Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land | Page 9

Gildea could quite understand that apart from general views
on the marriage question, Lady Bridget O'Hara might well shrink from
further connection with City finance.

CHAPTER 4

A naughty little gust--herald of the sub-tropical afternoon breeze that
comes up the Leichardt River from the sea, blew about the typed sheets
on the table, and, among them, those of Lady Bridget's letter, as Mrs
Gildea laid them down.

While she collected the various pages of manuscript that had been
displaced and was bundling them together, with a banana on each sheaf
to keep it safe, there came a second snap of the gate and a man's voice
hailed her.
It was the voice of a man who sang baritone, and his accent was an odd
combination of the Bush drawl grafted on to the mellifluous Gaelic,
from which race he had originated.
'Any admittance, Mrs Gildea, except on business, during working
hours?'
'Yes, it is working hours Colin, but you happen to be business because
you're just the person I'm wanting to speak to, so come along.'
'Good for me, Joan,' and the man came along, clearing the rest of the
garden path and the veranda steps in three strides.
He gripped Mrs Gildea's hand.
'You're nice and cool up here, and you get every bit of wind that's going
along the river,' he said. 'It's a good thing you kept this humpey, Joan--a
little nest for the bird to fly home to, eh?'
'Yes, I'm glad, though it seemed a silly piece of sentiment . . . and, as
you say, I always FELT the old bird might want to fly home for a bit
some day. Well, YOU look cool enough, Colin.'
'This is temperate zone for me after the Leura. . . . But it's a hot March
because we haven't had a proper rainy season, and I'll just stand here
and catch the breeze for a minute or two before I sit down.'
He balanced himself on the veranda railing: took off his
broad-brimmed Panama hat and mopped his forehead with a silk
handkerchief. Mrs Gildea surveyed him with interested admiration.
A big man--large-limbed, bony--a typical Scotcher in that--with thin
flanks, a well-set up back and massive shoulders. His face was
browny-red all over except where the skin ran white under the hair and
there was a ruddier ring round the upper part of the throat. His nose was
thin between the eyes, broadening lower, high-bridged and with high
cut nostrils, showing the sensitive red when he was enraged--as not
infrequently happened. He had large honest blue eyes, intensely blue,
of the fiery description with a trick of dropping the lids when he was in
doubt or consideration. They were expressive eyes, as a rule keen and
hard, but they could soften unexpectedly under the influence of
emotion. At other times, according to the quality of the emotion, they

glowed literally like blue flames. He was considered queer-tempered,
rather sulky, and his face often took on a very unyielding expression.
He had thick reddish-yellow eyebrows at the base of a slightly receding
forehead--wanting in benevolence, phrenologists would have said, and
with the bump of self-esteem considerably developed. His hair was
yellow, pure and simple--the color of spun silk, only coarser, and it
would have curled at the ends had he not worn it close-cropped. His
moustache and beard were rather deeper yellow, the beard short,
well-shaped--the cut of Colin McKeith's beard was almost his only
vanity--there was one other, the 'millionare strut' in town--and he had
the masculine habit of stroking and clasping his beard with his large
open-fingered hand--spatulate tips to his digits, the practical
hand--fairly well kept, though brown and hairy.
There were lines in his face and a way of setting his features--that a
man gets when he has to front straight some cruel facts of human
existance--to calculate at a glance the chances of death from a black's
spear, a lost trail, an empty water-bag, the horns of a charging bullock
or even worse things than these.
And such experiences had put a stamp on him, and distinguished him
from the ordinary ruck of men--these and his undeniable manliness, and
good looks.
He smiled as he glanced amusedly from the littered wind-blown papers
on the table to his hostess' rather troubled face.
'Well you seem to have a pretty fair show here of what you call "copy,"'
he said.
Mrs Gildea met his look with one of frank pleasure.
'That's what I want YOU for.'
'What's the job?' he asked. 'You ought to know that literary "copy" is
not much in my line. Now if it had been yarding the fowls or cleaning
up the garden, I'd feel more at home as a lady's help.'
'Colin, you take me back to Bungroopim--when it