Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land by Rosa Praed (page 6)

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.

With the sight of her in that sleep, however, the pull on his forces slackened, though he was still too strung-up to think of snatching even an hour’s sleep for himself. He watched, alternately, the Bush fire and Bridget’s face, thinking his own dour thoughts the while. Every now and then, he would creep on tip-toe to the veranda railings and gaze out upon the lurid smoke which it seemed to him was thickening over the horizon. When the sun was risen he washed and dressed and went up to the Bachelors’ Quarters where Mrs Hensor was already about and gave him tea and food, which he badly needed. From her he learned a considerable amount of what had been going on at Moongarr. From the Police Inspector, a little later, he learned a good deal more.

Harris’ manner was portentous; he asked for a private interview in the office, saying that he had stayed on purpose to see the Boss, because his tale was impossible to write. Then he told his own version of the capture and locking up of Wombo, taking blame on himself for having left the key of the hide-house in Maule’s possession.

‘But you see, Boss, he twitted me a bit about not having a warrant, and there’s no doubt, wherever he’s learned it, that the chap has got the whole constabulary lay-out at his finger ends–besides having the ear of the Governor and the Executive down in Leichardt’s Town. He’s got money too, no end of it. They were saying in Tunumburra that his wife left him a quarter of a million.’

‘Go on–that’s nothing to do with us,’ put in McKeith gruffly.

‘He’s an old friend of her Ladyship’s, I understand,’ sniggered Harris.

‘What the devil has that got to do with Wombo?’ said McKeith furiously.

Harris drew in his feelers.

‘I wouldn’t swear that it had, Mr McKeith, and I wouldn’t swear that it hadn’t. All I know is, that Mr Maule had the key of the hide-house in his bedroom that night, and, being a close friend of her Ladyship’s, he was no doubt aware that she didn’t relish the notion of Wombo’s being had up for theft and murder–I’m not saying who it was let out Wombo. It’s a mystery I don’t take upon myself to fathom–I’ll leave that to you.’

‘There’s one easy solution of the mystery that doesn’t seem to have occurred to you,’ said McKeith. ‘The gin Oola could easily have stolen the key–they’re cunning as the devil–half-castes–and as treacherous–I know them–I’ve had my own good reasons for not letting one of them inside the fence of my head-station.’

‘That may be–I can only say what I know, and you can form your own opinion.’

‘Say what you know then–I’m waiting to hear. But be quick about it, man, I’ve no time to waste this morning.’

Harris began his tale–how he had watched at the window of his little room, till after midnight, his gun ready, his eyes glued on the padlocked door opposite; how overcome with drowsiness against which he had vainly struggled–‘for a man that’s been pretty near two days and nights in the saddle may be excused if his eyes begin blinking,’ Harris put it. He had dropped dead asleep–he confessed it–at his post. Then, how on awakening suddenly, for no apparent reason, all seeming quiet around, he had got up as he was, half dressed and in his boots– had stepped across to the hide-house, had found the padlock intact and, hearing no sound, had concluded the black-boy was inside safe asleep. How then, with a relieved mind, he had been going back to his stretcher, when the noise of a goat bleating had set him on the look-out from his veranda. How, presently, looking at the veranda opposite, he had seen the door of Mr Maule’s bedroom open, and a woman come out, how she had stood a few moments facing him, with the moonlight straight on her, so that there was no possibility of his making a mistake. Harris paused. McKeith glared at the man, who, had he been quick at psychological interpretations, would have read an awful apprehension underlying the ill-restrained fury in the other’s face. The question came in hoarse jerks.

‘What–Who–Who was it you saw–?’

‘It was the Lady Bridget, Boss. . . . I–‘

Before he could proceed, a strong arm struck out and McKeith’s hand clutched at the Police Inspector’s neck.

‘You hound! You contemptible skunk! Take back that lie, or I’ll throttle it in your throat.’

Harris was of powerful build also, and, moreover knew some tricks of defence and assault. He freed himself by a dexterous duck of his head, and a sharp shake of his body, and stepped backward so that the office table was between him and his antagonist.

His face was scarlet, his bull’s eyes protruded from their full sockets. But he was wary, and not anxious to provoke the devil in McKeith.

‘Wait a bit,’ he said thickly. ‘if you’ll keep your hands off me, and let me finish what I was going to say, I’ll show you the proof that I’m not telling you lies–though you’re mistaking my meaning in regard to her Ladyship. . . .

‘Leave her Ladyship out of it, will you,’ McKeith snarled, his teeth showing between his tense lips.

‘I would do that willingly, Boss, for there’s no disrespect intended I can assure you. Only it means that this Wombo business will have to be reported, and if you can help me to the right evidence–well, so much the pleasanter for all parties,’ returned the Police Inspector craftily.

McKeith made a slight assenting movement of his head, but said nothing. His brows puckered, and he stiffened himself as he listened, strung to the quick, while Harris continued.

‘Well–I did see–that lady,’–the volcanic gleam from McKeith’s eyes stopped him from pronouncing Lady Bridget’s name. ‘I saw her come out of that room,’ he jerked his thumb along the veranda. ‘The moon was right on her just then. I saw her give a shiver–she’d been out in the wet. Then she walked up the veranda to where there’s the covered bit joining on to the Old Humpey, and I noticed her sit down on the steps– ‘

‘Stop,’ broke in McKeith. ‘If you were on the veranda over there, you couldn’t have seen as far as the steps.’

‘Right you are, Boss. But I wasn’t waiting on the veranda. When the lady turned her back, I moved into the yard, and I was standing by that flower-bush’–Again he jerked his thumb, this time to the centre bed, and a young bohinia shrub covered with pink blossoms ‘If you try yourself from there, you’ll find you can look slick through to the front garden. That’s where I saw Maule step out of–I guessed he’d come round by the back of the Old Humpey. I guessed too, he thought she oughtn’t to be sitting out there in the damp–She was shivering again –she’d put a rug that was lying on the steps round her. He just picked her up in his arms, and carried her right along, and when I stepped across I saw him take her into one of those rooms at the end of the front veranda. . . .’

A muffled growl, something like the sound a hunted beast might make when the dogs had got to touch of him, came from McKeith. Again he stiffened himself; his lips hard pressed; his eyes on Harris’ face. The Police Inspector avoided his gaze; but he too was watchful.

‘You see I was thinking of my prisoner, and wondering if there could be anything afoot about him. So as I knew there was nobody then–in Mr Maule’s room, I went back and looked in. I wanted to make sure, if I could, where the key of the hide-house might be. There was a candle left alight, and I saw the key right enough on the chest of drawers beside Maule’s watch and chain. It never came into my mind then, that anybody could have used it. I noticed a bit of folded paper under the watch. That’s it, Mr McKeith. There’s the proof that I am not lying about what I saw.’

Harris had taken out of his breast pocket, a piece of newspaper in which was wrapped the leaf torn out of Maule’s notebook, folded and addressed. He opened it out, and laid it on the office table in front of McKeith, keeping his own stubby finger on one corner of the sheet.

Still McKeith maintained his difficult self-restraint.

‘So you stole–a private communication that had been left in another person’s room, and was intended for his eyes alone?’

‘Come now, Boss. You know well enough that a constabulary officer who’s up against tricks to release a prisoner has got to keep his eyes peeled, and mustn’t let any clue to mischief escape him. How was I to know that there wasn’t some plot to cheat the law? How do I know that there wasn’t? That’s why I’m showing you the paper. I’m not a French scholar–I suppose that’s French–and as I suppose you are, I’ll ask you to translate what’s written there.’

McKeith pushed aside the man’s finger, and taking up the paper carried it to the window, where he stood with his back to Harris, spelling out Lady Bridget’s hurriedly written sentences.

He seemed a long time in getting at the sense of what he read. As a matter of fact, he had only a limited acquaintance with any modern languages except his own. He had picked up some colloquial German, and once when laid up in hospital, had set himself to read Balzac’s PERE GORIOT with the aid of a dictionary. Thus he had acquired a fairly extensive if somewhat archaic vocabulary. But Lady Bridget’s veiled intimation of Wombo’s escape couched in up-to-date and highly idiomatic French which would have been perfectly intelligible to Willoughby Maule, conveyed little to him beyond the fact of a secret understanding between his wife and a man whom he knew had once been her lover. That idea drove every other into the background of his thoughts. He did not care in the least how Wombo had escaped. It seemed clear to him that Oola had stolen the key after Harris had gone back to his room, while Maule and his wife were together–together in Lady Bridget’s own chamber. The blood surged to his brain, and his temples throbbed as though they would burst. In the madness of his jealousy, the words of the paper, combined with Harris’ revelations were damnatory confirmation of his wife’s guilt. He felt now that he had foreseen what would happen, from the moment that he had surprised the look on Lady Bridget’s face, when Maule had unexpectedly appeared before her. She had given herself away then. And, a little sooner, rather than a little later–as might have been the case had he not left them together–the inevitable had come to pass.

Yes, through the agony of that conviction now brought home to him, a dogged resolve formed itself in his mind–the determination not to betray himself or her. It beat upon him with insistent force. Though his goddess must be dethroned from her shrine in his heart, she should not be cast down for a vulgar brute like Harris to gloat over her shame. . . .

‘Well, Boss,’ the Police Inspector asked with affected nonchalance that bordered on insolence. ‘Can you make anything that’s satisfactory to you out of that?’

