the furthest out-station she had had an

attack of dengue fever, and no woman within forty miles of her.

'And your husband allowed this? But where was that barmaid-looking

person who seems to keep house here for stray gentlemen--and, who has

the yellow-headed and blue-eyed little boy?'

Bridget's lip curled.

'Mrs Hensor had accepted a temporary situation at an hotel in Fig Tree

Mount--the only time I've regretted her absence,' and the musical laugh

seemed to Maule to have acquired a note of exceeding bitterness.

'Perhaps you don't know,' she went on, 'that Mrs Hensor is a sort of

Helen of the Upper Leura--though unfortunately as yet no Paris has

carried her off--I wish there was one bold enough to do it. She had to

be asked to take a change of air because there was rivalry about her

between the buyer of a Meat Preserving Establishment and the chief

butcher at Tunumburra. Fair Helen scorned them both. Result: The two

buyers bought beasts elsewhere and, as you would understand, on a

cattle station, butchers may not be flouted. Though I daresay,' Lady

Bridget added with a shrug, 'if I could have had the butchers in the

house--I draw the line only at Harris--and had sung to them and played

up generally, I might have scored even off Mrs Hensor. But they

wouldn't come until after she had gone and there was no further danger

of a duel taking place outside the Bachelors' Quarters.'

Maule took her cue again and laughed as if the matter were one to jest

about. But as he looked round, his face did not suggest merriment. Nor

for that matter did the landscape. They were riding at the edge of the

immense sandy plain, patched with brown jaggled grass and parched

brambles and prickly lignum vitae--nothing to break the barren monotony

but clumps of stunted brigalow and gidia, a wind-mill marking the site

of an empty well with the few hungry-looking cattle near it.

Now they dipped into a scrub of dismal gidia.

'This is the most depressing country I have ever ridden through,' he

said.

'You don't know what a difference three inches of rain makes,' she

answered. 'Then the grass is green, the creeks are running, and at this

time the dead brambles are covered with white flowers. But it doesn't

rain. There's the tragedy.'

'The tragedy is that you--you of all women should be wasting your youth

and beauty in this wilderness. How long is it going to last?'

She shrugged again, and for an instant turned her face up towards the

sky. 'You must ask the heavens?'

'Meaning, I presume, that like most of the Australian squatters, your

husband hasn't capital enough at his back to stand up against continued

drought?'

'Precisely.' She looked at him, with her puzzling smile.

'But you couldn't have understood his position when you married him?'

'No, I didn't--altogether. But I should really like to remind you that

I am not in the witness box.'

'I think you owe me the truth!' he said, passionately.

'What do you call the truth?' she asked, reining in her horse and

meeting his eyes straight.

But she had to turn hers away before he answered, and he as well as

herself was conscious of the compelling effect his gaze had upon her.

'I could have made you marry me if I had been strong enough to

persist,' he said.

'Cannot any man do what he is strong enough to do--if he wishes it

enough to persist?'

'I should have put it this way. If I had thought less of you and more

of myself. But after what you said that day, when you jeered so

contemptuously at the kind of environment in which, THEN, I should have

had to place my wife--what could I do--except withdraw? But you

suffered, Bridget,' he went on vehemently. 'Not so much as I did--but

still you suffered. You thought of me--I felt it, and you must have

felt too, how continually I thought of you. I used to try and make you

think of me--dream of me. And I succeeded. Isn't that true?'

'Yes, it is true,' she answered in a low voice.

'Only lately, since I have been in the district, it has seemed to me

that the invisible wires have been set working afresh. Isn't that true

also?'

'Yes, it is true,' she said again, as if forced to the acknowledgment.

'Then, can there be any question of the bond between us? You see, it's

independent of time and space! for you WERE sorry--you DID care. That's

the truth you owe me. If after--after we parted in that dreadful way, I

had gone back, had thrown up everything, had said to you, "Come with me

ANYWHERE, let us be all in all to each other--on the slopes of the

Andes, on an island in the South Seas--you would have come?"'

'I always told you,' she said with her puzzling smile, 'that the slopes

of the Andes appealed to me.'

'Peru would have been more picturesque than this, anyway. Is that all I

can get out of you--that grudging admission? Well, never mind, I am

satisfied. You have owned up to enough. I won't tease you now for more

admissions.'

'I have admitted too much,' she said gloomily. 'The curse of the

O'Hara's is upon me. Almost all of them have gambled with their lives,

and most of them have lost.'

She gave her horse the rein as she spoke, and they cantered on over the

plain. After that, she resolutely forbade sentiment.

Mr Ninnis was gratified by an invitation that evening to dine at the

Home, and came down in his best dark suit and his most genial mood.

Bridget sang. She had not been singing much lately. Colin's gloom over

the evil prospects of squatting on the Leura re-acted upon her spirits.

And besides, the piano had been attacked by white ants, and the tuner

had not been so far up the river for a long time. It was inspiring to

learn that Maule added to his gifts that of getting a piano into tune.

Ninnis promised to rummage among the tools for a key that would serve.

Ninnis had never admired Lady Bridget so much as he did this evening.

Certainly he thought her more flighty and incomprehensible than ever,

but he could not deny her fascination. It seemed quite natural to him

that she should be in high spirits at seeing an old friend from

England, who appeared to know all her people. Ninnis had taken

immensely to Maule. Beside Maule knew parts of the world where Ninnis

had been. It was curious to see the American-isms crop out. Ninnis

considered Maule a person of parts and of practical experience. He said

to himself that the Boss had done wisely in leaving Maule at the

head-station while they were short-handed. Maule showed great interest

in Bush matters--said he wanted to learn all he could about the

management of cattle--thought it not improbable that he might invest

money in Leichardt's Land. Ninnis agreed to show him round, and Maule

begged that he might be made useful--even offered to take a turn with

the tailing-mob, so that Moongarr Bill and the other stockmen might be

free to muster more cattle.

Nothing was heard of the Blacks during the next day or two, but one

morning Ninnis discovered that an old gun, which the station hands and

the black-boys were allowed to use on Sundays for shooting game in the

lagoon, had disappeared in the night. Circumstantial evidence pointed

to Wombo as the thief. Cudgee owned to having seen him skulking among

the Gully rocks. A deserted gunya was found near a lonely, half-dry

waterhole in the scrub, and there were rumours of a tribe of wild

blacks having passed towards the outlying country in the Breeza Downs

direction.

No news came, however, of either racial or labour warfare. McKeith sent

not a word of his doings, and Harry the Blower was not due yet on his

postal, fortnightly round.

McKeith had been gone a week, and the time of his absence seemed like

that sinister lull which comes after the sudden shock of an earthquake

and the tornado that follows upon it. Then, one day, something happened.

All the men except the Chinamen were out. Moongarr Bill, Ninnis, and

the stockmen on the run, while Maule--a book and a sandwich in his

pocket--had gone herding with Joey Case and one of the extra hands.

A sense of mutual embarrassment had that day driven them apart. He had

been afraid of himself, and she too had felt afraid. During these seven

days she had rushed recklessly on as though impelled by a fatality,

never pausing to consider how near she might be to a precipice.

Whenever possible, she had ridden out with Maule and Ninnis, or with

Maule alone. She found relief from painful thoughts of Colin in the

excitement and emotion with which Maule's society provided her. She

went with him on several occasions behind the tailing-mob, though

ordinarily, she could not endure being at close quarters with cattle.

But it interested her to see Maule ride after and round up the wild

ones that escaped; to watch his splendid horsemanship which had the

flamboyant South-American touch--the suggestion of lariat and lasso and

ornate equipment, the picturesque element lacking in the Bush--all

harmonizing with his deep dark eyes and Southern type of good looks.

To-day, she had preferred to remain at home alone. She had been pulled

up with a startled sense of shock. Last evening when they were walking

together on the veranda he had begun again to make love to her, and in

still more passionate earnest--had held her hands--had tried to kiss

her. She had found herself giving way to the old romantic

intoxication--then had wrenched herself from him only just before the

meeting of lips.

