In ten years, Cameron's had become the biggest clearing in the hills, as it was the oldest. Many others had been made and were scattered throughout the lower ranges overlooking the Wirree plains, though at great distances apart; ten, twelve and sometimes twenty miles lying between neighbouring homesteads.
The hut that had been Donald and Mary Cameron's first home had been broadened by the addition of several extra rooms. Floors had been put down and a wide verandah spread out from them. Every room had a window with four small glass panes. The window-sills, verandah posts and doors had been painted green, and the whole of the house whitewashed. Its bark roof had given place to a covering of plum-coloured slates; there was even a coin or two of grey and golden lichen on them, and the autumn and spring rains drummed merrily on the iron roof of the verandah. Creepers climbed around the stone chimney and the verandah; clematis showered starry white blossom over the roof and about the verandah post.
A little garden, marked-off from the long green fields of spring wheat by a fence of sharp-toothed palings, was filled with bright flowers—English marigolds, scarlet geraniums, pink, yellow and blue larkspurs—and all manner of sweet-smelling herbs—sage, mint, marjoram and lemon thyme. The narrow, beaten paths that ran from the verandah to the gate and round the house were bordered with rosemary. And in the summer a long line of hollyhocks, pink, white and red, and red and white, waved, tall and straight, at one side of the house. The edge of the forest had been distanced so far on every side of the clearing, except one, that the trunks of the trees showed in dim outlines against it, the misty, drifting leafage swaying over and across them. Only on the side on which the track climbed uphill from the road, the trees still pressed against the paddock railings. A long white gate in the fence where the road stopped bore the name Donald Cameron had given his place—"Ayrmuir." It was the name of the estate he had worked on in Scotland when he was a lad. It gave him no end of satisfaction to realise that he was the master of "Ayrmuir," and that his acres were broader than those of the "Ayrmuir" in the old country; not only broader, but his to do what he liked with—his property, unencumbered by mortgage or entail.
On the cleared hillsides about the house, crops of wheat, barley and rye had been sown. An orchard climbed the slope on the left. Behind the old barn and the stables were a row of haystacks. The cowsheds and milking yards were a little further away. Round the haystacks and about the barn a score of the buff and buttermilk-coloured progeny of Mother Bunch, a few speckled chickens, black and white pullets, and miscellaneous breeds of red-feathered, and long-legged, yellow fowls, scratched and pecked industriously.
Donald Cameron farmed his land in the careful fashion of the Lowland Scots. There was perhaps here and there a crooked line in his fields and a rick awry behind the barns. But all was neatness and order, from the beehives which stood with their pointed straw bonnets beneath the apple trees, to the cowsheds, where newly-cut bracken was laid down every day or two for the cows to stand in when they were milked. There was no filth or squelching morass in his cow-yards. The pigs wandered over the hills rooting under the tender grass. Scarcely a straw was allowed to stray between the back of the house and barns. In the feed-room, the harness-room, in every shed and yard, the meticulous precision and passion for order which characterised all that Donald Cameron did, was maintained.
There were changes indoors as well as out. A long straight kitchen, with a bricked floor and small window looking out on to the yard, had been added 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. In it, on broad low shelves against the wall, the rows of milk pans, with milk setting in them, were ranged; a small window in the back wall framed a square of blue sky. When Mrs. Cameron was making butter, the sound of the milk in the churn, the rumble and splash of the curded cream, could be heard in the yard. The sweet smell of the new butter and buttermilk 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 struggle against, had left their mark on Donald Cameron. Every line in his face was ploughed deep.
His expression, gloomy and taciturn as of old, masked an internal concentration, the bending of all faculties to the one end that occupied him. Always a man of few words, as the farm grew and its operations increased, he became more and more silent, talking only when it was necessary and seldom for the sake of companionship or mere social intercourse. His mind was always busy with the movements of cattle, branding, mustering, breeding, buying and selling prices, possibilities of the market. He worked insatiably.
He was reminded of the flight of time only by the growth of his son—a gawky, long-limbed boy.
As soon as he could walk Davey had taken his share in the work of the homestead, rounding up cows in the early morning, feeding fowls, hunting for eggs in the ripening crops, scaring birds from the ploughed land when seed was in, and cutting ferns for the cowsheds and stables. His father was little more than a dour taskmaster to the boy. Davey had no memory of hearing him sing the gathering song of the Clan of Donald the Black.
His mother had taught him to read and count as she sat with her spinning wheel in the little garden in front of the house, or stitching by the fire indoors on winter evenings. Davey had to sit near her and spell out the words slowly from the Bible or the only other book she had, a shabby little red history. Sometimes when he was tired of reading, or the click and purr of her wheel set her mind wandering, she told him stories of the country over the sea where she was born. Davey knew that the song she sang sometimes when she was spinning was a song a fairy had taught a Welshwoman long ago so that her spinning would go well and quickly. She told 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 would say 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 a farmer's boy who minded his father's sheep on a wild, lonely mountain side. 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 all alone up there, he saw a girl looking at him from round a rock. Her hair was so dark that it seemed part of the rock, and her face was like one of the little flowers that grow on the mountain side. But he knew that it was not a flower's face, because there were eyes in it, bright, dark eyes—and a mouth on it ... a little, red mouth with tiny, white teeth behind it. They played on the mountain together for a long time and sometimes she helped him to drive his sheep. After a while they got so fond of each other that the boy asked her to go home with him to his father'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 from the mountain on a path of moonlight and clattered into the farmyard of the 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 they all rode grey horses, Davey?"
"Yes, mother," Davey breathed.