McKeith turned, Harris thought he was going to leap upon him in a fit of blind fury, and started up from his seat by the office table. McKeith’s eyes blazed, his taut sinews quivered; his face was now quite pallid, and the hand in which he held the piece of paper was clenched so tight that the veins stood out like thick cords, and the knuckles were perfectly bloodless.

But suddenly the pitch on his nerves was eased. His eyelids dropped, and when he lifted them, the eyes were quiet and intently observant.

He moved into his usual office chair.

‘Sit down again, won’t you, Harris?’ he said, and Harris resumed his former place.

‘What were you asking?’ McKeith continued. ‘Satisfactory to me is it? Yes, perfectly satisfactory, thank you. . . . I’m only amused–as you see. . . to find that I was quite right in my suspicions.’ And he laughed in what Harris thought a very odd way.

‘Eh? I don’t take your meaning.’ Harris’ manner was distinctly objectionable.

McKeith gave him a sharp look, and his teeth went over his under lip. Then, to the man’s evident surprise, he laughed again, throwing his head back so that the muscles of his throat showed under his beard, working, as it were, automatically. It really seemed as if the man’s mechanical merriment were no part of himself. He was, in fact, gaining time to propound an explanation which he did not believe in the least, but which happened to be almost the exact truth.

He answered with an air of ironic indifference.

‘Well, you know, I wouldn’t go in for the detective line, if I were you, Harris. You aren’t subtle enough for it. You jump too quickly at conclusions which have nothing to do with the main point. In fact, you’re a fool, Harris–a damned fool.’

Harris’ puzzled expression turned to one of extreme indignation. ‘Seems to me, Mr McKeith, that it’s you who are–well, damned queer about this affair. I’m sure I don’t know what you’ve got to laugh at. But if you’ve found out who let the black-boy out of the hide-house, I’d be glad to know, that’s all.’

McKeith ceased from his mirthless laughing and his sarcastic bluff. He leaned forward, facing Harris with his hands on the paper which he had laid on the table before him. He picked up the other’s last words.

‘Yes, that IS all. It’s the only part of this note which concerns you. Well, I can tell you that it was the half-caste woman, as I thought, who let Wombo out of the hide-house. She stole the key from Mr Maule’s room when HE was asleep, and let Wombo out when YOU were asleep–a longer time perhaps than you imagined, Harris. The black-boy made for the scrub, and I suppose they were in too great a hurry to think of shutting the door. Oola sneaked back–they’ve got the cunning of whites and blacks put together, those half-castes–and no doubt she guessed there’d be a hue and cry directly the door was found open. So she locked it again–and brought the key to her ladyship.’

McKeith seemed to force the last words from between his teeth.

‘Well, that’s quite simple, isn’t it?’

‘Now, I shouldn’t call it as simple as you make out, Boss. It appears mighty odd to me that the gin should have worried round after her ladyship when she might have sneaked back with the key to the place she took it from. And then there’s all the rest–the putting the key back and fitting in times and all that. . . . Seems to me a bit too much of the Box and Cox trick–a sort of jig-saw puzzle, d’you see.’

Manifestly, Harris was endeavouring to square probabilities. McKeith still held himself in.

‘I’ve given you the facts. You can figure out your details for yourself. I’ve my own business to attend to, and I must be off on it.’

He got up, and folding Lady Bridget’s note, deliberately put it in his breast pocket. Harris stretched forth a restraining hand.

‘Boss, I say–that’s important–for my report, you know.’

McKeith’s temper burst out.

‘Damn your report. I’m a magistrate, and I’ve taken your report, and the blacks are in the scrub and you can go and find them for yourself if you choose. You have no warrant, remember. No, I’m not going to be bothered any more about that black-boy. What. . . . Not I–with a fire raging on my run, and not enough hands to put it out.’

‘But her ladyship. . . .’ spluttered Harris.

‘Listen here you. . . .’ McKeith’s face and attitude were menacing. ‘I came back to find her ladyship down with dengue as bad as could be. It was on her that night, and if she had to be carried to her room in a fit of shaking, what business is that of yours? Understand me, Harris. Don’t you go mixing up my wife’s name with this beastly black-boy affair, or you’ll have to reckon with me–and I can tell you, you won’t relish that reckoning.’

‘There was no offence meant. I only wanted to do my duty,’ protested the Police Inspector, cringing after the way of bullies.

‘You’ll find opportunity enough for doing that if you ride back to Breeza Downs and lend the Specials your valuable assistance in protecting the sheep-owners against the Unionists. And I might remind you, as I reminded that damned Organiser who’s fired my run, that there’s a hundred pounds reward still waiting for anybody who catches the men that robbed my drays and killed my horses.’

McKeith paused a moment before going out by the further door of the office which looked out on the plain.

‘I’ll leave you now to run up your horse and make your own arrangements. As soon as I can, I shall start to help in getting the bush fire under. You can arrest that Organiser if you are keen on arresting somebody. Send in when you’re saddled up, and if I’m ready we’ll ride to the turn-off track together.’

McKeith went back to his wife’s room. She was still sleeping. Then it was that spasms of mortal agony began literally to rend the man. He left her side and seated himself on the bed in his dressing-room. He sat with his arms folded across his chest. His shoulders heaved. Deep dry sobs shook his huge frame. He would not let a groan escape from between his clenched teeth, but there was blood on his lower lip where he had bitten it in the effort to control himself. Presently, he heard a sound in the next room–a half moan–a name spoken. No, it would not be his name that she would utter first on her return to consciousness.

The man got up; stretched his long, lean frame, shuddering as if it had been on the rack. He drew two deep breaths, braced himself, wiped the blood from his lip, put on the stony mask which Bridget saw when she opened her eyes and found him looking down at her.

CHAPTER 8

Next morning, Lady Bridget was better and her mind clearer. There had been no return of fever, and, though the physical weakness was great and her temperature–had she taken it–would have been found a good deal below normal, her fierce determination not to remain helpless any longer gave her strength to get up and dress. She was not able, however, to do anything but lie in a half-alive condition in the hammock at the end of the veranda. All night the fire had blazed, but more fitfully, and this morning the lurid glare had died down. Only a murky haze, faintly red here and there, spread over the north-eastern sky. Small, isolated smoke-clouds rose above the stretches of forest, and an irregular-shaped tract of charred grass at the edge of the plain showed how far the flames had encroached upon it before they had been got under. One might well conceive with what almost superhuman exertions the beaters had at length accomplished their task. A large number of cattle had been driven by the fire on to the pasture beyond the home paddock–a pasture that had so far been carefully nursed in view of possible later necessity.

Bridget was bushwoman enough to comprehend the crippling effect upon McKeith’s resources of the calamity, had she allowed her mind to dwell upon that aspect of affairs. But her mind was incapable just now of dealing with practical issues. She felt utterly weak, utterly lonely. Although she was glad Maule had gone, she missed his sympathetic companionship to an extent that she could hardly have thought possible.

As the hammock swayed gently at the slight touch of her fingers on its rope edge, her imagination drifted dangerously and her senses yielded to the old drugging fascination. He seemed as close to her as had been his bodily shape a few days previously. She was conscious of the pull of his will upon the invisible cords by which he held her. If it were an unholy spell, it was, now, at least, in her desolation, a consoling one. He loved her; he wanted her. She knew that he was passionately eager to devote his life to her. He would wait expectantly until she wrote. With a few strokes of her pen she might end her irksome captivity in this wall-less prison of desert plain–this wilderness of gum and gidia.

As she lay there in the hammock, a child’s clumpy boots pattered along the garden path and Tommy Hensor came up the steps with a big cabbage leaf gathered in his hand. He opened it out when he reached the veranda and displayed three Brazilian cherries, the first fruits of a plant growing in the Chinaman’s garden.

‘La-ship . . . La-ship! I got these myself. I made Fo Wung give ’em me for you.’

At any other time the child’s offering would have been received, at any rate, graciously. Now Tommy shrank away, startled by the look on Lady Bridget’s face and the forbidding gesture with which she warned him off.

‘Go away! . . . Go away! . . .’ she cried. ‘I don’t want you.’

Tommy’s common, freckled little face crumpled up and his blue eyes filled with tears. He dropped the cabbage leaf and the cherished Brazilian cherries and ran down the steps again, blubbering piteously.

Lady Bridget got up as soon as the child had clicked the garden gate behind him. She was ashamed of the spasm of revulsion that had seized her. She wanted to cast away from her the dreadful thought his appearance had suddenly evoked. She picked up the cabbage leaf with the fruit and flung them over the railings into a flower bed, where the butcher-birds and the bower-birds quarrelled over them, and the big, grey bird in the gum tree on the other side of the fence cachinnated in derisive chorus to Bridget’s burst of hysterical laughter.

A little later Maggie came out from the bedroom with some letters in her hand.

‘I’ve laid holt on your mail, Ladyship, turning out your room. I expect you forgot all about it.’

Yes, she had forgotten, absolutely; it seemed years since Harry the Blower had passed by and Willoughby Maule had departed. She languidly inspected the envelopes. Nothing among them of any importance–except one.

It was a blue telegraph-service envelope, and had been forwarded on by the postman from Crocodile Creek, the nearest telegraph station. In the last fifteen months they had brought the bush railway a good deal further up the river, and Crocodile Creek was the present terminus. Thus the road journey was now considerable shorter than when Colin McKeith had brought his bride home.

Lady Bridget read the several lines of the cabled message over two or three times before the real bearings of it became clear to her fever-weakened intelligence.

