A Bride from the Bush by E. W. Hornung Read Free Book Online Page B

necessitate a hasty change of subject. When Australia was rigorously tabooed the Bride was safe, and stupid; when it was not, she might be bright and animated and amusing—but you could never tell what she would say next—the conversation was full of perils and pitfalls.
    The particular conversations that revealed the thinness of the ice in this quarter were trivial in the extreme. In them it was mere touch-and-go with the dangerous subject, nothing more: nothing more because Gladys was quick to perceive that the subject was unpopular. So she became rather silent in the long evenings at the dinner-table and in the drawing-room; for it was her only subject, this one that they did not seem to like. To strangers, however, who were glad to get up a conversation with one of the prettiest women they had ever met in their lives, this seemed the likeliest topic in the world; they could not know that Australia was dangerous ground. The first of them who ventured upon it did not soon forget the experience; it was probably always a more amusing reminiscence to him than to Gladys’s new relatives, who heard all that passed, and grinned and bore it.
    The stranger in question was by way of being illustrious. He was a Midland magnate, and his name, Travers, was a good one; but, what was for the moment much more to the point, he was a very newly elected Member of the House of Commons; in fact, ‘the new boy’ there. He came down to dinner at Twickenham flushed with the agreeable heat of successful battle. Only the week beforehe had snatched his native borough from the spreading fire of Democracy, and won one of the very closest and most keenly contested by-elections of that year. Naturally enough, being a friend of some standing, he talked freely of his electioneering experiences, and with a victor’s rightful relish. His manner, it must be owned, was a trifle ponderous; according to Granville, he was an inflated bore. But Mr Travers, M.P., was sufficiently well listened to (Lady Bligh was such a wonderful listener); and he fought his good fight over and over again with such untiring energy, and depicted it from so many commanding points of view, that, even when it came to tea in the drawing-room, the subject was still unfinished. At all events, it then for the first time became lively; for it was then that Mr Travers turned to young Mrs Bligh (also for the first time), and honoured her with an observation:—
    â€˜No doubt you order these things better in Australia; eh?’
    â€˜What things?’ asked the Bride, with some eagerness; for of Australia she had been thinking, but not of Mr Travers or his election.
    â€˜Why,’ said the Member, with dignity, ‘your elections. I was speaking of the difficulty of getting some of the lower orders to the poll; you have almost to drive them there. What I say is, that very probably, in Australia, you manage these things on a superior system.’
    â€˜We do,’ said the Bride laconically.
    The new Member looked astonished; he had expected a more modest answer.
    â€˜Indeed!’ he said stiffly, and addressed himself to his tea-cup.
    â€˜For,’ explained the Bride, exhibiting dangerous symptoms, ‘we do drive ’em to the poll out there, and make no bones about it either!’
    â€˜Indeed?’ said Mr Travers again; but this time there was some curiosity in his tone. ‘This is interesting. I always thought Australia was such a superlatively free country!’
    The Bride scented a sarcasm.
    â€˜So it is,’ she cried warmly, beginning to speak at a perilous pace, and with her worst twang; ‘my word it is! But you don’t understand me. It’s like this: we do drive ’em to the poll, up the Bush; I’ve driven ’em lots o’ times myself. They’re camped out—the voters, like—all over the runs, for all the hands have a vote; and to get ’em to the police-barracks (the poll, d’ye