She had this irritating little way of going back a word or two on her story if a thread caught on her wheel.
"Well—" she began again, and, as likely as not, her mind taken up with the tangled thread, would add: "Where was I, Davey?"
And Davey, all impatience for her to go on with the story, though he could have almost told it himself, would say: "And the smallest and fattest of the men, in a red coat—"
"Oh, yes!" Mary started again: "Strode into the kitchen and pinched the farmer's ear, and said that he was Penelop's father ... the girl's name was Penelop ... and that he would let her marry the farmer's son, and give her a dowry of health, wealth and happiness, on condition that nobody ever touched her with a piece of iron. If anybody put a piece of iron on her. Penelop's father said, she would fly back to the mountain and her own people, and never more sit by her husband's hearth and churn or spin for him. So the farmer's boy married Penelop and very happily they lived together. Everything on the farm prospered because of the fairy wife, though she wore a red petticoat and was like any other woman to look at, only more beautiful, and always busy and merry. She made fine soup and cheese, and her spinning was always good, and everybody was very fond of her. Then one day when her husband wanted to go to a fair, she ran into the fields to help him to catch his pony. And while he was throwing the bridle, the iron struck her arm—and that minute she vanished 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 never came back to her husband or the two little children she had left with him. But one very cold night in the winter, he wakened out of his sleep to 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, while Davey listened, big-eyed and awe-stricken.
"When the children grew up they had dark hair and bright, sparkling eyes like their mother," she would conclude, smiling at him. "And when they had children they were like them, too, so that people who came from the valley where the farmer's boy had married the fairy were always known by their 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 the story; but he learnt more than fairy tales from his mother's memories of the old land. Her mind was beginning to be occupied with thoughts of his future. She and her husband were simple folk. Cameron could barely read and write, and what little knowledge Mary possessed she had already passed on to Davey. She knew what Donald Cameron's ambitions were, and after ten years of life with him had little doubt as to their achievement. The position that it would put Davey in had begun to be a matter of concern to her.
She was turning over in her mind her plans for his getting a good education, as she sat spinning beside the fireplace in the kitchen one evening, when her husband said suddenly:
"I wish to goodness you'd put that clacking thing away—have done with it now!"
"My wheel?" she asked, mild surprise in her eyes.
"Aye," he said impatiently. He was sitting in his chair on the other side of the hearth. "Don't you realise, woman, it's not the thing for Mrs. Cameron of Ayrmuir to be doing. Don't you realise y're a person of importance now. The lady of the countryside, if it comes to that, and for you to sit there, tapping and clacking that thing, is as good as telling everybody y' were a wench had to twist up wool for a living a few years ago."
She stared at him. He shifted his seat uneasily.
"I've been thinking," he continued, "it's no good having made the name and 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 the evening, 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 spring sales they were calling me 'Laird of Ayrmuir.' I cleared near on a thousand 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 the way they did at Ayrmuir in the old country."
She rose and lifted the spinning wheel from its place by the fire. It was like putting an old and tried friend from her. But when she sat down on her chair opposite Donald Cameron again there was a new steady light in 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 going to have." She came steadily to her point. "All your money won't be any use to him, it will only make him ashamed to go where the money could take him unless he has got the education to hold his own."
Her eyes drew his from their contemplation of the fireplace and the falling 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 little enough. I'm not such a fine scholar as you think, Donald. There are things in those books that you brought from the Port—in the sale lot with the arm-chair and the fire-irons—that I cannot make head nor tail of, though the fore-bits I've read say that: 'A knowledge of the contents 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 sounded important.
"I've been thinking," Mary went on quickly, "there's a good many people about here now, and they ought to be getting their children educated too. There's the Morrisons, Mackays, Rosses and O'Brians. And there's a child at the new shanty on the top of the track, Mrs. Ross was telling me, last time she was here. Between the lot of us we ought to be able to put up a school and get a teacher. A barn on the road would do for a school. In other parts of the country the people are getting up schools. The newspaper you brought from Port Southern last sales said that. Why should 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 and would think it worth while giving school to children are the convicts and ticket-of-leave men; but there are decent men among them. They seem to be doing very well in other places. I see that mothers are going to the school-room and sitting there, doing their sewing, so that they can be sure the children are learning no harm with their lessons. We could not do that every day here, but now and then one of us mothers could go to see that the school was going on well. Anyway, the children must be taught 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 or two, won't you?" she asked. "I might take the cart and Lass and go and see what Mrs. Ross and Martha Morrison and Mrs. Mackay think of getting a school."
"If people about are willing," Donald Cameron said, brooding over his pipe, "it'd be a good thing for all of us—a school. The difficulty I can see will be the teacher. Can we get one? There's high wages for stockmen and drovers. But maybe there'll be just some stranded young fool glad of the job and the chance of makin' a little money without soiling his hands. You could pick them up by the score in Melbourne, but here—"
He shook his head.
"You might ask a few questions in the Port when you're there, if there is any likely young man," she said.
"Aye, I might," he replied. There was an amused gleam in his eyes as he looked up at her. "You seem to have thought a good deal on this matter before 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 the grass to grow under y're feet, Mary?"
"No, indeed!"
She put her work-basket away, took the lighted candle from the table and went to her room. The loose star of the candle flickered a moment in the gloom and then was extinguished. But Donald Cameron, left alone before the fire, realised that the subject of Davey's schooling had been disposed of.
It took Mrs. Cameron some time to make her round of visits. But she was very pleased with the result of them. On the afternoon of the third day, she drove in a high spring-cart, up the steep hillside, on the top of which a shanty had been built only a few months before.