At last she grasped the startling fact that the cablegram was from her cousin, Lord Gaverick, and that it had been despatched from London about seven days previously. This was what it said.

‘ELIZA GAVERICK DIED TWENTIETH LEAVES YOU CASTLE AND FIFTY THOUSAND DIFFICULTIES EXECUTORS YOUR PRESENCE URGENTLY DESIRED WIRE IF CAN COME, GAVERICK ‘

Lady Bridget let the blue form drop on her lap. She stared out over the brown plain and the herds of lean beasts all shadowy in the smoky mist over the horizon, then round, along the wilderness of gidia scrub, with its charred patches afar off, from which there still rose thin spirals of smoke.

Destiny had spoken. Here was the order of release. There was no gaoler to keep the prison doors locked any longer–except–except–No, if she wished to break her bonds, Colin would never gainsay her.

Late that night the men came back from fighting the fire which they had now practically put out. Even in the moonlight they looked deplorable objects, grimed, covered with dust and ashes, their skins and clothes scorched by the fierce heat.

They seemed drunk with fatigue, and could scarcely sit their horses. When they dismounted they could hardly stand.

Their feeble COO-EES at the sliprails brought out Ninnis, who had been sent home in the afternoon and had been taking some well-earned repose so as to be ready for the next shift–happily not required. He and the few hands left to look after the head-station and the tailing-mob held the men’s horses when their riders literally tumbled off them. Ninnis made McKeith take a strong pull of whiskey and supported him along to the Old Humpey. For Colin had had strength to say that Lady Bridget must on no account be disturbed. Ninnis led him to the room lately occupied by Willoughby Maule, and was surprised at his employer’s vehement refusal to remain in it.

‘I’ll not stop here. . . . No, I won’t go to my dressing-room. In God’s name, just let me stretch myself on the bunk in the Office and go to sleep.’

He threw himself on a bush-carpentered settle, with mattress and pillows covered in Turkey-red, which was used sometimes at mustering times when there was an overplus of visitors. There he lay like a log for close on twelve hours.

By and by, Lady Bridget, at once longing and reluctant, came softly in to see how he fared.

A storm of pity, anger, tenderness, repulsion–the whole range of feeling, it seemed, between love and hate–swept over her as she looked at the great gaunt form stretched there. Colin was still in riding clothes and booted and spurred. His moleskins were black with smoke and charcoal; his flannel shirt, open at the neck, showed red scratches and scorch-marks on the exposed chest and was torn over the arms, where were more excoriations of the flesh. And the ravaged face! How hard it was. How relentless, even in the utter abandonment of bodily exhaustion! The skin was caked with black dust and sweat. The darkened thatch of yellow hair was dank and wet. The fair beard, usually so trim, was singed in places, matted, and had bits of cinder and burnt leaves sticking to it.

A revolting spectacle, offending Lady Bridget’s fine, physical sensibilities, but a MAN–THE Man. She could not understand that tornado of emotion which now made her being seem a very battle-ground, for all the primal passions. She turned away with a sense of nausea, and then turned to him again with a kind of passionate longing to take him in her arms–brutal as she thought him, and unworthy of the affection she had once felt for him–felt still alas!–and all the romance she had once woven about him. . . . She saw that a fly was hovering over the excoriated arm and drew the ragged sleeve over its bareness. Then she noticed the mosquito net reefed up on a hoop above the bunk, and managed to get the curtain down so that he should be protected from the assaults of insects. But as she touched him in doing this, he stirred and muttered wrathfully in his sleep, as though he were conscious of her tenderness and would have none of it; she fled away and came to him no more.

She had been racking her brain since receiving the cablegram as to what answer she should return to it.

After that pitiable sight of her husband, Bridget moved restlessly about the house, with intervals of lassitude in the hammock, for she still felt weak and ill. But quinine was keeping the fever down, and she resolved that her husband should not again be required to nurse her. She did not go into the Office any more, but busied herself in a defiant fashion upon little cares for his comfort when he awoke. He should see that she did not neglect her house-wifely duties–at least while she remained there to perform them. The qualification was significant of her mood.

Thus, she gave orders that the veranda of the Old Humpey should be kept free from disturbing footsteps, and saw that the bathroom was in order, and a change of clothing set ready for him when he should awake. Also that there should be a meal prepared.

He did not wake till the afternoon. She heard him go straight in to take his bath, and hastened to have the dining room table spread. But she saw him go out of the bathroom–all fresh and more like himself– and cross the yard on his way to the Bachelors’ Quarters, making it clear to her that he wished to avoid the part of the house she occupied. Bridget went back to the front veranda in a cold fury, pierced by stabs of mental pain. She watched him from the end of the veranda go into the living room of the Quarters, and thought bitterly that he would ask Mrs Hensor for the food he required. No doubt too, he would obtain from Mrs Hensor, information as to how she herself had been getting on during his absence, and Mrs Hensor would give him a garbled report of her own dismissal from the sick room. . . . How dared he–oh! how DARED he treat her, Lady Bridget, his wife, with such cruel negligence, such marked insult!

It did not occur to her that he might wish to see Ninnis, who, when at the station, was usually about this time, in his office at the back of the Bachelors’ Quarters.

After a time, she heard Colin’s voice again in the yard, and his step on the Old Humpey veranda. He came now by the covered passage on to that of the New House, and advanced towards her.

He only came, she told herself, because it would have seemed too strange had he continued to ignore her existence.

And he was conscious of her resentment. By a curious affinity, his own spirit thrilled to the unquenchable spirit in her. Qualities in himself responded to like qualities in her. He admired her pride and pluck. Yet the two egoisms reared against each other, seemed to him–could he have put the thought into shape–like combatants with lances drawn ready to strike.

He believed that it was love which gave her strength–love, not for him, but for that other man whose influence he was now convinced had always been paramount, and who with renewed propinquity had resumed his domination.

Certain phrases in that letter he had read long ago on Joan Gildea’s veranda, and which had been haunting him ever since Willoughby Maule’s re-appearance, struck his heart with the searing effect of lightning. He felt, at the first sight of her there on the veranda, before she turned full to him, a passionate yearning to take her in his arms, and cover her poor little wasted face with kisses–to call her ‘Mate’; to remind her of that wonderful marriage night under the stars. But when he saw the proud aloofness of her look, his longing changed to a dull fury, which he could only keep in check by rigorous steeling of his will against any softening impulse.

So his face was hard as a rock, his voice rasping in its restraint, when he came near and spoke to her. ‘You have not had any more fever?’

‘No.’

He put two or three questions to her about her health–whether she had taken the medicine he had left for her, and so on, to which she returned almost monosyllabic replies, sufficiently satisfactory in the information they gave him.

‘That’s all right then,’ he said coldly. ‘I thought it would be, though I didn’t at all like leaving you in such a condition.’

‘Really! But it doesn’t seem as if you had felt any violent anxiety about me since you came back. I heard you go to the bathroom a long time ago, and I saw you going up to the Quarters.’

He did not appear to notice the latter implication.

‘I had to sleep,’ he said curtly. ‘I was dead beat.’

‘Yes, I saw that,’ she answered.

‘A-ah!’ The deep intake of breath made a hissing sound, and he flushed a brick red. ‘You came and looked at me?’

‘I went into the Office.’

‘I didn’t want you to see me. You must have loathed the sight of me. I was a disgusting object.’

She said nothing.

If he had glanced at her he would have seen a piteous flicker of tenderness pass over her face–a sudden wet gleam in her eyes. And had he yielded then to his first impulse, things might have gone very differently between them. But he kept himself stiffened. He would not lift his eyes, when she gave him a furtive glance. The expression of his half averted face was positively sinister as he added with a sneering little laugh.

‘One can’t look as if one had come out of a bandbox after fighting a bush fire.’

She exclaimed, ‘Oh! what does it matter?’

He utterly mistook the meaning of her exclamation.

‘You are quite right,’ he retorted. ‘When it comes to the end of everything, what does ANYTHING matter!’

For several moments there was dead silence. She felt as if he had wilfully stabbed her. He on his side had again the confused sense of two antagonists, feinting with their weapons to gain time before the critical encounter.

‘Well?’ He swung himself savagely round upon her. ‘That’s true, isn’t it? The end HAS come. . . . You’re sick of the whole show–dead sick– of the Bush–of everything?–Aren’t you? Answer me straight, Bridget.’

‘Yes, I am,’ she replied recklessly. ‘I hate the Bush–I–I hate everything.’

‘Everything! Well, that settles it!’ he said slowly.

Again there was silence, and then he said:

‘You know I wouldn’t want to keep you–especially now,’–he did not add the words that were on his lips ‘now that bad times are coming on me,’–and she read a different application in the ‘now.’ ‘I–I’d be glad for you to quit. It’s as you please–maybe the sooner the better. I’ll make everything as easy as I can for you.’

‘You are very–considerate. . . .’ The sarcasm broke in her throat.

She moved abruptly, and stood gazing out over the plain till the hysterical, choking sensation left her. Her back was to him. He could not see her face; nor could she see the dumb agony in his.

Presently she walked to a shelf-table on the veranda set against the wall; and from the litter of papers and work upon it, took up the cablegram she had lately received.

‘I wanted to show you this,’ she said stonily, and handed him the blue paper.

There was something significant in the way he steadied it upon the veranda railing, and stooped with his head down to pore over it.