At last, she had realized the strength of the glamour. She fought

against it; nevertheless, in imagination gave herself up to it, as the

opium-smoker or haschisch-eater gives himself up to the insidious

FANTASIA of his drug.

Yes, Bridget thought it was like what she had read of the effects of

some unholy drug--some uncanny form of hypnotism.

For she knew that she did not really love Maule--that her feeling for

him was unwholesome.

There was poison in it acting upon her affection for and trust in her

husband. Maule made subtle insinuations to McKeith's detriment,

injected doubts that rankled. There were no definite charges, though he

would hint sometimes at gossip he had heard in Tunumburra. But he would

convey to her in half words, looks, and tones that he had reason to

believe Colin unworthy of her--that her husband had led the life of an

ordinary bushman, and had fully availed himself of such material

pleasures as might have come to his hand. The veiled questions he asked

about Mrs Hensor and her boy, brought back a startled remembrance of

the scene outside the Fig Tree Mount Hotel and Steadbolt's vague

accusation. She had almost forgotten it--had never seriously thought

about it. Yet now she knew the midge-bite had festered.

Could it be that there was a chapter in Colin's life of which she knew

nothing? Was it not too much to believe that he had always been

faithful to his ideal of the camp fire? Ah! Maule would have jeered at

that--would have been totally incapable of understanding the romance of

that dream-drive--a dream in truth. But how beautiful, how sane, how

uplifting it seemed, compared with the feverish haschisch dream in

which she was now living. Restless under the obsession, she wandered up

the gully and, as she sat among the rocks, wrestled with her black

angel--and conquered. Clearly there was but one thing to do. She must

send Maule away at once before Colin came back. As for Colin, that

trouble must be faced separately. Maule must ride back to

Tunumburra--he knew the track. Or, should he wish to explore the

district further, Harry the Blower was due with the mail to-morrow, and

could guide him to any station on the post-man's route which might

appear to Maule desirable.

Bridget knew that Maule would leave the tailing-mob before the other

men that afternoon, and would probably come to look for her here. So

having arrived at her decision and wishing to put off the inevitable

scene as long as possible, she set forth by another route for the

head-station.

CHAPTER 3

But she had only gone a few steps, when out of the gidia scrub, came

Oola the half-caste, her comely face bruised, her eyes wild with grief

and terror, her head tied up in a blood-stained strip torn from Lady

Bridget's lacy undergarment, the gaily-flowered kimono hanging in dirty

shreds upon her brown bosom.

'White Mary! Lathy-chap!' she cried. 'Plenty poor feller Oola. Plenty

quick me run. Me want 'em catch Lathy-chap before pollis-man come. That

feller pollis-man take Wombo long-a gaol. Mithsis'--the gin implored.

'BUJERI you!--Mithis tell pollis-man Wombo plenty good blackfellow. No

take Wombo long-a gaol.'

'What has Wombo been doing?' asked Lady Bridget. 'Did he steal the gun?'

'YOWI (yes). Wombo plenty frightened long-a ole husband belonging to

me.' And Oola dropped and knocked her head upon the ground, wailing the

ear-piercing death-wail of the Australian native women.

'Oola, you must stop howling!' said Bridget, alive to the seriousness

of the situation. 'Has Wombo shot your husband with our gun?'

'YOWI, Mithis. That feller husband altogether BONG' (dead).

From Oola's broken revelations Bridget pieced the story. It appeared

that the tribe had followed in hot pursuit of the fugitives, and,

knowing his peril, Wombo had sneaked up to the head-station in the

darkness, possessed himself of an effectual weapon, and fled away with

the gun. The offended blacks had discovered the guilty pair on the

outskirts of Breeza Downs, and Oola's husband, with a company of

braves, had attacked their gunya. Then--to quote Oola--'that feller

husband throw spear at Wombo--hit Oola long-a COBRA (head) with NULLA

NULLA. Him close-up carry off Oola. My word! Wombo catch him PHO PHO.

Plenty quick husband belonging to me TUMBLE DOWN.' And Oola wailed anew.

'Where's Wombo now?' Bridget asked.

'Blackfeller YAN (run) along-a pollis-man. Pollis-man close-up black's

camp. That feller Harris catch 'im Wombo--fetch um long-a Tunumburra

gaol. Mine think it stop to-night Moongarr. Close-up station now.'

Lady Bridget at once saw through the affair. Here was Harris taking a

legitimized revenge on Wombo, and doubtless also on herself. Clearly,

he had been patrolling the Breeza Downs boundaries in search of

Unionist incendiaries, and seizing Wombo instead, had acted promptly

without waiting for a warrant or consulting McKeith. Wombo would be

charged at the township with theft of the gun and murder of Oola's

husband. To a certainty he would be hanged if the matter ran its

ordinary course. That it should not do, Bridget declared within

herself--if she could by any possibility prevent it.

The half-caste woman and the white lady went swiftly through the gidia

scrub towards the head-station. At the gully crossing, Maule, on his

way back from the tailing-mob, overtook them, and dismounting, walked

with Lady Bridget to the house. She forgot then all the scene of last

evening, told him the black's story, begged him to help her in the

rescue of Wombo.

He reflected for a minute or two.

'We're up against Harris,' he said, 'and Harris has a grudge against

all of us. But Harris feels some respect for my knowledge of

constabulary law, which, I take it, is pretty much the same in most

countries where there are white settlers and native races.'

She looked up at him, letting him feel that she was relying on his

astuteness and his strength. He went on:

'Ninnis is mustering with Moongarr Bill and the others, a good way off,

and they're camping out to-night.... That leaves only Joe Casey and the

other extra hand. Ninnis put me in authority here. Somebody has got to

take command, and it must be either you, Lady Bridget, or myself.

Perhaps I'm the best qualified of the two....'

She laughed shakily in assent.

'Anyway, I fancy that I know how to deal with this sort of affair

better than you do,' he said. 'Will you let me manage it my own way?'

She nodded.

'I suppose I may assume that your husband left me in a position of some

responsibility. And if I seem to be taking too much on myself--or, on

the other hand, deferring too much to Harris, you'll trust me and not

interfere?'

There was no time for discussion, had she wished to go against him.

Oola was shrieking and pointing frantically to the track down from the

upper slip rails, along which Harris and his prisoner were to be seen

riding.

The Police Inspector, uniformed, burly, triumphant, exhaled the Majesty

of the Law as he rode slightly in advance leading the black-boy. Now,

as they pulled up at the fence, Wombo presented a sorry spectacle--a

spear wound in his left shoulder, a spear graze on his leg, his wrists

handcuffed and his feet tied to the stirrup-iron with cords so tight

that they cut into his tough, black flesh.

Harris dismounted, tied Wombo's horse securely to the veranda post and

then made his statement which coincided with Bridget's idea of what had

happened. It was too late to push on to Tunumburra. He proposed to lock

up his prisoner at Moongarr for the night. Could he have the hide-house?

Not long before, the Police Inspector had locked up a horse stealer,

whom he had in charge, in the hide-house for a few hours while he took

a meal.

To Bridget it seemed an irony that Wombo should be imprisoned in the

very room he had so lately shared with his stolen gin.

She was quivering with indignant pity at sight of the sores on the

black boy's legs made by the raw hide thongs, and Oola, who had crept

up the off side of the black-boy's horse, was wailing anew. Maule

checked with a look the angry protest on Lady Bridget's lip and

answered the Police Sergeant in her stead.

'Why, certainly. I'm sure her Ladyship won't object. You'll let me see

to that for you, Lady Bridget,' and, as she bowed her head, he

addressed Harris again. 'Mr Ninnis and most of the others are camping

out to-night on the run, and I seem to be the only responsible man in

the place--of course you know that Mr McKeith asked me to stop and help

look after things for Lady Bridget if necessary.' Then he complimented

Harris genially upon his zeal. 'You've got your warrant, I suppose,' he

asked incidentally.

The Police Sergeant looked a little uncomfortable.

