"Boss come back, Ladyship. I can see him. He is up, talking to Mother."
Lady Bridget was too proud a woman to feel petty jealousy, nor would it have occurred to her to be jealous of Mrs Hensor. Her sentiment of dislike towards that person was of quite another order. But she was just in the mood to resent neglect on the part of McKeith.
She went to the veranda railing, whence she had a view of the Bachelors" Quarters, and was able to see for herself that Tommy"s report had been correct. She called to the child:
"Go at once, Tommy, and tell the master that I am waiting."
Tommy flew off immediately on his small, st.u.r.dy legs, and Lady Bridget watched the scene at the Bachelors" Quarters. McKeith had dismounted, and with one foot on the edge of the veranda, was facing Mrs Hensor, who looked fresh and comely in a clean blouse and bright-coloured skirt. The two seemed to have a good deal to say to each other, though Lady Bridget heard only the voices, not the words. Her Irish temper rose at the thought that Mrs Hensor might be giving him her version of the Wombo episode. She felt glad that the black-boy and his gin were comfortably sleeping off the effect of their wounds, and of the plentiful meals supplied them in the hide-house, and thus were not in evidence. When McKeith spoke, it was in a dictatorial, angry tone--that of the incensed master. Clearly, however, Mrs Hensor was not the object of his wrath. Lady Bridget saw little Tommy run excitedly up to deliver her message, and almost cried out to him to keep away from the horses"
heels, to which he went perilously near. As things happened, the beast lashed out at him, and Tommy had a very narrow escape of being badly kicked. Lady Bridget heard Mrs Hensor shriek and saw her husband drag the child to the veranda and examine him anxiously, Mrs Hensor bending with him. Then McKeith lifted up Tommy and kissed and patted him almost as if he had been the boy"s father. It always gave Bridget a queer little spasm of regret to see Colin"s obvious affection for the little fellow. He was fond of children, specially so of this one. Lady Bridget knew, though he had never said so to her, that he was disappointed at there being no apparent prospect of her having a child.
And she--with her avidity for any new sort of sensation, although she scoffed at the joy of maternity--felt secretly inclined sometimes to gird at fate for having so far denied her this experience. She herself liked Tommy in her contradictory, whimsical fashion; but now, the fuss over, the boy--who clearly was not in the least hurt--made her very cross, and she became positively furious at seeing McKeith delay yet further to unstrap his valise and get out a toy he must have bought for Tommy in Tunumburra. Then, his grievance aparently coming back on him, he put the child abruptly aside, and leaving valise and horse at the Bachelors" Quarters, walked with determined steps and frowning visage down the track to the veranda. There, his wife was standing, very pale, very erect, her eyes glittering ominously.
McKeith was through the gate and up the flight of steps in three or four strides.
He seemed to sense the antagonism in her, and demanded at once, without waiting to give her any greeting.
"Biddy, what"s this I"m hearing about Wombo and that gin?"
"I think you might have asked me before going to Mrs Hensor for information," she answered with equal curtness.
He stared at her for a moment or two as if surprised; his face reddened, and his eyes, too, glittered.
"I don"t know what you mean. I had to speak to Mrs Hensor about beds being wanted up there, and of course I asked her how things had been going on."
"And did she tell you that she had been inhuman and insolent?"
"Inhuman... Insolent!"
"She spoke to me impudently. She defied my orders."
"I am given to understand that she was carrying out mine," said McKeith slowly. "And if that"s so, Mrs Hensor was in the right."
"You put that woman before ME--before your wife?"
"There"s not another woman in the universe I"d put before my wife. But that"s no reason for my giving in to her when she does what I know to be folly."
"I see. You call an act of common humanity folly--doing what one could to relieve the agony of a fellow creature. I am glad that I differ from you--and from your servant. Mrs Hensor refused to help that poor gin who had a spear through her arm and was shrieking with pain."
"Oh, you don"t know black-gins as well as I do. They"ll pretend they"re dying in agony just to wheedle a drop of rum or a fig of tobacco out of a white man; and they"ll take it quite as a matter of course when one of their men bashes their head in with a NULLA-NULLA."
"I suppose you"ll allow that a spear wound may hurt a little," said Bridget. "I believe that you yourself suffered from the effect of one at least, you once told me so."
And memory--so active these late days, brought suddenly back the vision of him as he had approached her that evening at Government House. What a great Viking he had looked!--in modern dress, of course, but bearing mark of battle in a slight drag of the left leg, only noticeable, she knew now, when he was shy and proud, and under, to him, difficult social conditions. But what a MAN she had felt him to be then, among the other men!
It seemed an outrage on her idealised image of him to hear him speaking in that dry, caustic manner.
"Ah, that"s different. The Gulf natives have a nasty way of barbing and poisoning their spears. An ordinary spear-thrust is nothing to either black or white. Wombo could have pulled the thing out, and in a few hours the gin would have been all right again."