The blow was at first almost staggering. It was as though the high gods had shot down a bolt from heaven, shattering his world, and leaving him alone in Chaos. They had taken him at his word–had registered on the instant his impious declaration. It WAS the end of everything. She was to quit. . . . He had said, the, sooner the better. . . . Well–he wasn’t going to let even the high gods get a rise out of him.

He laughed. By one of those strange links of association, which at moments of unexpected crisis bring back things impersonal, unconnected, the sound of his own laugh recalled the rattle of earth, upon the dry outside of a sheet of bark in which, during one of their boundary rides at Breeza Downs lately, they had wrapped for burial the body of a shepherd found dead in the bush. Both sounds seemed to him as of something dead–something outside humanity.

He handed her back the telegram, speaking still as if he were far-off– on the other side of a grave, but quite collectedly and as though in the long silence he had been weighing the question.

‘It seems to me that this has come to you in the nick of time, to solve difficulties.’

‘Yes,’ she assented dully.

‘You’ve got no choice but to go as your cousin says. There’s money depending on it.’

‘Money! . . . Oh, money!’ she cried wildly.

‘Money is apt to stick on to lawyers’ fingers when they’re left to the handling of it . . . . This is a matter of business, and business can’t be put on one side–especially, when there’s as large a sum as fifty thousand pounds in the proposition. I guess from this that you’re wanted.’

‘Yes,’ she said again. She was thinking to herself, ‘That’s his Scotch carefulness about money; he wouldn’t consider anything in comparison with that.’

‘You had better take the northern route,’ he went on. ‘There ought to be an E. and A. boat due at Leuraville pretty soon–I’ll look it out. . . . Perhaps you’d like to make the start to-morrow?’

‘To-morrow–oh yes, to-morrow–just whenever suits you.’

‘I couldn’t take you down myself. There are things–serious matters I’ve got to see to on the station. And besides, you’ll allow it’s best for me not to go with you. Ninnis could drive you to Crocodile Creek, and put you into the train; and Halliwell will look after you at Leuraville, and see you on board the steamer.’

‘Oh, I wonder that you can spare Ninnis,’ she returned bitterly. ‘I suppose you’d want Moongarr Bill still more on the run. But there’s Joe Casey–I daresay somebody else can milk the cows, and get up wood and water. Or there’s Cudgee–I don’t mind who goes with me. . . . I can drive myself.’

‘My God! do you imagine I’d put a black-boy–or anyone but my own trusted overseer in charge of you! What are you thinking of to talk like that?’

He took a few steps along the veranda, moving with uncertain gait; then stopped and leaned heavily against the wall. In a few seconds he had recovered himself, and came back to her, speaking quietly.

‘I will think out things and arrange it all. You’ll be perfectly safe with Ninnis, I think it would be better for you to sleep one night at old Duppo’s place. There’s fresh horses for the buggy there–I’ve got Alexander and Roxalana in the paddock now–they’re the best. . . .’

Oh, how could he bear that those horses, of the dream-drive, should take her away from him! He went on in the same matter-of-fact manner. ‘I expect the answer to the cablegram will get as quickly as if Harry the Blower took it, if you send it from Crocodile Creek yourself. And there’s your packing–there’s not much time, but you won’t want to take a lot of things. Anything you cared about could go afterwards.’

‘Go afterwards–What do you mean? I want to take nothing–nothing except a few clothes.’

‘Ah well–it doesn’t matter–As you said–nothing matters now. . . . Well, I’ll go and see Ninnis, and settle about to-morrow. . . . Then there’s money. . . .’ he stopped at the edge of the steps leading down to the Old Humpey, looking back at her–‘what you’ll need for the passage–and afterwards–I know what you’ll be thinking; but I can arrange for it with the Bank manager at Leuraville.’

A mocking demon rose in her.

‘Please don’t let yourself be inconvenienced. I only want the bare passage money. And directly I get to England I will pay you back.’

His hands dropped to his sides as if she had shot him. His face was terrible. At that moment, she could have bitten her tongue out.

‘I don’t think–you need have said that, Bridget,’ and he went slowly down the steps, and out of her sight like a man who has received a mortal hurt.

CHAPTER 9

If purgatory could hold worse torture than life held on that last evening Lady Bridget spent at Moongarr, then neither she nor her husband would have been required to do any long expiation there. It would be difficult to say which of the two suffered the most. Probably McKeith, because he was the strongest. Equally, he showed it the least when the breaking moment had passed. Yet both husband and wife seemed to have covered their faces, hearts and souls with unrevealing masks. No, it was worse than that. Each was entirely aware of the mental and spiritual barrier, which made it absolutely impossible for them to approach each other in the sense of reality. A barrier infinitely more forbidding than any material one of stone or iron. Because it was living, poisoned, venomous as the fang of some monstrous deadly serpent. To come within its influence meant the death of love.

There was not much more of the day to get through. Husband and wife both got through it in a fever of activity over details that seemed scarcely to matter. He busied himself with Ninnis–first explaining to the overseer as briefly as he could, the necessity for Lady Bridget’s voyage to England–a necessity that appealed to Ninnis’ practical mind, particularly in the present financial emergency. It surprised him a little that McKeith should not himself see his wife off; but he also recognised practical reasons–against that natural concession to sentiment. On the whole, it rather pleased him to find his employer ignoring sentiment, and he fully appreciated the confidence reposed in himself.

The two men went over questions connected with the journey, overhauling the buggy so that springs, bars and bolts might be in order, seeing that the horses were in good condition, sending on Cudgee that very hour, with a second pair in relay for the long stage of the morrow, when over fifty miles must be covered. There would be another pair at old Duppo’s, and, after a day and night of comparative rest, Alexander and Roxalana would be fresh for the last long stage of the journey. They calculated that under these provisions the railway terminus at Crocodile Creek, might be reached on the eve of the third day. And there were many instructions, and much careful arranging for Lady Bridget’s comfort during the journey.

Then there were letters to write, business calculations, a further overdraft to be applied for to the Bank, pending the cattle sales. . . . Would there be saleable cattle enough to meet demands and expenses of sinking fresh artesian bores–now that the fire had destroyed all the best grass on the run?

McKeith found no consolation in the prospect of his wife’s riches. That only added gall to his bitterness, new fuel to his stubborn pride, new strength to the wall between them.

He sat brooding in his office, when the business letters were written– to the Bank-manager; to Captain Halliwell, the Police-magistrate at Leuraville; to the Manager of the Eastern and Australian Steam Navigation Depot, Leuraville, enclosing a draft to pay the passage; to the Captain of the boat advertised for that trip, who happened to be an acquaintance of his–all recommending Lady Bridget to the different people’s care–all anticipating and arranging against every possible drawback to her comfort on the voyage–all carefully stating the object of her trip to England–business connected with the death of a near relative. Then, after the ghastly pretence of dinner–during which appearances were kept up unnecessarily before Maggie and the Malay boy, by a forced discussion of matter-of-fact details–looking out the exact time of the putting in of the next E. and A. boat at Leuraville–all of which he had already done, and pointing out to Bridget that she could catch it, with a day to spare.

There was food for the journey too, to be thought of, and other things to talk about. As soon as the meal was ended, McKeith went back to the office, and Bridget saw or heard no more of him that night. He did not come even to his dressing-room. She concluded that he was ‘camping’ on the bunk in the office, and when her own packing was done, she lay in wakeful misery till dawn brought a troubled doze.

Her packing was no great business–clothes for the voyage, and a big furred cloak for warmth, when she should arrive in England in the depth of winter–that was all.

Everything else–her papers, knicknacks, personal belongings–she left just as they were. Colin might do as he liked about them. She felt reckless and quite hard.

Only one among those personal possessions moved her to despairing tears. It was a shrivelled section of bark chopped from a gum tree, warped almost into a tube.

She placed this carefully in the deepest drawer of her wardrobe. Would Colin ever find it there–and would he understand? All the time, through these preparations, strangely enough she did not think of any possible future in connection with Willoughby Maule. The events of the past few days seemed to have driven him outside her immediate horizon.

When she came out in the morning dressed for her journey, she found her husband in the veranda waiting to strap up and carry out her baggage. Scarcely a word passed between them; they did not even breakfast together. He said he had been up early, and had had his breakfast already, but he watched her trying to eat while he moved about collecting things for her journey, and he poured out the coffee, and begged her to drink it. While he was there, Chen Sing brought in the basket of food he must have ordered for the buggy, and there was Fo Wung too, the gardener, with fresh lettuce and water-cress, and a supply of cool, green cabbage leaves in which he had packed a few early flat-stone peaches, and some Brazilian cherries.

Lady Bridget thanked them with the ghost of her old sweetness, and they promised to have the garden ‘velly good–TAI YAT number one’ and to ‘make plenty nice dishes,’ for the Boss during her absence.

While they stood at the French window, McKeith filled flasks with wine and spirits, and packed quinine and different medicines he had prepared in case of her needing them. Then after shewing her the different bottles, he took the supply out to Ninnis to be put in the buggy.

Everything was ready now–the buggy packed, the hood unslung so that it could be put up and down in protection against sun or rain–this last alas! an improbable eventuality. Alexander and Roxalana were champing their bits. Ninnis in a new cabbage-tree hat and clean puggaree, wearing the light coat he only put on when in the society of ladies he wished to honour, was standing by the front wheels examining the lash of his driving-whip. McKeith had given him his last directions. There was nothing now to wait for. McKeith went slowly up the steps of the back veranda, and in at the French window of the sitting room, where Bridget had been watching, waiting. At his appearance, she went back into the room. She stood quite still, small, shadowy, the little bit of her face which showed between the folds of her motor veil, where it was tied down under her chin–very pale, and the eyes within their red, narrowed lids, dry and bright.

