'HER! Has it come to HER! Colin, if anyone had told me that you would ever be fool enough to fall in love with a woman you've never seen, I should have laughed outright. You don't even know what she's like.'

'I can see her in my mind's eye, as I used to see the women I read about by my camp fire. You'd never believe either what a queer idealistic chap I can be when I'm mooning about the Bush. Don't you know, Joan'--and his voice got suddenly grave and deep-toned--'you ought to, for you were a bush girl and you've had men-kind out in the Back Blocks--Don't you know that when a man has got to go on day after day, week after week, year after year, fighting devils of loneliness and worse--with nothing to look at except miles and miles of stark staring gum trees and black, smelling GIDGEE* and dead-finish scrub--and never the glimpse of a woman--not counting black gins--to remind him he once had a mother and might have a wife. Well, can't you see that his only chance of not growing into a rotten HATTER* is to start picturing in his imagination all the beautiful things he's ever seen or read about--the sort of lady-wife he hopes to have some day and in making such a companion of her that she seems to him as real as the stars and far more real than the gum trees. So as he'll keep saying to her always in his thoughts: "I'll keep myself sound and wholesome for your sake. I'll never forget that I'm a gentleman, so as YOU won't shrink away from me in horror if ever I've the luck to come across YOU down here on this Earth."'

[*Gidgee--Colloquial p.r.o.nunciation of gidia, an Australian tree.]

[*Hatter--A white man who prefers the society of blacks.]

He stopped, fitted another cigarette from the copper case into the holder and, before beginning upon it, said without looking at Mrs Gildea:

'I wouldn't spout like that to anybody but you, Joan. My word! Though I see by your writing that you've a fair notion of how this cursed, grim, glorious old Bush can play the deuce with a chap--body and brain and soul--if he doesn't wear the right kind of talisman to safeguard himself.'

'Yes--I understand. And your talisman, Colin? What was your picture of the lady-wife? Describe your Ideal and I'll tell you if SHE is the least bit like it.'

McKeith smoked ruminatively for a few moments, his eyes narrowed. The lines in his forehead and round his mouth showed plainly. He was gazing out into s.p.a.ce, far beyond the sun-flecked Leichardt River and the Botanical Gardens, and the glaring city and the range of distant hills on the horizon.

'Well,' he said at last, slowly, 'you can laugh at me if you like, but I'll tell you how I see HER. She is tall--got a presence, so that if SHE'S there, you'd know it and everybody else would know it, no matter how many other women there might be in the place. Most big men take to their opposites. Now, though I'm a big man I've never fancied a snippet of a girl. Five foot seven of height is my measure of a woman, and a good ten stone in the saddle--What are you laughing at, Joan? I'm out there, I suppose?'

Mrs Gildea controlled her muscles.

'No, no, not in the least. In fact, your description fits the Ideal Wife perfectly. Go on, Colin. Five foot seven and a good ten stone. How is the rest of HER? Fair or dark--her hair now--and her eyes?'

'Her hair--oh, it isn't fair--not yellow or noticeable in colour--like those dyed beauties you see about. Her hair is dark, soft and cloudy looking. And she's got a small head set like--like a lily on its stem--and her hair is parted in the middle and coiled smoothly each side and into a sort of Greek knot....'

'In short, she's a cross between the Venus of Milo and the Madonna.'

Mrs Gildea was smiling amusedly.

'Perhaps.... Something of that sort. Dignity and sweetness, you know--those are what I admire in a woman. But not too much of the G.o.ddess or of the angel either. I shouldn't want always to have to load up with a pedestal when we shifted camp, and the only shrine I'd keep going for her would be in my heart. It's a Mate I'm wanting, as well as an Ideal.... Now you're laughing again.'

'No, I'm not. I agree with you entirely--and so would SHE.'

'There! You needn't tell me. I shouldn't wonder if I'd got the second sight where SHE'S concerned.'

Again Mrs Gildea smiled enigmatically.

'I shouldn't wonder, Colin. But you haven't finished your personal description. What about the colour of her eyes?'

'Now I don't believe I could say exactly the colour of her eyes any more than of her hair. They're the kind, to me, that have no colour.

Soft and melting and sort of mysterious--Deep and clear and with a light far down in them like starlight reflected in a still lagoon.... I say, Joan, you remember the old Eight Mile Water-hole on Dingo Flat--middle of the patch of flooded gum and she-oak--that the Blacks used to say had no bottom to it? HER eyes seemed to me a bit like that water-hole--No bottom to her possibilities.'

'That's true enough,' a.s.sented Mrs Gildea. 'There's no bottom to HER possibilities.'

'I could tell it from her letter. She seemed to write flippantly about things--but that was just because she hates insincerity and flummery, and the world she lives in doesn't satisfy her. Why, it was as if I read slick through to her soul. That woman would go through anything for a man she really loved.'

He had a way of lowering his voice when he spoke of love--as if he felt it a sacred subject; and this in him surprised Joan. She was discovering a new Colin McKeith. She answered softly.

'Yes. I think she would--IF she really loved him.'