It was a stopping place for stockmen and travellers on the overland track, the only one between the scattered settlements on the other side of the ranges and the Wirree River. From the head of the ranges it looked down on the falling slopes of lesser hillsides and on the wide sweep of the inland plains. It was not more than five or six miles from Ayrmuir, but she had made it the last place to visit, thinking that she might not have time to get to it before her husband was due to return from the Clearwater. She had settled in her own mind to make a separate journey some afternoon if she could not include it in this one. But her plans had gone well and briskly.
All the women she had seen thought the school a good idea and were anxious to have it; the men had promised to help in the building, and to pay the share that she had mentioned as likely to be asked of them for the Schoolmaster's services.
Davey had enjoyed the first part of the excursion as much as she had. He had romped and run wild with boys and girls on the homesteads they had been to. It was only when they were leaving Ross's that morning he had been disturbed. After his mother and Mrs. Ross had kissed good-bye, Mrs. Cameron had shaken hands with Ted and Mick Ross and kissed little Jessie, and he had shaken hands with Mrs. Ross and grinned at the boys, Mrs. Ross exclaimed:
"Why Davey hasn't said good-bye to Jess!"
She had lifted the child up to his face. Jess's soft skin against his and her wet baby mouth overwhelmed him with confusion. He brushed his coat sleeve across his cheek.
"Oh Davey!" his mother laughed.
Mrs. Ross laughed too, and Ted and Mick giggled hilariously.
Davey had climbed into the cart and taken his seat by his mother, angry and offended. He had no idea why they were laughing at him; and he sat stolid and sullen, brooding over it all the morning.
When they came to the ramshackle house of grey palings, with a roof of corrugated iron, on the top of the hill, two or three dogs flew out, barking furiously. A bullock-wagon was drawn up on the side of the road, and a lean stock horse, hitched to a post, stood twitching his tail to keep the flies away. Half a dozen scraggy fowls scratched and pecked about the water-butt.
A bare-legged little girl with wind-tossed dark hair ran out and stood staring at them. She had a little white, freckled face, and eyes as shy and bright as a startled wild creature.
Mrs. Cameron got down from the cart, leaving Davey in it holding the reins.
"Good-day," she said to the child. "I want to see Mr. Stevens."
The child stared at her.
Then a man came to the dark doorway of the house, a lean, lithe man, with bearded chin and quick restless eyes.
She went towards him and explained in a few eager words why she had come.
"Will you come in and take a seat, ma'am," he asked, his voice vibrating strangely.
She went into the house; its very shadow exhaled a stale smell of crude spirits and tobacco.
"You'd better give Lass a drink, Davey," she called. "I'll be back presently."
The room she stepped into was kept with an attempt at orderliness. It was bare and cleanly. The dull afternoon sunshine garnished its bare walls, the rough chairs and the bunks against the wall. The man had followed her into the room and now faced her. There was a suspension of the breath in his nostrils as this quiet, grey-clad woman lifted her eyes to his.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes.
People passed and repassed the room, feet dragged, curious glances strayed into it.
"If you recognise us—give us away—the game's up," he muttered.
"I understand," Mrs. Cameron said.
"Steve made some money on the fields," he said. "He bought this place and Deirdre and I came with him to see him settled. Deirdre—the child you saw outside—belongs to me."
"It's about her I came," Mrs. Cameron explained hurriedly, glad to leave the ground of troubled memory.
She described the scheme for getting a school in the district, building a room somewhere on the roadside, at a point where it could be reached by children of the scattered clearings.
"Who's to be the teacher?" he asked.
Sitting on a low form, he leaned across the table and gazed at her.
Through the open window she could see Davey sitting up very stiff and straight in the spring-cart. He had taken his red history book from his pocket and was pretending to read. The child whom the man before her had called Deirdre was standing staring at him. A smile flitted across Mrs. Cameron's face. She thought that Davey had not forgiven her sex for the discomfiture it had put upon him that morning, and was determined to have nothing to do with little girls.
"That's our difficulty, the teacher," she said. "The only persons who have the education, who are able to be teachers, are—"
"Transports—convicts," he interrupted harshly. "Beg your pardon, ma'am"—his voice dropped contritely as he continued—"You were saying the only persons in the colony who could be school teachers are persons of evil character who could not be depended on not to corrupt the children. What are you going to do then?"
"We thought if we could get a young man with the education, who seemed reformed, we would give him a chance," she said. "For a while the mothers would go to the school and sit there during some of the lesson-times to see—"
"That the children did not learn more than their reading, writing and arithmetic."
"Yes," she smiled. "Do you think you would be willing to let your little girl come to the school if we can get a teacher?"
He flung off his seat and strode restlessly up and down the room.
"She's a wild cat. She wouldn't go unless—"
He threw back his head looking at her, a blithe defiance creeping into his eyes and voice.
"Unless you made me the teacher," he said. "What would you say if I applied for the post?"
"You!"
Her eyes were wide with amazement.
"Oh I thought so!" he laughed. "But your reformed young man would have something of a past too, you know, and it might not be as clean even as mine. It's a pity you won't consider me as a likely person. I've got what you call the 'education.'"
"Have you?" she asked eagerly. "The grammar, geography, all the—the learning that is—'essential to a liberal education'?"
"All that, and letters after my name for it," he said, bitterly. "But I'm an Irishman ... I called myself a patriot—and any stick is good enough to beat a dog with. I don't know exactly what they called my offence—'inciting to revolt,' or 'using seditious language,' perhaps; but I have earned my sentence since I got here. It was that I was doing all the time in New South Wales and the Island—'inciting to revolt' and 'using seditious language' ... but the fire's gone out of me now. I want a quiet life."
