Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land Part 6

'State Entry! Good Lord! Sir Luke Tallant has got a bit too much red tape and too many airs about him to suit the Leichardt'stonians.'

'You WERE there, then?'

'Started for Alexandra City that afternoon.'

'But you saw--Colin did you see--the Tallants and--their party?

His face changed: it looked positively angry, and his jaw under the neatly trimmed, sandy beard, protruded determinedly. But at that moment a footman came towards them, and Mrs Gildea was handed on to an imposing butler and ushered through a wide palm-screened doorway into the large inner hall which had a gallery round it and the big staircase at one end. Joan saw that the room, formerly stiffly furnished and used chiefly as a ballroom, had been transmogrified with comfortable lounge chairs and sofas, beautiful embroideries, screens, a spinet and many flowers and books into a delightful general sitting-room. It seemed quite full--mostly of official Leichardt'stonians. Joan looked for the new Governor and his wife, or at least for Lady Biddy, but none of them had yet put in an appearance. A handsome, fair-moustachioed young aide-de-camp, looking very smart in his evening uniform with white lapels, was fluttering round, his dinner list in his hand, and introducing people who already knew each other. He looked distinctly worried, so did the private secretary--sallow-faced, of a clerkish type, and obviously without social qualifications--who was also wandering round and trying ineffectively to do the right thing. The aide-de-camp rushed forward to shake hands with Joan, exclaiming in a relieved undertone:

'Oh, Mrs Gildea, do help me. I believe I've made an awful hash of it all. People out here,' he murmured, 'ain't used to viceregal etiquette as she is interpreted in Ceylon--that was my last post you know. They seem to think his Excellency ought to have been standing at the door to receive THEM, instead of their waiting to receive HIM.'

Clearly, the aide-de-camp had failed to please, though he looked spruced and his manners were beautiful. The Premier of Leichardt's Land, a red-faced gentleman of blunt speech, was grumbling audibly to the Attorney-General. Mrs Gildea caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of discontent as she pa.s.sed from one to another.

'd.a.m.ned impertinence, I call it. A salaried official, no better than any of us, giving himself royal airs.... May do in India... won't go down in a free country like this.'

The AIDE finished pairing his couples.

'Mrs Gildea, you're to go in with the Warden of the University. Of course you know Dr Plumtree? Literature and learning is an obvious combination, but' (in a confidential aside) 'if you KNEW the job I've had to find out the right order of precedence. Mr McKeith, the Governor will be so glad to meet you. Will you take in Lady Bridget O'Hara?

She's not down yet. You see,' he explained again to Mrs Gildea, 'we're strictly official to-night and Debrett's out of it.'

'So am I,' put in Colin McKeith. 'I guess that Lady Bridget would be better pleased if she wasn't handed over to a rough bushman.'

'Now, there you ARE quite out of it,' laughed the aide-de-camp. 'Lady Bridget asked specially to be sent in with you,' and at Mrs Gildea's enquiring smile, he explained once more: 'Sir Luke was speaking about Mr McKeith, said his name had been mentioned at a meeting of the Executive yesterday. Oh! you're top hole, Mr McKeith, I a.s.sure you.'

The AIDE broke off suddenly.

There was a rustle of silk on the grand staircase--the slam of a door above, the sound of a laugh and the patter of little high-heeled shoes on the parquet floor of the gallery. The AIDE darted to the foot of the staircase and all eyes turned upward.

The new Governor and his wife came down in slow and stately fashion, arm-in-arm, Sir Luke looking very impressive with the Ribbon and Order of St Michael and St George. He was a handsome man, clean-shaven but for a heavy dark moustache, and carried his dignities with perhaps a little too conscious an air--'Representative of the Throne' seemed written all over him and no greater contrast could be imagined than the new Governor presented to his predecessor, an elderly, impoverished marquis who had the brain of a diplomatist and the manners of a British farmer, and who with his homely wife had been immensely popular in Leichardt's Land.

Nor a greater contrast than the new Governor's wife to the fat, kindly, old marchioness. Lady Tallant was a London woman, of about forty-five.

