A little later, McKeith having tubbed and changed his riding clothes, came to his wife's room. He looked very large and clean and fair, and the worst of his temper had worn off in a colloquy with Ninnis, and the imparting and receiving of local news. But his eyes were still gloomy, and his mouth sullenly determined. And he had remembered with remorse that he should have softened to Bridget the sudden news of her friend's death. The sight of her now—a small tragic figure with a white face and burning eyes, in a black dress into which she had changed, deepened his compunction.
'I am very sorry, Biddy.' He tried to put his arm round her shoulder, but she drew back.
'What are you sorry for, Colin—that Rosamond Tallant is dead, and that you forgot to tell me, and let me hear it from—Willoughby Maule?' She paused perceptibly before pronouncing the christian name, 'Or that you behaved like an inhuman monster to those wretched Blacks, and refused me the only thing I have asked you for a good time past?'
Her tone roused his rancour anew.
'I think we'll drop the subject of the Blacks; there is no earthly use in talking about them, I make it a rule never to threaten without performing, and I'd punish them again, just the same—or more severely—under similar circumstances.'
'Very well. You will do as you please, and I shall do as I please, too.'
'What do you mean?'
'Just what I say. I agree with you that there's no use in discussing things about which we hold such different opinions. Quite simply, I can't forgive you for this afternoon's work.'
'Biddy, you exaggerate things.'
'Perhaps. But I don't think so in this case. Let me go out, Colin. Dinner must be ready by now.'
'No. I've got something to ask you first. I want to know why you looked so upset—as if you were going to faint—when that man came up to you to-day?'
'Naturally, I was startled. I had no idea he was in Australia.'
'But why should that have affected you. One might have imagined he had been your lover. Was he ever your lover, Biddy? I must know.'
'And if he had been, do you think I should tell you,' she answered coldly.
McKeith's face turned a dark red. His eyes literally blazed.
'That's enough.' He said, 'I shall not ask you another question about him. I am answered already.'
He stood aside to let her pass out into the veranda, and she walked along to the sitting-room.
Dinner went off, however, more agreeably than might have been expected. Lady Bridget's manner was simple and to the guest charming. The black dress, the touch of pensiveness was in keeping with the shadow of tragedy. But she spoke in a natural way, and with tender regret of Lady Tallant—questioning Maule as to when he had last seen her, and learning from him how it had been at Rosamond's instigation that he had cabled proposing himself as a companion in Sir Luke's loneliness. It had been only a week after his arrival in Leichardt's Town that the blow had fallen.
'You know, Tallant and I always hit it off very well together,'he observed explanatorily, addressing McKeith. 'It was at their house that I used to meet Lady Bridget during the few months that I had the honour of her acquaintance in England.'
McKeith looked at his guest in a resentful but half puzzled way. A spasm of doubt shook him. Suppose he had been making a fool of himself—insulting his wife by unreasoning suspicions? A vague contempt in her courteous aloofness had stung him to the quick. And the other man's easy self assurance, the light interchange of conversation between them about things and people of which McKeith knew nothing—all gave the Australian a sense of bafflement—the feeling that these two were ruled by another social code, belonged to a different world, in which he had no part. He had been sitting at the head of his table, perfunctorily doing his duty as host, wounded in his self-esteem—almost the tenderest part on him, morose and miserable. Now he snatched at the idea that he had been mistaken, as if it were a life-buoy thrown him in deep waters. He began to talk, to assert himself, to prove himself cock of his own walk. And Maule suavely encouraged him to lay down the law on things Australian, while Lady Bridget withdrew into herself, baffling and enraging McKeith still more hopelessly. He did not seem now to know his wife! A catastrophe had happened. What? How? Why? .... Nothing was the same, or could be the same again.
It was a relief when dinner was over. The men pulled out their pipes in the veranda. Lady Bridget, just within the sitting room window, smoked a cigarette, her small form extended in a squatter's chair, listening to, but taking scarcely any part in the conversation. The two outside discussed local topics—McKeith's failure to trace the perpetrators of the outrage on his horses. Maule's impressions of Tunumburra—where he had met McKeith in the township hotel, and the two had apparently, in the usual Bush fashion, got on intimate terms—the rumours of an armed camp of Unionists, and the expected conflict between them and the sheep owners and free shearers at Breeza Downs, whither the Government specials were bound. Lady Bridget gleaned that Maule had placed himself under McKeith's directions.
'What are your immediate movements to be?' he asked his host. 'Remember, I am ready to fall in with any plans you may have for making me useful.'
McKeith did not answer at once. He took his pipe from his mouth, and knocked the ashes out of it against the arm of his chair, while he seemed to be considering the question. Then, as if he had formed a definite determination, he leaned forward and addressed his wife in a forcedly matter-of-fact tone.
'I don't suppose you know much about what has been going on, Biddy. The same boat that brought up the specials brought a hundred or more free labourers, and they're on their way up to the different sheep-stations along the river—a lot of them for Breeza Downs, where Windeatt has begun shearing. Windeatt is in a blue funk because a report that a little army of Unionists, all mounted and armed, are camped that way and threatening to burn down his wool-shed and sack his store. The burned old Duppo's wool-shed last week.'
'He's a skinflint, and I'm sure he deserved it,' put in Lady Bridget indifferently.
McKeith check a dry sarcasm. He became aware of Maule's eyes turning from one to the other.
'Well—' He got up and leaned his great frame against the lintel between Maule and Lady Bridget. 'The Pastoralist Executive at Tunumburra have asked us cattle-owners who—are more likely to be let alone than the sheep-men, to help in garrisoning the sheep-stations; and I've promised to ride over to Breeza Downs to-morrow and do my share in protecting the place. Harris and I are going together.'