In his eyes she read a passionate impatience and weariness.
"If you were willing that I should be the Schoolmaster, the other people would be likely to have me, perhaps," he continued. "They would not know what you know, and I can play the part of the broken-down fool who has lost every penny he had on the fields."
"It does not rest with me, naming the Schoolmaster, of course," she said, a little troubled. "But if the others are willing to have you I shall be glad."
She had a native grace that took for granted in others her own sincerity and purity of motive.
"I am grateful, Mrs. Cameron," he said.
She smiled to think that he knew her name.
"You are—"
"Daniel Farrel," he said.
When they went out of doors Lass was standing deserted, with her nose over the water-butt. There was no sight or sound of Davey or Deirdre. Her father called; and presently she came racing round the corner of the house, hair flying, and eyes bright with mischief and laughter.
Davey followed at a breakneck pace. His collar was twisted and a jagged three-cornered tear showed in his grey trousers. The girl flew to her father. Davey came to a standstill sheepishly, a few yards from his mother.
"What have you been doing, Deirdre?" Farrel asked.
"Showing him the ring-tail 'possum's nest in the tree at the back of the cow-yard," she said eagerly. "He couldn't climb because his trousers were too tight, and I raced him up the hill."
"She's a wild thing—has never had anybody but me to look after her," he said to Mrs. Cameron, the black head under his hand.
"Her mother's dead?" Mrs. Cameron asked gently.
"Yes," he said.
Davey and Mrs. Cameron drove away. Davey craned his neck, looking back along the road several times, and the last time he looked Deirdre was standing alone, an elfish figure outlined against the sunset.
"Shecanrun, mother!" he cried, his eyes alight. "She can run and climb quicker than anybody I ever saw. P'raps—I believe she's a Pelling, mother! She's got the bright eyes and black hair."
"Maybe"—Mary Cameron said, smiling at his eagerness and belief in the old story, "maybe there's fairy blood in her veins."
It was not long before a barn-like building of slatted shingles appeared in a clearing off the road, two or three miles below Steve's. It stood on log foundations, as if on account of its importance, and had a door at one end of its road-facing wall instead of in the middle, as ordinary houses had, and two windows with small square panes of glass stared out on the road.
Drovers and teamsters on the roads, as they passed, halted-up to listen to the children singing, and went on their way with oaths of admiration, throats and eyes aching sometimes at the memories and vivid pictures the sound brought them.
Behind the school was the bark-thatched hut which had been run up for the Schoolmaster to live in. Donald Cameron had given the plot of land for the school and he had promised to sell the Schoolmaster a few acres beside it, if he wanted to make use of his spare time to clear the land, put in a crop, or make a garden. Mr Farrel soon intimated that he did, and came to terms with Donald Cameron.
At first no more than a dozen children went to school. Some walked, others came tumbling into the clearing, two or three a-back of a stolid, jog-trotting, old horse, others arrived packed together in a spring-cart. At the back of the clearing was a fenced paddock into which the horses were turned during school hours.
They were a merry company of young warrigals, these children of the hills, when they poured out of the school doorway, played in the clearing at midday, munching their crusty lunches, or chased in the horses, as a preliminary to scrambling on to them and racing each other helter-skelter down the bush tracks, spreading and straggling in every direction to their homes.
The Schoolmaster governed them all with an easy familiarity. He had an eager, boyish way of talking when he explained a peculiarity of spelling, or grammar, or a story from history—a light reckless humour that made Mrs. Cameron, if she were sitting by the window, sewing, look up uneasily, her serene face disturbed, her eyes mildly reproving. But the children laughed and loved the flippancies. They scratched and scraped the better for being on good terms with the Schoolmaster, although Mrs. Cameron was afraid that they had not a proper respect for him and that he was not dignified enough with them.
She was not the only woman who sat on the seat by the window. Sometimes Mrs. Ross or Mrs. Morrison took a turn there and knitted or stitched as they watched to see that the Schoolmaster's behaviour was all that might be expected. They knew nothing of Mr. Farrel's history or antecedents. As far as they were concerned he was a broken-down Irishman who had come to make his fortune on the goldfields and lost any money he had. That was his story; and that he wanted to live a quiet life for awhile, away from the temptations and risks of the scramble for gold. His manner and air were decorous enough to make them believe it; and after the first few visits of inspection they were satisfied not to make any more. Only Mary Cameron was concerned as to the nature of some of the seeds he was sowing in the minds of the young generation. She had heard him describing the state of Ireland under His Most Gracious Majesty George III. to the older boys and girls, and on another occasion had heard him telling them that the exports of Great Britain were cotton and woollen goods, coal and iron, and convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.
"Did you have good lessons to-day, Davey," she asked one evening when her son was poring over his books.
"Not half as good as yesterday, when you were there, mother," he said.
"Why, how was that?" she asked.
"Oh, Mr. Farrel says more things to make us laugh when you're there," he said, going on with his writing, painstakingly. "He made me do sums all this morning, and I'd never have got them right if Deirdre hadn't helped me. He lets her sit next me, now."
When school was out, a day or two later, Mrs. Cameron rose from her seat by the window. She tied her bonnet strings.
The Schoolmaster hummed the tune the children had been singing before they clattered out for the day; it was an old English folk song that he had taught them. As he put away his books and pencils, his eyes wandered towards Mrs. Cameron once or twice. Her back was to him; she was looking out of the window.
