Lady Bridget watched him disappear round the knoll. The curlews went on wailing, and as if in answer a night owl sent forth his portentous HOOT--HOOT!... Apparently nothing was much amiss with the horses; they had quieted down again. Lady Bridget picked up the strip of bark and carried it in her arms into the tent, laughing to herself as she did so.

'Only a sheet of bark! What a fool I am--But it's quite appropriate, anyway.'

She put it beside her dressing-bag, and then went out once more into the night. Through the interlacing gum branches she saw a great coppery disk, and the moon rose slowly to be a lamp in her bridal chamber. How wonderful the stars were!... There was the Southern Cross with its pointers, and the Pleiades. And that bright star above the tops of the trees, which seemed to throw a distinct ray of light, must be Venus....

The moon was high enough to cast shadows--black--distorted. The low clumps of shrubs beyond the carpet of gra.s.s looked like strange couched beasts....

As she stood by the rocks at the creek edge, she heard her husband speaking to Moongarr Bill, who seemed to be walking down along the sandy bed.

'Horses all right, Bill?'

'Oh, ay--just a possum up a tree gev Julius Caesar a start.... Been digging a decent bath-hole for the ladyship in the morning, boss.

There's plenty there.'

'I wish it was as near the surface at Moongarr, Bill. We shall have our work cut out making new bores, if the dry weather lasts.'

'My word, it's no joke going down three thousand feet. Amazing queer the amount of water running underground on this dried-up old earth.'

'But we can always strike it, Bill; no matter how dried up the outside looks, there's the living spring waiting to be tapped. And how's that in human nature too, Bill. Same idea, eh?'

Moongarr Bill emitted a harsh grunt.

'My best girl chucked me a month back, boss, and as for your darned sentiment and poetry, and sech-like--well, I ain't takin' any just at present.'

'Bad luck, Bill! Struck a dead-head that time, eh?... Well, good-night.'

'Good-night, boss--and good luck to you. I reckon your spring ain't a dead-head, anyway.... Say, Mr McKeith, me and the boys are shifting our fire over to the other side of the creek.... Keep the 'osses from hevin' any more of their blessed starts.... Handier for gettin' them up in the morning.'

[*Yarraman--Horse.]

CHAPTER 8

Lady Bridget McKeith had been married about a year and a quarter.

Winter was now merging into spring. But it was not a bounteous spring.

That drear spectre of drought hung over the Never-Never Land.

Lady Bridget stood by the railing of the veranda at Moongarr, looking out for two expected arrivals at the head-station--that of her husband, who had been camping out after cattle--and of the mailman--colloquially, Harry the Blower--who this week was to bring an English mail.

Perhaps the last arrival seemed to her at the moment most important of the two. The bush wife had long since begun to feel a sort of home sickness for English news. Yet, had you asked her, she would have told you that barbarism still had a greater hold than civilisation.

There did not, however, appear to be much of the barbarian about Lady Bridget. She still looked like an old picture in the high-waisted tea-gown of limp yellow silk that she had put on early for dinner, and she still trailed wisps of old lace round her slender shoulders. There was the same touzle of curly hair, like yellow-brown spun gla.s.s or filaments of burnished copper, which was shining now in the westering sun. The finely-modelled brows and shadowy eyes were as beautiful as when Colin McKeith had first beheld his G.o.ddess stepping on to Australian earth.

But for all that, a change had taken place in her--a different one from the indefinable yet significant change which is felt in almost every woman after marriage. There is usually in the young wife's face an expression of fulfilment, of deepened experience--a certain settled, satisfied look. And this was what was lacking in Lady Bridget's face.

The restless soul within seemed to be peering out through hungry eyes.

She could see nothing human from the veranda except the blue-smocked figure of Fo Wung, the Chinaman, at work in his vegetable garden by the lagoon. There was one large water-hole and a succession of small ones, connected by water-courses, now dry, and meandering from a gully, which on the eastern side broke the hill against which Moongarr head-station was built. The straggling gum forest, interspersed with patches of sandal-wood and mulga, that backed the head-station, stopped short at the gully, and beyond, stretched wolds of melancholy gidia scrub.

Looking up from the end of the veranda, Lady Bridget could see an irregular line of grey-brown boulders, jagged and evidently of volcanic origin, marking the line of gully. These gave a touch of romantic wildness to the otherwise peaceful scene.

Lady Bridget's gaze went along a track skirting the gidia scrub, and crossing the lower end of the gully near the lagoon, to the great plain which spread in front of the head-station. Except for some green trees by the lagoon, a few ragged belts of gum and sandal-wood or single isolated trees dotted about, the plain was unwooded to the horizon.

There were also silhouetted upon the sky the grotesque-looking sails of one or two windmill-pumps. In the foreground the plain was intersected by lines of grey fencing, within which browsed straggling herds of lean cattle, mostly along the curve of the lagoon.