'Well, fact is, I wouldn't waste time going back to Breeza Downs

head-station for that. Mr McKeith's there and they had a bit of an

alarm. Those Unionist skunks tried to fire the shed one night, but no

particular damage was done, and they've dispersed. But Windeatt is in

such a fright of their making another attempt on his head-station that

he's pushing the imported shearers on with the shearing for all he's

worth, and keeps any man he can get hold of on guard night and day

round the house and sheds, while I and my lot have been doing a bit of

riding after Unionists.... Now, if you please, we'll have the key of

the hide-house,' concluded Harris. 'I'd like to get my prisoner stowed

away safe before I take an hour's spell myself. I'm pretty well knocked

up, I can tell you. No sleep at all last night watching that nigger who

was tied up to a gum tree, and I've been in the saddle all day.'

Maule proffered the usual refreshment with a deprecatory reference to

Lady Bridget, who stood stonily apart. Then on pretext of getting the

key of the hide-house, he had a few words with her in the office.

'I'm going to take care of this,' he said, as she gave him the key of

the padlock which secured the hide-house door, and he forthwith

fastened it to the ring of his watch-chain. 'Of course you want the

black-boy to escape?'

'I shall let him out myself,' she answered.

'That would only make McKeith more angry. I have a better plan, in

which you need not be implicated.'

'I would rather do it myself,' she said. 'I'm not afraid. If it had

been possible, I would have cut those horrible thongs straight away and

let the poor wretch get into the bush. He'll be safe at the head of the

gully in the gidia scrub.'

'I promise you that he shall be safe in the gidia scrub before sunrise

to-morrow. Trust me.'

She shook her head. 'But I can't take services from you, after....' she

began hastily and then stopped.

'You call that a service! Yes--to humanity, if you like. Oh, I know.

After yesterday evening. NOW, you blame me for being true to myself....

All that has got to be settled between us, Bridget--for good and all. I

thought it out as I rode behind the tailing-mob to-day. But for the

moment,' he fingered the key agitatedly, 'Bridget, you MUST let me do

this thing for you. Don't refuse me that small privilege, even if you

deny me all others.'

She wavered--yielded. 'Very well. You can manage it better than I

could. So I will accept this last favour.'

'The first, not the last. What have I done but cause you pain? ... If

you knew the torture I have been going through....' He checked himself.

She was staring at him, half frightened, half fascinated.

'No, no. There must be an end.'

'Yes. There must be an end. Later on, we'll decide what the end is to

be.'

He went out to the veranda carrying the key. Bridget did not follow

him. She had no power either to resent or to compel him. She sat

waiting. When, after about a quarter of an hour, he came back, she was

still in the office as he had left her, seated by the rough table on

which were the station log, the store book, and branding tallies.

He came in triumphantly, exhibiting the key.

'Harris wanted to take possession of this. It was lucky I had put it on

my chain. However, he's satisfied that Wombo is securely locked up and

an extra glass of grog and a hint that, as he hasn't provided himself

with a warrant there's no obligation on him to stand over his prisoner

with a loaded gun, eased his mind of responsibility. The man is in a

beast of a temper though, he evidently expected to be entertained down

here. I hope Mrs Hensor will give him a good dinner. He insists on

sleeping in the little room off the store veranda where he says he can

keep watch on the hide house. I suppose it's all right?'

Bridget nodded. 'I'll tell Maggie.' Maule asked for ointment with which

to dress the black-boy's wounds and abrasions, and she gave it and left

him.

The afternoon was drawing in. Then came the sound of the herded beasts

being driven to the yard at sundown and, by-and-by, of Joe Casey's

stockwhip as he got up the milkers. The shorthandedness and disturbance

of Harris' arrival made everything late, and the goats which should

have been penned by now, were busy nibbling at the passion vines on the

garden fence. But all this made little impression on Bridget's

preoccupied brain. She had the thought of that coming interview with

Maule before her. Oola's continuous wailing was an affliction, and she

gave the half-caste a blanket and some food and told her to camp on the

further side of the hide house where, with eyes and ears glued by turns

against the largest chink between the slabs, she might see and speak to

the prisoner.

CHAPTER 4

Maule's and Lady Bridget's TETE-TETE dinner was an embarrassed meal,

with Kuppi and Maggie hovering about the table. The man's eyes said

more than his lips, and the woman sat, strained and silent, or else

uttered forced commonplaces.

They were alone at last on the veranda, with night and the vast

distances enfolding them. The air was close and hot, the sky banked

with storm clouds, and, occasionally, there were flashes of sheet

lightning and low growls of thunder. Before long the head-station was

very quiet. Harris had inspected the hide-house and, having assured

himself of the safety of his prisoner, had retired to the veranda room,

making a great parade of keeping his door open, his gun loaded, and his

clothes on, ready for any emergency. Joe Casey had gone to his hut, the

Chinaman and the Malay boy to theirs, and Maggie, the woman servant, to

her own tiny room wedged in between the new house and the kitchen wing.

But it was all early. At that hour, Maule laughingly reminded Lady

Bridget, the dining world of London would scarcely have reached the

dessert stage.

She would not waste time on banalities.

'I've been waiting to tell you something. My mind is quite made up. I

can't go on like this any longer. You must go away to-morrow.'

'To-morrow!' he echoed in dismay.

'Yes. I've thought it out. You don't know the country, but the mailman

will be here to-morrow, and he can show you the road.'

'You are very kind.... Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?'

'Surely you understand. You made me a scene yesterday. You'd go on

making me scenes.'

'And you?'

She gave a hard little laugh. 'Oh! I--don't want to play any more.'

'You call it play! To me it's deadly earnest. I let you go once. I do

not mean to let you go again.'

'But you are talking wildly. Don't you see that it is impossible we can

be friends.'

'Oh! that I grant you. We must be everything to each other--or nothing.'

In spite of her cold peremptoriness he could see that she was deeply

agitated. That fact gave him courage. His voice dropped to the tender

persuasive note which had always affected her like a spell.

'My dear--my very dearest.... We made a great mistake once. Let us

forget that. Death has opened the gate of freedom--for me, at

least--and I can only feel remorseful thankfulness. We have again a

chance of happiness. We will not throw it away a second time.'

'You seem to forget that if you are free I am married.'

'What a marriage? Call it a mad adventure.'

'That may be,' she said bitterly. 'But it doesn't alter the fact that I

did care very much for my husband.' She brought out the last words with

difficulty.

'DID care. You put it in the past tense. You don't care for him any

longer. It would be astonishing if you did. One has only to see you

together.... Oh, Biddy, it was so like you to rush off to the other

side of the world, and ruin your life for the sake of some strange

impracticable idea! I can follow it all....'

'You are mistaken,' she put in.

'I think not. You married in a fit of revulsion against the conditions

in which you were living--the hollow shams of an effete

civilisation--that's the correct phrase, isn't it? And--well, perhaps

there was another reason for the revulsion.... And you thought you had

found the remedy for it all. Oh! I admit that he is very good looking,

and, of course, he worshipped you--until he had you secure, and then he

reverted to the ways of his kind. "Nature's gentlemen" usually do....'

'Be silent, Will,' she exclaimed vehemently. 'You don't understand.'

'My dear, your very anger tells me that I do understand. Why! naturally

your imagination was set on fire. The Bush was painted to you in its

most glowing colours. No doubt, as you said, it's a Garden of Eden in

good seasons. Wonderful vegetation, glorious liberty--no galling

conventions--vast spaces--romance--and the will o' the wisp wealth of

the Wild. Confess now ... are not my guesses correct?'

'Yes--partly.' She spoke with reluctance. 'But I remember that YOU used

to talk to me about the joys of the Wild,' she added with sharp irony.

'Oh, yes, I know it all. I've been there myself. And it's only when El

Dorado proves a delusion that one begins to hanker--I did before I met

you--for the advantages of civilised existence.'

'Well, you have secured those. Why not go and enjoy them as I'm asking

you to do.'