He strode over to her. He knew she was displeased. His eyes had the guilty look of awaiting reproof, the glad light of the miscreant who knows that he has done wrong but has enjoyed doing it. He had not admitted to himself even that his reason for talking to make the children laugh and pointing a story from history with a radical or cynical moral, was that her anxiety about the instruction they were getting might not be quite lulled. He did not want her to give up coming to the school and cease to occupy the seat by the window occasionally.
But there was something in her face this afternoon that he had not seen there before.
"It was a pity to talk to the children the way you did to-day," she said simply.
"Facts, Mrs. Cameron!" he cried gaily. "The facts of life presented in an interesting form are far more important to boys and girls than a knowledge of—let us say—geography."
"It was geography, among other things, we asked you to teach them," she replied.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am."
His pride was cut to the quick; he bowed, awkwardly.
"I shan't be coming to the school any more, Mr. Farrel," she said after a few moments. There was an odd mixture of dignity and humility in her bearing.
"We're all grateful to you for what you have done in teaching the children. I knew from the first that you were to be trusted—that no harm would come of your schooling—and Davey has told me that it is only when I am here that you talk as you have done to-day. You know I've been coming for my own learning and not to see that you taught properly. I came often because I wanted to learn, and keep up with Davey ... so that I could help him by-and-by, perhaps."
There was an unmistakable break in her voice.
"It was not very kind ... to laugh at me."
She took the wild flowers from the jar of water on her table by the window, as she always did, and went to the door.
It had been very pleasant for her to sit on the bench under the window, hearing the children sing old country songs, and listening to the Schoolmaster telling them of other parts of the world, of rules of speech and calculation, of the nature of the earth, the heavens, the stars and the sea, of kingdoms, strange peoples, and their histories and occupations. The sunlight had come through the open window; and a breeze, bearing the honey fragrance of the white-gum blossoms fleecing the trees on the edge of the clearing, had fanned her face. She was so sorry to be giving up those days in the school-room that a mist of tears stood in her eyes as she glanced about it. She had felt an innocent, almost childish pleasure in them, and in learning with the children.
"Mrs. Cameron—"
The Schoolmaster sprang after her. The trouble in his face surprised her.
"Don't say that I—that I—that you think I could—"
He was not able to say "laugh at you." But she had gone.
He dropped into her chair by the window and threw his arms across the table.
The school had been working for over three years when Mrs. Cameron and the Schoolmaster came to an agreement by which Davey was to have extra lessons after school hours—to learn something of foreign languages, and of the higher mathematics, not to speak of other odds and ends of knowledge that Mr. Farrel might consider part of that "liberal education" she was so anxious he should acquire—and Deirdre was to stay with Mrs. Cameron for a while, and learn to cook and sew, and, generally, to practise woman's ways about a house.
It was bareback on Lass, that Davey and Deirdre came jogging along the road from school for the first time.
Mrs. Cameron heard their shrill, joyous voices long before they emerged from the cover of the trees; then she watched them climbing the track across the rise, straddling the old horse's fat sides, Deirdre with her arms round Davey's waist, the red handkerchief containing her wardrobe in his left hand, fast in Lass's matted mane. He gave the old mare a flick, now and again, with a stripped branch he had in his right hand, though it made no more impression than a fly alighting on her thick hair. She kept on at her steady, jogging pace until they were against the yard gate.
Mrs. Cameron laughed when she saw them.
She kissed Deirdre and took the red bundle from Davey's hand.
"Father says," Deirdre said, a quaint air of sedateness settling down on her, "that he's 'shamed to send me without stockings or a wedding garment, Mrs. Cameron. But if you will get what is necessary for me next time you go to the Port he will be—what was it, Davey?"
"Extremely obliged," Davey replied carefully. "Mr. Farrel says that he's bought her shoes and stockings over and over again, mother, but she won't wear them."
"There's two shoes in the 'possum's nest by our house, and a pair of boots in the creek," Deirdre admitted with a sidelong look at him.
While Davey took Lass to the paddock on the top of the hill, Deirdre went indoors with Mrs. Cameron. She had never been away from her father before. At first she had been surprised at the suggestion of going anywhere without him, but he had told her that she was going to learn to be like Mrs. Cameron—a good housewife—so that she could look after him and their home as well as a grown woman; and she was delighted at the idea. Jogging up the hills behind Davey, she had not realised that she was to spend the night away from "Dan," as he was to her in all her tense moments.
It was only when she went into the tiny, box-like, paper-covered room with two little white beds in it that she began to understand this. She gazed at the room, she had never seen anything like it, with its white covers, little cupboard with a mirror on it, and papered walls spread with red and brown flowers.
"You must wash your face and hands, and feet, Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron said, "and then I'll bring you a pair of Davey's shoes and stockings to wear until I can get others for you."
She unknotted the red handkerchief. The two or three little garments of coarse calico it contained had been washed and rough-dried. Mary turned them over critically.
"Dan washed them himself," Deirdre said, sullenly sensing the criticism. "He put them under his bed and slept on them so that they would look nice this morning. He sewed up the holes, too. And he said 'O God!' when he folded them up and put them in the handkerchief."
Mrs. Cameron stared at the clothes, her heart sore for the Schoolmaster and his attempt to send the child to her with all her little belongings neatly mended and in order.
There was silence a moment. Then Deirdre started away from her.
"I don't want to stay here!" she cried.
"Deirdre!" Mrs. Cameron was amazed at the change that had come over the sunny, little face.
"I want Dan! I want to go home," Deirdre cried passionately. "I don't want to stay here. I don't want to be like you! I want—want Dan."