Lady Bridge seemed more interested in blowing smoke-rings than in her husband's news.
'I may have to be away several days,' continued McKeith. 'Then there's the new bore we're sinking—the water is badly wanted—cattle are dying—I can't run any risk of the bore-plant being wrecked. The men who are working there must be sent off because we're short of rations—thanks to those murderous brutes keeping back the drays—and the muster has to be stopped for the same reason. I won't answer for when I can be back.' ... As she made no answer, he asked sharply: 'Do you understand, Biddy?'
'Yes, of course. I have no doubt, Colin, that you'll find it all highly stimulating. And perhaps you will be able to shoot somebody with a clear conscience, which will be more stimulating still. Really Mr Maule, you are lucky to have come in for a civil war—I heard that in South America that was your particular interest. Do you carry civil wars about with you? Only, there's nothing very romantic in fighting for mere freedom of contract—it seems so obvious that people should be free to make or decline a contract. I wonder which side you would take.'
Her levity called forth an impatient ejaculation from McKeith.
'I'm afraid in my wars it's generally been what your husband would consider the wrong side,' said Maule with a laugh. 'I've usually fought with the rebels.'
'Then you'd better not go to Breeza Downs. You'd better stop and fight for me,' exclaimed Bridget.
'That's just what I was about to propose your friend should do,' said McKeith in hard deliberate tones. He looked straight at his wife—shoulders and jaws squared, eyes like flashing steel under the grim brows. The expression of his face gave Bridget a little sense of shock. She raised herself abruptly, and her eyes flashed pride and defiance too.
'How very considerate of you, Colin—if Mr Maule LIKES to be disposed of in that way. HE is to be allowed freedom of contract I presume, though the shearers are not.'
'You needn't be afraid that I shall strike, Lady Bridget,' laughed Maule. 'It will suit my general principles to keep out of the scrimmage. I don't know anything about the rights and wrongs of your labour question, but I confess that, speaking broadly, my sympathies are usually rather with Labour than with Capital.'
'Capital!' echoed McKeith derisively. 'It's blithering irony to talk of us Leura squatters as representing capital. We're all playing a sort of battledore and shuttlecock game—tossed about between drought and plenty—boom and slump. A kick in the beam and one end is up and the other end down. There's Windeatt, who will be ruined if his wool-shed is destroyed and his shearing spoiled. No rain, and the banks would foreclose on most of us. Take myself. Two years ago the skies were all smiling on my fortunes. This last year, it's as if the hosts of heaven had a down on me.'
'The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,' murmured Lady Bridget.
'I'm Sisera, am I?' He gave her a fierce look and crossed to the veranda-railing, where he began cutting tobacco into the palm of his hand. 'Well, there is something in that. But the stars have never licked me yet. Sisera was a coward, or they wouldn't have DOWNED him.'
'Ah, but there was Jael to be reckoned with,' put in Maule softly.
'Jael!' McKeith plugged his pipe energetically. 'The more fool Sisera for not giving Jael a wide berth. He should have gone his way and kept her out of his affairs.'
A hard little laugh rang from the depths of the squatter's chair. Maule got up and strolled into the sitting-room, where he seemed engrossed in the pictures on the wall. Just then Cudgee, the black boy, hailed McKeith from the foot of the steps.
'That fellow pollis man want'ing Massa. He sit down long-a Old Humpey.'
'All right.'
McKeith looked into the parlour. 'My wife will entertain you, Maule. I daresay you've got plenty to talk about. I'll see you later.'
Presently they heard him outside speaking to the Police Inspector. 'Come into the office, Harris, and have a smoke and a glass of grog.'
Lady Bridget and Willoughby Maule were alone again. She got up from the long chair, and as she did so her cigarette case dropped from her lap. He picked it up and it lay on his open palm, the diamonds and rubies of her maiden initials glistening on the gold lid. They looked at each other across it.
'I gave you this,' he said, 'and you have kept it—used it?'
He seemed to gloat over the bauble.
Her fingers touched his hand as she took the case from him, and he gave a little shiver of pleasure.
'Let me have it; I want another cigarette.' She selected two and gave him one of them.
They moved to the divan near the fireplace, where some red embers remained of the log of sandalwood. Its perfume lingered faintly in the atmosphere.
'That's good,' he said. 'It's like you; the only thing in the god-forsaken desert that IS like you.'
'Oh, you don't know me—now.'
'Don't I! Well, your husband has given me the chance of knowing you—better—and I warn you that I shall not scruple to avail myself of the opportunity.'
She shook her head dubiously. 'Give me a light.'
He stooped and lit his own cigarette, then, bending, held its tip to her. They both inhaled a few whiffs in silence. Presently, he said:
'I find it difficult to understand McKeith.'
'Don't try. You wouldn't succeed. I observe,' she added, 'that you must have become rather friendly at Tunumburra?'
'Oh, yes. I can generally get on with open-air men. Besides, I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to ask me here.'
'Well—and what do you thing of it, now that you are here?'
'Great heavens! What do you imagine that I should think of it! The whole thing seems to me the most ghastly blunder—the most horrible anomaly. You—in these surroundings! Married to a man so entirely beneath you, and with whom you don't get on at all.'
'You have no right to say that.'
'The thing is obvious; though you tried to carry it off before dinner. Your manner to each other; the lack of courtesy and consideration in him; his leaving you....'