She had been excessively pretty, but had rather lost her looks after a bad illness, and her worst affliction was now a tendency to scragginess, cleverly concealed where the chest was no longer visible.

Obviously artificial outside, at any rate Lady Tallant was, as Mrs Gildea had reason to believe, a genuine sort underneath. She had a thin, high-nosed face of the conventional English aristocratic type, a good deal rouged to-night, but with natural shadows under the eyes and below the arch of the brows which were toned to correspond with the evidently dyed hair. Her dress, a Paris creation of pale satin and glistening embroidery, was draped to hide her thinness, and her neck and throat were almost covered with strings of pearls and cl.u.s.ters of clear-set diamonds. Judging from the way in which the Leichardt'stonians stared at her as she came down the stairs, it seemed probable that none of them had ever before seen anyone quite like Lady Tallant.

Joan Gildea's eyes pa.s.sed quickly from Sir Luke and Lady Tallant to a third figure behind them, on the half-landing, but first she realised in a flashing glance that Colin McKeith's gaze had been all the while riveted upon that figure. Not in astonishment--a proof to Joan that he had seen it before--but in a kind of unwilling fascination, most upsetting to Mrs Gildea's sense of responsibility in the matter.

The Visionary Woman of the camp-fire! And she had let Colin McKeith believe that Bridget O'Hara was the embodiment of his Ideal--height five foot seven at the least: weight ten stone or more: smooth-parted, Greek-coiled hair: a cross between a G.o.ddess and a Madonna--that was Colin's Ideal--Good Heavens! What did he now behold? A very little woman. One of the snippets he despised. Not an ounce of the traditional dignity about her. Lady Bridget gave the impression of an old-fashioned, precocious child, dressed up in a picture frock of soft shining white stuff, hanging on a straight slender form and gathered into a girdle at the waist, with a wisp of old lace flung carelessly over the slight shoulders. She stood for a moment or two on the half landing, then, as the aide-de-camp murmured in the Governor's ear at the foot of the stairs, she came close to the bannisters and looked down amusedly at the party in the hall. Her face was a little poked forward--a small oval face, pale except for the redness of a rather thin-lipped mouth--the upper lip like a scarlet bow--and the brilliance of the eyes, deep-set under finely-drawn brows and with thick lashes, golden-brown, and curling up at the tips. Peculiar eyes: Mrs Gildea, who knew them well, never could decide their exact colour. The nose was a delicate aquiline, the chin pointed. An untidy ma.s.s of wavy chestnut hair stuck out in uneven puffs and insubordinate curls, all round the small head. At this moment Mrs Gildea remembered a suggestive charm sent to Lady Bridget by her cousin, Chris Gaverick, one Christmas, of a miniature gold curry-comb.

It was a vivid brief impression, for the girl moved on immediately, but Joan noticed that Colin McKeith had arrested Lady Bridget's wandering gaze. That was not surprising, for his great height and the distinctiveness of his appearance, made him more likely than anyone else present to attract her attention. Then, as she caught sight of Joan, the interested, startled look changed to one of bright recognition, the red lips smiled, showing dimples at their sensitive corners.

'His Excellency and Lady Tallant,' said the aide-de-camp, and Bridget seemed hardly able to keep herself in the background while Sir Luke and his wife advanced to greet the a.s.sembled guests. This, Lady Tallant did with quite enchanting courtesy, making an apt apology for having kept them waiting, which almost mollified the irate Premier. Bridget came with a swift gliding movement to the side of her friend, squeezed her hand and held it, while she talked in a soft rapid monotone.

'How cool you look. I've never been so hot in my life. And the mosquitoes! Rosamond is in despair. She says she really can't afford to lose more flesh. Do you see how she has had to make herself up to hide the mosquito bites? Luckily, I've got a skin that insects don't find palatable....'

They had of course met since the Landing. Joan had paid her formal visit, had lunched at Government House, and was now on intimate terms with the new people. Also, Lady Bridget had found her way to the cottage on Emu Point.

She looked round at the different groups and gave a cynical little shrug.

'Why! it's like everything one had left behind! I might be at a party to the Colonial Delegates in London for all the difference there is.