She brushed past Mrs. Cameron and ran out of the house. Mrs. Cameron went after her, calling her, but Deirdre, a light, flying figure, ran on, sobbing; the trees swallowed her.
"Where's the child?" Davey asked, with the easy superiority of his extra years, when he came down from the stables and found his mother standing at the gate, looking down the track Deirdre and he had just come by.
"She's gone, Davey," Mrs. Cameron cried distressfully.
"Gone—where?"
"Home!"
"She went down the track?" he asked.
Mrs. Cameron nodded, tears of disappointment in her eyes. She had been looking forward to having a little girl to teach and look after as though she were her own.
Davey set off at a run.
It was nearly an hour later that he returned, a kicking, struggling, scratching, little creature in his arms. He released his hold of her as he entered the kitchen, threw her from him, and slammed the door behind him.
"There, scratch cat!" he cried fiercely. "Next time you try to run away remember what the Schoolmaster said: 'If you love me, Deirdre, you'll be good to Mrs. Cameron and do what she wants you to!'"
Deirdre had dropped to the floor and was crying, wildly, furiously.
Davey stared at her.
"If you don't stop that howling and yelling at once, I'll ride over and tell him how you're behaving," he said. "And then what'll he say?"
Deirdre's sobbing subsided.
There was a heavy step outside. Donald Cameron opened the kitchen door.
"What's this?" he asked, looking down on the huddled heap on the floor that was Deirdre. He glanced questioningly from his wife to Davey.
"It's the Schoolmaster's little girl!" Mrs. Cameron explained. "She's never been away from him before, and—"
"Well, we can't have this noise in the place," he said irritably.
Deirdre had looked up at the sound of that harsh voice. The sight of Davey's father quelled her.
"Take her away and see that she gets ready for tea, Davey," Mrs. Cameron said anxiously.
Although Deirdre made no more noise, she sat shivering and quivering all the evening, her eyes vacant of all but an inexpressible misery, her thin little body shaken by long, gasping breaths. Mrs. Cameron tried to comfort and console her, talking to her gently and lovingly as she put her to bed, but the child's mind was adamant.
"I want Dan! I want Dan!" she sobbed.
And in the morning when Mrs. Cameron went into her room, the window was open and the little white bed empty.
At school next morning Jessie Ross ran up to Davey, her fair plaits flying.
"I'm to go home with you after school, Davey Cameron," she cried eagerly. "My mother wants your mother to give her the recipe for making cough-mixture out of gum leaves."
"All right," said Davey.
It was a very dismal morning in the school-room. The Schoolmaster's face was dark with displeasure, and it was a very sullen, drooping Deirdre who took her seat beside Davey.
"After school I'm going to drive over to see your mother, Davey," Mr. Farrel said. "I must ask her pardon for what happened last night. I am grieved and ashamed beyond measure that Deirdre—"
His look of reproach went into Deirdre's heart. With a wailing cry she burst into tears again.
Davey, after his first glance at her, kept his eyes on his book; he tried not to see her, or hear her sobbing beside him. His heart was hot against Mr. Farrel. For, after all, it was because she loved the Schoolmaster so much and could not bear to be separated from him that Deirdre was crying like this, he told himself. It was hard that Mr. Farrel should be angry with her as well as everybody else when she had made everybody angry with her on his account.
But the sight of Deirdre's grief was more than the Schoolmaster could bear either. He lifted her out of her seat and carried her off to the far end of the room. He sat there with her on his knee talking to her for awhile. Once Davey glanced in their direction; but he looked away quickly. He had seen tears on the Schoolmaster's lean, swarthy cheeks and Deirdre's face lifted to his with a penitent radiance, and tear-wet eyes, shining. The joy of being folded into his love again had banished the desolation and bleak misery from her face.
When school was out, Jess clambered into the spring-cart Davey had come to school in that day, and perched herself on the high seat.
The Schoolmaster and Deirdre followed them along the road a little later.
Lass went without any flicking with a switch, or mirthful goading of hard young heels that afternoon. Davey brooded over the tragedy of Deirdre's having to become domesticated, and of her love for her father that made it unendurable for her to be away from him even for a night. Since he had forgiven her and they had come to an understanding, she had eyes for nobody else. Her eyes had followed him all the afternoon, still swimming with tears, an adoring light in them. Davey's young male instinct was piqued. He had had no existence for her; yet he had always been her play-mate, and felt for her more than anybody else—even the Schoolmaster, he was sure.
Jess jolted up and down contentedly on the seat beside him. The ends of her little fair pig-tails flipped his arm. She chatted gaily.
"I like you better than any of the other boys at school, Davey," she said with innocent candour. "I think you're the nicest boy, and I'll marry you when I grow up. Mother says you kissed me once when I was quite a little girl. And boys only kiss girls who are their sweethearts, don't they, Davey?"
"No. I don't know," Davey muttered.
Jessie Ross was a fair, tidy-looking little girl, with home-made stockings and black boots on her dangling feet. Her round little face never freckled, nor got sunburnt, though she only wore a hat or bonnet in the summer time. Her skin was prettily coloured and her grey-blue eyes smiled up at him easily.
It pleased Davey to think that she thought he was "the nicest boy." He smiled sheepishly. It was good to think that somebody liked him. He looked round to see how far behind the Schoolmaster and Deirdre were. They were not very far. He saw Deirdre leaning happily against her father, although in her hand—Davey's eyes lighted—was the red bundle.
He clucked and whistled to Lass.
"Gee-up! Gee-up, old Lazybones!" he called cheerily.
Jess chirruped after him:
"Gee-up! Gee-up, old Lazybones!"