'Stop,' she interrupted. 'There's one thing you MUST understand. I don't mind what you say about yourself—I want to hear that—but I can't allow you to criticise my husband.'
'I beg your pardon. It isn't easy in the conditions to preserve the social conventions. I will try to obey you. At any rate, you allow me to be frank about myself.... It was sweet of you to keep this—more than I could have dared hope for.'
He fingered tenderly the cigarette case on her lap.
'I suppose I ought to have sent it back to you. But I didn't want to. You see it was not like an engagement ring.'
'No, worse luck.'
'Why, worse luck?'
'The ring would have been the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual bond. If you had been really engaged to me—formally, officially engaged, you couldn't have thrown me over so easily.'
'I—throw you over! Is it quite fair to put it that way?'
'No, I admit that. Let us be honest with each other—this once.'
'This once—very well—but not at this moment. I daresay there will be time for a talk by and by.'
'I wait your pleasure.'
'There are some things I should like to understand,' she went on, '—about you—about me, it doesn't matter which. And, after all, I only want to know about you out of a sort of perverse curiosity.'
'That's so like you. You always managed to infuse a bitter drop into your sweetness. And you COULD be so adorably sweet... If only I could ever have felt sure of you.'
'Where would have been the use? We never could spend an hour together without hurting or annoying each other. It's a very good thing for us both that neither cared enough to make any real sacrifice for the other.'
'There you wrong me,' he exclaimed. 'I did care—I cared intensely. The touch of your hand—the very sweep of your dress thrilled every nerve in me. I never in all my life loved a woman as I loved you. That last day when you walked out of my rooms....'
'Where I never ought to have gone. Fancy the properly brought-up English girl you used to hold up to me doing such a shocking thing as to visit you alone in your chambers! ... Oh! Is that Colin back again?'
For Maule had started visibly at the sound of quick steps mounting to the veranda, and McKeith's towering figure appeared in the doorway, looking at them.
Lady Bridget turned her head, her cigarette in her hand, and glanced up at his face. What she saw in it might have made a less reckless or less innocent woman feel uneasy. She was sure that he must have heard that last speech of hers about visiting Maule in his chambers. Well, she didn't care. Besides Colin hadn't the smallest right to resent any action of hers before her marriage... She did not turn a hair. Maule admired her composure.
'BON SANG NE PEUT MENTIR,' he thought to himself, and wished they had been talking in French.
'You look as grim as the statue of the Commander,' said Lady Bridget. 'What is the matter?'
'Lady Bridget and I have been exchanging unconventional reminiscences,' put it Maule with forced lightness.
McKeith took no notice of either remark, but strode across the room to the roll-top escritoire, where he usually wrote his letters when in his wife's company. He extracted a bundle of papers from one of the pigeon holes.
'This is what I came for. Sorry to have interrupted your reminiscences,' and he went out again, passing along the back veranda.
Maule had got up and was standing at the fireplace. Lady Bridget rose too.
'I'm going to bed. We keep early hours in the Bush.'
'What! Already!' he exclaimed in dismay.
'I was up at six this morning. Well, I hope you won't be too uncomfortable with the white ants in the Old Humpey—they are perfectly harmless. Your room is next to the office, as I daresay you've discovered. And you'll find Colin there I suppose, with your friend the Police-Inspector.'
'Don't call that man Harris my friend. We've had one or two scraps at each other already. He was pleased to take it for granted that I'm what he calls a "new chum," and didn't like my shewing him that I knew rather better than he does what police administration should be in out-of-the-way districts.'
Lady Bridget nodded. 'Then we're both under ban of the Law. I DETEST Harris.... Good-night.' And she flitted through the French window without giving him her hand.
The station seemed in a state of unquietude till late into the night. The lowing of the tailing-mob in the yard was more prolonged than usual. And the horses were whinnying and answering each other down by the lagoon as though there were strangers about. Lady Bridget, lying awake and watching through her uncurtained windows the descent of the Southern Cross towards the horizon, and the westward travelling of a moon just out of its first quarter, could hear the men's voices on the veranda of the Old Humpey—that of Ninnis and the Police Inspector; Maule seemed to have retired to his own room.
McKeith was evidently busy upon preparations for his absence from the station. He must have been cleaning guns and pistols. There were two or three shots—which startled and kept her in a state of tension. At last she heard the interchange of good-nights, and the withdrawal of Ninnis and Harris to the Bachelor's Quarters. Finally, her husband came to his dressing-room—not along the front veranda, as would have been usual, but by the back one, through the bathroom. Even this deviation from habit seemed significant of his mood—he would not pass her window. He moved about for a time as if he were busy packing. Then came silence. She imagined him on the edge of the camp bed, so seldom used, smoking and ruminating.
Whiffs from his pipe came through the cracks of the door between the two rooms, and were an offence to her irritated nerves. She had grown accustomed to his tobacco, but, as a rule, he did not smoke the last thing at night. He had seemed to regard his wife's chamber as a tabernacle, enshrining that which he held most sacred, and would never enter it until he was cleansed from the grime and dust of the stockyard and cattle camp, and had laid aside the associations of his working day. That attitude had appealed to all that was idealistic in both their natures, and had kept green the memory of their honeymoon. It angered her that to-night, of all nights, he should disregard it.