'They have no value for me, unless I may share them with you. Bridget,

I can give you everything now that you once asked for.'

'With your wife's money?'

He drew back sharply. 'Ah! You CAN hit a man!' and there was silence

for a few minutes. Then he leaned closer to her, and his fingers

touched the gold cigarette case which lay on the arm of the squatter's

chair in which she was sitting. He went on in a changed manner.

'Poor Evelyn left her fortune to me, knowing the truth. She was a

noble-souled woman. I was not worthy of her. But unworthy as I may have

been, Bridget, I deserved better of my wife than your husband deserves

of you. At least, I did not deceive her.'

'What do you mean? Colin did not deceive me. That, at all events, is

not one of his faults towards me.'

'Has he told you, then, why he keeps on his station that insolent woman

and her yellow-haired blue-eyed boy?'

Bridget started visibly. He saw that his shaft had struck the mark. But

she answered calmly:

'I don't know what you want to imply. I thought you knew that Mrs

Hensor's husband was killed on one of Colin's expeditions, and that he

looked after her and her boy on that account.'

'Oh, yes, I've heard that story. But it seemed common gossip at

Tunumburra that there was another--less creditable--explanation.'

She turned fiercely upon him. 'You have no right to make such an

abominable accusation.'

'I only mention what I heard. I went about a good deal there in bar

saloons, and to men's gatherings. Naturally, I was interested in the

district where, by the way, McKeith does not appear to be over popular.

Of course, I attached no great importance to the gossip then. It only

made me wonder. Oddly enough, to-day when I was out with the tailing

mob, one of the men repeated it--I need not say that I stopped him. He

said he'd had it as a fact from a man who was a long time in your

husband's employ--a man called Steadbolt.'

Again the scene in front of Fig Tree Mount Hotel flashed before Lady

Bridget, and Demon Doubt rose up clothed now in more material

substance. Her voice shook as she answered, though she tried to be

loyal:

'Steadbolt was discharged from my husband's employment. He is another

of Mrs Hensor's rejected suitors. That speaks for itself.'

'Strange that Mrs Hensor should reject so many suitors without apparent

reason,' said Maule.

Bridget did not seem able to bear any more. Her head drooped upon her

hands, her shoulders heaved convulsively.

'I don't know what to do--I am alone. It's an insult to talk to me in

this way.'

'I want to protect you from insult--I want to take you out of these

miserable conditions--and there's only one way to do that,' he pleaded.

He took her hands in his and kissed them passionately. 'Oh, I love you.

There's nothing in the world I would not do to make you my wife. Why

should you hesitate? It breaks my heart to see you unappreciated,

neglected, living the sort of rough life that might suit a labourer's

daughter, but which is sacrilege for Lady Bridget O'Hara. A man had no

right to condemn a beautiful, refined woman like you to such a fate....

Well there' as she murmured incoherently, 'I'll not say any more about

that since it hurts you. You see, I respect your wishes. I'll even go

away at once, if you command it, and leave you to form your own

judgment. I will stay in Leichardt's Town--in Sydney--anywhere--until

you have decided for yourself--as I know you must do--how impossible it

is for you to remain here. Then I will meet you wherever you please,

and we will go to Europe together--bury ourselves abroad--wait in any

part of the world you may choose, until the divorce proceedings are

over, and we are free to marry. You need not be afraid of scandal, the

thing can be kept out of the English papers. It's so far away that

nobody will remember you were married to an Australian. Besides,

anything of the sort is so easily got over nowadays. My darling, why do

you look at me with those tragic eyes? It is not like the old Biddy to

be a slave to Mrs Grundy.'

She had been listening, sitting rigid in her chair, her hands still in

his, looking at him in a strange fixed manner, almost like a person in

the first stage of hypnotism. Now she snatched her hands away and gave

a sobbing cry.

'Oh, I'm not the old Biddy. I never can be again.'

'Dear love--believe me, when I promise you that you shall never have

cause for regret.'

He would have taken her into his arms, but she drew herself back.

'Will, you don't understand. And I don't understand myself, I can't see

things clearly. It's all been so sudden--Colin going

away--you--everything.... I want to be alone. I want to find myself.'

He moved aside with a slight inclination of his head as if to let her

pass. 'I told you that I would do anything you wish.'

'You mean that--really? Then I wish you to go away at once. You said

you would leave me to decide for myself. I take you at your word, and I

shall write to you, by-and-by. Promise me that you will go.'

'I have no choice. Your will is law to me. But understand, dearest--I

am only waiting.'

'It's good of you not to want to worry and argue.... Don't you

understand?--I couldn't bear you to be here when Colin comes back. You

must go to Tunumburra to-morrow.'

'Go to Tunumburra to-morrow?' he repeated blankly.

'It's on the way to Leuraville, and you can take the steamer from

there. I will write to you in Leichardt's Town. Oh, it's quite simple.

The mailman will be here early. You can leave a letter saying that you

are recalled.'

'I understand.' Her definite planning gave him hope that she had

already made up her mind, and that she would join him in Leuraville or

Leichardt's Town. After all, that might be best. 'But I shall see you

again. The mailman is not here yet. I have still a few hours respite.'

She made no answer at first. Then 'Good-night,' she said abruptly, and

flitted like a small white ghost along the dim veranda.

'Lady Bridget!' His voice stopped her. It shook a little, but the

manner was conventional, and she gained confidence from that and turned

irresolutely.

'Lady Bridget. While we've been talking about ourselves, we've

forgotten that unfortunate black-boy. I only want to tell you, that you

may depend on your wishes being carried out. I shall go to my room and

watch my opportunity. Trust me, that's all--in everything.'

'Thank you,' she answered simply. 'I do trust you.'

She came back a few steps, and he met her in the middle of the veranda.

In one of her swift transitions of mood a humorous element in the

situation seemed to appeal to her, and she said with a laugh:--'It's

comical, isn't it? The two tragedies, black and white--we two

here--those two out there!'

Just then the black curtain of cloud, that had been rising slowly and

obscuring the stars, was torn by a strong flash of chain lightning. It

threw up her face in startling clearness and he saw, in strange blend

with the conflicting emotions upon it, the wraith of her old whimsical

smile.

He did not answer her laugh. In truth, the man's nature was stirred to

a more deep-reaching extent perhaps than ever in his life before. It

may have been the flash of lightning recalling a momentary flash of

illumination that had once shone upon his own soul.

That had been when he was kneeling by the bedside of his dying wife,

and her last words revealed to him a magnanimity of devotion for which

he had been wholly unprepared. He had thought her merely amiable and

stupid--except in her love for him--and his sentiments towards her had

been a mixture of boredom, and the tolerant consideration due to the

bestower of substantial benefits. Nevertheless, she had awakened,

during a spasm of remorseful self-abasement, some nobler quality latent

in the man.

And now--as that flash of lightning illuminated Bridget's face and made

him keenly sensitive to the charm of her personality--her wayward

fascination, her inconsistencies, her weakness, her temperamental

craving for dramatic contrast, her reckless toying with emotion--by a

curious law of paradox, there came back upon Willoughby Maule that

scene with his dying wife, and he had again the flashing perception of

something sacred, unexplainable, to which his own nature could not

reach.

It sobered him. He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to

seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the

memory of it must for ever bind her to him.

But the impulse was past. They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the

interval--it seemed a very long one--between the lightning flash, and

the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.

Then he said mechanically, like one walking out of a dream? 'There's

going to be a storm. Are you frightened?'

'No,' she answered. 'I'm never frightened of storms!' and added,

'besides, Colin would be so glad of rain.'

Before he could reply, she had glided away again and he was alone.

He thought it strange that she should be thinking of her husband and

his material interests just then.

CHAPTER 5

It must have been a little while after midnight when Bridget was

awakened by more thunder and lightning and a confused tornado of sound.

She had been dreaming that Harris was throwing her from the gully

cliffs on to the boulders in its bed--only it seemed to her bewildered

senses that the boulders rose towards her instead of her descending to

meet them. Next she discovered that rain was pattering on the zinc

roof, and that the violent concussions she felt beneath her must be due

to the horns of goats knocking up against the boards of her bedroom.

