'That's true enough,' assented 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 circumstances, 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 Japanese 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 constituency 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 circumstances 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.'
'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.