In personal details, she was intensely fastidious, and at some trouble and cost had maintained in her intimate surroundings a daintiness almost unknown out-back. Her room was large, and much of its furnishings symptomatic of the woman of her class—the array of monogrammed, tortoise-shell backed brushes and silver and gold topped boxes and bottles, the embroidered coverlet of the bed, the flowered chintz and soft pink wall paper, the laced cambric garments and silk-frilled dressing gown hanging over a chair. When service lacked, and there was no one to wash and iron her cambric and fine linen, she contrived somehow that the supply should not fail, and brought upon herself some ill-natured ridiculed in consequence. The wives of the Leura squatters thought her 'stuck-up' and apart from their kind. If they had known how much she wanted sometimes to throw herself into their lives—as she had thrown herself into the lives of her East-End socialistic friends! But the stations were few and far between, and the neighbours—such as they were—left her alone.
Letting her mind drift along side-tracks, she resented now there having come no suggestion from the Breeza Downs women that she should accompany her husband and share the benefits of police protection, or—which appealed to her far more—the excitement of what might be going on there. Of course, though, there was nothing for her to be nervous about here—she wished there might have been. Any touch of dramatic adventure would be welcome in the crude monotony of her life.
But the adventure promised to be of a more personal kind.
Suddenly, she jumped out of bed and softly slipped the bolt of the door into her husband's dressing room. She did it on a wild impulse. She felt that she could not bear him near her to-night. He should see that she was not his chattel.... But, perhaps, he did not want to come.... Well, so much the better. In any case, she wanted to show him that she did not want him. She wondered if he would venture.... She wondered if he did really care....
He appeared in no hurry to test her capacity for forgiveness.... Or it might be that the minutes went slowly—laden as they were with momentous thought. She lay in a tumult of agitation, her heart beating painfully under the lawn of her nightgown. She had a sense of gasping wonderment. She felt, as Colin had felt, that something tremendous had happened—and with such bewildering suddenness—altering all the conditions between them.
Yet, through the pain and bewilderment, her whole being thrilled with an excitement that was almost intoxicating—like the effect of an insidious drug, or the fumes of heady wine. She knew it was the old craving for sensation, the fatal O'Hara temperament awake and clamouring. Try as she would—and she did try in a futile fashion—she could not shut off the impression of Willoughby Maule—the sombre ardour in his eyes, the note of suppressed passion in his voice. There was no doubt that this unexpected meeting had restarted vibrations, and that his influence was a force to be reckoned with still.
If Colin had acted differently—if he had not behaved so brutally to those poor blacks—if his manner to her had not been so hard and overbearing. And then his leaving her alone like that with Willoughby Maule! Of course, he was jealous. He had jumped at conclusions. What right had he to do so? What could he know? He must suspect her of horrible things. His questions had been insultingly dictatorial. Now, he wanted to shew her that he flung her off. He would not put out a finger to hold her to him. Had he not said something like that before their marriage! ... It was abominable.
The whiffs of tobacco smoke came no more. He was moving about again. She heard him in the bathroom. After a minute or two he came to the door and tried to open it.
'Biddy,' he said. Then in a deep-toned eager whisper, 'Mate!'
She sat up in bed; she had the impulse to go and open the door, but some demon held her back. She lay down again on her pillow.... The bed had creaked.... He must have known that she was awake.... He waited a minute or two without speaking ... knocked very softly.... She was silent.... Again she heard him moving about in his dressing-room, and, after a little while, she heard him go out, passing along the back veranda. He did not return. It was dawn before Bridget dropped into the heavy morning slumber, which follows a night of weeping.
When Lady Bridget awoke, it was then near the hour at which they ordinarily breakfasted. Finding, when she had dressed, that all was silent in the next room, she looked in.
It was empty, the bed had not been slept in, but there were signs that McKeith had got into his riding clothes and that he had packed a valise.
Maule was waiting in the dining-room, and Maggie, the serving maid, gave a message from McKeith that he had had his breakfast at the Bachelors' Quarters with Mr Harris and that they were both going to start for Breeza Downs immediately.
Bridget made no pretence of breakfasting. She told Maule to forage for himself, and, after swallowing a cup of coffee, made the excuse of household business—to see if the Chinaman had put up his master's lunch—if the water-bags were filled—what were to be the proceedings of the day. She had a hope that McKeith might say something conciliatory to her before he left. The remembrance of that disregarded appeal—the word 'Mate' to which she had given no response, weighed, a guilty load, upon her heart.
But she was sore and angry—in no mood to make any advance or stoop to self-justification. He was outside the store, where Ninnis was weighing rations for Harris, and McKeith's and the Police Inspector's horses, ready saddled, with valises strapped on, were hitched to the paling.
Harris sulkily touched his helmet to Lady Bridget, but McKeith had his back to her and seemed wholly absorbed in some directions he was giving.
'You'll see to it, Ninnis, that six saddle-horses are kept ready to run up, in case the Pastoralist Executive sends along any message that's got to be carried down the river—there's that lot of colts Zack Duppo broke in, they'll do. And you can get in Alexander and Roxalana from the Bore pasture, in case the buggy should be wanted—and one or two of the old hacks that are spelling out there. Of course, her ladyship's horse mustn't be touched, and you'll see Mr Maule has a proper mount if he wants it—the gentleman who'll be here for a bit—a friend of her ladyship's from England—you understand. You'll keep on those new men for the tailing mob, though I'm not sure they mightn't be Unionists in disguise. Anyway, Moongarr Bill is a match for them.... And you'll just mind—the lot of you—that it's my orders to stockwhip blacks off the place, and that if any Unionist delegates show their faces through the sliprails they're not allowed to stop five minutes inside the paddock fence.'
'Right you are, Boss,' responded Ninnis, and there was a change of grouping, and McKeith strode out to the yard to look into some other matter, all without sending a glance to his wife.