Ah! she thought, the men had forgotten to pen the goats, and they were

sheltering from the rain in the open space under the floor of the

house. There could be no more sleep for her that night, unless they

were dislodged.

She waited through the din until there came a lull in the storm, then

got up and put on her shoes and a waterproof coat over her nightdress.

It was not the first time by any means that, when sleeping alone, she

had been obliged to rise and drive away stray animals that had been

inadvertently allowed means of entrance.

She went out to the back veranda, which was connected by steps with the

verandas of the other two wings. The moon was full and shed occasional

pale gleams through the scudding clouds. The close heat had given place

to a chill wind and the rain came down intermittently but in no

volume--it could not make much difference to the parched earth. There

was not a light visible anywhere. The goats were still making a noise

under the house.

Lady Bridget got a stick from a heap of sandal-wood boughs stacked

against the veranda, and passing to the front, where the piles

supporting the house were higher, proceeded to belabour an elderly

nanny, who, with her mate, was now nibbling twigs of the creepers. But

she was surprised to see only two or three goats, she had thought there

must be many more. The animals were refractory, and her beatings of no

avail. Now, suddenly, she was seized with a fit of nervous shivering

and realised that she felt physically ill. It was of no use for her to

try and drive off the goats. She sank down on the veranda steps of the

Old Humpey, and afterwards thought she must have fainted.

The sound of Maule's approaching footsteps and his alarmed ejaculation

seemed to bring her to herself. He appeared to have come round the back

of the Old Humpey. He was horrified at the sight of her convulsive

shivering.

'You mustn't stop here,' he exclaimed. 'I was afraid the goats would

disturb you, and I've been getting them out as quietly as I could. Most

of them are shut up in their fold.'

She saw that he was almost fully dressed. With an effort she controlled

her terror, and asked:

'You've not been asleep.'

'Oh! off and on. I've been keeping my eye on Harris' room,' he pointed

across the yard to the kitchen and store-building opposite--at the end

of which Harris had installed himself--to the squat outline of the slab

and back hide house. 'My ear, too,' he went on, 'for Harris' slumbers

are neither silent nor peaceful. When he's not snoring, he groans and

stirs, and the worst of it is that he's got his door wide open on to

the veranda and his bed right across the window that looks straight at

the door of the hide house. I thought I'd take advantage of the

thunder, but it was no good. He was awake and looking out. Now he has

lain down again, and as soon as I hear him snoring I shall try once

more.'

A fresh fit of shivering seized Bridget.

'This won't do,' he said, and went hurriedly into his own room which

opened a few doors down on to the veranda, and coming back with an

opossum rug on his arm and a glass of brandy and water in his hand, he

made her drink the spirits and wrapped the rug round her. Presently the

shivering ceased.

A moon-gleam between two clouds closing on each other showed her his

eyes glowing with sombre passion. She saw that he was holding himself

under stern restraint. Though where they were, the veranda running

between the end of the Old Humpey and the new house, made a kind of

passage so that they were in shadow, there was a possibility of

watchful eyes discovering their whereabouts.

'Will you go back to your room, and I'll get rid of these goats,' he

said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way. 'I supose there isn't a

yard where I could put them, nearer than their own by the lagoon.'

'I don't think so,' she answered dully, and without stirring from where

she crouched upon the steps. When he urged her anew to go back to bed,

she answered petulantly:

'Oh, do let me be. I like the wind and the rain--they're soothing. And

I couldn't sleep now until I know that Wombo is safe in the scrub.'

He made no further protest, but set to work shepherding the goats. She

watched him drive them out of the gate till his dark form and the

piebald shapes he was driving before him were lost in the night. She

knew that it would take some little time to pen them all securely in

their fold. But the night was young yet.

From shivering, the fire of the brandy and the warmth of the fur rug

had turned her temperature to fever heat. She felt keenly excited; the

blood in her veins seemed boiling, and the occasional raindrops and

moist wind were pleasant on her face. She had gone to the end of the

veranda and stood there with long withes of the native cucumber vine

that grew over the Old Humpey swaying around her in the breeze. There

was not a light in the place. Even moon and stars were now veiled. Her

brain raced round desperate and futile schemes for eluding the

vigilance of the Police Inspector. She wished now that she had thought

of asking him to dinner and putting opium into his coffee--that was the

sort of thing they did in novels. She did not know that a less

developed brain than her own was working at this moment to the same

end, on an inspiration from the bush DEBIL-DEBIL, or such savage

divinity as watches over the loves of the Blacks.

She saw what at first she had thought part of the shadow of a

neighbouring gum tree cast on the strip of grass that ran at the back

of the Old Humpey. But the lesser shadow moved, halted, and the greater

shadow was stationary and grew denser as the moon sailed again across a

clear patch of sky.

Then Bridget realised that the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola,

shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin

had halted at the casement window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with

her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the

window ledge and dropped within.

Bridget ran along the grass to the window, and from there watched Oola

move about the room and in the almost darkness fumble among the objects

on the dressing-table. Then Bridget could hear the little click of the

tongue and the guttural note of exultation a black tracker gives when

he comes upon a trail. Bridget drew aside against the wall, so that

Oola, again springing over the window sill, did not observe her. But

Bridget saw the watch and chain with the iron key attached to it which

the gin had stolen, and seized Oola's arm as the dark form crouched

upon the grass again. The gin uttered a smothered shriek. Bridget took

the watch from her hand, detached the key from the chain, and slipped

watch and chain into the pocket of her coat, while Oola, clutching Lady

Bridget's knees, pleaded chokily:

'Mithsis--you gib me key--no make im noise. No tell pollis-man me let

out Wombo. My word! plenty quick he YAN long-a scrub. BA-AL pollis-man

catch Wombo. Mithsis--BUJERI White Mary! You gib it key to Oola.'

The key was in Oola's hand. 'BA-AL me tell,' whispered Bridget. 'You go

quick.'

She, too, bent her body and followed Oola, who sped like a hunted hare

round the comer of the Old Humpey. Now she wriggled in the shadow of

the yard railings. Now she crept stealthily past Harris'

window--and--oh! DEBIL--DEBIL be praised! the Police sergeant's

stertorous snoring was clearly audible.

Blessed, likewise, be the retiring moon and the sweeping clouds! Lady

Bridget, every nerve a-quiver and the rushing blood throbbing in her

temples, also crept noiselessly beneath the window in the wake of Oola,

crawling like Oola, but more to the back of the hide-house into the

shelter of its drooping bark eaves.

Bending cautiously round the slabs, she watched, as the gin, with a

swift wriggling motion like that of a snake, drew herself along the

sunken earth floor beneath the eaves and then, softly raising herself

to the level of the padlock, put in the key. There was a muffled

grating of iron under the gin's hand, as the padlock unclosed and the

hasp dropped, then a creak of the door on its hinges, while it opened

and shut behind the undulating shape in the aperture. Then a low

throaty ejaculation--the black's call of warning. And now with a

quickness incredible, the wriggling movement of two blanket-shrouded

serpentine shapes round the hide-house--in and out among the grass

tussocks and the low herbage, now hidden for a moment by friendly gum

shadows in the dimness, now dark moving blurrs upon the lesser

darkness, and now altogether invisible....

Lady Bridget knew that in five minutes, once they could be upright

again, the fugitives would have reached the gully, and after that the

gidia scrub. Then security from the terrors of a white man's gaol would

be almost assured to them.

Lady Bridget waited--waited, it seemed to her an eternity, in reality

it was barely over the five minutes she had mentally given the two

blacks for their escape. That five minutes had been full of alarms, and

she could feel her heart thumping, so tense was the strain. She had to

consider the possibility of Harris being awakened; also, of Maule's

return and an attempt on his part to free the hide-house prisoner. Also

there was the danger of the clouds breaking before she had done her

work.

