Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land | Page 6

freely paragraphed
newspaper correspondent.
The telegram was phrased thus:
SORRY IMPOSSIBLE NO FUNDS OTHER REASONS WRITING
BIDDY
Mrs Gildea's illuminative 'H'm!' implied that her two inductions had
been correct. No funds--and other reasons--meaning--a MAN. She
scented instantly another of Biddy's tempestuous love-affairs. Had it
been merely a question of lack of money with inclination goading, she
felt pretty certain that Lady Bridget would have contrived to beg,
borrow or steal--on a hazardous promissory note, after the
happy-go-lucky financial morals of that section of society to which by
birth she belonged. Or, failing these means, that she would have
threatened some mad enterprise and so have frightened her aunt Eliza
Countess of Gaverick into writing a cheque for three figures. Of course,
less would have been of no account.
Mrs Gildea opened the two envelopes and sorted the pages in order of
their dates. The first had the address of a house in South Belgravia,
where lived Sir Luke Tallant of the Colonial Office and Rosamond his
wife--distant connections of the Gavericks.
Lady Bridget's letters were type-written, most carelessly, with the
mistakes corrected down the margin of the flimsy sheets in the manner

of author's proof--the whole appearance of them suggesting literary
'copy'.
Likewise, the slapdash epistolary style of the MS., which had a certain
vividness of its own.

CHAPTER 2

'Dearest Joan,
You'll have got my wire. Vancouver was right, I suppose. I sent it from
Rome. Since then I have been at Montreux with Chris and Molly, and
since I came back to England with them, I've been in too chaotic a state
of mind to write letters. Really, Chris and Molly's atmosphere of
struggling to keep in the swim on next to nothing a year and of eking
out a precarious income by visits to second-rate country houses and
cadging on their London friends gets on my nerves to such an extent
that Luke and Rosamond's established "Colonial Office" sort of
respectability is quite refreshing by contrast.
I should have loved the Australian trip. Your "Bush" sounds perfectly
captivating, and, of course, I could do the illustrations you want.
Besides, I'm stony-broke and, financially, the great god Gibbs appeals
to me. I'd take my passage straight off--one would raise the money
somehow--if it wasn't for--There! It's out. A MAN has come and upset
the apple-cart.'
Mrs Gildea gave a funny little laugh. The letter answered her thought.
'"Oh, of course!" I can hear you sneer. "Just another of Biddy's
emotional interests--bound to fizzle out before very long." But this is a
good deal more than an emotional interest, and I don't think it will
fizzle out so quickly. For one thing, THIS man is quite different from
all the other men I've ever been interested in. The first moment I saw
him, I had the queerest sort of ARRESTED sensation. He's told me
since, that he felt exactly the same about me. Kind of lived before--
"WHEN I WAS A KING IN BABYLON AND YOU WERE A
CHRISTIAN SLAVE" idea. Though I'm quite certain that if I ever was
a slave it must have been a Pagan and not a Christian one. Joan, the
experience was thrilling, positively electrifying--Glamour--personal

magnetism. . . . You couldn't possibly understand unless you knew
HIM. Descriptions are so hopeless. I'll leave him to your imagination.
By the way, Molly annoyed me horribly the other day. "You know,
dear," she had the audacity to remark, "he's not of OUR class, and if
you married him, you'd have to give up US! For could you suppose,"
she went on to say, "that Chris and Mama--to say nothing of Aunt
Eliza--would tolerate an adventurer who tells tall stories about buried
treasure and native rebellions and expects one to be amused!"
OUR CLASS! Oh, how I detest the label! And that unspeakably
dreadful idea of social sheep and goats--and the unfathomable abyss
between Suburbia and Belgravia! Though I frankly own that to me
Suburbia represents the Absolutely Impossible. After all, one must go
right into the Wilderness to escape the conditions of that state of life to
which you happen to have been born.
Well, that speech of Molly's came out of a fascinating account my
Soldier of Fortune gave us of how he stage-managed a revolution in
South America, and of an expedition he'd made in the Andes on the
strength of a local tradition about the Incas' hidden gold. I call him my
Soldier of Fortune--though he's not in any known Army list, because
it's what he called himself. Likewise a Champion of the Dispossessed.
He has an intense sympathy with the indigenous populations, and
thinks the British system of conquering and corrupting native races
simply a disgrace to civilisation. With all of which sentiments I entirely
agree. Luke has taken to him immensely,