"You think so--well in a few hours she was in a high fever. I took her temperature this morning when I re-bandaged the wound."
McKeith laughed shortly.
"It wouldn"t be surprising, if you had given her grog and tobacco and as much meat as she wanted. That what you did, eh?"
"Yes, it was. They were both starving."
"Well, I wouldn"t bank on your stock of medical knowledge, Biddy--not if I was down with fever or otherwise incapacitated. But that"s not the point--which is that those blacks have been kept here against my express orders."
"They"ve been kept here by MY orders," flamed Lady Bridget.
McKeith"s jaw squared, and there showed in his eyes that ugly devil which many a black and white man had seen, but never his wife before.
"Look here, milady--there can be only one boss on this station. And now you"ll excuse me if I act according to my own discretion."
Without another word he walked up the veranda and down the few steps connecting it with the Old Humpey. She heard him go into his office, and presently the door of it slammed behind him. She knew that he was going to the culprits in the hide-house, and wondered what punishment he would mete unto them. Had he gone to the office for his gun? At this moment, anything seemed possible to Lady Bridget"s heated temper and excited imagination.
She stood waiting, absorbed in her fears, so abstracted from her ordinary outside surroundings that she was unaware of the approach of two hors.e.m.e.n from the Gully Crossing. They did not stop at the garden gate, but made for the usual station entrance at the back. One of them, lingering behind the other, gazed earnestly at Lady Bridget"s tense little figure and bent head, poised in a listening att.i.tude and conveying to him the impression that something momentous had happened or was about to happen. And just then, appalling shrieks, from the rear of the home, justified the impression.
Lady Bridget ran through the sitting-room to the veranda behind, which again connected on either side the new house with the Old Humpey and kitchen and store-wing--the hide-house standing slightly apart at the end of the store building. The shrieks in male and female keys came from the hide-house and mingled with McKeith"s strident tones fulminating in Blacks" lingo. The noise brought Mrs Hensor and Tommy down from the Bachelors" Quarters, and the Chinese cook, the Malay boy and Maggie the housemaid from the service department. The three verandas and garden plot made a kind of amphitheatre; and now, into the arena, came the actors in the little tragedy.
From the hide-house, McKeith dragged the prisoners, and through the gateway in the palings which made the fourth side of the enclosure.
With one hand he clutched Wombo, with the other Oola, who in her lace-trimmed petticoat and flowered kimono was truly a tragi-comic spectacle.
McKeith carried his coiled stockwhip in the hand which held Wombo. It was plain, judging from the state of Wombo"s new shirt, that he had given the black boy a thrashing; Oola was unscathed. Of course, Colin could not lift his hand to a woman, though he was a brute and the woman only a black-gin. Lady Bridget felt faintly glad at this.
She watched the scene, half fascinated, half disgusted, all her attention concentrated on these three figures. She had but a dim consciousness of two men riding round the store-wing and dismounting.
One of the two remained in the background screened by the trails of native cuc.u.mber overhanging the veranda end. The other--a wiry, powerful figure in uniform, with a rubicund face, black bristling moustache and beard and prominent black eyes, reminding one of the eyes of a bull--walked forward and spoke with an air of official a.s.surance.
"Can I be of any use to you, Mr McKeith, in dealing with that n.i.g.g.e.r? A bad character, as I"ve reason to know."
"No, thank you, Harris. I can do my own dirty jobs," said McKeith shortly.
He had released the pair and now stood grimly surveying them. Oola was crying and squealing; Wombo stood upright--a scowl of hate on his face.
His whole nature seemed changed. A flogging will rouse the semi-civilised black"s evil pa.s.sions like nothing else. There was something of savage dignity in the defiant way in which he faced his former master.
"What for you been take-it stockwhip long-a me? BA"AL me bad black boy long-a you, Boss. What for me no have "em gin belonging to me? Ma.s.sa catch "im bujeri White Mary like it gin belonging to him. What for no all same black fellow?"
McKeith cut short the argument--sound logic it seemed to Lady Biddy--by an imperious, silencing gesture, and a sudden unfurling of his stockwhip, which made a hissing sound as it writhed along the ground like a snake. The black boy sprang aside. McKeith pointed to the gidia scrub and issued a terse command in the native language.
"YAN" (go). "BA"AL YOU WOOLLA" (don"t talk any more). "YAN."
Wombo turned appealingly to Lady Bridget.
"Lathychap!"
"YAN," stormed McKeith again, and, as Lady Bridget made a movement of sympathetic response towards the black fellow, he added sternly: "You"ll oblige me by not interfering in this business. The Blacks know that what I say, I mean, and I"ll have no more words with them."
Bridget stood quite still, her att.i.tude and expression all indignant protest, but she said nothing. Her face was turned full towards the man hidden by the creepers, who was watching her with intense interest, but she was unconscious of his gaze.