The Pioneers

by Katharine Susannah Prichard

  CHAPTER VII

  In ten years, Cameron's had become the biggest clearing in the hills, asit was the oldest. Many others had been made and were scatteredthroughout the lower ranges overlooking the Wirree plains, though atgreat distances apart; ten, twelve and sometimes twenty miles lyingbetween neighbouring homesteads.

  The hut that had been Donald and Mary Cameron's first home had beenbroadened by the addition of several extra rooms. Floors had been putdown and a wide verandah spread out from them. Every room had a windowwith four small glass panes. The window-sills, verandah posts and doorshad been painted green, and the whole of the house whitewashed. Its barkroof had given place to a covering of plum-coloured slates; there waseven a coin or two of grey and golden lichen on them, and the autumn andspring rains drummed merrily on the iron roof of the verandah. Creepersclimbed around the stone chimney and the verandah; clematis showeredstarry white blossom over the roof and about the verandah post.

  A little garden, marked-off from the long green fields of spring wheatby a fence of sharp-toothed palings, was filled with brightflowers--English marigolds, scarlet geraniums, pink, yellow and bluelarkspurs--and all manner of sweet-smelling herbs--sage, mint, marjoramand lemon thyme. The narrow, beaten paths that ran from the verandah tothe gate and round the house were bordered with rosemary. And in thesummer a long line of hollyhocks, pink, white and red, and red andwhite, waved, tall and straight, at one side of the house. The edge ofthe forest had been distanced so far on every side of the clearing,except one, that the trunks of the trees showed in dim outlines againstit, the misty, drifting leafage swaying over and across them. Only onthe side on which the track climbed uphill from the road, the treesstill pressed against the paddock railings. A long white gate in thefence where the road stopped bore the name Donald Cameron had given hisplace--"Ayrmuir." It was the name of the estate he had worked on inScotland when he was a lad. It gave him no end of satisfaction torealise that he was the master of "Ayrmuir," and that his acres werebroader than those of the "Ayrmuir" in the old country; not onlybroader, but his to do what he liked with--his property, unencumbered bymortgage or entail.

  On the cleared hillsides about the house, crops of wheat, barley and ryehad been sown. An orchard climbed the slope on the left. Behind the oldbarn and the stables were a row of haystacks. The cowsheds and milkingyards were a little further away. Round the haystacks and about the barna score of the buff and buttermilk-coloured progeny of Mother Bunch, afew speckled chickens, black and white pullets, and miscellaneous breedsof red-feathered, and long-legged, yellow fowls, scratched and peckedindustriously.

  Donald Cameron farmed his land in the careful fashion of the LowlandScots. There was perhaps here and there a crooked line in his fields anda rick awry behind the barns. But all was neatness and order, from thebeehives which stood with their pointed straw bonnets beneath the appletrees, to the cowsheds, where newly-cut bracken was laid down every dayor two for the cows to stand in when they were milked. There was nofilth or squelching morass in his cow-yards. The pigs wandered over thehills rooting under the tender grass. Scarcely a straw was allowed tostray between the back of the house and barns. In the feed-room, theharness-room, in every shed and yard, the meticulous precision andpassion for order which characterised all that Donald Cameron did, wasmaintained.

  There were changes indoors as well as out. A long straight kitchen, witha bricked floor and small window looking out on to the yard, had beenadded to the original home. On the east side, two rooms had been built,and a small limewashed shed behind the kitchen served for a dairy. Init, on broad low shelves against the wall, the rows of milk pans, withmilk setting in them, were ranged; a small window in the back wallframed a square of blue sky. When Mrs. Cameron was making butter, thesound of the milk in the churn, the rumble and splash of the curdedcream, could be heard in the yard. The sweet smell of the new butter andbuttermilk hung about the kitchen door.

  Ten years of indefatigable energy, of clearing land, breaking soil,raising crops and rearing cattle, doing battle with the wilderness,overcoming all the hardships and odds that a pioneer has to struggleagainst, had left their mark on Donald Cameron. Every line in his facewas ploughed deep.

  His expression, gloomy and taciturn as of old, masked an internalconcentration, the bending of all faculties to the one end that occupiedhim. Always a man of few words, as the farm grew and its operationsincreased, he became more and more silent, talking only when it wasnecessary and seldom for the sake of companionship or mere socialintercourse. His mind was always busy with the movements of cattle,branding, mustering, breeding, buying and selling prices, possibilitiesof the market. He worked insatiably.

  He was reminded of the flight of time only by the growth of his son--agawky, long-limbed boy.

  As soon as he could walk Davey had taken his share in the work of thehomestead, rounding up cows in the early morning, feeding fowls, huntingfor eggs in the ripening crops, scaring birds from the ploughed landwhen seed was in, and cutting ferns for the cowsheds and stables. Hisfather was little more than a dour taskmaster to the boy. Davey had nomemory of hearing him sing the gathering song of the Clan of Donald theBlack.