‘Are you ready, Bridget?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He came close, and took a little bag she was holding out of her hands, carried it to the back veranda, and told one of the Chinamen to give it to Mr Ninnis–all, it seemed to her, to evade farewells. She called him back in a hard voice.

‘Colin–I’ve left my keys,’–pointing to a sealed and addressed envelope on her own writing-table. ‘There are a few things of value– some you have given me–in the drawers.’

‘I will take care of them,’ he answered hoarsely.

They stood fronting each other, and their eyes both smarting, agonised, stared at each other out of the pale drawn faces.

‘Colin,’ she said; and held out her hands. ‘Aren’t you going to say good-bye?’

He took her hands; his burning look met hers for an instant and dropped. There was always the poisonous wall which their soul’s vision might not pierce–through which their yearning lips might not touch. For an instant too, the hardness of his face was broken by a spasm of emotion. The grip of his hands on hers was like that of a steel vice; she winced at the pain of it. He dropped her hands suddenly, and moved back a step.

‘Good-bye–Bridget.’

‘Is that all you have to say? All?’

He stuttered, helplessly. ‘I–I–can’t. . . . There’s nothing to say.’

‘Nothing! You let me go–like this–without one word of apology–of regret. I think that, at least, you owe me–courtesy.’

Her tone lashed him. He seemed to be struggling with his tongue-tied speech. When words came they rushed out in fierce jerks. ‘I’ll say this –though where’s the good of talking. . . . What does it amount to anyway, when you’re down on the bedrock, and there’s nothing left but to give up the whole show and start fresh as best you can? I’ll say this–I’ve never pretended to fine manners–I leave them–to others. I’m just a rough bushman, no better and no worse. Apology!–that’s my apology–As for regret. My God! isn’t it all one huge regret? No, I won’t say that. . . . Because there are some things I CAN’T regret– for myself. For you, I do regret them. I was an insane ass ever to imagine that I and my way of living could ever fit in with a woman brought up like you. The incompatibilities were bound to come out– incompatibilities of temper, education, breeding–outlook on things– they were bound to separate us sooner or later, I’m glad that it’s sooner, because that gives you a chance of getting back into your old conditions before you’ve grown different in yourself–dried up– soured–maybe lost your health, roughing it through bad times in the bush. . . . As it is, you’ll get out all right–Never fear that I won’t see you get out all right.’

‘And you?’ she put in.

‘Me! I don’t count–I don’t care. . . . A man’s not like a woman. I’ve always been a fighter. And I’ve never been DOWNED in my life. I’m not going to be DOWNED this time. I shall make good–some time–somehow. I’m not the sort of small potato that drops to the bottom of the bag in the big shake-up.’

She winced visibly. He read distaste in her slight gesture, in the expression of her eyes. It was true that the man’s pugnacious egoism– a lower side of him asserting itself just then–had always jarred upon her finer taste. He recognised this subconsciously, and his self-esteem revolted at it.

‘You needn’t be afraid,’ he exclaimed harshly. ‘If I wanted to hold to my rights, and keep you here with me–what has happened would prevent me–I’ve got too much pride to hang on to the skirts of a rich wife. But you won’t be harmed. . . . I don’t know yet, but I believe there’s a way by which you can win through straight and square–no smirch that you need mind–And if there is–whatever the way of it is, I’ll do my best to bring you out all right.’

‘You are generous.’ Her eyes flashed but her voice was coldly bitter. ‘May I ask what you propose to do?’

‘There’s no use. . . .’ he said heavily. ‘I told you talking was no good–now. I’ve got my own ideas. . . .’

‘Then, if that’s how you feel, the sooner I go the better pleased you will be,’ she returned hysterically. ‘Oh, I’m ready to go.’

He moved to the steps, not answering at once. Then he said:

‘The buggy is waiting, will you come?’

He went down the steps in front of her, but stopped at the bottom to help her, for her foot had stumbled on the edge of the veranda. His strong arm upheld her until she was on the gravel. The touch of his fingers on her arm, brought home the incredible horror of it all–the suddenness, the brutality. She pulled her veil hastily over her face to hide the gush of tears. She could not speak for the choking lump in her throat. He released her at once and strode on. Not another word passed between them. Ninnis greeted her with gruff cordiality–began a sort of speech about the cause of her departure–condolence and congratulations stupidly mixed. McKeith impatiently cut him short.

‘All right, Ninnis. Get up. And mind, the horses are fresh. They’ll want a bit of driving at the start.’

He helped Bridget to her seat, tucked the brown linen coverlet round her knees. In doing so, he bent his head–she thought he had dropped something. Then through the thin linen of the covering, and her light summer garments, she felt the pressure of his burning lips as though they were touching her flesh.

She bent forward. Their eyes met in a wild look. just for a second. The horses plunged under Ninnis’ hands on the reins. McKeith sprang back.

‘Wo-oh! Gee on then!’ Ninnis called out. ‘Good-bye, Boss. You can trust me to look well after her ladyship. . . . Be back again as soon as I can.’

And if Colin spoke, the sound did not carry to his wife’s ears. Her last impression of him as the buggy swayed and rattled down the hill was again the dogged droop of his great shoulders.

It was too late now. She felt that the Furies were pursuing her. Ah, but the end had come–come with such hideous misconception–every word spoken–and there had been so few in comparison with the immensity of the occasion–a hopeless blunder. It had been the tussle of two opposing temperaments, it was like the rasping steel of a cross-cut saw against the hard, heavy grain of an iron-bark gum log. Then the extraordinary involvements of circumstance. Each incident, big and little, dovetailing and hastening the onward sweep of catastrophe. It seemed as though Fate had cunningly engineered the forces on every plane so that there should be no escape for her victims. Like almost all the tragedies of ordinary human life, this one had been too swift in its action to allow of suitable dialogue or setting.

CHAPTER 10

From Joan Gildea to Colin McKeith.

Written about a year later.

MY DEAR COLIN,

I find it impossible to recognise my old friend in the hard, businesslike communication you sent me from Leichardt’s Town. I almost wish that you had allowed the lawyer you consulted to put the case before me instead; it would have seemed less unfitting, and I could have answered it better. But I quite appreciate your objection to taking the lawyer into your confidence as regards the personal matters you mention to me. It would be cruelly unjust–I think quite unpardonable in you to bring forward the name of Mr Willoughby Maule in connection with Bridget. Not that HE would mind that. I honestly believe that he would snatch gladly at any means for inducing Bridget to marry him. Whether she would do so, if you were to carry through this amazing scheme of yours, it’s impossible for me to say. At present she certainly prefers to keep him at a distance. He has never been to Castle Gaverick. And except for a few visits on business to London that is where she has lived since she came over here.

Your letter followed me to Jamaica where I’ve been reporting on the usual lines for THE IMPERIALIST, but, of course I couldn’t answer it until I had talked it over with Bridget and, as you desired, had obtained her views on the matter. It was a shock to her to realise that your reason for never writing to her and for refusing to let her write to you, was lest that might affect the legality of these proceedings, which I understand you have contemplated from the beginning of your quarrel. Bridget is too proud to show you how deeply she is wounded by your letter. All she has to say is, that if you really wish to take this action, she will not oppose it.

But Colin, do you really wish, it? I refuse to believe that you seriously contemplate divorcing your wife. You must know that you have not the accepted grounds for doing so. As for the law you quote which allows divorce in cases of two years’ so-called desertion, I can only say that I consider it a blot on Leichardt’s Land legislation. Divorce should be for one cause only–the cause to which Our Lord gave a qualified approval; and Bridget has never been unfaithful–in act or desire, to her husband. I would maintain this in spite of the most damning testimony, and you must in your heart believe it also. Besides, your testimony is ridiculously inadequate.

I am glad, however, that you have at last made your accusations in detail–in order, as you say–that I–and Bridget, incidentally, I suppose–should fully understand why you are adopting this attitude towards her. I’m glad too, that you do not mean to make any use of the evidence against her and are prepared to take all the blame for the unhappy state of affairs between you! I write sarcastically. Why, it would be monstrous if you had any other intention! Oh, how I hate this pedantic roundabout way of writing! I feel inclined to tear up these sheets–I’ve torn up two already. Really, you’ve made it so difficult for me to treat you naturally. If I could talk to you, I’d make you understand in five minutes–but I can’t–so there!

Naturally, I had heard of your bringing Mr Willoughby Maule to the station, and when I learned what followed, naturally also, I concluded that you had discovered his identity with that of the man Bridget had once cared for. I blame myself horribly. But for my carelessness you would never have read that letter of Biddy’s–she knows all about it now–and your insane jealousy would not have jumped to conclusions– at any rate so quickly. And perhaps if I had not bound you to secrecy you’d have had the matter out with her, which would probably have saved all this trouble. Anyhow, I can’t imagine that you would have left her alone with him as you did–and with bad feeling between you–at the mercy of her own reckless impulses and that of Willoughby Maule’s ardent love-making. She doesn’t pretend that it wasn’t ardent, or that he did not do his best to get her to run away with him–or that the old infatuation did not come back to a slight extent–Is it surprising after your conduct? No wonder she compared his devotion favourably, with yours. Colin, your leaving her in such conditions wasn’t the act of a MAN, of a gentleman. I speak strongly, but I can’t help it. I know your stubborn pride and obstinacy, but you were wrong, you have disappointed me–oh! how bitterly you have disappointed me!

