'That's the bunya-bunya, and the nuts are splendid roasted in the ashes--if ever that one gets properly ripe--it has to be yellow, you know--I'll ask Joan Gildea to let me roast it for you. Only it wouldn't be the same thing at all as when it's done in a fire of gum logs, the nuts covered with red ashes, and then peeled and washed down with quartpot tea....'

'Quartpot tea! What a lot you'll have to show me if--if I ever come to your station in the Back-Blocks.'

'Different from your London Life, eh? ... Your b.a.l.l.s and dinners and big shows and coaching meets in Hyde Park, and all the rest of the flummery! Different, too, from your kid-glove fox-hunts over gra.s.s fields and trimmed hedges and puddles of ditches--the sort of thing you've been accustomed to, Lady Bridget, when you've gone out from your castle for a sporting spree!'

'A sporting spree!' She laughed with a child's merriment, and he joined in the laugh, 'It's clear to me, Mr McKeith, that you've never hunted in Ireland. And how did you know, by the way, that I'd lived in a castle?'

'I was led to believe that a good many of your kind owned historic castles which your forefathers had won and defended with the sword,' he answered, a little embarra.s.sed.

'That's true enough.... But if you could see Castle Gaverick! My old Aunt is always talking of restoring it, but she never will, and if my cousin Chris Gaverick ever does come into it, he'd rather spend his money in doing something else.... But never mind that.... I want to hear about the black gin and the half-caste girls, and if your mother saved them from the cannibals ... and why the blacks wanted to eat their own kind. Dog doesn't eat dog--at least, so they tell one.'

'It's this way. Our blacks weren't regular cannibals, but in the bunya season they'd all collect in the scrubs and feed on the nuts and nothing else for months. Then after a bit they'd get meat-hungry, and there not being many wild animals in Australia and only a few cattle in those outlying districts, they'd satisfy their cravings by killing and eating some of themselves--lubras--young girls--by preference, and, naturally, half-castes, as having no particular tribal status, for choice.'

'Half-castes!' She repeated, a little puzzled.

'These ones had c.h.i.n.ky blood in them--daughters of a Chinaman fossicker.... We're not partial to the Chinese in Australia--only we don't eat them, we expel them--methods just a bit dissimilar, but the principle the same, you see.... Anyway, of course we took on the gin and her girls, and for about a year didn't have any particular trouble at the station with the blacks--though there was a shepherd speared in one of the out-huts.... That was his fault, however, poor devil--the old story--but it don't matter. The trouble came to a head with a black boy, called Leura-Jimmy, that Jerry the bullock-driver brought up with him and left at the station where he went down to the township for store supplies--He took me with him--I told you I was learning bullock-driving....'

McKeith paused, and the dark look came upon his face.

'And Leura-Jimmy?' put in Bridget.

'Oh, he was a fine, big fellow--plausible, too, and could speak pidgin English--he was never weaned from his tribe, and he was a treacherous scoundrel at heart.... As a precautionary measure, my father forbade the blacks to come up to the head-station. But Jimmy fell in love with the eldest of the half-caste girls. She encouraged him at first, then took up with one of the stock-boys....

'It was the bunya season again, and the girls' old tribe, under their King Mograbar--a devil incarnate in a brute--I sent him to h.e.l.l afterwards with my own hand and never did a better deed'--McKeith's brown fists clenched and the fury in his eyes blazed so that he himself looked almost devilish for a moment. His face remained very grim and dour as he proceeded.

'Jimmy had got to know through the half-caste girl about our ways and doings, and he made a diabolic plot with King Mograbar to get the blacks into the house.... Every living soul was murdered ...surprised in their sleep ... My father ... my mother ... my sisters ... G.o.d! ...

I can't speak of it....'

He got up abruptly, jerking his long legs, and went to the further end of the veranda, where he stood with set features and brows like a red bar, below which staring eyes were fixed vacantly upon the avenue of bunya trees in the long walk of the Botanical Gardens across the river.

But they did not see those bunya trees. What they saw was a row of mutilated bodies, lying stark along the veranda of that head-station on the Leura.