'What I haven't been able to make out is whether she did care--does care--for that chap. You see, that would make a difference.'

'A difference! How? What do you mean?'

'I mean that I don't believe I should feel about her as I do if I wasn't going to meet her. Look here, Joan, you've as good as told me--and if you hadn't, I'd be pretty thick-headed not to have put two and two together--that the Luke of her letters is Sir Luke Tallant, our new Governor. Well, if she was staying with him in London, and his wife is a friend of hers, why shouldn't she come and stay with them out here?'

The idea had already presented itself to Mrs Gildea, but she tried not to show that it had, or that there had ever been any question of the sort in Bridget's mind. Colin had not read the opening sheet of her letter.

'I suppose more unlikely things than that have happened,' Joan said neutrally. 'But really, Colin,' she went on with strenuous emphasis, 'I can't understand this phase of you. You--a hard-headed Bushman, to be dreaming romantic dreams and falling all of a sudden over head and ears in love with--with a figment of your imagination--just because you happen to have read by mistake some sentimental outpourings of a woman you know nothing about and who would never forgive me if she knew I'd let you see her letter.'

'She won't know--You have my word of honour that I'll never give you away over that letter--not under ANY circ.u.mstances, so you can set your mind at rest on that score, Joan. And as to my falling in love with--a figment of my own imagination'--he spat the words out savagely--'we'll see how far your remark is justified when She does come out and I recognise her--as I am convinced I shall do directly I set eyes on Her.'

Mrs Gildea burst into rather hysterical laughter, which manifestly offended Colin McKeith.

'We'll drop the subject, please,' he said stiffly. 'And now, Mrs Gildea, I'm quite at your service for any information you desire about the Big Bight country and the probability of a j.a.panese invasion so soon as our future Commonwealth comes to crucial loggerheads with the Eastern Powers on the question of a strictly White Australia.'

After that Colin pointedly abstained from allusion to the Ideal Wife and to Joan Gildea's Typewriting-Correspondent, as he had called her.

He was very busy himself at this time in connection with a threatened labour strike that was agitating sheep and cattle owners of the Leura District. Likewise with a report he had been asked to furnish of a projected telegraph line for the opening of his 'Big Bight Country'.

Colin McKeith appeared to be deep in the confidence of the Leichardt's Land Executive Council and to have taken up his abode for the winter session in the Seat of Government, though he seemed to regard his recent election for a Northern const.i.tuency as an unimportant episode in a career ultimately consecrated to the elucidation of far-reaching Imperial problems.

Joan Gildea found him excellent 'copy,' and the great Gibbs cablegrammed, in code, approval of her lately-tapped source of information.

She almost forgot Bridget O'Hara in her absorption in colonial topics.

But three weeks before the expected arrival of the new Governor of Leichardt's Land a cablegram was shot at her from Colombo which made her feel that there was no use in setting oneself against Destiny. This was the wire:

EXPECT ME WITH TALLANTS BIDDY.

She said nothing to Colin McKeith about the message--partly because his movements were erratic and he was a good deal away from Leichardt's town just then. Thus Mrs Gildea did not know whether or not he had read the flowery description telegraphed by a Melbourne correspondent who interviewed Sir Luke Tallant and his party at that city and wired an ecstatic paragraph about the beautiful Lady Bridget O'Hara who was accompanying her friend and distant relative, the Honourable Lady Tallant.

Anyway, McKeith made no references to the newspaper correspondent's rhapsodies when he paid Mrs Gildea a short visit two or three days before the landing of the new Governor. But his very reticence and something in his expression made Joan suspect that he was puzzled and excited, and would have been glad had she volunteered any information about Lady Tallant's companion. Joan, however, kept perverse silence.

In truth, she felt considerably nervous over the prospect. What was going to happen when Colin McKeith set eyes on Bridget?

Joan Gildea was a simple woman though circ.u.mstances had made her a shrewd one, and she had all the elementary feminine instincts. She believed in love and in strange affinities and in hidden threads of destiny--all of which ideas fitted beautifully on to Bridget O'Hara's personality, but not at all on to that of Colin McKeith.

CHAPTER 8

The first dinner-party given by Sir Luke and Lady Tallant at Government House included Mrs Gildea and Colin McKeith.

These two met in the vestibule as they emerged respectively from the ladies' and gentlemen's cloak-room. Both held back to allow certain Members of the Ministry to enter the drawing-room before them, which gave opportunity for an interchange of greetings.

'Well!' both said at once, and the tones in which the monosyllable was uttered and the glances accompanying it held volumes of hidden meaning.

'I haven't seen you since the Governor arrived,' Joan went on. 'Where have you been all these three weeks?'

'At Alexandra City, close on the desert, where they bored for water and struck ready-made gas--the whole place now is lighted with it. If you like, I'll give you material for a first-rate article upon an uncommon phenomenon of Nature.'

'Thank you. I shall be grateful. Colin'--hesitatingly, 'I did think you'd have come and looked after an old friend at the big Show in the Botanical Gardens when the Governor made his State Entry.'