Then there was that business about the blacks. What a fool you were– and how brutally self-opinionated! I don’t wonder Bridget thought you an inhuman monster.

Now I have said my worst, and you must take it as it is meant and forgive me.

As for the true story of that night’s adventures, out of which your Police Inspector seems to have made such abominable capital–I used to think Police Inspectors were generally gentlemen–but they don’t seem to be, out on the Leura–I’ve got all the details from Biddy. A tragi-comic business–so truly of the Bush, Bushy! I could laugh over it, if it weren’t for its serious consequences. Of course, Biddy got up to turn out the goats which were butting with their horns under the floor of her bedroom. I’ve often got up myself in the old days at Bungroopim, when stray calves got into the garden, or the cockatoo disturbed our slumbers. Do you remember Polly? and how she would keep shouting out on a moonlight night ‘The top of the mornin’ to ye’– because we’d forgotten to put her blanket over the cage–I believe there were several occasions when you and I met in midnight dishabille and helped each other to restore tranquillity. If anyone was to blame for Biddy’s adventure, it was your wood-and-water joey–or your Chinamen–or whoever’s business it may have been to see that the goats were properly penned.

Naturally, Mr Maule, when he was disturbed too, came and did the turning out for Bridget and shepherded the creatures to the fold.

Then meanwhile, she saw the black-gin sneaking in at Mr Maule’s back window to steal the key; and WOULD it have been philanthropic, impulsive Biddy, if she hadn’t helped in the work of rescue, and sent the two sinners, with a ‘Bless you, my children!’ off into the scrub? It was like Biddy too, to go and put the key back in Mr Maule’s bedroom and to scribble that ridiculous note in French so that he shouldn’t go blundering to the hide-house and hurry up the pursuit. I told Bridget how the Inspector had watched her go out of Mr Maule’s room, and had grabbed the note afterwards, and shown it to you. She had forgotten altogether about that note–supposed that, of course, it had reached its proper destination. She couldn’t remember either exactly what she had written–except that she wanted to word it so that if there should be any accident, nobody–except Mr Maule, for of course, they’d determined on the release before that–should understand to what it referred. So she didn’t mention any name–she believes she dashed off some words he had quoted to her about Love triumphant, and securing happiness and freedom by flight. And then she put in something referring to a scene they’d had that day in which he had begged her to fly with him, and she had made him promise to leave next morning, pacifying him by a counter promise to write.

She told me about her fever and ague–you don’t need proof of that after the state in which you found her–and how Mr Maule carried her to her room and left her there after a few minutes. She doesn’t remember anything after that, until she came out of the fever and saw you–with the face and manner I can well imagine–standing by her bedside.

I am sure that Bridget began to ‘find herself’ then, and that the way in which she left Moongarr was one of those shocks which make a woman touch reality. It may be only for that once in her life, but she can never be the same again. You have put your brand on your wife, Colin– that is quite plain to me. She has changed inwardly more than outwardly.

But she is extremely reticent about her feelings towards you. That in itself is so unlike the old Bridget, and I have no right to put forward my own ideas and opinions–they may be quite wrong. Really, the news of Eliza Lady Gaverick’s death, and of Bridget’s change of fortune, coming just at that moment, is the sort of dramatic happening, which I –as a dabbler in fiction–maintain, is more common in real life than in novels. I am certain that if I had set out to build up the tangled third act of a problem play on those lines, I couldn’t have done it better. All the same, I’m very sorry that this change of fortune didn’t come off earlier or later, for I am well aware of how you will jib at it.

Well, I can tell you, on her own authority, that Bridget never wrote to Mr Maule as she had promised. She had no communication with him from the time he left the station until they met on the E. and A. boat. He joined her, as you know, at the next port above Leuraville. It was rather canny of him to go there–yet I don’t see how, in the circumstances, he could have loafed round Leuraville without making talk–though I think it was a great pity he didn’t. Of course he had his own means of communication with the township, and knew she was on board. No one was more surprised than she at his appearance on deck next morning. I don’t think, however, that she saw much of him on the voyage. She said that she got a recurrence of the malarial fever off the northern coast and had to keep her cabin pretty well till they reached Colombo. Then she asked him to leave the steamer and take a P. and O. boat that happened to be in harbour–and this he did do.

I am bound to say that Willoughby Maule must have improved greatly since the time when young Lady Gaverick decided he was a ‘bounder.’ I daresay marriage did him good. I believe that his wife was a very charming woman. Or, it may be that the possession of a quarter of a million works a radical change in people’s characters. Or, again, it may be that he is more deeply devoted to Biddy than I, for one, ever suspected. There is no doubt that given the regrettable position, his behaviour in regard to her now is commendable.

But Bridget, doesn’t love him–never has loved him. I state that fact on no authority whatsoever except my own intuition. Also I am honestly of opinion she has cared for you more than she has cared for any man. You don’t deserve it, and I may be wrong. But, nevertheless, it is my conviction. Make of it what you please. I have been, I candidly own it, surprised to see what discretion and good feeling she has shown through all this Gaverick will business. There has been a good deal of disagreeable friction in the matter. Lord Gaverick has not come off so well as he expected. He has got the house in Upper Brook Street, which suits young Lady Gaverick, and about fifteen hundred a year– considerably less than Bridget. The trouble is that Eliza Gaverick left a large legacy to her doctor–the latest one–and there was a talk about bringing forward the plea of undue influence. That, however, has fallen to the ground–mainly through Biddy’s persuasion. I believe it is Bridget’s intention to make over Castle Gaverick to her cousin, but this is not given out and of course she may change her mind.

And now, Colin, I think I have said everything I have to say. The main point to you is, no doubt, the answer to your question. As I said at the beginning of this letter, Bridget will not oppose any course you choose to take in order to secure your release from her–that is the exact way she worded it. But I cannot believe that, in face of all the rest I have told you, you will go on with this desertion–divorce business–at least without making yourself absolutely certain that you both desire to be free of each other. Remember, there has been no explanation between you and Biddy–no chance of touch between the true selves of both of you. Can you not come to England to see her? Or should she go out to you. I think it possible she might consent to do so, but have never broached the idea and cannot say. Yes, of course I understand that this might invalidate the legal position. But as only two years are necessary to prove the desertion–even if you should decide together that it is best to part–isn’t it worth while to wait two years more in order to make quite sure? No doubt, you will say that I am shewing the proverbial ignorance of women in legal questions. But I can’t help feeling that there must be some way in which it could be arranged. I do beseech you, Colin, not to act hastily.

You say that if this divorce took place, Bridget’s reputation would not suffer, and that she could marry again without a stain upon her character as they say of wrongfully accused prisoners who are discharged. But again–is that the question?

I know nothing of your present circumstances–health, outlook on life –anything. Bridget once hinted to me that you might have your own reasons for desiring your freedom. She would give no grounds for the suspicion that there is any other woman in your life. I do not think anything would make me credit such a thing and I put that notion entirely out of court. I do not know–as your letter was dated from Leichardt’s Town–whether you still live at Moongarr. It is possible you may have sold the place. I hear of severe droughts in parts of Leichardt’s Land, but have no information about the Leura district. Now that Sir Luke Tallant has exchanged to Hong Kong, Bridget hasn’t any touch with Leichardt’s Land, and I have very few correspondents there.

Write to me–not a stilted, legal kind of letter like the last. Tell me about yourself–your feelings, your conditions. We are old friends –friends long before Bridget came either into my life or yours. You can trust me. If you do not want me to repeat to Bridget anything you may tell me, I will faithfully observe your wishes. But I can’t bear that you, whom I should have thought so well of–have felt so much about–should be making a mess of your life, and that I should not put out a hand to prevent it.

Always your friend,

JOAN GILDEA.

CHAPTER 11

It was a long time before Mrs Gildea received an answer to her letter. She had begun to despair of ever getting another line from Colin McKeith, when at last he wrote from Moongarr, six months later.

MY DEAR JOAN,

Your letter has made me think. I could not write before for reasons that you’ll gather as you go along. I shall do as you ask and tell you everything as straightly and plainly as I can. I feel it is best that you should know exactly the sort of conditions I’m under and what a woman would have had to put up with if she had been with me–what she would have to put up with if she were going to be with me. Then you can judge whether or not I’m right in the decision I have come to as the result of my thinkings. You can tell my wife as much as you please–of the details, I mean. Perhaps, you had better soften them to her, for you know as well as I do–or better–that her impulsive, quixotic disposition might lead her into worse mistakes than it has done already. Of course, she’ll have to know my decision. I am sure that if she allows her reason play, she will agree it is the only possible one.

I’m not going to talk about what happened before she went away, or about that evidence–or anything else in that immediate connection. I was mad, and I expect I believed a lot more than was true. I don’t believe–I don’t think I ever did really believe–what I suppose you would call ‘the worst.’ But that doesn’t seem to me of such great matter. It’s the spirit, not the letter that counts. The foundation must have been rotten, or there never would have been a question of believing one way or the other–because we should have UNDERSTOOD. Explanations would not have been needed between true mates. Only we were not true mates–that’s the whole point. There was too great a radical difference between us. It might have been a deal better if she HAD gone off with that man.

But to come now to the practical part of the situation. You know enough about Australian ups and downs to realise that a cattle or sheep owner out West, may be potentially wealthy one season and on the fair road to beggary the next. It will be different when times change and we take to sinking artesian bores on the same principle as when Joseph stored up grain in the fat years in Egypt against the lean ones that were coming. That’s what I meant to do and ought to have done at any cost. But– well I just didn’t.