Bridget was leaning forward in her squatter's chair, her fingers grasping the arms of it, her face very white and her eyes staring too, as though they also beheld the scene of horror.

Presently McKeith came back, pale too, but quite composed.

'I beg your pardon,' he said stiffly. 'Perhaps I should not have told you.'

'It's--horrible. But I'm glad to know. Thank you for telling me.'

He looked at her wistfully. There was silence for a moment or two.

'And you ... you ... where were you?' she stammered.

'Me! I was with the drays, you know. We got back about noon that day.... If we'd been twelve hours sooner! Well, I suppose I should have been murdered with the rest.... The blacks had gone off with their loot.... We ... we buried our dead.... And then we ran up our best horses and never drew rein for forty miles till we'd got to where a band of the Native Police were camped.... And then ... we took what vengeance we could.... It wasn't complete till a long time afterwards.'

He was standing behind Bridget's chair, his eyes still gazing beyond the river. He did not notice that she leaned back suddenly, and her hands fell nervelessly to her lap. He felt a touch on his arm. It was Mrs Gildea, who had come out to the veranda again. 'Colin,' she said, 'I want you to go and bring me my typewriter from the parlour. And then you've got to dictate "copy," about the Alexandra City Gas-Bore. Please go at once.'

He obeyed. Mrs Gildea bent over Lady Bridget.

'Biddy! ... You're not faint, are you?'

Lady Bridget roused herself and looked up at her friend rather wildly.... 'No.... What do you take me for? ... I said I wanted real things, Joan ... And I've got them.'

She laughed a little hysterically.

'All right! But we shall give you a taste of real Australia that isn't quite so gruesome. That some of the tragedy belongs to the pioneer days.... I could tell you things myself that my father has told me. ...

But I won't.... Mind, Colin McKeith is no more of a hero than a dozen bush boys I knew when I first knew him. Yes, put it there, Colin, please.... And now, if Biddy doesn't mind, we'll proceed to business, which is my IMPERIALIST Letter. I suppose you haven't brought back any snapshots of Alexandra City and your wonderful Gas-Bore that Mr Gibbs could get worked up for his paper?'

CHAPTER 13

That was not the only time Lady Bridget and McKeith met on Mrs Gildea's veranda. In fact, Biddy, reminiscent of wild sea-excursions along the sh.o.r.e by Castle Gaverick, developed a pa.s.sion for what she called tame boating on the Leichardt River. She found a suitable skiff in the boat-house--the Government House grounds sloped to the water's edge, and would row herself up and down the river reaches. It was easy to round the point, skirt the Botanical Gardens, and, crossing above the ferry, land below Mrs Gildea's cottage, then climb up the bank and enter by a lower gate to the garden. Thus she would often turn up unexpectedly of mornings for a chat with her friend in the veranda study.

At this time, Colin McKeith contracted a similar habit. He showed a still greater interest in Mrs Gildea's journalistic work and professed a strong desire to enlighten British statesmen, through the medium of Mr Gibbs' admirable paper, on certain Imperial questions affecting Australia--the danger of a j.a.panese invasion in the northern waters--the establishment of a naval base by Germany in New Guinea--the Yellow Labour Problem and so forth. He would intersperse his political dissertation with racy bits of description of life in the Bush, and would give the points of view of pearl fishers, miners, loafers, officials in out-of-the-way townships, Labour reformers, sheep and cattle owners--all of which vastly amused Lady Bridget, and was valuable 'copy,' typed unscrupulously by Mrs Gildea. In fact, she owed to it much of the success which, later, attended her journalistic venture. Mrs Gildea thought at first that the 'copy' would be more easily obtainable in the intervals before and after Lady Bridget's arrival, or on the days when she failed to come. But, finding that Colin was distinctly at his best as a narrator with Biddy for an audience, she artfully arranged to take her notes under those conditions. This lasted two or three weeks, during which period Sir Luke and Lady Tallant conscientiously improved their acquaintance with the new sphere of their labours. They visited hospitals, inspected public buildings, inaugurated social schemes, and, to the strains of 'G.o.d Save the Queen,' performed many other insignificant public functions, from which, as often as not, their guest, Lady Bridget, basely cried off.