  His mother had taught him to read and count as she sat with her spinningwheel in the little garden in front of the house, or stitching by thefire indoors on winter evenings. Davey had to sit near her and spell outthe words slowly from the Bible or the only other book she had, a shabbylittle red history. Sometimes when he was tired of reading, or the clickand purr of her wheel set her mind wandering, she told him stories ofthe country over the sea where she was born. Davey knew that the songshe sang sometimes when she was spinning was a song a fairy had taught aWelshwoman long ago so that her spinning would go well and quickly. Shetold him stories of the tylwyth teg--the little brown Welsh fairies.There was one he was never tired of hearing.

  "Tell me about the farmer's boy who married the fairy, mother," he wouldsay eagerly.

  And she would tell him the story she had heard when she was a child.

  "Once upon a time," she would say, "ever so long ago, there was afarmer's boy who minded his father's sheep on a wild, lonely mountainside. Not a mountain side like any we see in this country, Davey dear,but bare and dark, with great rocks on it. And one day, when he was allalone up there, he saw a girl looking at him from round a rock. Her hairwas so dark that it seemed part of the rock, and her face was like oneof the little flowers that grow on the mountain side. But he knew thatit was not a flower's face, because there were eyes in it, bright, darkeyes--and a mouth on it ... a little, red mouth with tiny, white teethbehind it. They played on the mountain together for a long time andsometimes she helped him to drive his sheep. After a while they got sofond of each other that the boy asked her to go home with him to hisfather's house, and he told his father that he wanted to marry her.

  "That night a lot of little men, riding on grey horses, came down fromthe mountain on a path of moonlight and clattered into the farmyard ofthe farmer of Ystrad. The smallest and fattest of the men, in a red coat... they all wore red coats, and rode grey horses. Did I say that theyall rode grey horses, Davey?"

  "Yes, mother," Davey breathed.

  She had this irritating little way of going back a word or two on herstory if a thread caught on her wheel.

  "Well--" she began again, and, as likely as not, her mind taken up withthe tangled thread, would add: "Where was I, Davey?"

  And Davey, all impatience for her to go on with the story, though hecould have almost told it himself, would say: "And the smallest andfattest of the men, in a red coat--"

  "Oh, yes!" Mary started again: "Strode into the kitchen and pinched thefarmer's ear, and said that he was Penelop's father ... the girl's namewas Penelop ... and that he would let her marry the farmer's son, andgive her a dowry of health, wealth and happiness, on condition thatnobody ever touched her with a piece of iron. If anybody put a piece ofiron on her. Penelop's father said, she would fly back to the mountainand her own people, and never more
sit by her husband's hearth and churnor spin for him. So the farmer's boy married Penelop and very happilythey lived together. Everything on the farm prospered because of thefairy wife, though she wore a red petticoat and was like any other womanto look at, only more beautiful, and always busy and merry. She madefine soup and cheese, and her spinning was always good, and everybodywas very fond of her. Then one day when her husband wanted to go to afair, she ran into the fields to help him to catch his pony. And whilehe was throwing the bridle, the iron struck her arm--and that minute shevanished into the air before his eyes."

  She paused for Davey's exclamation of wonderment; and then continued:

  "Though he wandered all over the mountain calling her, Penelop nevercame back to her husband or the two little children she had left withhim. But one very cold night in the winter, he wakened out of his sleepto hear her saying outside in the wind and rain:

  "Lest my son should find it cold, Place on him his father's coat. Lest the fair one find it cold, Place on her my petticoat."

  Mary sang the words to a quaint little air of her own making, whileDavey listened, big-eyed and awe-stricken.

  "When the children grew up they had dark hair and bright, sparkling eyeslike their mother," she would conclude, smiling at him. "And when theyhad children they were like them, too, so that people who came from thevalley where the farmer's boy had married the fairy were always known bytheir looks, and they were called Pellings, or the children of Penelop,because it was said they had fairy blood in their veins."

  Davey had always a thousand questions to ask. He liked to brood over thestory; but he learnt more than fairy tales from his mother's memories ofthe old land. Her mind was beginning to be occupied with thoughts of hisfuture. She and her husband were simple folk. Cameron could barely readand write, and what little knowledge Mary possessed she had alreadypassed on to Davey. She knew what Donald Cameron's ambitions were, andafter ten years of life with him had little doubt as to theirachievement. The position that it would put Davey in had begun to be amatter of concern to her.

  She was turning over in her mind her plans for his getting a goodeducation, as she sat spinning beside the fireplace in the kitchen oneevening, when her husband said suddenly:

  "I wish to goodness you'd put that clacking thing away--have done withit now!"