The thing is that if I could have looked ahead, perhaps even six months, I might not have thought it acting on the square to a woman to get her to marry me. If I could have looked a year ahead, I wouldn’t have had any doubt on the subject.

But you see I justified it to myself. One thousand square miles of country–fine grazing land most of it, so long as the creeks kept running–and no more than eleven thousand head of stock upon it, seemed, with decent luck, a safe enough proposition, though you’ll remember I was a bit doubtful that day on your veranda at Emu Point, when we talked about my marrying. The truth was that directly I saw Bridget, she carried me clean off my head–and that’s the long and short of it.

Besides, I’d been down south a good while, then, figuring about in the Legislative Assembly and swaggering on my prospects. I’d left Ninnis to oversee up here, and Ninnis didn’t know the Leura like some of the old hands, who told me afterwards they’d seen the big drought coming as long back as that.

I remember one old chap on the river, when he was sold up by the Bank in the last bad times, and his wife had died of it all, saying to me, ‘The Leura isn’t the place for a woman.’ And he was right. Well, I saw that I was straight up against it that spring when we had had a poor summer and a dry winter, and the Unionists started trouble cutting my horses’ throats, and burning woodsheds and firing the only good grass on my run that I could rely upon. I didn’t say much about it, but I have no doubt that it made me bad-tempered and less pleasant to live with. . . . That was just before the time Biddy went away. Afterwards, the sales I’d counted on turned out badly–cattle too poor for want of grass to stand the droving and the worst luck in the sale-yards I’d ever known.

First thing I did was to reduce the staff and bar everything but bare necessaries–I sent off the Chinamen and every spare hand. Ninnis and I and the stockman–a first-rate chap, Moongarr Bill–worked the run –just the three of us. You can guess how we managed it. A Malay boy did cooky for the head-station.

After Christmas I left Ninnis and Bill to look after the place. I had to go to Leichardt’s Town. I had been thinking things out about Biddy all that time–you know I’m too much of the Scotchy to make hasty determinations. Well, I had that Parliament Bill, allowing divorce after two years desertion in my head, from the day Biddy left me. It seemed the best way out–for her. I had heard about that fellow going Home in the same boat with her, and never guessed but that it was a concerted plan between them. That note Harris showed me made me think it was so. I don’t think this now–after what you told me.

But what did rub itself into me then was that I ought to let her marry him as soon as she decently could. I couldn’t see the matter any other way–I don’t now. He has lots of money–though a man who would buy happiness with another woman out of the money his wife had left him– well, that’s a matter of opinion. Besides, she has got the fortune the old lady left her and can be independent of him if she chooses. There’s nothing to prevent her living any kind of life that pleases her– except me, and I’m ready and willing to clear out of the show. One thing I’m sorry for now, and that is having torn up the draft she sent to pay me back her passage money, and putting the bits in an envelope and posting them to her without a word. I suppose it should have been done through a lawyer, with all the proper palaver. Perhaps she didn’t tell you about that. I somehow fancy she didn’t. But I know that it would have hurt her–I knew that when I did it. And perhaps that is why I did it. You are right. I haven’t acted the part of a gentleman all through this miserable business. But what could you expect?

For you see, my father worked his own way up, and my grandfather was a crofter–and I haven’t got the blood of Irish kings, on the other side, behind me.

Now I’m being nasty, as you used to say in the old Bungroopim days when I wouldn’t play. YOU were my Ideal, in those days, Joan–before you went and got married. I’ve been an unlucky devil all round.

Well there! I had to try and arrange things for an overdraft with the Bank in Leichardt’s Town, but I went down chiefly to consult lawyers about the divorce question, so that it should be done with as little publicity and unpleasantness as possible. It appeared that it could be done all right–as I wrote you. What would have been the good of my havering in that letter over my own feelings and the bad times I had struck? It never was my habit to whine over what couldn’t be helped.

Luck was up against me down there too. I got pitched off a buckjumper at a horse-dealers’, Bungroopim way. I had been ‘blowing,’ Australian fashion, that I could handle that colt if nobody else was able to. The end of it was that the buckjumper got home, not me. I was laid up in hospital for close on two months, with a broken leg and complications. The complications were that old spear wound, which inflamed, and they found that a splinter from the jagged tip had been left in. Blood-poisoning was the next thing; and when I came out of that hospital I was more like the used up bit of soap you’ll see by the COOLIBAH* outside a shepherd’s hut on ration-bringing day, than anything else I can think of.
[*Coolibah–a basin made from the scooped out excrescence of a tree.]

As soon as I could sit a horse again I went to work at Moongarr. I had found things there at a pretty pass. Not a drop of rain had fallen up to now on the station for nearly nine months. YOU know what that means on the top of two dry seasons. As soon as I was fit, we rode over the run inspecting–I and Ninnis and Moongarr Bill. There’s a lot of riding over one thousand square miles, and we didn’t get our inspection done quickly. Day after day we travelled through desolation–grass withered to chips, creeks and waterholes all but empty, cattle staggering like drunken men, only it was for WANT of drink. The trees were dying in the wooded country; and in the plains the earth was crumbling and shrinking, and great cracks like crevasses were gaping in the black soil where there used to be beautiful green grass and flowers in spring.

The lagoon was practically dried up, and the little drain of water left was undrinkable because of the dead beasts that had got bogged and dropped dead in it. They were short of water at the head-station, and we had to fetch it in from a waterhole several miles off that we fenced round and used for drinking–so long as it lasted. When we were mustering the other side of the run, it came to our camping at a sandy creek where we could dig in the sand and get just enough for horses and men. The water of the Bore I’d made, was a bit brackish, but it kept the grass alive round about and was all the cattle had to depend on. You can think of the job it was shifting the beasts over there from other parts of the run which was what we tried to do, so long as they were fit for it.

We were selling what we could while there was still life left in the herd, but the cattle were too far gone for droving. We managed to collect a hundred or so–sent them in trucks from Crocodile Creek Terminus, for boiling down and netted about thirty shillings a head on them. That was all. I guess that–by this time, out of my eleven thousand head with No. 666 brand on them I’d muster from four to five hundred. The mistake I made was in not selling out for what I could get at the beginning of the Drought. But it was the long time in Leichardt’s Town that had me there.

It was bad luck all through from first to last. Mustering those beasts for boiling down started that old spear wound afresh. Until it got well again, there was nothing for it but to sit tight and wait.

Moongarr Bill left to make a prospecting trip on my old tracks up the Bight–took Cudgee and the black-boy with him. He had an idea that he’d strike a place where we’d seen the colour of gold on our last expedition, but weren’t able then to investigate it. I’ve never been bitten by the gold fever like some fellows, and I daresay that I’ve missed chances. But I thought cattle were a safer investment, and I’ve seen too much misery and destruction come from following that gold will o’ the wisp, for me to have been tempted to run after it.

Old Ninnis was the next to leave, I made him take the offer of a job that he had. When it came to drawing water five miles for the head-station, and keeping it in an iron tank sunk in the ground, with a manhole and padlocked cover for fear of its being got at, the fewer there were of us the better. Now the station is being run by the Boss and the Malay boy, who is a sharp little chap, and more use in the circumstances than any white man. We’ve killed the calves we were trying to PODDY*. And the dogs–except one cattle dog–Veno–Biddy would remember her; how she used to lollop about the front veranda outside her room. Now, what the deuce made me write that!–Well, the dog goes with me in the cart when I fetch water, and takes her drink with the horses at the hole.
[*Poddy–to bring up by hand.]

I’m getting used to the life–making jobs in the daytime to keep myself from feeling the place a worse hell than it really is. There’s always the water to be fetched and the two horses and the dog to be taken for their big drink. If you could see me hoarding the precious stuff–washing my face in the morning in a soup plate, and what’s left kept for night for the dog. When I want a bath I ride ten miles to the bore. Then there’s saddlery to mend, and dry-cleaning the place and pipes between whiles–more of them than is good for me. Stores are low, but I’ve still got enough of tobacco. I daresay it’s a mercy there’s no whiskey–nothing but a bottle or two of brandy in case of snake-bites–or I might have taken to it.

Thank God I’ve got a pretty strong will, and I’ve never done as I see so many chaps do, find forgetfulness in drink–but there’s no saying what a man may come to. It’s the nights that are the worst. I’m glad to get up at dawn and see to the beasts. And there’s that infernal watching of the sky–looking out all the time for clouds that don’t come–or if they do, end in nothing. You know that brassy glare of the sun rising that means always scorching dry heat? Think of it a hundred times worse than you’ve ever seen it! The country as far as you can look is like the floor of an enormous oven, with the sky, red and white-hot for a roof, and all the life there is, being slowly baked inside. The birds are getting scarce, and it seems too much trouble for those that are about to lift their voices. Except for a fiend of a laughing-jackass in a gum tree close by the veranda that drives me mad with his devilish chuckling.

Well, how do you think now, that her ladyship would have stood up against these sort of conditions? Many a time, walking up and down the veranda when I couldn’t sleep, I’ve thanked my stars that there was no woman hanging on to me any more. Most of the men on the river have sent away their women–stockmen’s wives and all. There was one here at the Bachelors’ Quarters, but I packed her off before I went to Leichardt’s Town.