Presently Moongarr Bill came up, chuckling mysteriously, 'Say, Boss, I believe there's one of them dashed organising chaps coming down now from the top sliprails.' And as he spoke, a man rode to the fence, harmless enough looking, of the ordinary bush type.
He was about to get off his horse in the assured manner of a bushman claiming the usual hospitality, but McKeith—big and grimly menacing—advanced and held up his hand.
'No, wait a bit. Don't unsaddle. I'd like first to know your business.'
'I'm an Organiser,' said the man defiantly, 'and I'm not ashamed of my job. Trades Unions are lawful combinations, and I've come to have a talk with your men....' He ran on with professional volubility. 'My object in going round your district is to bring about a peaceful compromise between employers and employed—Do you see....?'
'Stop,' thundered McKeith. 'I'd have you understand that there's an organiser on this station already. I'M the Organiser here, and I'm not taking stock in Trades Unions at present.'
'But you'll let me have a talk with your men?—No harm in that.'
'No, you don't,' said McKeith.
'Well, I can spell my horse an hour or two, can't I?'
'No, you can't. You'll ride off my station straight away.'
'I've been off tucker since yesterday,' said the man, who seemed a poor-spirited creature. 'Anyhow, Boss, you'll give me something to eat.'
'Yes, I'll do that.' The laws of bush hospitality may not be violated. Food must be given even to an enemy—provided he be white. McKeith called to the Chinaman to bring out beef and bread. A lump of salt junk and a hunk of bread were handed to the traveller.
'Now you be off, and eat that outside my paddock,' said McKeith. 'See those gum trees over there?—You can go and organise the gum trees.'
The man scowled, and weakly threatened as he half turned his horse's head.
'Look here, Boss, you'll find yourself the worse for this.'
'Shall I. In what way, can you tell me?'
'You'll find that your grass is burned, I daresay.'
'I'm obliged to you for the hint. I'll take precautions, and I'll begin by shepherding you straight off my run,' said McKeith. 'Harris, if you're ready now, come along here.'
The Police Inspector stepped off the store veranda, where he had been standing, a majestic and interested onlooker. The Organiser—after all, a mere man of straw, crumpled under his baneful stare.
'You can't give me in charge—you've got no warrant—I've done nothing to be given in charge for.'
'Some of your people have, though, and here's a bit of information for any skunk among your cowardly lot,' said McKeith. 'I've offered one hundred pounds reward for the scoundrels who cut my horses' throats and robbed my drays on the road to Tunumburra. There's a chance for you, if you're mean enough to turn informer.'
'I know nothing about that,' said the Organiser.
'Eh? Well, if my grass is burned, I shall know who did it, and so will this Police Inspector. And I am a magistrate, and will have you arrested. Get on your horse, Harris, we'll start at once, and ride alongside this chap till he's over my boundaries.'
Harris unhitched his horse and mounted, but not sooner than McKeith was he in the saddle. Then McKeith looked at last towards the veranda where Bridget stood, white, defiant, with Maule at the French window of the dining-room just behind her.
McKeith took off his hat, made her a sweeping bow, which might have included his guest, turned his horse's head and rode in the direction of the sliprails, Harris and the sulky Organiser slightly at his rear.
Bridget never forgot that impression of him—the dogged slouch of his broad shoulders—the grim set of his head, the square, unyielding look of his figure, as he sat his horse with the easy poise of a bushman who is one with the animal under him—in this case, a powerfully made, nasty tempered roan, one of Colin's best saddle-horses—which seemed as dogged tempered as its master.
Maule showed tact in tacitly assuming the unexpected necessity for McKeith's abrupt departure—also that he had already bidden good-bye to his wife.
Lady Bridget made no comment upon her husband's scant courtesy to his guest when she rejoined Maule after an hour or two spent in housewifely business. They strolled about the garden, smoked cigarettes in the veranda, she played and sang to him, and he brought out his cornet, which he had carried in his valise, being something of a performer on that instrument.
A demon of reckless gaiety seemed to have entered into Lady Bridget. Watching McKeith disappear behind the gum trees, she had said to herself:—'I can be determined, too. I have as strong a will as he has. He did not choose to say one regretful word. He was too stubborn to own himself in the wrong. He left me in what—if he believed his suspicion to be true—must be a dangerous position for a woman—only it shall not be dangerous to ME. I know exactly how far I am going—exactly the amount of excitement I shall get out of it all. Neither Willoughby nor he deserve an iota of consideration. I shall amuse myself. So! No more.... But he can't know that. He has never thought about ME. He has thought of nothing but his own cross-grained pride and selfish egoism. No man of ordinary breeding or SAVOIR-FAIRE would have gone off like that!'
She forgot in her condemnation of Colin to make allowance for the primal nature of the man; for a certain kinship in him with the loftier type of savage, whose woman must be his wholly, or else deliberately relinquished to the successful rival, and into whose calculation the subtleties of social jurisprudence would not naturally enter.