"You don't like Deirdre better than me, do you, Davey?" she asked.
"No," said Davey in his newly-won good humour and sore at Deirdre's indifference to his attempts to attract her attention all day.
"The Schoolmaster means she's to stay with us anyway," he thought.
Jess sighed.
"Then if you like me, you can kiss me again, Davey," she said.
"Eh?"
Davey looked scared.
"Well, then, I'll kiss you," Jess said gaily and forth with did.
Davey felt himself grow hot and red.
Jess laughed delightedly.
"Oh you look so funny, Davey!" she cried. "Mick doesn't look like that when I kiss him."
Jess was only a kid, Davey told himself, and because she had brothers and kissed them, thought she could kiss other boys. Yet her gay little peck at his cheek had not displeased him. He wondered whether Deirdre and the Schoolmaster had seen it.
Davey got out of the cart to swing open the long gate. He left it open for the Schoolmaster. Mrs. Cameron came into the yard.
Jess jumped out of the cart and ran to her.
"Mother says, Mrs. Cameron dear," she cried, "would you please give her the recipe for making cough-mixture with gum leaves. And she sends her love and hopes you are well—as she is—and our black cow has a calf, and I found thirteen eggs in a nest in the creek paddock, and Mick killed a snake, five-foot long, under the verandah on Sunday."
Mrs. Cameron smiled and kissed her. Jess snuggled affectionately against her.
"The Schoolmaster's bringing Deirdre," Davey said.
Mrs. Cameron's eyes flew along the track to the other cart that was coming slowly up the hillside.
Davey took charge of the Schoolmaster's horse. Mrs. Cameron and he and the children went indoors.
"I've come to apologise, Mrs. Cameron, for Deirdre's rudeness last night," the Schoolmaster said gravely. "It was very good of you to say that you would teach her what I so much want her to know. I hope that you will forgive her and—"
His voice trembled.
"Deirdre, you've got something to say to Mrs. Cameron yourself, haven't you?"
"I'm sorry!" Deirdre cried, with a dry, breathless gasp.
Her face had whitened; the misery had come into her eyes again. They went appealingly to the Schoolmaster and back to Mrs. Cameron's face.
"Will you—forgive me and teach me to cook and sew and be a good housewife," she sobbed, as if she were repeating a lesson.
"Poor child!"
Mrs. Cameron's compassionate gaze turned from Deirdre to the Schoolmaster.
"Do you really think you ought to?" she asked.
"So help me God, ma'am," he said, struggling with his emotion. "This is the only chance I've got of making a decent woman of her—your influence—if you will use it. I don't want her to be a hoyden always. She must be gentled and tamed, and if you will be as good as to help me—"
He stopped abruptly.
"You will forgive me. Good-day," he said, and went out of the room.
Deirdre made a quick, passionate gesture after him. She did not call him, but a sob broke as she stood staring after him. She ran into the garden to watch the cart with him in it go down the hillside and slip out of sight among the trees; then she threw herself on the grass and sobbed broken-heartedly.
Davey moved to go out to her.
"Leave her alone," his mother said gently, "it's best to let her get over it by herself, Davey."
Jess flew backwards and forwards helping to set the table. She delighted in making herself useful.
"Oh, Mrs. Cameron, what a funny salt-cellar," she cried. "We've got two blue ones and a big new lamp mother got at the Port!"
Mrs. Cameron looked from the tear-stained, grief-torn face of the Schoolmaster's little daughter to the plump, rosy-cheeked, happily-smiling child of her nearest and most prosperous neighbour, and sighed. When the tea was made, she and the children sat round the table for their meal.
Donald Cameron was away and not expected home for a day or two.
Deirdre tried to eat when she was told to, but her lips quivered. She choked over the mouthfuls of food she swallowed. Mrs. Cameron put her arms round her; but Deirdre stiffened against their gentle pressure. She would not be comforted. Davey stared at her miserably.
Only Jess chattered on artlessly, taking no notice of her, eating all her bread and butter, and drinking her milk and water, saying her grace and asking to be excused from the table when she had finished her meal—as though she were demonstrating generally how a nice, well-mannered child ought to behave. She had the other bed in the room in which Deirdre had been put to sleep the night before.
Mrs. Cameron kissed them both good-night.
Jess responded eagerly to her caress. She threw her arms round Mrs. Cameron's neck and rubbed her soft little face against hers, purring affectionately.
"I do love you, Mrs. Cameron, dear," she whispered. "Good-night."
Deirdre submitted to the good-night kiss; she did not respond to it. Of Davey she took no notice when she went to the little room she and Jess were to sleep in. Jess held up her face for him to kiss as Mrs. Cameron had done, but he turned away brusquely, as if he did not see it, and she ran off crying gaily:
"Good-night, Davey Jones,And sweet sleep rest your bones."
Jess undressed methodically. As she took off each garment she folded it and laid it neatly on the chair beside her bed. When she had on her little night-gown of unbleached calico, she brushed her hair and plaited it again so that it hung in two braids on either side of her face. Then she knelt down by her bedside, folded her hands together, and prayed aloud.
She got into bed and looked at Deirdre across the patchwork quilt, conscious of having performed her whole duty for the day.
"Aren't you sorry you're such a bad, naughty, wicked, little girl?" she asked.
Deirdre's sobs were her only answer.
"God doesn't love you, and I don't, and Mrs. Cameron and Davey don't love you either. Nobody loves bad, wicked, naughty little girls," Jess said solemnly.
She put her head on the pillow and was sleeping, sweetly, peacefully, in a few minutes.
