The Pioneers
Page 39
CHAPTER XXXIX
Deirdre watched Davey going out of Narrow Valley in the dim starlight ofthe early spring morning, the mob, hustled by Teddy and the dogs, astream of red and brown and dappled hides before him. The cows liftedtheir heads, bellowing protestingly; their breath steamed before them inthe chill air. The horses and dogs, heeling and wheeling them, and thetrampling hoofs of the herd, beat a wraith-like mist from the cold, andstill sleeping earth.
Davey was to steer by the stars till he came to a point on the road thatwould give him a clear and easy descent to the sale yards on theoutskirts of Melbourne. It was too late in the year to try the usualroute. He was to take a winding track on the edge of the swamp that laybetween the southern hills and Port Phillip. Only the blacks knew thepaths through the brown-feathered reeds and dense ti-tree scrubs. Conalhad tried to cross it once in the summer and got bogged there, losing ascore of fine beasts. If Conal could not find his way across it, theSchoolmaster did not think that Davey could. It was only in case ofuntoward happenings that he advised trusting to the black boy'sknowledge of the tracks through the swamp, and taking to the cover ofthe moss-dark, almost impenetrable, scrub that covered it.
Davey had given his word to the Schoolmaster that if he met Conal hewould give the cattle over to him and return to the hills.
"I'd give everything I've got in the world if you'd never been broughtinto this business," he had said, deeply moved, just before Davey rodeout.
"Father's blaming himself, Davey," Deirdre said.
Davey wrung the Schoolmaster's hand.
"I wouldn't have been in it, if I hadn't broken my word to you," hesaid. "I promised you when I brought up that first mob for Conal, I'dclear out after, didn't I? But Conal offered me the job, and--you bet Iwouldn't 've been out of a moonlighting either, if I could 've helpedit."
"But this business--I never meant you to be in it," Farrel saidbitterly. "I never meant to be in it myself, Davey. Circumstances weretoo strong for me. A drowning man clutches a straw, they say."
Deirdre had ridden to the valley. She had watched the mob go out acrossthe plains, watched until men, cattle, horses and dogs, a moving blur inthe mists, disappeared altogether, and the faint lowing of the beastscame to her no longer.
She waited impatiently for news of Davey, though she knew none couldcome for weeks. There were few travellers on this overland track. Conaland one or two others had used it, with Teddy to guide them if theywanted to take the short cut across the scrubs of the swamp. There werewell-defined northern paths into New South Wales: but it was a long androundabout journey to Port Phillip from the southern ranges.
"Father," Deirdre said impulsively, one morning soon after Davey hadgone. "I'm going to see Mrs. Cameron. I've been thinking she must beanxious about Davey and wanting news of him."
"She'll be glad to see you, no doubt," he said.
"There's one subject you won't speak to her of, though, Deirdre," headded after a moment's hesitation.
She knew what he meant. He did not want Mrs. Cameron to know that hissight was almost gone.
"Yes, I understand," Deirdre said.
Socks, as sensitive to the keen air, the sunshine, the fluty ripplingsand joy-callings of the birds as Deirdre was, rollicked gaily down thetrack to Cameron's. His white stockings flashed as he thudded along; hisunshod hoofs fell with a soft beat on the grassy waysides. Deirdre sangsoftly to herself as they passed under the arching trees. Her thoughtswent drifting away dreamily to the time when Davey would come back andshe would call going to Ayrmuir, "going home."
It was an eager, tremulous greeting that Mrs. Cameron gave her.
"It's you, dearie," she said. "I am glad to see you, indeed! What canyou tell me of Davey? He was to have come home to us and I haven't seenhim for weeks."
There was much to tell and yet much that the girl, in her tendersolicitude for Davey's mother, could not tell. It would terrify her toknow that someone had shot at and nearly killed him, that Davey had anenemy who would go to these lengths. When he was back with her, he mighttell her himself what had kept him away; but it would stretch her soulto the limit of anguish, Deirdre knew, to tell her now.
"Yes, Davey told me he was coming home," Deirdre said, smiling.
Her eyes met Davey's mother's with their secret no secret; but MaryCameron was thinking only of her boy, and in her anxiety, although sherealised that Davey and Deirdre understood each other, she did not askany questions, and Deirdre said nothing, thinking it was for Davey totell his mother.
"I knew you'd be anxious about him," the girl said with a sigh, "andthat's why I came. He's gone overland with some of Maitland's cattle;but he ought to be back in a week now, and then he'll be coming straighthere."
"Ah, dear!" Tears welled in Mrs. Cameron's eyes. "How glad I'll be."
