Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land Part 40

It must have been a little while after midnight when Bridget was awakened by more thunder and lightning and a confused tornado of sound.

She had been dreaming that Harris was throwing her from the gully cliffs on to the boulders in its bed--only it seemed to her bewildered senses that the boulders rose towards her instead of her descending to meet them. Next she discovered that rain was pattering on the zinc roof, and that the violent concussions she felt beneath her must be due to the horns of goats knocking up against the boards of her bedroom.

Ah! she thought, the men had forgotten to pen the goats, and they were sheltering from the rain in the open s.p.a.ce under the floor of the house. There could be no more sleep for her that night, unless they were dislodged.

She waited through the din until there came a lull in the storm, then got up and put on her shoes and a waterproof coat over her nightdress.

It was not the first time by any means that, when sleeping alone, she had been obliged to rise and drive away stray animals that had been inadvertently allowed means of entrance.

She went out to the back veranda, which was connected by steps with the verandas of the other two wings. The moon was full and shed occasional pale gleams through the scudding clouds. The close heat had given place to a chill wind and the rain came down intermittently but in no volume--it could not make much difference to the parched earth. There was not a light visible anywhere. The goats were still making a noise under the house.

Lady Bridget got a stick from a heap of sandal-wood boughs stacked against the veranda, and pa.s.sing to the front, where the piles supporting the house were higher, proceeded to belabour an elderly nanny, who, with her mate, was now nibbling twigs of the creepers. But she was surprised to see only two or three goats, she had thought there must be many more. The animals were refractory, and her beatings of no avail. Now, suddenly, she was seized with a fit of nervous shivering and realised that she felt physically ill. It was of no use for her to try and drive off the goats. She sank down on the veranda steps of the Old Humpey, and afterwards thought she must have fainted.

The sound of Maule's approaching footsteps and his alarmed e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n seemed to bring her to herself. He appeared to have come round the back of the Old Humpey. He was horrified at the sight of her convulsive shivering.

'You mustn't stop here,' he exclaimed. 'I was afraid the goats would disturb you, and I've been getting them out as quietly as I could. Most of them are shut up in their fold.'

She saw that he was almost fully dressed. With an effort she controlled her terror, and asked:

'You've not been asleep.'

'Oh! off and on. I've been keeping my eye on Harris' room,' he pointed across the yard to the kitchen and store-building opposite--at the end of which Harris had installed himself--to the squat outline of the slab and back hide house. 'My ear, too,' he went on, 'for Harris' slumbers are neither silent nor peaceful. When he's not snoring, he groans and stirs, and the worst of it is that he's got his door wide open on to the veranda and his bed right across the window that looks straight at the door of the hide house. I thought I'd take advantage of the thunder, but it was no good. He was awake and looking out. Now he has lain down again, and as soon as I hear him snoring I shall try once more.'

A fresh fit of shivering seized Bridget.

'This won't do,' he said, and went hurriedly into his own room which opened a few doors down on to the veranda, and coming back with an opossum rug on his arm and a gla.s.s of brandy and water in his hand, he made her drink the spirits and wrapped the rug round her. Presently the shivering ceased.

A moon-gleam between two clouds closing on each other showed her his eyes glowing with sombre pa.s.sion. She saw that he was holding himself under stern restraint. Though where they were, the veranda running between the end of the Old Humpey and the new house, made a kind of pa.s.sage so that they were in shadow, there was a possibility of watchful eyes discovering their whereabouts.

'Will you go back to your room, and I'll get rid of these goats,' he said, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact way. 'I supose there isn't a yard where I could put them, nearer than their own by the lagoon.'

'I don't think so,' she answered dully, and without stirring from where she crouched upon the steps. When he urged her anew to go back to bed, she answered petulantly:

'Oh, do let me be. I like the wind and the rain--they're soothing. And I couldn't sleep now until I know that Wombo is safe in the scrub.'

He made no further protest, but set to work shepherding the goats. She watched him drive them out of the gate till his dark form and the piebald shapes he was driving before him were lost in the night. She knew that it would take some little time to pen them all securely in their fold. But the night was young yet.

From shivering, the fire of the brandy and the warmth of the fur rug had turned her temperature to fever heat. She felt keenly excited; the blood in her veins seemed boiling, and the occasional raindrops and moist wind were pleasant on her face. She had gone to the end of the veranda and stood there with long withes of the native cuc.u.mber vine that grew over the Old Humpey swaying around her in the breeze. There was not a light in the place. Even moon and stars were now veiled. Her brain raced round desperate and futile schemes for eluding the vigilance of the Police Inspector. She wished now that she had thought of asking him to dinner and putting opium into his coffee--that was the sort of thing they did in novels. She did not know that a less developed brain than her own was working at this moment to the same end, on an inspiration from the bush DEBIL-DEBIL, or such savage divinity as watches over the loves of the Blacks.