Neither plain nor lagoon formed altogether pleasing objects of contemplation just now, for they spoke eloquently of the threatened drought. When Lady Bridget had come up a bride, the plain had been fairly green. The sandal-wood blossoms were out and wild flowers plentiful. The lagoon was then flush with the gra.s.s, and its water, on which white, pink and blue lilies floated, had reflected the vegetation at its edge. Now the lagoon had shrunk and the water in the gully was in places a mere trickle. Of course, the trees were there--ti-tree, flooded gum, and so forth--but they looked brown and ragged. One standing by itself, a giant white cedar, which in spring was a ma.s.s of white and mauve bloom and in winter of scarlet berries, had a wide strip of brown mud between it and the water that had formerly laved its roots.

Lady Bridget had thought that the rocky gully, the lagoon and the vast plain made as pretty a landscape as she had ever seen, when she had first looked upon it in the early morn after her homecoming. Now, as she paced up and down the veranda--for she was in a restless mood--her mind went back to that bridal homecoming. They had not arrived at the head-station till after dusk, but it had been visible from the plain a long way off, and she had examined it with ardent curiosity through her field-gla.s.ses in the clear light of sunset.

She had seen a collection of rough buildings backed by the forest, and from different points of view, as they drew nearer, had made out that the three princ.i.p.al ones formed three sides of a square. Two of these--the side wings--were old and of primitive construction--slab walls, bark roofs, and low verandas, overgrown with creepers. Colin explained that these were the Old Humpey--as he called the original dwelling house--and the kitchen and store building opposite. Lately, the New House had been put up at right angles with the old buildings, and fronting the plain. It had been begun before his trip south and practically finished during his absence. Colin was very proud of the New House.

It was made of sawn wood and had a high-pitched roof of corrugated zinc, turned to gold by the sunset rays upon it. There was a deep veranda all round the New House, and it was much taller than the wings, being raised on blood-wood piles, that had been tarred to keep off white ants, and with a flight of wooden steps leading up to the veranda.

The details of Moongarr head-station became familiar enough later to its new mistress. Besides the dwelling houses were various huts and outbuildings. The stock-yards lay on a piece of level ground behind at the side of the gully, and between the yards and the House stood a small slab and bark cottage--the Bachelors' Quarters.

Even though glorified by the sunset, it had given Lady Bridget a little shock to see how crude and--architecturally speaking--unlovely was her new home. But her Celtic imagination was stirred by the weirdness of the grey-green gum forest, and of the mournful gidia scrub, framing the picture.

Then, as dusk crept closer, and the great plain, along which the tired horses plodded, became one illimitable shadow out of which rose strange sounds of beasts and eerie night cries of birds, the spell of the wilderness renewed itself and she felt herself enveloped in world-old mystery.

She remembered how the lights of the head-station against the forest blackness had looked like welcoming torches and how she had roused herself out of her weariness at the last spurt of the equally weary buggy horses. Then the jolt in the dark over the sliprails, the slow strain of the wheels up the hill, the cracking of Moongarr Bill's stock-whip, and the sound of long drawn COO-EES. Also of dogs barking, of men running forward. Then how Colin had lifted her down and half carried her into the parlour. She remembered her dazed glance round and the rushing thought of how she could soften its ugliness. Yet it had looked welcoming. A log fire blazing, the table spread, a Chinese cook in baggy blue garments--pigtail flowing; a Malay boy; her bewildered question--was there no woman in the establishment? Then Colin's strident call from the veranda--'Mrs Hensor. Where's Mrs Hensor!' And the appearance presently of Florrie Hensor--youngish, tall, a full figure; black hair, frizzed and puffed, a showy face, red cheeks, redder lips, rather sullen, flashing dark eyes--who had received Lady Bridget almost as if she had been her equal, and of whom the bride had at once made an enemy by her frigidly haughty response. From the first moment, Lady Bridget had disliked Mrs Hensor. But she had felt a vague attraction towards the little yellow-headed, blue-eyed boy clinging to Mrs Hensor's skirts. As for any uneasiness on the score of Steadbolt's insolent insinuations, she had absolutely dismissed that from her mind.

Yes--that bridal homecoming--how strange it had seemed! How rough everything was! How impossible the whole thing would have appeared to her had any fortune-teller in Bond Street prophesied the end of her marriage journey!

And how, in the first moment of settling down, she had laughed with Colin at the thought of what Chris and Molly Gaverick, and 'Eliza Countess' would have said! But with what dauntless energy she had worked in transforming her new abode and in making it reflect her own personality. She had felt really grateful, she said, to the Union delegates for having enticed away the builders before the inside furnishings were complete. Soon they got hold of a bush carpenter, and she was provided with occupation for a good many months.

Lady Bridget had been very happy in those early days. Colin had seemed so thoroughly in the picture--strong, chivalrous, adoring--like a Viking worshipping his conquered bride. The romance of it all appealed tremendously to the Celtic blood in Bridget. It was her nature, when she gave, to give generously. She had become genuinely in love with her bush husband during that wonderful honeymoon journey.

