Joan saw that McKeith was extremely anxious to know more about the writer of that letter and the progress of that love-affair, though he had given his word of honour that he would not try to find out her identity. But he put subtle questions to Joan about her friends in England and her acquaintance with the higher circles of society in London. Once, he asked her straight out whether she had heard again from her typewriting correspondent, and if the Soldier of Fortune had proved himself a Bounder, as they had suspected?
'Yes,' Joan answered unguardedly. 'I'm thankful to say that he is married to his heiress.'
The eager light which suddenly shone in McKeith's eyes startled Mrs Gildea.
'You don't mean to say that you're thinking of her like that?' she exclaimed. 'It's no use, Colin.'
'Probably not,' he answered composedly. 'Tell me, how does she take it?'
'Deadly seriously. She's practising Deep-breathing and Concentration to try and drive the man from her thoughts.'
'What! Oh, you mean Theosophy and that kind of thing. I went to hear Mrs Annie Besant lecture once, and I couldn't make head or tail of it.'
'No. You wouldn't. But it was a German Professor who taught B—— No. I will NOT tell you her name.'
'Anyway, I know that it begins with a "B." And I know that she's got one relation called Molly, and another called Chris, and a friend whose name is Rosamond—likewise that Rosamond is the wife of Luke.... By Jove!' He stopped short and looked at Mrs Gildea with sharp enlightenment.
They were in the veranda of her cottage, and he was seated on the steps smoking, his long legs stretched out against one veranda post, his broad back against another. 'Seen the paper this morning?' he asked.
'No. If you pass the CHRONICLE Office, I wish you'd lodge a complaint for me against the vagaries of their distribution department. Twice lately I haven't had the paper till the afternoon.'
He pulled it from his pocket, and, leaning across, handed it to her.
'Read the English Telegrams,' he said.
Joan stopped cleaning her typewriter and examined the column of latest intelligence.
'Good gracious! So they've appointed Sir Luke Tallant new Governor of Leichardt's Land!'
'Luke!—A coincidence you'll say. No good telling me that. SHE wrote that "Luke" was hankering after a colonial governorship.'
'Well, he's got it,' replied Mrs Gildea noncommittally.
'And if you read the leading article you'll see that the CHRONICLE is justly outraged at so important a post as that of Governor of Leichardt's Land being given to an unknown man who has never served outside the Colonial Office in London and who doesn't even belong to the noble army of Peers.'
'That's all nonsense. Luke Tallant's a friend of Chamberlain's, a thorough Imperialist and a very good man for the post.'
'You know him then?'
'I know OF him.'
'From HER?'
'HER! Has it come to HER! Colin, if anyone had told me that you would ever be fool enough to fall in love with a woman you've never seen, I should have laughed outright. You don't even know what she's like.'
'I can see her in my mind's eye, as I used to see the women I read about by my camp fire. You'd never believe either what a queer idealistic chap I can be when I'm mooning about the Bush. Don't you know, Joan'—and his voice got suddenly grave and deep-toned—'you ought to, for you were a bush girl and you've had men-kind out in the Back Blocks—Don't you know that when a man has got to go on day after day, week after week, year after year, fighting devils of loneliness and worse—with nothing to look at except miles and miles of stark staring gum trees and black, smelling GIDGEE* and dead-finish scrub—and never the glimpse of a woman—not counting black gins—to remind him he once had a mother and might have a wife. Well, can't you see that his only chance of not growing into a rotten HATTER* is to start picturing in his imagination all the beautiful things he's ever seen or read about—the sort of lady-wife he hopes to have some day and in making such a companion of her that she seems to him as real as the stars and far more real than the gum trees. So as he'll keep saying to her always in his thoughts: "I'll keep myself sound and wholesome for your sake. I'll never forget that I'm a gentleman, so as YOU won't shrink away from me in horror if ever I've the luck to come across YOU down here on this Earth."'
[*Gidgee—Colloquial pronunciation of gidia, an Australian tree.]
[*Hatter—A white man who prefers the society of blacks.]
He stopped, fitted another cigarette from the copper case into the holder and, before beginning upon it, said without looking at Mrs Gildea:
'I wouldn't spout like that to anybody but you, Joan. My word! Though I see by your writing that you've a fair notion of how this cursed, grim, glorious old Bush can play the deuce with a chap—body and brain and soul—if he doesn't wear the right kind of talisman to safeguard himself.'
'Yes—I understand. And your talisman, Colin? What was your picture of the lady-wife? Describe your Ideal and I'll tell you if SHE is the least bit like it.'
McKeith smoked ruminatively for a few moments, his eyes narrowed. The lines in his forehead and round his mouth showed plainly. He was gazing out into space, far beyond the sun-flecked Leichardt River and the Botanical Gardens, and the glaring city and the range of distant hills on the horizon.
'Well,' he said at last, slowly, 'you can laugh at me if you like, but I'll tell you how I see HER. She is tall—got a presence, so that if SHE'S there, you'd know it and everybody else would know it, no matter how many other women there might be in the place. Most big men take to their opposites. Now, though I'm a big man I've never fancied a snippet of a girl. Five foot seven of height is my measure of a woman, and a good ten stone in the saddle—What are you laughing at, Joan? I'm out there, I suppose?'
Mrs Gildea controlled her muscles.
'No, no, not in the least. In fact, your description fits the Ideal Wife perfectly. Go on, Colin. Five foot seven and a good ten stone. How is the rest of HER? Fair or dark—her hair now—and her eyes?'
'Her hair—oh, it isn't fair—not yellow or noticeable in colour—like those dyed beauties you see about. Her hair is dark, soft and cloudy looking. And she's got a small head set like—like a lily on its stem—and her hair is parted in the middle and coiled smoothly each side and into a sort of Greek knot....'
'In short, she's a cross between the Venus of Milo and the Madonna.'
Mrs Gildea was smiling amusedly.
'Perhaps.... Something of that sort. Dignity and sweetness, you know—those are what I admire in a woman. But not too much of the goddess or of the angel either. I shouldn't want always to have to load up with a pedestal when we shifted camp, and the only shrine I'd keep going for her would be in my heart. It's a Mate I'm wanting, as well as an Ideal.... Now you're laughing again.'
'No, I'm not. I agree with you entirely—and so would SHE.'
'There! You needn't tell me. I shouldn't wonder if I'd got the second sight where SHE'S concerned.'
Again Mrs Gildea smiled enigmatically.
'I shouldn't wonder, Colin. But you haven't finished your personal description. What about the colour of her eyes?'
'Now I don't believe I could say exactly the colour of her eyes any more than of her hair. They're the kind, to me, that have no colour. Soft and melting and sort of mysterious—Deep and clear and with a light far down in them like starlight reflected in a still lagoon.... I say, Joan, you remember the old Eight Mile Water-hole on Dingo Flat—middle of the patch of flooded gum and she-oak—that the Blacks used to say had no bottom to it? HER eyes seemed to me a bit like that