I’m just waiting on to get Moongarr Bill’s report of the country up north–how it stands the drought, and what the chances are for pushing out. As for the gold find–well, I’m not banking on that. As soon as I hear–or if I don’t hear in the course of the next two or three weeks –I shall pull up stakes, and burn all my personal belongings, except what a pair of saddle bags will carry.

Before long, I’m going to begin packing Biddy’s things. They’ll be shipped off to her all right.

When the divorce business is over, I shall make new tracks, and you won’t hear of me unless I come out on top. I’ve got a queer feeling inside me that I shall win through yet.

Well, I’m finished; and it’s about time. I’ve run my pen over a good many sheets, and it has been a kind of relief–I began writing this about three weeks ago. Harry the Blower–that’s the mailman–comes only once a month now, and not on time at that.

I suppose the drought will break sooner or later, and when it breaks, the Bank is certain to send up and take possession of what’s left. So I’m a ruined man, any way.

Good-bye, Joan, old friend. I’ve written to the lawyer, and Biddy will be served with the papers soon after this reaches you. I’m not sending her any message. If she doesn’t understand, there’s no use in words– but YOU know this. She’s been the one woman in the universe for me– and there will never be another.

He signed his name at the end of the letter; and that was all.

CHAPTER 12

Harry the Blower came up with his mails a day or two later. Among the letters he brought, there were three at least of special importance to Colin McKeith.

One was from the late Attorney General of Leichardt’s Land, in whose following he had been while sitting in the Legislative Assembly, and whom he had consulted in reference to the Divorce petition. This gentleman informed Colin that proceedings were already begun in the case of McKeith versus McKeith, and that notification of the pending suit had been sent to Lady Bridget at Castle Gaverick, in the province of Connaught, Ireland.

The second letter was from the Manager of the Bank of Leichardt’s Land, regretfully conveying the decision of the Board that, failing immediate repayment of the loan, the mortgage on Moongarr station must be foreclosed and that in due course a representative of the Bank would arrive to take over the property.

The third letter was from Moongarr Bill, dated from the furthest Bush township at the foot of the Great Bight, which had formed the base of Colin’s last exploring expedition. A mere outpost of civilisation it was–that very one which he had described at the dinner party at Government House where he had first met Lady Bridget O’Hara. Apparently, in Moongarr Bill’s estimation, its only reason for existence lay in the fact that it had an office under the jurisdiction of the Warden of Goldfields, for the proclamation of new goldfields, and the obtaining of Miner’s Rights.

Moongarr Bill’s epistolary style was bald in its directness.

Dear Sir– he began:–

The biggest mistake we ever made in our lives was not following up the streak of colour you spotted in that gully running down from Bardo Range to Pelican River. If we had stopped, and done a bit of stripping for alluvial, for certain, we should have found heavy, shotty gold, with only a few feet of stripping. But I’ve done better than that–got on the lead–dead on the gutter. To my belief, that gully is the top dressing of a dried up underground watercourse. It’s a pocket chock full of gold.

You see, it’s like this:

Here followed technical details given in local gold-digger’s phraseology which would only be intelligible to a backwoods prospector or a Leichardt’s Land mining expert. McKeith read all the details carefully, turning the page over and back again in order to read it once more. There was no doubt–making due allowance for Moongarr Bill’s exaggerative optimism–that the find was a genuine one.

The writer resumed:

‘I’ve pegged off a twenty men’s ground, this–being outside the area of a proclaimed goldfield–our reward as joint discoverers. The ground joins on to your old pegs; and the wonder to me is that nobody has ever struck the place. However, that’s not so queer as you might think, for there has been very little talk of gold up here–in fact the P.M. does Warden’s work. Besides, the drought has kept squatters from pushing out, and it’s too far off for the casual prospector. Luckily, the drought has driven the Blacks away too, further into the ranges; and I haven’t seen any Myalls this trip like the ones that went for us last time. It’s a pity Hensor pegged out then. He’d have come in for a slice of luck now–we three being the only persons in the world–until I lodged my information at the Warden’s office this morning–who had ever raised the colour in this district or had any suspicion of a show. I reckon though that if the find turns out as I think, you’ll be making things up to little Tommy.

I’m to have my Miners’ Right all properly filled up to-morrow, and shall make tracks back to the gully at once, so as to leave no chance of the claim being jumped. I’ve named it “McKeith’s Find” so your name won’t be forgotten. I don’t count on a big rush at first–all the better for you–but I shall be surprised if we are not entitled at the end of four months to our Government reward of 500 pounds, as there are pretty sure to be two hundred miners at work by that time.

I’m writing to Ninnis–though I don’t know if he has done his job yet –telling him to lose no time in getting here; and you won’t want telling to do the same. I reckon that whether the drought has broken by this time or not, it will pay you better to start for here than to wait at the station until there are calves coming on to brand and muster. Ninnis will be in with us all right, and it would be a fine thing if you came up together. He’s a first-rate man, and has had a lot of experience in the Californian goldfields. Poor luck, however, or he wouldn’t have come over to free-select on the Leura.

It took me a good three weeks to get as far as the Pelican Creek, and I couldn’t have done it in the time if there had been Blacks about. Knowing the lay of the country too, made it easier than it was before for us. Cudgee has turned out a smarter boy than Wombo was. No fear of Myalls with their infernal jagged spears being round without his sniffing them. One of the horses died from eating poison-bush. Don’t go in for camping at a bend in Pelican Creek, between it and a brigalow scrub, first day you sight Bardo Range going up the Creek, where there’s a pocket full of good grass one side of a broken slate ridge– IT’S NO GOOD. But I wouldn’t swop the other horses for any of Windeatt’s famous breed. There’s some things it would be well for you and Ninnis to bring, and a box of surveyor’s compasses would come in handy.

Here followed half a page on practical matters, and then the letter ended.

McKeith pondered long over Moongarr Bill’s letter, as he sat in the veranda smoking and watching a little cloud on the horizon, and wondering whether rain was coming at last. . . . If Moongarr Bill was right, the gold-find would mean a fresh start for him in his baulked career. At any rate, it behoved him to take advantage of the chance and to go forth on the new adventure without unnecessary delay. But the savour was gone for him from adventure–the salt out of life. The stroke of luck–if it were one–had come too late.

And now the Great Drought had broken at last.

Next evening there came up a terrific thunderstorm, and a hurricane such as had not visited the district for years. It broke in the direction of the gidia scrub, and razed many trees. It passed over the head-station and travelled at a furious rate along the plain. Hailstones fell, as large as a pigeon’s egg, and stripped off such leafage as the drought had left. Thunder volleyed and lightning blazed. Part of the roof of the Old Humpey was torn off. The hide-house was practically blown away. The great white cedar by the lagoon was struck by lightning, and lay, a chaos of dry branches and splintered limbs, one side of the trunk standing up jagged and charred where it had been riven in two.

Upon the hurricane followed a steady deluge. For a night and a day, the heavens were opened, and poured waterspouts as though the pent rain of nine months were being discharged. The river ‘came down’ from the heads and filled the gully with a roaring flood. The lagoon was again almost level with its banks. The dry water-course on the plain sparkled in the distance, like a mirage–only that it was no mirage. No one who has not seen the extraordinary rapidity with which a dry river out West can be changed into a flooded one, could credit the swiftness of the transformation.

Then the heavens closed once more. The sun shone out pitilessly bright, and the surface earth looked, after a few hours, almost as dry as before. But the life-giving fluid had penetrated deep into the soil; the rivers and creeks were running; green grass was already springing up for the beasts to feed upon. The land was saved. Alas too late to save the ruined squatters. There were so few of their beasts left.

Nevertheless, the rain brought new life and energy to the humans. Kuppi, the Malay boy fetched buckets of water from the replenished lagoon, and scoured and scrubbed with great alacrity. He came timidly to his master, and asked if he might not wash out with boiling water the closed parlour and Lady Bridget’s unused bedroom. He was afraid that the white ants might have got into them.

McKeith’s face frightened Kuppi. So did the imprecation which his innocent request evoked. He was bidden to go and keep himself in his own quarters, and not show his face again that day at the New House.

Since Lady Bridget’s departure, McKeith had slept, eaten and worked in the Old Humpey, his original dwelling.

But Kuppi did not know that the white ants had not been given a chance to work destruction upon ‘the Ladyship’s’ properties. Regularly every day, McKeith himself tended those sacred chambers. Bridget’s rooms were just as she had left them.

He had done nothing yet towards dismantling that part of the New House in which she had chiefly lived. He had put off the task day after day. But since receiving Moongarr Bill’s letter, and now that the drought had broken, and the Man in Possession a prospect as certain as that there would come another thunderstorm, he knew that he must begin his preparations to quit Moongarr.

To do this meant depriving himself of the miserable comfort he found during wakeful nights and the first hour of dawn–the time he usually chose for sweeping and cleaning his wife’s rooms–of roaming, ghost-like, through the New House where every object spoke to him of her. In the day time, he shrank from mounting the steps which connected the verandas, but in the evenings, he would often come and stroll along the veranda, and sit in the squatter’s chair she had liked, or in the hammock where she had swung, and smoke his pipe and brood upon the irrevocable past. And then he would suddenly rush off in frantic haste to do some hard, physical work, feeling that he must go mad if he sat still any longer.

To-day however, after Kuppi had fled to the kitchen, he went into his old dressing room and stood looking at the camp bed, and thought of the day of Bridget’s fever when Harris had given him her note to Maule, and he had sat here huddled on the edge of the bed wrestling dumbly with