Deirdre went with her into the well-known parlour, and they sat down andtalked together awhile. There was a new and tender understanding betweenthem. Mrs. Cameron talked of her loneliness and the joy Davey'shome-coming would be to her.
"Oh, I have prayed so, Deirdre," she said, "It has nearly broken myheart being without him ... what with the long nights here, and thesorrow that has come upon us...."
That was all she said of the other trouble, yet it had almost brokenher, and had taken all her fortitude and patient wifeliness to endure.An instinct of blind fidelity was part of Mary Cameron.
When Deirdre was going she kissed her. There was lingering affection inthe pressure of her lips.
"My heart goes out to you, dear," she said. "It's almost as if you weremy own child. I love you like that, Deirdre. It was good of you to cometo-day. Now I will get Davey's room ready for him ... and the littleroom you used to sleep in. You'll be coming to stay with us again whenhe comes home, won't you? Oh, I could laugh and cry with happiness tothink the old times will come again."
Deirdre laughed, a little laugh of shy joyousness. She could not tellMrs. Cameron that she would be coming to stay with her altogether soon.
"Davey will be able to get on better with his father now," Mrs. Cameroncontinued, giving expression to her dreams. "He will be able to getDonald to do what he wants, without angering him. His father has lostmany of the ways he had, and you wouldn't believe how he loves the boy,in spite of everything. It's a strange, dour way a man has of lovingsometimes, dear--hard to bear. It's love all the same--not love the waywomen love--that tries to make life easy for the dear one. It's alltenderness and sacrifice a woman's love, Deirdre...."
"Sometimes a man loves that way too," Deirdre said.
She had swung into her saddle and was looking away before her, over themist-wreathed hills. For a moment her eyes lay on Mrs. Cameron's facewith its grey-green eyes, delicate contour, exquisite line of lips,loving and lovable. Her face had lost its youthful freshness, but itsbeauty was unimpaired, so tender its expression, so compelling and purethe light of her eyes, though a lonely soul looked out of them, painedand wondering.
Deirdre pressed her heels into the chestnut: she and the horsedisappeared among the trees.
She talked of Mrs. Cameron to her father.
"It would break your heart to see the change in her," she said.
"But I can't see her any more," he said brusquely.
Deirdre realised the wound that she had opened. She had never quiteforgiven Davey's mother for the fact that Dan had lost his sight on heraccount. Mrs. Cameron never seemed to realise it and that had angeredthe girl. Perhaps Mrs. Cameron did not know what the Schoolmaster haddone for her, Deirdre told herself sometimes. But Davey knew and shecould hardly believe that Mrs. Cameron was ignorant, though she neverseemed to take the Schoolmaster's injury as a personal matter.
Deirdre looked down on his face, dark and sombre now. Scarcely anythingof its old reckless gaiety was left. Lines had been carved on it bybitter thought and brooding on the utter night he was travelling into.
She rubbed her soft cheek against his.
"Tell me," he said, with an effort, "how she looks, Deirdre."
"She looks," the girl said hesitatingly. "She looks--I can't explainhow--as if something that burned inside of her had gone out."
"But she's beautiful--like she used to be," he begged. "She used to havea way of looking at you that I never saw with anybody else--"
His voice was trembling.
"Yes," Deirdre said slowly. "She's beautiful like she used to be, thoughher hair's got grey in it ... and the colour of the pink orchids hasgone out of her skin. And she looks at you that way--I know what youmean--as if she were seeing ... not only the outside you.... It's hereyes ... and the way her lips lie together tell you about her real selfand make you love her--even when you don't want to!"
The Schoolmaster threw himself back in his chair.
Deirdre gazed at him, then she turned away with a little sigh.
His face was almost a mirror to her now that he was blind. She could seehis thoughts in it. It was sacred to her, that thin, lined face, all itsreverence and emotion; but she could not bear to look at it and feelthat she was stealing his secrets when his eyes could not guard themfrom her.
She went to the seat under the window and sat there thinking, idly,aimlessly, for awhile. Recollections of Mrs. Cameron were always thoseof a woman occupied with her home, her husband and son. Deirdre wonderedhow her father came to be in Mrs. Cameron's debt, as he had said he was,how it was he owed her anything at all. She seemed to owe him so much.
The cows had gathered up to the fence near the bails for the milking.They were lowing quietly, the sunshine making a luminous mist behindthem; the birds were laughing and hooting among the trees.
Deirdre rose to go and do the milking, but Steve burst open the doorfrom the tap-room.
A moment before there had been a clatter of hoofs on the shingle. Stevestood on the threshold, the muscles of his face twitching.
"It's Pete M'Coll from the Wirree," he gasped. "He says--they've gotDavey at Port Phillip for duffing!"