Nor did she remember at the moment that Maule had been described by her own relatives as a person of neither birth nor breeding—a fortune-hunter—not by any means a modern Bayard. He at least was a man of the world, she thought, and would appreciate the situation. He had lost that touch of unaccustomedness—she hardly knew how to describe it—which had often irritated her in their former relation. In their talk that day he seemed much more at home than she was in the world she had once belonged to. He spoke of 'personages' with the ease of familiar acquaintance. Apparently, he had got into quite the right set—a rather political set, she gathered. He told her that he had been pressed to stand for a well-nursed Liberal Constituency, and implied that but for the catastrophe of his wife's death he would now be seated in Parliament, with a fair prospect in the future of place and distinction. Of course, it was the money which had done it, she told herself, though he had undoubted cleverness, she knew, and, as he pointed out, his experience in a particular South American republic—very much to the fore just now in European diplomacy—stood to his advantage. His marriage had given him opportunity. He alluded without bad taste to his dead wife's generosity. She had left him her entire fortune unfettered. He was now a rich man. He explained that she had had none but very distant relations and that, otherwise, charitable institutions would have benefited. She had been a very good woman, he said—a woman with whom nine hundred out of a thousand decent men would have been perfectly happy. He let it be inferred that he was the thousandth man. His eyes, not his lips told her the reason why.
Their talk skimmed the surface of vital things—the new awakening in England; the threatenings of a socialistic upheaval; his individual aims and ideas—she recognised her own inspirations. He spoke of his political ambitions. Suddenly she said:
'I wonder why you made the break of coming out to Australia—why you did not stay in England and follow on your career?'
'There are bonds stronger than cart ropes which may drag a man by force from the path he has marked out for himself. Surely you must understand?'
'Really, Mr Maule.'
'Why will you be so formal!' he interrupted impetuously. 'It is absurd. Women nowadays always call men they know well by a PETIT NOM.'
'Do I know you well! I often think I never knew you at all.'
'That is what Lady Tallant used to say to me, latterly, about you and myself—that we never really knew each other.'
'Oh, poor Rosamond! It makes me miserable to think of her. You became friends, then—latterly?'
'She was very nice to me when she came back from Leichardt's Land. And besides, she was anxious for me to come out to Luke and help him a bit.... She told me about your marriage. She knew I could settle to nothing—of course, the world in general thought it was because of that tragedy—my wife's death—and the child—you understand?'
Bridget nodded slowly.
'Lady Tallant knew the truth—that I was tormented by one ceaseless longing—after the impossible. I fancy she thought that if I could realise the impossibility, I might get over the longing.... But—Bridget, it's no use pretending—I did try to do my duty. I think I succeeded, to a certain extent, in making my wife happy—but there was always the same gnawing regret....'
'You must put all that out of your head,' she interrupted curtly.
'I cannot. A man doesn't love a woman like you, and, because she is married to another man, put her out of his head—in two years or ten—or Eternity, for that matter.'
She laughed joylessly. 'Eternity!' she scoffed.
They were in the veranda after luncheon, she swinging slowly in the hammock, playing with a cigarette, he smoking likewise, scarcely attempting to suppress the stormy feeling in his face and voice. For her, the crude brown-grey landscape rose and fell with the motion of the hammock, and jarred with the exotic memories he evoked. She had been called back to the varied emotional interests of her girlhood, and realised, in a rush, how deadly dull was life in the arid wastes of the Never-Never. Nothing more exciting than to watch the great parched plain, with the dry heat-haze upon it, getting browner every day, and the shrinking lagoon and its ever widening border of mud. Nothing, when she turned her eyes to right and left, but ragged gum trees and black gidia forest. What a dead blank wilderness it was!'
She gave a little gasp as if for breath. He seemed to read her thoughts.
'Do you remember Rome—and the Campagna, that first day we went to Albano?—And our walk through the woods down to Lake Nei?—It was then I first knew that I loved you.'
'Will—if you are going to stay here you mustn't talk like that. It's not playing the game.' She spoke pleadingly.
'Does your husband play the game?' Maule retorted. 'Is it playing the game to leave you here alone with me, when he must know—or at least, guess—how things have been between us?—Do you think I didn't notice yesterday that he suspected me—suspected us both? I should have been a blind mole not to see by his face and manner how he felt. Upon my soul, he would have no defence—if....'
She stopped him with a gesture.
'I must ask you again not to discuss my relations with my husband; they do not concern you.'
'Do they not!' And as she rose abruptly from the hammock, 'I beg your pardon,' he added humbly, 'I will do my best not to offend again.'
He got up too and stood, his back against the veranda railings.
'Lady Bridget, you mustn't be angry with me. I suppose I am a little off my balance, you must remember that this is—for me, a rather staggering experience.'
'Shall we go for a ride?' she asked suddenly. 'I don't suppose you have much idea of what a wild western station is like.'
'Oh, I'm fairly well acquainted with life on big pastures,' he answered lightly, taking her cue. 'You would be surprised, perhaps, at the list of my qualifications as an "out-back squatter."—I'm a bit of a rancher—had one in the Argentine—a bit of a doctor—a bit of a policeman—I was in charge once of a constabulary force out in British Guiana. That's where I got a rise off Harris—a bit of a law breaker, too—in fact a bit of everything. Yes, I should enjoy a ride round here with you immensely.'
'Then do you mind looking for Mr Ninnis, the overseer, you know.'
'Yes, I know Ninnis. Had a yarn—as he'd say—with him last night while your husband was talking to Harris. Ninnis doesn't get on well with Harris—another point of sympathy. We're quite friends already. Ninnis and I—he's been in South America, too.'
'You'll find him somewhere about the Bachelors' Quarters, and I'll go and put on my habit,' she said.
Lady Bridget appeared as Maule and Ninnis were finishing saddling the horses. Ninnis had stayed near the head station, and was keeping a sharp look-out for bush fires, he said. Otherwise, there appeared to be no elements of disquiet. Lady Bridget noticed with surprise that Ninnis seemed to defer to Maule, which was not his usual attitude towards strangers. She attributed this to a community of experiences in South America, and also to Maule's undoubted knack of managing men.
