Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land | Page 4

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This etext was produced by Col Choat [email protected]
This etext was first created as part of the BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at
the Celebration of Women Writers through the combined work of:
Carmen Baxter, Brenda Lambey, Elizabeth Morton, Jessie Hudgins,
Mary Crosson, Mary Nuzzo, Nick Rezmerski, Patricia Heil, Patsy
Edmonds, Steve Callis, Tami Hutchinson, Velvet Van Bueren, and
Mary Mark Ockerbloom.
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Rosa Praed (1851-1935) LADY BRIDGET IN THE NEVER-NEVER
LAND.(1915)
CONTENTS
BOOK I FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MRS GILDEA BOOK II
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF LADY BRIDGET O'HARA
BOOK III FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF COLIN MCKEITH
AND OTHERS

BOOK I
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MRS GILDEA

CHAPTER 1

Mrs Gildea had settled early to her morning's work in what she called
the veranda-study of her cottage in Leichardt's Town. It was a primitive
cottage of the old style, standing in a garden and built on the cliff--the
Emu Point side--overlooking the broad Leichardt River. The veranda,
quite twelve feet wide, ran--Australian fashion--along the front of the
cottage, except for the two closed-in ends forming, one a bathroom and
the other a kind of store closet. Being raised a few feet above the
ground, the veranda was enclosed by a wooden railing, and this and the
supporting posts were twined with creepers that must have been planted
at least thirty years. One of these, a stephanotis, showed masses of
white bloom, which Joan Gildea casually reflected would have fetched

a pretty sum in Covent Garden, and, joining in with a fine-growing
asparagus fern, formed an arch over the entrance steps. The end of the
veranda, where Mrs Gildea had established herself with her type-writer
and paraphernalia of literary work, was screened by a thick-stemmed
grape-vine, which made a dapple of shadow and sunshine upon the
boarded floor. Some bunches of late grapes--it was the very beginning
of March--hung upon the vine, and, at the other end of the veranda,
grew a passion creeper, its great purple fruit looking like huge plums
amidst its vivid green leaves.
The roof of the veranda was low, with projecting eaves, below which a
bunch of yellowing bananas hung to ripen. In fact, the veranda and
garden beyond would have been paradise to a fruitarian. Against the
wall of the store-room, stood a large tin dish piled with melons,
pine-apples and miscellaneous garden produce, while, between the
veranda posts, could be seen a guava-tree, an elderly fig and a loquat all
in full bearing. The garden seemed a tangle of all manner of
vegetation--an oleander in bloom, a poinsettia, a yucca, lifting its spike
of waxen white blossoms, a narrow flower-border in which the
gardenias had become tall shrubs and the scented verbena shrubs
almost trees. As for the blend of perfume, it was dreamily intoxicating.
Two bamboos, guarding the side entrance gate, made a soft whispering
that heightened the dream-sense. The bottom of the garden looked an
inchoate mass of greenery topped by the upper boughs of tall straggling
gum trees, growing outside where the ground fell gradually to the river.
From where Mrs Gildea sat, she had a view of almost the whole reach
of the river where it circles Emu Point. For, as is known to all who
know Leichardt's Town, the river winds in two great loops girdling two
low points, so that, in striking a bee-line across the whole town,
business and residential, one must cross the river three times. Mrs
Gildea could see the plan of the main street in the Middle Point and the
roofs of shops and offices. The busy wharves of the Leichardt's Land
Steam Navigation Company--familiarly, the L.L.S.N. Co.--lay opposite
on her right, while leftward, across the water, she could trace, as far as
the grape-vine would allow, the boundary of the Botanical Gardens and
get a sight of the white stone and grey slate end of the big
Parliamentary Buildings.
The heat-haze over the town and the brilliant sun-sparkles on the river

suggested a cruel glare outside the shady veranda and over-grown old
garden.
A pleasant study, if a bit distracting from its plenitude of associations
to Australian-born Joan Gildea, who, on her marriage, had been
transplanted into English soil, as care-free as a rose cut from the parent
stem, and who now, after nearly twenty years, had returned to the scene
of her youth--a widow, a working journalist and shorn of most of her
early illusions.
Her typewriter stood on a bamboo table before her. A pile of Australian
Hansards for reference sat on a chair at convenient distance. A large
table with a green cloth, at her elbow, had at one end a tray with the
remains of her breakfast of tea,