She saw what at first she had thought part of the shadow of a neighbouring gum tree cast on the strip of gra.s.s that ran at the back of the Old Humpey. But the lesser shadow moved, halted, and the greater shadow was stationary and grew denser as the moon sailed again across a clear patch of sky.

Then Bridget realised that the moving shadow was the half-caste Oola, shrouded in the dark blue blanket she had given her, and that the gin had halted at the cas.e.m.e.nt window of Maule's bedroom. Now, Oola, with her hands on the sill, curved her lithe body, drew her bare feet to the window ledge and dropped within.

Bridget ran along the gra.s.s to the window, and from there watched Oola move about the room and in the almost darkness fumble among the objects on the dressing-table. Then Bridget could hear the little click of the tongue and the guttural note of exultation a black tracker gives when he comes upon a trail. Bridget drew aside against the wall, so that Oola, again springing over the window sill, did not observe her. But Bridget saw the watch and chain with the iron key attached to it which the gin had stolen, and seized Oola's arm as the dark form crouched upon the gra.s.s again. The gin uttered a smothered shriek. Bridget took the watch from her hand, detached the key from the chain, and slipped watch and chain into the pocket of her coat, while Oola, clutching Lady Bridget's knees, pleaded chokily:

'Mithsis--you gib me key--no make im noise. No tell pollis-man me let out Wombo. My word! plenty quick he YAN long-a scrub. BA-AL pollis-man catch Wombo. Mithsis--BUJERI White Mary! You gib it key to Oola.'

The key was in Oola's hand. 'BA-AL me tell,' whispered Bridget. 'You go quick.'

She, too, bent her body and followed Oola, who sped like a hunted hare round the comer of the Old Humpey. Now she wriggled in the shadow of the yard railings. Now she crept stealthily past Harris'

window--and--oh! DEBIL--DEBIL be praised! the Police sergeant's stertorous snoring was clearly audible.

Blessed, likewise, be the retiring moon and the sweeping clouds! Lady Bridget, every nerve a-quiver and the rushing blood throbbing in her temples, also crept noiselessly beneath the window in the wake of Oola, crawling like Oola, but more to the back of the hide-house into the shelter of its drooping bark eaves.

Bending cautiously round the slabs, she watched, as the gin, with a swift wriggling motion like that of a snake, drew herself along the sunken earth floor beneath the eaves and then, softly raising herself to the level of the padlock, put in the key. There was a m.u.f.fled grating of iron under the gin's hand, as the padlock unclosed and the hasp dropped, then a creak of the door on its hinges, while it opened and shut behind the undulating shape in the aperture. Then a low throaty e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n--the black's call of warning. And now with a quickness incredible, the wriggling movement of two blanket-shrouded serpentine shapes round the hide-house--in and out among the gra.s.s tussocks and the low herbage, now hidden for a moment by friendly gum shadows in the dimness, now dark moving blurrs upon the lesser darkness, and now altogether invisible....

Lady Bridget knew that in five minutes, once they could be upright again, the fugitives would have reached the gully, and after that the gidia scrub. Then security from the terrors of a white man's gaol would be almost a.s.sured to them.

Lady Bridget waited--waited, it seemed to her an eternity, in reality it was barely over the five minutes she had mentally given the two blacks for their escape. That five minutes had been full of alarms, and she could feel her heart thumping, so tense was the strain. She had to consider the possibility of Harris being awakened; also, of Maule's return and an attempt on his part to free the hide-house prisoner. Also there was the danger of the clouds breaking before she had done her work.

She heard a movement of the sleeper in his bed below the open window opposite. Harris might have been aroused, and perhaps have stirred without awakening.... But the snoring had ceased.... She did not think, however, that he could be fully awake.... Presently the snoring recommenced.

She crept very slowly along the earthen floor, drawing her hands along the slabs as she went. A splinter from one of them ran into her finger--but that did not matter. Now she touched the door, which lay back towards her, for the blacks had not waited to close it. She pushed it very softly, holding her breath at the creak of the hinge and listening intently for the recurrent snore which sounded through the window only three paces from her.

