The Pioneers
Page 25
CHAPTER XXV
Donald Cameron was made of the stuff that gives confidence andappreciation grudgingly. He was obsessed by the idea that no one coulddo anything as well as he could. He could only satisfy his own recklessdesire to be up and doing by girding at all that was being done for him.If Davey had been less efficient a stop-gap it would have pleased himbetter. He would have liked to see mistakes made which would assure himthat no one but himself could run Ayrmuir as it ought to be run. ButDavey had done very well in his place. He had brought off one bargainwith a smartness that his father vaguely resented, and Davey waschockful of boyish pride over.
There had been chafings and crossings of will, two or three times. MaryCameron trembled when she heard them. Anxious fears fluttered and filledher with foreboding every time her husband's irritability at his chainedhelplessness and crippling pain was directed at Davey. The boy's shortanswers with an underlying contempt in them fanned his father'ssmouldering wrath.
"Davey, dear," she had said once, after there had been high wordsbetween them, "try and be a little more patient with your father. It'shard on him having to sit in a chair like this after the active lifehe's led. He's fretting his heart out to be up and doing things, andseeing them done the way he likes."
"There's no pleasing him, mother," Davey said, shaking her arms fromhim.
She knew he was right, but Davey was almost as sullen and surly as hisfather these days. Donald Cameron kept him going all day. The boy wasdog-weary when he came into the house at nightfall; then there wereentries to make and book-keeping to do, accounts of sales and movementsof stock to render, and nothing but carping and fault-finding for hispains.
At one time, in the evenings he used to take out his books and readintently for hours, sprawling over the table, till the candle flickereddown and his mother said softly: "Won't you go to bed now, dear?"knowing that late hours were never an excuse, in Donald Cameron's eyes,for failing to be out after the cows before the sun was up. But now helay in his chair, his long legs stretched out before him, after he hadgiven his father an account of the day's work, and got from himdirections for the next; and there was a sullen, brooding look on hisface, an expression in his eyes that it hurt her to see.
Davey's face had changed so within the last few months. It was arevelation to her. There was a firmness of line about his chin and upperlip that caused her to glance from him to his father. Little of the boywas left in Davey now, she realised. What there was lay in his eyes andabout his mouth. It was as if the child in him were dying hard.Something had hurt him bitterly, she surmised, and she wondered whetherit was bitter thinking, hard riding, or the life he was leading withstrange, rough men that had brought those creases about his nose, givenhis face its dour manliness.
This man-Davey was a strange to her. Her heart yearned over him, asthough her baby had been snatched from her arms. She wanted to know him,to understand his ways of thinking. But he had a new and strange mannerwith her. His mind was shut. He kissed her in a perfunctory fashion, andwhen she put her arms round him, he stiffened under them. In sympatheticsensitive fashion she knew that he was guarding the kingdom of himselfagainst her. She had some subtle warning that he was afraid of her love,of her tenderness, which, with its fine edge, might prize open the innershell of his being and discover the trouble and tremulous fury ofemotion which lay hidden within.
She was afraid of offending him, afraid of approaching him with heraffection and sympathy, afraid not to respect the reserve that he hadput between them. Yet her anxiety tormenting her, one day she said:
"Tell me what is troubling you, Davey? Tell me. It is breaking my heartto see you like this."
"There's nothing to tell, mother," he replied sharply.
For a long time he had not been coming home till late. The silence ofthe long evenings when she sat and sewed by the fire and Donald Cameronglowered into it, smoking, had been unbroken. Sometimes he had askedwhere Davey was. Then she stilled the tremors in her voice to sayquietly that she thought he was with the Rosses or at Mrs. Hegarty's forthe dancing.