She heard a movement of the sleeper in his bed below the open window

opposite. Harris might have been aroused, and perhaps have stirred

without awakening.... But the snoring had ceased.... She did not think,

however, that he could be fully awake.... Presently the snoring

recommenced.

She crept very slowly along the earthen floor, drawing her hands along

the slabs as she went. A splinter from one of them ran into her

finger--but that did not matter. Now she touched the door, which lay

back towards her, for the blacks had not waited to close it. She pushed

it very softly, holding her breath at the creak of the hinge and

listening intently for the recurrent snore which sounded through the

window only three paces from her.

At last the thing was done--the padlock fastened, the key turned in the

lock, and now in her pocket. She dropped flat on the earth, her cloak

drawn lightly between her knees, and wriggled snake-like, as Oola had

done past Harris' windows, then pushed herself on hands and knees along

the ground, squeezing her body against the palings of the yard, till

she reached the Old Humpey on the opposite side. Once round that

corner, she got on to her feet, feeling sick and giddy but intensely

relieved. She leaned against the gum tree which had protected Oola, and

now realised that it had been raining in a driving gust and that she

was wet to the skin.

The bleating of a kid, which had been left under the house and had

found its way into the yard, startled her anew. She thought that she

heard sounds in the wing near the hide-house--steps on the veranda. Was

Harris stirring? Had he discovered the flight of his prisoner?

She waited again till all was quiet. By this time, there was a watery

radiance just overhead. She looked towards the lagoon, but there was no

sign of Maule. She felt the shivering begin again, though her head

seemed burning, and she could hardly think collectedly. Her chief idea

was to get back to bed.

But she was able to reason to herself that Maule must somehow be

informed of the escape. She did not think he could have got back yet to

the spot where he had left her. Or he might come straight to his room

and miss the key and his watch. In any case, these must be restored to

the place from which Oola had taken them.

She lifted herself to the window-sill as Oola had done, and in a moment

was inside the room. It had been an easy enough business, only that in

clutching the window frame, the jagged end of the splinter she had run

into her hand caught and tore her flesh. The room was of course empty.

She lifted a candle--which, with matches, stood on the dressing

table--and put back the watch and chain, and the key now separate from

them. That fact would show Maule that it had been tampered with. But

she must find some more exact means of conveying what had happened.

Premature action on his part might give the alarm. Her brain worked in

flashes. She had vivid ideas, which in her fevered state she could not

hold properly. She must write to Maule. A notebook that he must have

taken from his pocket lay on the table also. She tore out a

leaf--paused--She must write so that only he would understand. An

accident might happen to the paper.

There must be no definite statement to implicate him or herself. Some

words in French occurred to her. She wrote them down and continued the

note in that language. At the close she begged him to act so that there

should be no ground for suspicion--reminded him of his promise to go

away on the morrow--said she would write to him at the Post Office at

Leuraville. She did not sign the sheet, but folded it across--addressed

it to Maule and laid it under the watch on the table.

A fresh spasm of shivering seized her. Suddenly she remembered the

opossum rug she had left. She opened the door leading from Maule's room

into the veranda, and went out. She stood bewilderedly, looking across

the faint-lit yard to the dim veranda of the kitchen wing opposite, as

she fought against the sick faintness that threatened to overcome her.

Then she walked along the veranda to the place where she had parted

from Maule. The rug was lying there, and she threw it round her, and

waited on the steps with chattering teeth and shaking limbs.

In a minute or two, he joined her. She saw by the fitful moonbeams that

he was wet and muddy--truly in a worse plight than herself. She could

hardly speak for the rigor. Seeing her condition, he took her up in his

arms, and carried her along the veranda towards her own room. The clasp

of his arms, the warmth of his body, even through his wet clothing

helped her to steady herself. She continued to tell him of the great

achievement.

'Wombo has escaped--I saw Oola taking the key out of your room. Harris

was asleep--snoring. She let Wombo out, and I locked the door of the

hide-house again afterwards, and put the key back in your room. It's

all right--nothing can be found out till the morning. They're safe in

the scrub by now.'

'Well, I'm thankful for that at any rate,' he answered. 'But at this

moment I cannot think of anything or anyone but you. My dearest--I'm so

afraid of your being ill--what can I do?'

'Nothing. I have sal volatile in my room--stuff to take for a cold. I

only want to get off my wet things and go to bed--I can sleep now.

Don't be frightened about me.'

She staggered when he put her gently down inside her own door, but

recovered herself courageously, lighted her candles, laughed at her own

disordered appearance, bade him go at once and look after himself.

He kissed her hand reluctantly.

'Till to-morrow.'

She looked at him alarmedly. 'Will! But you have promised me. You are

going away to-morrow.'

He did not reply. His eyes were roving round the chamber, dimly lighted

by the two candles. He was observing the feminine details the

untidinesses so characteristic of her; the daintinesses, equally

characteristic--all in such odd contrast with inevitable bush

roughnesses. He noticed the silver and ivory on the dressing-table; the

large silver-framed photographs--an autographed one of the Queen of

Wartenburg--Molly Gaverick and Rosamond Tallant in Court veil and

feathers, Joan Gildea at her type-writer--the confusion of books, the

embroidered coverlet on the large bed, the bush-made couch at its foot

upholstered in rose-patterned chintz on which she had seated herself.

'You have GOT to go,' she urged. 'WHATEVER happens, you are leaving

here with the mailman to-morrow.... Promise--on your word of

honour--that NOTHING shall hinder you.'

'Of course, I shall keep my promise, though it breaks my heart to leave

you like this. But I know--I feel that the parting will not be for

long.... Yes....' as she slowly shook her head and a strange fateful

look shadowed the feverish brightness of her eyes. 'I COULDN'T leave

you if I didn't feel certain of that.'

'Oh, I'm tired out. I'm tired--dead tired--' Her face was ghastly, her

lips like burning coals. 'I can't argue any more. And now it's

good-night--good-bye.'

'Not good-bye. At least there will be time to-morrow for that.'

'You MUST go--Good-night.'

He left her, but waited in the veranda, reassuring himself by the sound

of movements on the other side of the closed door. When all was silent,

and the candles extinguished, he went back to his own room.

He saw on the dressing-table his watch and chain with the key detached

beside them--a confirmnation of the truth of what Lady Bridget had told

him. But she had forgotten to tell him of the note she had left also,

and, naturally, he did not look for it. Had he known and looked he

would have discovered that the note was gone.

CHAPTER 6

Lady Bridget always looked back upon the next few days as a confused

nightmare. She awoke in the grip of fever--that malarial kind which is

common in Australia--tried to get up as usual, but fell back upon her

bed, faint and dizzy. Her brows ached. She had alternations of burning

heat and icy coldness. There came active periods in the dull lethargy

which is often a phase of fever, and from which she only roused herself

at the spur of some urgent call on her faculties. One of these was

Willoughby Maule's anxious message of enquiry conveyed by Maggie, to

which she had the presence of mind to return the answer that she had

caught cold, and was staying in bed for the present, but would no doubt

be quite well shortly. Also that she was sorry not to bid him good-bye,

but begged that he would not think of postponing his departure.

She heard as in a dream the sound of the mailman's arrival, and

presently, of the saddling of horses in the yard, and then the

CLOP-CLOP of their feet as they were ridden past her end of the house

to the Gully crossing. There were two horses. So Maule had left the

head-station with Harry the Blower, as she had bidden him do. She was

conscious of relief.

She realised in bewildered fashion, that Maule was gone out of her life

at Moongarr, and connected the sound of his horses' departing feet with

the thud of Sir Luke Tallant's hall door, when he had left her at the

first interview which had led to their final quarrel.

From that effort of memory she sank again into mental coma. Maggie took

it to be natural sleep, and laid the mailbag just brought by Harry the

Blower, on her mistress' bed to await her awakening. Much later in the

day, on the return of Mr Ninnis and the other men from their

cattle-muster, finding the bag still untouched, Maggie broke the seals

at her mistress' dazed order, and having sorted out Lady Bridget's

letters, carried away the bag for Ninnis to take his own mail.