At last the thing was done--the padlock fastened, the key turned in the lock, and now in her pocket. She dropped flat on the earth, her cloak drawn lightly between her knees, and wriggled snake-like, as Oola had done past Harris' windows, then pushed herself on hands and knees along the ground, squeezing her body against the palings of the yard, till she reached the Old Humpey on the opposite side. Once round that corner, she got on to her feet, feeling sick and giddy but intensely relieved. She leaned against the gum tree which had protected Oola, and now realised that it had been raining in a driving gust and that she was wet to the skin.

The bleating of a kid, which had been left under the house and had found its way into the yard, startled her anew. She thought that she heard sounds in the wing near the hide-house--steps on the veranda. Was Harris stirring? Had he discovered the flight of his prisoner?

She waited again till all was quiet. By this time, there was a watery radiance just overhead. She looked towards the lagoon, but there was no sign of Maule. She felt the shivering begin again, though her head seemed burning, and she could hardly think collectedly. Her chief idea was to get back to bed.

But she was able to reason to herself that Maule must somehow be informed of the escape. She did not think he could have got back yet to the spot where he had left her. Or he might come straight to his room and miss the key and his watch. In any case, these must be restored to the place from which Oola had taken them.

She lifted herself to the window-sill as Oola had done, and in a moment was inside the room. It had been an easy enough business, only that in clutching the window frame, the jagged end of the splinter she had run into her hand caught and tore her flesh. The room was of course empty.

She lifted a candle--which, with matches, stood on the dressing table--and put back the watch and chain, and the key now separate from them. That fact would show Maule that it had been tampered with. But she must find some more exact means of conveying what had happened.

Premature action on his part might give the alarm. Her brain worked in flashes. She had vivid ideas, which in her fevered state she could not hold properly. She must write to Maule. A notebook that he must have taken from his pocket lay on the table also. She tore out a leaf--paused--She must write so that only he would understand. An accident might happen to the paper.

There must be no definite statement to implicate him or herself. Some words in French occurred to her. She wrote them down and continued the note in that language. At the close she begged him to act so that there should be no ground for suspicion--reminded him of his promise to go away on the morrow--said she would write to him at the Post Office at Leuraville. She did not sign the sheet, but folded it across--addressed it to Maule and laid it under the watch on the table.

A fresh spasm of shivering seized her. Suddenly she remembered the opossum rug she had left. She opened the door leading from Maule's room into the veranda, and went out. She stood bewilderedly, looking across the faint-lit yard to the dim veranda of the kitchen wing opposite, as she fought against the sick faintness that threatened to overcome her.

Then she walked along the veranda to the place where she had parted from Maule. The rug was lying there, and she threw it round her, and waited on the steps with chattering teeth and shaking limbs.

In a minute or two, he joined her. She saw by the fitful moonbeams that he was wet and muddy--truly in a worse plight than herself. She could hardly speak for the rigor. Seeing her condition, he took her up in his arms, and carried her along the veranda towards her own room. The clasp of his arms, the warmth of his body, even through his wet clothing helped her to steady herself. She continued to tell him of the great achievement.

'Wombo has escaped--I saw Oola taking the key out of your room. Harris was asleep--snoring. She let Wombo out, and I locked the door of the hide-house again afterwards, and put the key back in your room. It's all right--nothing can be found out till the morning. They're safe in the scrub by now.'

'Well, I'm thankful for that at any rate,' he answered. 'But at this moment I cannot think of anything or anyone but you. My dearest--I'm so afraid of your being ill--what can I do?'

'Nothing. I have sal volatile in my room--stuff to take for a cold. I only want to get off my wet things and go to bed--I can sleep now.

Don't be frightened about me.'

She staggered when he put her gently down inside her own door, but recovered herself courageously, lighted her candles, laughed at her own disordered appearance, bade him go at once and look after himself.

He kissed her hand reluctantly.

'Till to-morrow.'

She looked at him alarmedly. 'Will! But you have promised me. You are going away to-morrow.'

He did not reply. His eyes were roving round the chamber, dimly lighted by the two candles. He was observing the feminine details the untidinesses so characteristic of her; the daintinesses, equally characteristic--all in such odd contrast with inevitable bush roughnesses. He noticed the silver and ivory on the dressing-table; the large silver-framed photographs--an autographed one of the Queen of Wartenburg--Molly Gaverick and Rosamond Tallant in Court veil and feathers, Joan Gildea at her type-writer--the confusion of books, the embroidered coverlet on the large bed, the bush-made couch at its foot upholstered in rose-patterned chintz on which she had seated herself.