They rounded the lagoon and skirted the gidia scrub. Maule was on a Moongarr horse, Bridget rode a fiery little chestnut. Maule had already had opportunity to admire the famous O'Hara seat. They had hunted together once or twice on the Campagna, that winter when they had met in Rome. It was difficult to avoid retrospect, but Bridget seemed determined to keep it within conventional limits. They found plenty, however, to talk about in their immediate surroundings. Perhaps it was the effort to throw off the load on her heart that made Bridget gaily confiding. She drew humorous pictures of the comic shifts, the almost tragic hardships of life on the Leura—how she had been left servantless—until Ninnis had got up Maggie from the Lower Leura—when the Chinamen decamped during the gold rush. She described the chivalrous SUNDOWNER who had on one occasion helped her through a week's washing; and Zack Duppo the horsebreaker, whose Christmas pudding had been a culinary triumph, and the loyalty of faithful Wombo, who had done violence to all his savage instincts in acting as house-servant until the advent of the Malay boy Kuppi. She told of her first experience of a summer out West. The frying of eggs in the sun on a sheet of corrugated zinc, so intense was the heat. The terror of snakes, centipedes, scorpions. The plagues of flies and white ants. Then how, during the servantless period, in utter loneliness and Colin's enforced absence at the furthest out-station she had had an attack of dengue fever, and no woman within forty miles of her.
'And your husband allowed this? But where was that barmaid-looking person who seems to keep house here for stray gentlemen—and, who has the yellow-headed and blue-eyed little boy?'
Bridget's lip curled.
'Mrs Hensor had accepted a temporary situation at an hotel in Fig Tree Mount—the only time I've regretted her absence,' and the musical laugh seemed to Maule to have acquired a note of exceeding bitterness. 'Perhaps you don't know,' she went on, 'that Mrs Hensor is a sort of Helen of the Upper Leura—though unfortunately as yet no Paris has carried her off—I wish there was one bold enough to do it. She had to be asked to take a change of air because there was rivalry about her between the buyer of a Meat Preserving Establishment and the chief butcher at Tunumburra. Fair Helen scorned them both. Result: The two buyers bought beasts elsewhere and, as you would understand, on a cattle station, butchers may not be flouted. Though I daresay,' Lady Bridget added with a shrug, 'if I could have had the butchers in the house—I draw the line only at Harris—and had sung to them and played up generally, I might have scored even off Mrs Hensor. But they wouldn't come until after she had gone and there was no further danger of a duel taking place outside the Bachelors' Quarters.'
Maule took her cue again and laughed as if the matter were one to jest about. But as he looked round, his face did not suggest merriment. Nor for that matter did the landscape. They were riding at the edge of the immense sandy plain, patched with brown jaggled grass and parched brambles and prickly lignum vitae—nothing to break the barren monotony but clumps of stunted brigalow and gidia, a wind-mill marking the site of an empty well with the few hungry-looking cattle near it.
Now they dipped into a scrub of dismal gidia.
'This is the most depressing country I have ever ridden through,' he said.
'You don't know what a difference three inches of rain makes,' she answered. 'Then the grass is green, the creeks are running, and at this time the dead brambles are covered with white flowers. But it doesn't rain. There's the tragedy.'
'The tragedy is that you—you of all women should be wasting your youth and beauty in this wilderness. How long is it going to last?'
She shrugged again, and for an instant turned her face up towards the sky. 'You must ask the heavens?'
'Meaning, I presume, that like most of the Australian squatters, your husband hasn't capital enough at his back to stand up against continued drought?'
'Precisely.' She looked at him, with her puzzling smile.
'But you couldn't have understood his position when you married him?'
'No, I didn't—altogether. But I should really like to remind you that I am not in the witness box.'
'I think you owe me the truth!' he said, passionately.
'What do you call the truth?' she asked, reining in her horse and meeting his eyes straight.
But she had to turn hers away before he answered, and he as well as herself was conscious of the compelling effect his gaze had upon her.
'I could have made you marry me if I had been strong enough to persist,' he said.
'Cannot any man do what he is strong enough to do—if he wishes it enough to persist?'
'I should have put it this way. If I had thought less of you and more of myself. But after what you said that day, when you jeered so contemptuously at the kind of environment in which, THEN, I should have had to place my wife—what could I do—except withdraw? But you suffered, Bridget,' he went on vehemently. 'Not so much as I did—but still you suffered. You thought of me—I felt it, and you must have felt too, how continually I thought of you. I used to try and make you think of me—dream of me. And I succeeded. Isn't that true?'
'Yes, it is true,' she answered in a low voice.
'Only lately, since I have been in the district, it has seemed to me that the invisible wires have been set working afresh. Isn't that true also?'
'Yes, it is true,' she said again, as if forced to the acknowledgment.
'Then, can there be any question of the bond between us? You see, it's independent of time and space! for you WERE sorry—you DID care. That's the truth you owe me. If after—after we parted in that dreadful way, I had gone back, had thrown up everything, had said to you, "Come with me ANYWHERE, let us be all in all to each other—on the slopes of the Andes, on an island in the South Seas—you would have come?"'
'I always told you,' she said with her puzzling smile, 'that the slopes of the Andes appealed to me.'
'Peru would have been more picturesque than this, anyway. Is that all I can get out of you—that grudging admission? Well, never mind, I am satisfied. You have owned up to enough. I won't tease you now for more admissions.'
'I have admitted too much,' she said gloomily. 'The curse of the O'Hara's is upon me. Almost all of them have gambled with their lives, and most of them have lost.'