Ah, that journey! What an experience! If she could have written it down as a new adventure of 'The Lady of Quality,' how the great Gibbs would have jumped at her 'copy!' Well, she had practically done so in her letters to Joan Gildea--now back in her London flat. But the true inwardness of the adventure was a thing never to be put into words.

No sign yet of the men. Lady Bridget ceased her restless pacing and swung herself slowly to and fro in a hammock at the end of the veranda.

As she swung she traversed over again in her imagination the stages of that honeymoon journey.

Two hundred and twenty-five miles of it, after the first camp out. Many more nights under the stars. Then out of the gum forests they had gone through the great western plains, covering ground fairly easily, for McKeith had arranged to have fresh horses on the road, and they always drove a spare pair ahead of the buggy. Occasionally they stopped at a head-station. Once at night they pulled up at a bush house, and a strange old man had put his head out of a window and shouted to them in the darkness. 'If ye've come to see me, I'm drunk,' he had said, 'and if you've come to drink, the rum-keg's empty, but ye'll find a pint pot outside and a little water in the tank.' And then he had shut the window again and refused further parley.

They had camped, hungry, in the paddock--for provisions had run out, and on that account, and because the horses had strayed in the night, they had to go again to the house. The old man, sober and ashamed, captivated likewise by Lady Bridget's beauty and charm, apologised almost on his knees--he made Biddy think of Thackeray's picture of Sir Pitt Crawley proposing to Becky Sharp. Old Mr Duppo, it was--the father of Zack Duppo, the horse-breaker, who had recently been breaking in colts at Moongarr.

They stayed till the horses were found. Mr Duppo had a housekeeper--now if Mrs Hensor had been like that housekeeper there could have been no cause for jealous scandal. An aged dame, long, bony--dressed in a short green petticoat and tartan jacket, with a little checked shawl over her head and pinned under a bearded chin. She poured tea out of a tin teapot and leaned over her master's chair at meal times to carve the salt beef.

Lady Bridget sketched the pair. The old man roared over the sketch, but the housekeeper bore her a grudge for it, and afterwards had not a good word for the 'Ladyship' who had slipped out of her proper sphere into the Never-Never country.

There were plenty of other small adventures which would have made the hair of Lady Gaverick and her friends stand on end. A dream-drive indeed, full of sort of 'Alice in Wonderland' episodes. Bush life Out Back--a jumble of odd characters and situations. Fencers' camps, cattle-drivers' camps, bullock-dray camps. There had been a baby born unexpectedly under the tilt of a bullock-dray, on one occasion, the night before McKeith's party appeared on the scene, and Lady Bridget had a trunk down from the buggy, and there in the road tore up some of her fine-laced smocks and petticoats to provide swaddling clothes for the poor little sc.r.a.p of mortality. And there were tramps 'humping bluey' on the track likewise, and diggers carrying their picks. Bridget liked seeing Colin hail-fellow-well-met with them all--sharing tucker and quart-pot tea. She wished that her socialistic friends of the old played-out civilisation could see this shrewd, practical humanitarian of the Bush.

They came very close to each other in those long days of the dream-drive. He talked to her as he had never talked before, and as he talked rarely afterwards. He drew aside curtains from recesses of his real nature, the existence of which she had not suspected, and, in truth, at a later time, doubted. Then, if in broad sunlight the shy, rough exterior of the man would close suddenly over those secret chambers, when evening came, it would seem as though the camp fire illuminated them once more.

After the first time or two, he allowed her to boss the camp 'lay-out.'

It was she who spread the blankets on Wombo's beds of gra.s.s tree tops and dry herbage. Wombo and the 'big feller White Mary' (the adjective used metaphorically as expressive of distinction) made great friends in those days--out of which friendship sprang, alas! in due time, certain tragic happenings. It was Lady Bridget who would set the billy boiling and who, after one or two failures, succeeded in making excellent johnny-cakes. She remembered her first performance in that line under the eyes of a small group of admiring spectators--her husband 'just waiting to see how the new-chum cook shaped,' and, as he said the words, she, glancing up from the sheet of bark and the dough she was kneading, caught a look in his face which was something she could never in all her life forget. And Moongarr Bill with the horses' reins over his arm, and the two black-boys agape, beady eyes twinkling, white teeth glistening, emitting their queer guttural clicks of approbation, and an occasional 'My word! Bujeri you, Lathy-chap,' the nearest they could get to Moongarr Bill's accepted form of address. There was joy, glory to Lady Bridget in this playing of the squaw and fending for her man, ceasing to be the G.o.ddess and becoming the primal woman.

And the sports, and songs, and stories by the camp fire! Moongarr Bill's yarns, Colin's exploring tales, Wombo's and Cudgee's dances and corroboree-tunes--strange, weird music that had a fascination for Lady Bridget. She, too, would get up and sing CARMEN'S famous air, and the Neapolitan peasant songs of her mother's youth. Never, for sure, had the gaunt gum trees echoed back such strains as these.