On one such occasion, Joan, arrayed in her best, had patriotically gone forth on a steaming March day to support their Excellencies, fondly expecting that, as arranged, Lady Bridget and Colin would meet her. But Lady Tallant, looking distinctly cross, accompanied the Governor alone.

Bridget, it appeared, had come down, just as the carriage drove up, in her morning frock and garden hat, saying that she had a bad headache and meant to spend the afternoon in a hammock by the river bank. As for Colin, there was no sign of him.

But when Mrs Gildea got home very tired, and hot she was made extremely angry by hearing the voices of Lady Bridget and McKeith in the veranda where they were drinking tea and, it seemed, holding a confidential conversation. Mrs Gildea's gorge rose higher. She had to stop a minute to try and recover her temper. Here was Biddy disburdening herself to Colin of her family troubles and short-comings, showing herself and them in the worst light, singing small to a man with whom it was highly desirable she should maintain her dignity. Instead of that, she was deliberately pulling down the barrier of rank and social position which should exist between Lady Bridget O'Hara and the Factor's son, the Out-Back squatter--Colin McKeith.

Biddy was saying: 'Oh, but you're as bad as that sort of person who can't be made to realise that the oldest peerage in Ireland counts for nothing in comparison with an oil-king's millions and being able to entertain the right set.... And besides, really Mr McKeith, there's no difference at all between us. You talk such a lot about YOUR grandfather having been a Scotch peasant. Why! MY mother's father was an Italian beggar--Ugh! haven't you seen them with their crutches and things on the steps of the churches?--And my mother sang in the streets of Naples until a kind musician heard her and had her trained to be a opera singer.'

'Your mother?'

'My mother! That's where my CARMEN comes from--only that my voice, I'm told, isn't to be compared with what hers was.... But that's not the worst about my mother. Not that I blame her. I think that a woman has a perfect right to leave her husband if she has ceased to care for him, and that it's far more moral to live with a man you love and can't marry, than with a husband you hate.'

Mrs Gildea cut short Lady Bridget's exposition of her views on morality before McKeith had time to answer. Her voice was sharp as she went up the steps and arraigned the pair.

'Really, Biddy, I do call this too bad of you. May I ask how you and Mr McKeith come to be drinking tea together in my veranda?'

'Sure, and it's by accident intoirely,' answered Biddy, with a whimsical look and the touch of the brogue she sometimes put on when a situation became embarra.s.sing.

'A prearranged accident!'

'No it wasn't, Joan. As a matter-of-fact, we were the last persons either of us expected to meet.'

'Honour bright,' put in McKeith. 'I'd forgotten all about the Pineapple Products Exhibition, and I just dropped in at Government House to pay my respects after a pleasant dinner two nights ago--What you'd call a visit of digestion.'

'And since when, Colin, have you become an observer of social obligations?' jeered Mrs Gildea.

He grinned, 'Ah! you have me there. Anyway, I asked for Lady Bridget, and found her down by the boat-shed.'

'And we thought it would be cooler on the water, so he rowed me round the point. It was the most natural thing in the world that we should discover we were thirsty, and that we should come up the garden and ask your old woman to give us some tea. Don't be a cat, Joan. You never used to be grudging of your hospitality.'

Mrs Gildea quickly recovered her usual genial demeanour. She poured herself out a cup of tea, and remarked that it was refreshing after the pine-apple syrups and other concoctions she had, as in duty bound, sampled at the Show. Lady Bridget rattled along with questions about the Function and the behaviour of the Government House party. Had Sir Luke been too over-poweringly pompous? Was Lady Tallant really cross?

and had Vereker Wells made any more blunders? and so forth. But she did not enlighten Mrs Gildea much about her doings with Colin McKeith, and presently said she must go and make her peace with Rosamond. McKeith accompanied her--naturally, since he had to row her back to the Government House landing. There was something in the manner of the pair that Mrs Gildea could not understand. Of course, Colin was in love--that she knew already. But was Biddy merely playing with the big primitive-souled bushman--or was it possible that she, too, could be in love?