But Lady Bridget paid no heed to her letters, and thus it happened that

for the time being, she was quite unaware of an event which was of

great importance to her.

She had been scarcely even distantly conscious of the hue and cry, and

general excitement at the head-station, when it was discovered that the

prisoner had escaped. Harris had his own suspicions--it might be said,

his certainties, but the man's crafty nature bade him keep his

accusations for an opportunity when he ran less risk of being worsted.

He meant to wait until McKeith's return. Meanwhile what he had not been

prepared for was Willoughby Maule's departure with the mailman before

he himself came back from an unsuccessful hunt after the fugitives.

That move had lain outside his calculations. He had gleaned enough from

Mrs Hensor, as well as from his own observation, to feel sure that

Maule and Lady Bridget were in love with each other, and he had never

supposed that they would part so abruptly.

The head-station was very shorthanded in the absence of Ninnis and the

stockmen, and Harris had been obliged to go out by himself on the

man-hunt. He did not know the country at the head of the gully, where

he concluded that Wombo was hiding, and lost himself in the gidia

scrub. Thus, he was in a very disagreeable temper, when he at last

arrived at the Bachelors' Quarters.

To Lady Bridget the day passed, and all the seemingly distant noises of

it, like a phantasmagoria of vision, sound, impressions--the echoes of

station activity; the Chinamen's pidgin English as they weeded the

front garden; Tommy Hensor's voice when he brought the cook a nestful

of eggs some vagrant hen had laid in the grass-tussocks, the men going

forth with the tailing-mob--and at intervals the scorching recollection

of that hinted scandal concerning Colin and Mrs Hensor of which Maule

had told her.... Horrible... unbelievable... and yet....

Then, after a long while, with lucid breaks in the dreamy stupor, she

heard the roar of Ninnis' incoming mob of wild cattle from the range.

She could even wonder whether he had been able to muster that herd of

five hundred or so for the sale-yards. She knew that her husband was

counting upon the sale of these beasts--probably at 6 pounds a head--to

enable him to fight the drought, by a speedy sinking of artesian bores.

She felt herself reasoning quite collectedly on this subject, until the

roar of beasts turned into the roar of the mighty Atlantic, breaking

against the cliffs below Castle Gaverick.... She saw the green

waves--real as the heaving backs of the cattle--alive, leaping.... And

she herself seemed tossed on their crest... she saw and felt the cool

embrace of the wave-fairies she had once tried to paint for Joan

Gildea's book.... Oh! she had never fully appreciated the strength of

that now inappeasable longing for the Celtic home, the Celtic

traditions which had been born in her. She had never known how much she

loved Castle Gaverick... how much she loathed the muggy heat, the flies

and the mosquitoes now brought by last night's rain, the fierce glare

beating upon the veranda, the sun-motes dancing on the boards....

The appearance late that evening of Mrs Hensor, who having heard the

mistress was ill, had come down partly from curiosity, partly from

genuine humanity to see what might be amiss, was the next thing that

roused Lady Bridget from her fever-lethargy.

'Maggie told me you'd been out in the rain last night, and had caught

cold, and I thought Mr McKeith would wish me to ask if I could do

anything,' Mrs Hensor said.

Lady Bridget sat up in bed, for the moment her most haughty self.

'Thank you; but there's no occasion for you to trouble, Mrs Hensor. I

would have sent for you if I had required your services.'

'And I'm not aware that I was engaged to give them,' snorted Mrs

Hensor. 'It was out of consideration for Mr McKeith that I came. I've

got quite enough to do at the Quarters, and I'm really glad not to have

to trouble myself down here--what with Mr Ninnis wanting extra cooking,

and Mr Harris in such a rage over Wombo's getting away--I'm wondering

if you heard anything last night, of that, Lady Bridget? And Harris is

put out, too, over Mr Maule going off with Harry the Blower, while he

was hunting for the black-boy. However,' Mrs Hensor concluded, 'the

master will be here tomorrow to see into the rights of things.'

'How do you know that the master will be here to-morrow?' asked Bridget

sharply.

'Harry the Blower brought me a letter from Mr McKeith,' replied Mrs

Hensor with malign triumph. 'I suppose he thought you'd be too busy

doing things with Mr Maule to bother over the station affairs, and that

Mr Ninnis might be out on the run--and so he wrote to tell me what he

wanted done as he often used to before.'

Lady Bridget closed her eyes, and leaned back against the pillows

trying hard to control the muscles of her face, and not to betray her

mortification. Moreover, she was certain that Mrs Hensor had stated the

exact truth.

'I should prefer to be alone,' she said, feeling the woman's eyes upon

her.

'Then I'll go, as you don't want me,' returned Mrs Hensor. 'But if I

was you, Lady Bridget, I'd take a dose of laudanum, and get myself into

a perspiration, for I believe it's a touch of dengue fever you've got

the matter with you.'

A touch of dengue in tropical Australia may be serious or the

reverse--sharp and short and critical, or tedious and less dangerous.

Lady Bridget's case was the sharp, short kind demanding prompt

treatment. When McKeith came home the following day, he found her

delirious, and incapable of recognizing him.

Worn out as was the strong man's frame--not only with wild jealousy and

tortured love, but with sleepless nights of patrol work, days in the

shearing-shed, sharp fighting with a second conflagration--fortunately

put out before much damage had been done--and a final dispersion of

Unionist forces, Colin never for one instant relaxed his watch by

Bridget's bedside.

All night he tended her, fighting the fever as he had fought the fire

at Breeza Downs, plying her with continued fomentations, dosing her

with quinine, laudanum and the various medicines he had found

efficacious. For never was a better doctor for malarial fever than

Colin McKeith--he had had so much experience of it. When towards

morning she fell into a profuse sweating, and he had to change and

wring out the blankets in which he had wrapped her, he knew that the

fever danger was past.

She awoke at mid-day from a deep, health-restoring sleep, so weak

however, that her bones felt like water and her face looked as white as

the pillow case. But her brain was clear.

She saw that there was no one else in the room, which was still in

great disorder. The blankets, hot and heavy, were almost unbearable,

but she had not strength to fling them off. It felt frightfully warm

for the time of year and the air that came in through the open French

window seemed to be blowing from an oven. The sky, as she glimpsed it

from her bed between the veranda eaves and the railings, looked

curiously dark and had a lurid tinge.

Lifting herself slightly, she became aware that Colin was in the

veranda with his back to her, looking out over the plain. The set of

his figure as he bent forward, with his hands on the railings and his

eyes apparently strained towards the horizon, reminded her of the

determined hunch of his square shoulders and the dogged droop of his

head when he had ridden away with Harris and the Organizer.

She called faintly, 'Colin.'

He turned round instantly and came to the bed. She stared up at him,

frightened at the look in his face.... Something dreadful must have

happened. She was too weak to go over coherently in her mind the

sequence of events and feelings. She only sensed a menacing spectre,

monstrous, terrifying. She could not realise her own share in the

catastrophe she felt was impending. She could not believe that Colin

could change so much in less than ten days. Everything had come about

with such incredible swiftness. His face looked haggard, ravaged. The

cheeks seemed to have fallen in. The features were rigid as if cut out

of metal. The whites of his eyes between the reddened lids were very

blood-shot and the eyes themselves seemed balls of blue fire. There was

not a shade of kindliness in them, only the gleam of a fixed purpose

which no entreaties would alter.

She could imagine that he might have looked like that, when, as a boy

he had beheld the mutilated bodies of his father, mother, sisters,

stretched stark, after the blacks had done their hideous work.

And it was true that he did feel now somewhat as that boy had felt, for

again to his tortured imagination that which he held dearest seemed to

be lying foully murdered before his eyes. She, his love, had been

ravished from him, and he could only regard her as dead to him for

evermore.

'Colin,' she gasped. 'What is the matter?'