Where's your barbarism, Joan? ... I'm pining for a savage existence....

That's an excessively good-looking man'--her eyebrows indicated Colin McKeith--'I do hope he is the man I asked for to take me in to dinner--I told Vereker Wells that I wanted a new sensation--that man looks as if he might give it to me--No, don't tell me: there's excitement in uncertainty.'

She went on in eager monologue, giving no time for replies.

'It seems we've put the official backs up. Vereker Wells was determined to follow Indian vice-regal precedents--so ridiculous--as I told him: and as for Luke, he's got it on the brain that his mission is to uphold the dignity of the British Throne. Like a NOUVEAU RICHE--terribly afraid of doing the wrong thing and showing every moment that he's new to the great Panjandrum part.... Ah so!' ... an ejaculatory trick of Bridget's. 'He IS my fate!'

Captain Vereker Wells brought up Colin who was holding himself stiffly, limping just a little, as he did when he was nervous, and looking very big and strong and masterful--likewise extraordinarily well-groomed and tailored.

'Lady Bridget O'Hara, let me present Mr Colin McKeith.'

Lady Biddy looked up at Colin and he looked down at her.

'Do you think I can POSSIBLY reach your arm?' as he held his elbow crooked to about the level of her shoulder. 'You know I asked to be sent in with you--it was rather bold of me, wasn't it? But if I had known how VERY tall you are!'

Mr McKeith lowered his arm, stooping over her, and Mrs Gildea heard him say in a voice that sounded different somehow from his ordinary deep drawl:

'I wonder why I was chosen for this honour?'

And Bridget's reply:

'I'd been told that you were an explorer--that you're a kind of Bush Cecil Rhodes--I don't know Mr Cecil Rhodes, but I have an adoration for him--I wanted to talk to a real Bushman--I always felt that I should like Australian Bushmen from Joan Gildea's description of them.... And you....'

The rest was lost, as the groups converged and the long line of couples went forward.

CHAPTER 9

It was not an altogether successful party. The dinner had portentous suggestiveness; the Leidchardt'stonians were at first rather difficult.

Sir Luke a little too conscious of his responsibilities towards the British Throne: Lady Tallant so brilliant as to be bewildering. But except as it concerns Lady Bridget and McKeith, the Tallant's first dinner-party at Government House is not of special importance in this story. Mrs Gildea, very well occupied with Dr Plumtree, only caught diagonal glimpses of her two friends a little lower down on the opposite side of the table, and, in occasional lulls of conversation, the musical ring of Lady Bridget's rapid chatter. Colin did not seem to be talking much, but every time Mrs Gildea glanced at him, he appeared absorbed in contemplation of the small pointed face and the farouche, golden-brown eyes turned up to him from under the top heavy ma.s.s of chestnut hair. Lady Bridget, at any rate, had a great deal to say for herself, and Mrs Gildea wondered what was going to come of it all.

Conversation became more general as champagne flowed and the courses proceeded.

Sir Luke, discreetly on the prowl for information, attacked Antipodean questions--the Blacks for instance. He had observed the small company of natives theatrically got up in the war-paint of former times, which, grouped round the dais on which he had been received at the State Landing, had furnished an effective bit of local colour to the pageant.

Up to what degree of lat.i.tude might these semi-civilised, and he feared demoralised beings, be taken as a survival of the indigenous population of Leichardt's Land? Did wild and dangerous Blacks still exist up north and in the interior of the Colony?

'You'd better ask McKeith about that, your Excellency,' said the Premier. 'He knows more about the Blacks up north than any of us.'

The Governor enquired as to the amenability of the Australian native to missionary methods of civilisation, and one of the other Ministers broke in with a laugh.

'Bible in one hand and baccy in the other! No, Sir, the Exeter Hall and General Gordon principles aren't workable with our Blacks. Kindness doesn't do. The early pioneers soon found that out.'

Lady Bridget had stopped suddenly in her talk with Colin, and was listening, her eyes glowering at her companion.

'Why didn't kindness do?' she asked sharply.

'Yes; Mr McKeith, tell us why the early pioneers abandoned the gentle method,' said the Governor.