"Beelzebub didn"t teach you that," she said.
"No, quite the contrary. It all came out of my concentration studies and the Higher Thought Centre where I met some most original dears--Christian Scientists and Spiritualists--and then these Socialists--not a bit on the lines of the old Fabians and Bernard Shavians and the rest who used to believe only in Matter--specially landed property matter--and in parcelling that out among themselves. My friends are for parcelling out what they call the Divine Intelligence, which they say will bring them everything they need for the good of others and, incidentally, themselves. Of course none of them have a penny. But they do contrive to get what they want for other people--it was a soup kitchen this winter where they fed 11,000 starving poor.
Only, when they begin, they never have the smallest idea of HOW it"s going to be done."
Lady Bridget was so absorbed in her subject matter that she did not notice the entrance of the men; but Mrs Gildea saw that Colin McKeith was making straight towards them. He halted behind Bridget"s chair.
Biddy went on in reply to a question from her friend.
"You see, they argue this way, "We don"t know," they say, "the HOW of the simplest things in life, we don"t know the HOW of our actual existence--how we move or think--not even the HOW of the most ordinary fact in science. We only know that there must be an Intelligence who does know and who has forces at command and the power to set them in motion.""
"And how do we know that?" asked Colin McKeith.
Bridget turned with a start and looked at him solemnly for a second or two.
"You paralyse me: you are too big. I can"t speak to you when you are standing up. Please sit down."
He went to fetch a chair. At the moment, Lady Tallant came up.
"Biddy, will you sing. Do for Heaven"s sake make a sensation. Help me out! You know how!"
Lady Bridget had a funny inscrutable little smile and a gleam in her eyes which crinkled up when she was going to say or do something rather naughty.
"I"ll do my best, Rosamond. But you don"t think it would be a dangerous experiment, do you?"
Lady Tallant laughed, and told Captain Vereker Wells to take her to the piano.
"YOU know that Biddy does a lot of mischief when she sings," said the Governor"s wife, sitting down in Lady Bridget"s vacant place beside Mrs Gildea. Colin McKeith, still on the outskirts with his chair, stood leaning upon it, watching the performer.
The piano was in such a position that Lady Bridget faced him.
A vain man might have fancied that she was singing at him, and that the by-play of her song--the sudden eye-brightenings, the little twists of her mouth, the head gestures, were for his particular benefit.
She was singing one of the Neapolitan folk-songs which one hears along the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean beyond Ma.r.s.eilles--a love song.
Most people know that particular love-song. Lady Bridget gave it with all the tricks and all the verve and whimsical audacity of a born Italian singer. Well, she was Italian--on one side at least, and had inherited the tricks and a certain quality of voice, irresistibly catching. And she looked captivating as she sang--the small pointed face within its frame of reddish-brown hair, the strange eyes, the expressive red lips, alive with coquetry. The men--even the old politicians, listened and stared, quite fascinated.
Some of the Leichardt"s Town ladies--good, homely wives and mothers who, in their early married days of struggle, had toiled and cooked and sewed, with no time to imagine an aspect of the Eternal Feminine of which they had never had any experience, were perhaps a little shocked, perhaps a little regretful. One or two others, younger, with budding aspirations, but provincial in their ideals, were filled with wonder and vague envy.
A few of them had made the usual trip "Home," landing at Naples and journeying to London, via Monte Carlo and Paris, and these felt they had missed something in that journey which Lady Bridget was now revealing to them. Joan Gildea, whose profession it was to realise vividly such modes of life as came within her purview, felt herself once more in the blue lands girdling the Sea of Story--It all came back upon her--moonlight nights in Naples; on the Chiaja; looking down from her windows on sunny gardens on the Riviera, and the strolling minstrels in front of the hotel....
As for Colin McKeith who had never been in the Blue Land and knew little even of the British Isles except for London--chiefly around St Paul"s School, Hammersmith--and the Scotch Manse where he had occasionally spent his holidays--even he was transported from the Government House drawing-room. Where? .... Not to the realm of visions such as he had seen in the smoke of his camp fire. Oh no. He had never dreamed of this kind of enchantment.
A fresh impulse seized the singer. She struck a few chords. A familiar lilt sounded. Her face and manner changed. She burst into the famous song of CARMEN. She WAS CARMEN. One could almost see the swaying form, the seductive flirt of fan. There could be no doubt that had the voice been more powerful, Lady Bridget might have done well on the operatic stage.