She gave her horse the rein as she spoke, and they cantered on over the plain. After that, she resolutely forbade sentiment.
Mr Ninnis was gratified by an invitation that evening to dine at the Home, and came down in his best dark suit and his most genial mood.
Bridget sang. She had not been singing much lately. Colin's gloom over the evil prospects of squatting on the Leura re-acted upon her spirits. And besides, the piano had been attacked by white ants, and the tuner had not been so far up the river for a long time. It was inspiring to learn that Maule added to his gifts that of getting a piano into tune. Ninnis promised to rummage among the tools for a key that would serve.
Ninnis had never admired Lady Bridget so much as he did this evening. Certainly he thought her more flighty and incomprehensible than ever, but he could not deny her fascination. It seemed quite natural to him that she should be in high spirits at seeing an old friend from England, who appeared to know all her people. Ninnis had taken immensely to Maule. Beside Maule knew parts of the world where Ninnis had been. It was curious to see the American-isms crop out. Ninnis considered Maule a person of parts and of practical experience. He said to himself that the Boss had done wisely in leaving Maule at the head-station while they were short-handed. Maule showed great interest in Bush matters—said he wanted to learn all he could about the management of cattle—thought it not improbable that he might invest money in Leichardt's Land. Ninnis agreed to show him round, and Maule begged that he might be made useful—even offered to take a turn with the tailing-mob, so that Moongarr Bill and the other stockmen might be free to muster more cattle.
Nothing was heard of the Blacks during the next day or two, but one morning Ninnis discovered that an old gun, which the station hands and the black-boys were allowed to use on Sundays for shooting game in the lagoon, had disappeared in the night. Circumstantial evidence pointed to Wombo as the thief. Cudgee owned to having seen him skulking among the Gully rocks. A deserted gunya was found near a lonely, half-dry waterhole in the scrub, and there were rumours of a tribe of wild blacks having passed towards the outlying country in the Breeza Downs direction.
No news came, however, of either racial or labour warfare. McKeith sent not a word of his doings, and Harry the Blower was not due yet on his postal, fortnightly round.
McKeith had been gone a week, and the time of his absence seemed like that sinister lull which comes after the sudden shock of an earthquake and the tornado that follows upon it. Then, one day, something happened.
All the men except the Chinamen were out. Moongarr Bill, Ninnis, and the stockmen on the run, while Maule—a book and a sandwich in his pocket—had gone herding with Joey Case and one of the extra hands.
A sense of mutual embarrassment had that day driven them apart. He had been afraid of himself, and she too had felt afraid. During these seven days she had rushed recklessly on as though impelled by a fatality, never pausing to consider how near she might be to a precipice. Whenever possible, she had ridden out with Maule and Ninnis, or with Maule alone. She found relief from painful thoughts of Colin in the excitement and emotion with which Maule's society provided her. She went with him on several occasions behind the tailing-mob, though ordinarily, she could not endure being at close quarters with cattle. But it interested her to see Maule ride after and round up the wild ones that escaped; to watch his splendid horsemanship which had the flamboyant South-American touch—the suggestion of lariat and lasso and ornate equipment, the picturesque element lacking in the Bush—all harmonizing with his deep dark eyes and Southern type of good looks.
To-day, she had preferred to remain at home alone. She had been pulled up with a startled sense of shock. Last evening when they were walking together on the veranda he had begun again to make love to her, and in still more passionate earnest—had held her hands—had tried to kiss her. She had found herself giving way to the old romantic intoxication—then had wrenched herself from him only just before the meeting of lips.
At last, she had realized the strength of the glamour. She fought against it; nevertheless, in imagination gave herself up to it, as the opium-smoker or haschisch-eater gives himself up to the insidious FANTASIA of his drug.
Yes, Bridget thought it was like what she had read of the effects of some unholy drug—some uncanny form of hypnotism.
For she knew that she did not really love Maule—that her feeling for him was unwholesome.
There was poison in it acting upon her affection for and trust in her husband. Maule made subtle insinuations to McKeith's detriment, injected doubts that rankled. There were no definite charges, though he would hint sometimes at gossip he had heard in Tunumburra. But he would convey to her in half words, looks, and tones that he had reason to believe Colin unworthy of her—that her husband had led the life of an ordinary bushman, and had fully availed himself of such material pleasures as might have come to his hand. The veiled questions he asked about Mrs Hensor and her boy, brought back a startled remembrance of the scene outside the Fig Tree Mount Hotel and Steadbolt's vague accusation. She had almost forgotten it—had never seriously thought about it. Yet now she knew the midge-bite had festered.
Could it be that there was a chapter in Colin's life of which she knew nothing? Was it not too much to believe that he had always been faithful to his ideal of the camp fire? Ah! Maule would have jeered at that—would have been totally incapable of understanding the romance of that dream-drive—a dream in truth. But how beautiful, how sane, how uplifting it seemed, compared with the feverish haschisch dream in which she was now living. Restless under the obsession, she wandered up the gully and, as she sat among the rocks, wrestled with her black angel—and conquered. Clearly there was but one thing to do. She must send Maule away at once before Colin came back. As for Colin, that trouble must be faced separately. Maule must ride back to Tunumburra—he knew the track. Or, should he wish to explore the district further, Harry the Blower was due with the mail to-morrow, and could guide him to any station on the post-man's route which might appear to Maule desirable.
Bridget knew that Maule would leave the tailing-mob before the other men that afternoon, and would probably come to look for her here. So having arrived at her decision and wishing to put off the inevitable scene as long as possible, she set forth by another route for the head-station.