  "My wheel?" she asked, mild surprise in her eyes.

  "Aye," he said impatiently. He was sitting in his chair on the otherside of the hearth. "Don't you realise, woman, it's not the thing forMrs. Cameron of Ayrmuir to be doing. Don't you realise y're a person ofimportance now. The lady of the countryside, if it comes to that, andfor you to sit there, tapping and clacking that thing, is as good astelling everybody y' were a wench had to twist up wool for a living afew years ago."

  She stared at him. He shifted his seat uneasily.

  "I've been thinking," he continued, "it's no good having made the nameand the money unless we live up to it. You must get a girl to help y'with the work of the house, and we'll not sit in here any more in theevening, but in the front room, and have our meals there."

  "But the new carpet that's laid down ... and the new furniture, Donald,"she exclaimed.

  "They're not there to be looked at, are they?" he asked. "Last springsales they were calling me 'Laird of Ayrmuir.' I cleared near on athousand pounds.

  "I'm not wanting to be flash and throw away money," he added hastily."But that's to show you, we can, and are going to live, something theway they did at Ayrmuir in the old country."

  She rose and lifted the spinning wheel from its place by the fire. Itwas like putting an old and tried friend from her. But when she sat downon her chair opposite Donald Cameron again there was a new steady lightin her eyes.

  "You'll be a rich man indeed, Donald, if you go on as you are doing,"she said.

  "Aye." He gazed before him, smoking thoughtfully.

  "And your son will be a rich man after you?"

  "Aye."

  "Well, you must have him properly educated for the position he is goingto have." She came steadily to her point. "All your money won't be anyuse to him, it will only make him ashamed to go where the money couldtake him unless he has got the education to hold his own."

  Her eyes drew his from their contemplation of the fireplace and thefalling embers.

  "You've the book learning, why can't you give it to him?" he said.

  "I have given him as much as I can," she sighed, "but it's littleenough. I'm not such a fine scholar as you think, Donald. There arethings in those books that you brought from the Port--in the sale lotwith the arm-chair and the fire-irons--that I cannot make head nor tailof, though the fore-bits I've read say that: 'A knowledge of thecontents is essential to a liberal education.'"

  She pronounced the words slowly and carefully; Donald Cameron frowned.He did not exactly know what she was driving at, but those words soundedimportant.

  "I've been thinking," Mary went on quickly, "there's a good many peopleabout here now, and they ought to be getting their children educatedtoo. There's the Morrisons, Mackays, Rosses and O'Brians. And there's achild at the new shanty on the top of the track, Mrs. Ross was tellingme, last time she was here. Between the lot of us we ought to be able toput up a school and get a teacher. A barn on the road would do for aschool. In other parts of the country the people are getting up schools.The newspaper you brought from Port Southern last sales said that. Whyshould not we?"

  "And where will you get y'r teacher," Cameron asked grimly.

  Her colour rose.

  "I know what you mean," she said. "The only sort of men who could andwould think it worth while giving school to children are the convictsand ticket-of-leave men; but there are decent men among them. They seemto be doing very well in other places. I see that mothers are going tothe school-room and sitting there, doing their sewing, so that they canbe sure the children are learning no harm with their lessons. We couldnot do that every day here, but now and then one of us mothers could goto see that the school was going on well. Anyway, the children must betaught and we've got to make the best bargain we can."

  "I'll think of what you say," her husband replied.

  "You'll be going to the Clearwater River to-morrow, and be away a day ortwo, won't you?" she asked. "I might take the cart and Lass and go andsee what Mrs. Ross and Martha Morrison and Mrs. Mackay think of gettinga school."

  "If people about are willing," Donald Cameron said, brooding over hispipe, "it'd be a good thing for all of us--a school. The difficulty Ican see will be the teacher. Can we get one? There's high wages forstockmen and drovers. But maybe there'll be just some stranded youngfool glad of the job and the chance of makin' a little money withoutsoiling his hands. You could pick them up by the score in Melbourne, buthere--"

  He shook his head.

  "You might ask a few questions in the Port when you're there, if thereis any likely young man," she said.

  "Aye, I might," he replied. There was an amused gleam in his eyes as helooked up at her. "You seem to have thought a good deal on this matterbefore using y're tongue."

  "Is it not a good way?" she asked, the smile in her eyes, too.

  "Aye," he admitted grudgingly, "a very good way. And you do not mean thegrass to grow under y're feet, Mary?"

  "No, indeed!"

  She put her work-basket away, took the lighted candle from the table andwent to her room. The loose star of the candle flickered a moment in thegloom and then was extinguished. But Donald Cameron, left alone beforethe fire, realised that the subject of Davey's schooling had beendisposed of.