Yet it had a TIMBRE, a peculiar, devil-may-care pa.s.sion which produced a very thrilling effect upon her audience. She got up when she had finished in a dead silence and was half-way across the room before the applause burst out. There was a little rush of men towards her.
"Beats Zelie de Lussan and runs Calve hard," said the Premier who had made more than one trip to England and considered himself an authority in the matter.
Bridget skimmed through the groups of admirers, stopping to murmur something to Lady Tallant who had met her half way; then stopped with hands before her like a meek schoolgirl, in front of Mrs Gildea and Colin McKeith--he almost the only man who had made no movement towards her. Bridget sank into her former seat.
"The last time I sang that was at a Factory Girls" entertainment at Poplar," she said... "You should have seen them, Joan: they stood up and tried to sing in chorus and some of them came on to the platform and danced.... Mr McKeith you look at me as if I had been doing something desperately improper. Don"t you like the music of CARMEN?"
Colin was staring at her dazedly.
"It seemed to me a kind of witchcraft," he said.... "I should think you might go on the stage and make a fortune like Melba."
She laughed. "Why my voice is a very poor thing. And besides, I could never depend upon it."
"Everything just how you feel at the time, eh?" he said. "You wouldn"t care what you did if you had a mind to do it."
"No," she answered. "I shouldn"t care in the least what I did if I had a mind to do it."
There was the faintest mimicry of his half Scotch, half Australian accent in her voice--a little husky, with now and then unsuspected modulations. She looked at him and the gleam in her eyes and her strange smile made him stare at her in a sort of fascination. Joan knew those tricks of hers and knew that they boded mischief. She got up at the moment saying that people were going and that she must bid Lady Tallant good-night.
Then the Premier"s wife came up shyly; she wanted to thank Lady Bridget for her singing. It had been as good as the Opera--They sometimes had good opera companies in Leichardt"s Town, etcetera, etcetera.
Lady Bridget made the prettiest curtsey, which bewildered the Premier"s wife and gave her food for speculation as to the manners and customs of the British aristocracy. She had always understood you only curtsied to Royalty. But she took it as a great compliment and never said anything but kind words about Bridget ever after.
Colin McKeith escorted Mrs Gildea to her cab and as they waited in the vestibule, obtained from her a few more particulars of Lady Bridget O"Hara"s parentage and conditions. But he said not a word implying that he had discovered her ident.i.ty with the author of the typed letter.
"I"ll come along to-morrow morning if I can manage it, and tell you about Alexandra City and the Gas-Bore," he said carelessly as she shut the fly door. Joan wondered whether he had caught Lady Biddy"s parting words in the drawing room.
"If Rosamond doesn"t insist on my doing some stuffy exploration with her, I"ll bring my sketches some time in the morning, Joan, and you can see whether any of them would do for the great G.o.d Gibbs."
CHAPTER 11
"And what are you going to do, Biddy? How long are you going to stay with the Tallants?"
"Until Rosamond gets tired of me--or I feel no further need of the moral support of the British Throne," answered Lady Bridget lightly.
"I"m not sure whether I shall be able to stand Luke"s Jingo att.i.tude in regard to Labour and the Indigenous Population--all the Colonial problems in capitals, observe. He does take his position so strenuously; it"s no good my reminding him that even the Queen is obliged to respect a Const.i.tutional government."
Bridget took a cigarette from a gold case with her initials in tiny precious stones across it, and handed the case to Mrs Gildea who shook her head.
"Still too old-fashioned to smoke! I should have thought you"d have been driven to it here to keep the mosquitoes at a distance....
"Do you like my case, Joan? Willoughby Maule gave it to me," she asked.
"You didn"t return it then?"
"Why should I have hurt his feelings? We weren"t engaged." A meditative pause and then suddenly, "Evelyn Mary doesn"t smoke. Nice girls don"t!"
"Biddy, I shall be sorry for Evelyn Mary if the Maules are to live in London and you go back there again--which I suppose you will do."
"You needn"t suppose for certain that I shall go back." She savoured her cigarette slowly. "I can"t go on with that old life, the sort of life one has to lead with Aunt Eliza and the Gavericks and their set. I can"t go on pushing and striving and rushing here and there in order to be seen at the right houses and join the hunt after fleeing eligibles."