The muscles of his face relaxed, it seemed automatically, as if there

were no soul behind. He laughed a dry ironic laugh. 'Never mind. You

mustn't speak.'

He felt her pulse, examined her as a doctor might have done--all

without a word, and straightened the blankets and pillows.

'You must have food,' he said, and went out. She heard him calling

Maggie. After a few minutes he came back with a tumbler of beaten egg

and milk, to which he had added brandy, and told her she must drink it.

Her hand was too weak to hold the tumbler. He put one arm under the

pillow, raised her head and held the glass to her lips until she had

drunk every drop of the mixture. All this with no show of tenderness or

one unnecessary word. She needed the nourishment and stimulant, and

after them felt better.

'I remember.... I must have been ill. What was the matter with me?'

'Dengue,' he answered shortly.

'I was out in the rain.... I got a chill I remember.'

'Oh, you were out in the rain!... I should have thought you could have

done what you wanted without that.' The bitterness of his tone was

gall-like. And again the ironic laugh.

She winced and drew her head aside. He took away his arm instantly from

behind the pillow and straightened himself, looking down on her, still

with that dreadful light in his eyes. She could not bear it, and turned

her head away from him.

'Don't look at me.... I'm going to get up.'

'No, I think you'll stay where you are.' His voice broke slightly but

hardened again. 'I won't talk to you. I won't let you speak a word

yet... that will come afterwards.'

'But I don't understand.'

'Better not now. I'll tell you this. You're through the fever. It won't

come back if you do as I tell you--You understand something about

dengue. You'll stop here till you're stronger. You've got to take the

brandy, eggs and milk till you feel sick of it. To-day you'll have

slops. I've told Maggie about preparing your food, if the fever comes

back--it won't if you keep quiet--but if it does--hot

bottles--blankets--laudanum--I've mixed the doses--until you get into a

sweat. Remember that. And you'll have someone in your room to-night.'

'In my room--YOU? What do you mean?'

'It won't be me--I'm going away.'

'Going away--what is it?'

She noticed that he turned and looked at the sky.

'Why is it so dark--and the heat so stifling?' she asked.

'These damned Unionists have fired the only good pasture left on

Moongarr. It's been burning since two o'clock this morning. I sent the

men out. Now I'm going myself--to save what I can.'

He left the room abruptly. In a minute or two she heard him outside

calling 'Cudgee... Harris'--and then giving the order to saddle up. She

got out of bed and tottered to the window. She could see now the wide

range of the disaster. The lurid haze was spreading. The horizon

shrinking, and the air was hotter than ever. The fire seemed still a

long way off, but there was nothing to stop the flames if once they

reached the great plain. The course of the river, here at best a mere

string of shallow waterholes, was quite dry. The rain of the other

night had been too insignificant and local to do any good. The brown

mud-strip round the lagoon below, was not perceptibly diminished. She

knew that the narrow water channels flowing from their one working

artesian bore, must soon be licked up by the flames. And the Bore in

process of construction, was at a standstill for want of workmen.

Bridget gazed out despairingly towards the shrinking horizon and upon

the parched plain with the rugged clumps of dun coloured gum trees

scattered upon it--the near ones looking like trees of painted tin,

sun-blistered. The swarms of flies, mosquitoes in the veranda offended

her. She disliked the cattle dogs mooching round with hanging jaws and

slavering tongues. The ferocious chuckle of a great grey

king-fisher--the bird which white people called the laughing

jackass--perched on the branch of a gum tree beside the fence, made her

shudder, because the bird's soulless cachinnation seemed an echo of

Colin's laugh.

Ah! that was the bush, undivested of romance--hard, brutal, vindictive,

in spite of the mocking verdure of her honeymoon spring.... And Colin

was a part of the Bush. He resembled it. He too could be strong and

sweet and tender as the great blossoming white cedar down by the

lagoon, as rills of running water making the plain green--when his

desires were satisfied. And he could be brutal and vindictive likewise,

when anyone dared to thwart his will and defy his prejudices.

She staggered about the room, feminine instinct prompting her to

freshen her appearance, to change her soiled, crumpled nightdress, to

throw a piece of lace over her dishevelled head, to pull up the linen

sheets which had been rolled clumsily to the foot of the bed, so that

the blankets could be wrapped round her. But she sank again presently,

exhausted, on her pillows.

In a short time McKeith came back, booted and spurred, and stood as

before looking at her with forbidding sternness.

'You'd better have stopped quiet. I've told Mrs Hensor to come down and

look after you. She knows what to do.'

Bridget cried out passionately: 'I won't have that woman in my room.

How dare you tell her to come near me.'

'Dare! That seems a queer way to put it. However, you can order her out

if you don't want her. There's Maggie--and I'm sending Ninnis back

to-night.'

'When are you coming home?'

'I can't say. I've got things to do--and to think about.'

His words and his manner seemed to convey a sinister meaning.

'I see--you are angry about the black-boy. If you want to know I will

tell you exactly what happened.'

He laughed again and his laugh sounded to her insulting.

'Oh, I know what has happened. You needn't tell me. I had some

conversation with Harris this morning. I know EVERYTHING; and now I've

got to settle in my own mind how things are to go on.'

She went very white and repeated dully: 'How--things--are to go on?'

'Between you and me. You don't imagine, do you, that they can go on the

same?'

'No,' she retorted with spirit, 'certainly they can't go on the same.'

Maggie had come along the veranda and was at the French window.

'Mr Harris says he's ready, sir, and the horses....'

'All right.' McKeith went out of the door, but turned and paused as if

he were going to speak to his wife. But he thought better of it and

walked rapidly away--perhaps because she avoided his look.

She supposed that he was infuriated with her because of her part in

Wombo's escape, and she thought his anger unjust. No doubt, too, he

suspected Maule's connivance, and she knew that he was furiously

jealous of Maule. But surely he would understand that she must have

sent Maule away. What more can a wife do in the case of an

over-insistent lover? And how should a husband expect an explanation

when he had literally thrown her into her lover's arms, or at least had

left her defenceless against his solicitations! Had he treated her

differently after the Wombo episode in the beginning, she might have

told him the truth about her former relations with Willoughby Maule.

As things had been, it was rather for Maule than for Colin that she

found excuse.

She was bitterly hurt and offended against her husband. Oh, yes. He was

right. They could never again be the same to each other. If he had come

back penitent, pleading for forgiveness, overwhelmed with contrition at

her dismissal of Maule, she might then perhaps have explained

everything and they might have become reconciled. But now, his vile

temper, his insupportable manner, his dominant egoism made any attempt

of conciliation on her part impossible. She had a temper too--she told

herself, and her anger was righteous. And she also had an egoism that

wouldn't allow itself to be trampled on. She had rights--of birth, of

breeding, to say nothing of her rights of wifehood and womanhood for

which she must insist upon respect. If he would not bend to her, even

to show her ordinary consideration and courtesy, then she would not

lower her pride one iota before him.

Thoughts of this kind went through her mind as she lay smarting under

the burning sense of outrage, until the reappearance of Mrs Hensor.

Then, the new effort she made in sending away the woman exhausted brain

and body and left her with scarcely the power to think--certainly not

to reason.

CHAPTER 7

But Lady Bridget did not know what had followed upon her husband's

home-coming. She had not been in a condition to realize how all night

through he had tended her, putting aside every other consideration,

giving no heed to the affairs of the station, refusing to see the

Police Inspector who had sent in an urgent message soon after his

arrival.

Only when turning for a moment to the veranda and noticing the red

glare in the sky, had he been startled out of his absorption in his

wife's illness. In ordinary circumstances, he would have been on his

horse in a twinkling and riding as for life to fight the worst foe a

squatter has to face in times of drought. He knew that if the fire

spread, it might mean his ruin. As it was, he rushed up to the Quarters

to rouse Ninnis and send him with Moongarr Bill and all available hands

to do what he could in arresting the flames. But he himself dared not

leave Bridget till the fever was down, and the crisis past. That could

not be till she had awakened from the deep sleep into which she had

fallen.