'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, pa.s.sing 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociations of his working day. That att.i.tude 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 cla.s.s--the array of monogrammed, tortoise-sh.e.l.l 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 pa.s.sion 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, pa.s.sing along the back veranda. He did not return. It was dawn before Bridget dropped into the heavy morning slumber, which follows a night of weeping.

BOOK III

FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF COLIN MCKEITH AND OTHERS

CHAPTER 1

When Lady Bridget awoke, it was then near the hour at which they ordinarily breakfasted. Finding, when she had dressed, that all was silent in the next room, she looked in.

It was empty, the bed had not been slept in, but there were signs that McKeith had got into his riding clothes and that he had packed a valise.