Deirdre crept to the open window. She gazed out of it at the dark heave of the forest that cut her off from the being she loved and the hut in the clearing behind the school. The blue night sky that spread over her was spread over the hut in the clearing and the school too, she knew. They were not many miles away, the hut, the clearing, and the school. From gazing steadily before her and realising that fact, she glanced from the window to the ground. It was such a little distance.
Davey, going to bed in a loft in the barn saw her standing at the window, and watched her, a troubled pain at her suffering gripping his heart.
When she dropped from the window into the garden he was beside her in an instant. He caught her sobbing breath as he touched her.
"You're not going home, Deirdre?" he asked.
"Yes!" she panted, her eyes wide and dark with anguish. "I can't bear it, Davey. I can't breathe."
"He'll be angry," Davey said.
"Yes." She cried and sobbed quietly for a moment. "But I'd rather he'd be angry than send me away from him."
"It'll be morning soon. If you walked you wouldn't be home any earlier than if you waited for us to go to school," Davey said, with rare subtlety. "The Schoolmaster won't be angry if you wait till then, Deirdre, and—" A brilliant inspiration came to him. "I'll bring Lass in an hour earlier and we can start then."
"True, Davey?"
Her eyes questioned him tragically.
"True as death!" he said, and struck his breast three times.
She turned to go back to the bedroom.
"I'm sorry—that sorry, Deirdre," he cried, fumbling for words, and unable to express his sympathy.
She did not turn or look back at him as she clambered in the window; but her face in the morning showed that she understood his championship. She turned to him eagerly when she saw him at breakfast, a subdued gratitude in her eyes. Davey thought that she had at last recognised in him a friend to whom she could turn when everybody's hand was against her.
For months Davey and Deirdre went together along the winding tracks, from the school to Cameron's and from Cameron's to school, sometimes in the spring-cart, but more often on Lass's broad back.
Deirdre had to hang on to Davey when the old horse took it into her head to step out jauntily, but for the most part they rode her lightly enough, Davey with one hand on her mane and Deirdre swinging behind him.
Sometimes Davey dug his heels into her fat sides and put her at a trot that set them bumping up and down like peas in a box, and laughing till the hills echoed. And sometimes in the middle of the fun they found themselves shot on the roadside, as Lass shied and propped, pretending to be startled by a wallaby or a dead tree. These comfortable, middle-aged shies and proppings were regarded as her little joke, her way of indicating that she did not like being dug in the sides. They shrieked with laughter as she stood blinking at them, her white-lashed eyes, on which a chalky whiteness was growing, bland and innocent.
"As if she were so surprised—and hadn't done it all of a purpose," they explained to each other.
Deirdre quickly outgrew the dresses that Mrs. Cameron had first made for her. The Schoolmaster thought that Davey was growing too. Although Lass was up to the weight of the two, and they ran beside her up the hillsides as often as not, and rode her only one at a time as they grew older, with keen eyes for a fair thing where a horse was concerned, the Schoolmaster bought a little wilding of a white-stockinged chestnut for Deirdre to ride. A stockman had traded the colt for a bottle of rum when his mare foaled at Steve's. She was a fine animal with a strain of Arab in her, and when the Schoolmaster had mouthed and gentled White Socks, as Deirdre christened the colt, she straddled him bareback and Davey had his old Lass to himself.
There was nothing for him to do but watch Deirdre as she went off down the track clinging lightly to the little horse whose legs spread out like the wings of a bird. Davey's heart sickened with envy every time Deirdre dashed past him. He urged Lass to the limit of her heavy, clompering gait; but even then she did not keep the chestnut in sight, and all but broke a blood vessel in the attempt. When Davey came up to her, Deirdre was invariably twisted round, waiting for him, brilliant-eyed, a wind-whipped colour in her cheeks, and her hair flying about her.
"You'll break your neck some day, riding like that," he told her, sombrely.
But he was eating his heart out at not having a horse to put against hers, at not being able to send flying the pebbles on the hill tracks as she did. He had asked his father over and over again for a horse of his own, but Donald Cameron would not give him one.
"No, my lad," he said shrewdly. "I'm not going to have you racing horses of mine on these roads with the Schoolmaster's girl—breaking their knees and windin' them. I haven't money to throw away, if the Schoolmaster has. By and by, when you're working with me, you'll have a good steady-going stock horse of y're own—maybe."
Davey's school days were numbered, Mrs. Cameron knew. He was shooting up into a long, straggling youth. His father was talking of breaking him into the work of the place, and Davey was beginning to be restive at school, wanting to do man's work and get a horse of his own.
Deirdre learnt womanly ways about a house quickly enough when she had made up her mind to. Although since the new order of things at Ayrmuir, Mrs. Cameron had Jenny, a big, raw-boned, brown-eyed girl from the Wirree, to help her, and the family had meals in the parlour, and sat on the best shiny, black horse-hair furniture every day, Deirdre made beds, dusted and swept with Mrs. Cameron. She fed the fowls and learnt to cook and sew. Davey had seen her churning, sleeves rolled up from her long, thin arms; he had watched her and his mother working-up shapeless masses of butter in the cool dark of the dairy. When they washed clothes in tubs on the hillside, he carried buckets of water for them and had helped to hang the clean, heavy, wet things on lines between the trees; or to spread them on the grass to sun-bleach. Mrs. Cameron had taught Deirdre to knit, and when her husband was not at home had even taken her spinning wheel from under its covers, set it up in the garden and showed her how to use it. She had sat quite a long time at it, spinning, and delighting in its old friendly purr and clatter.
At such times she would sing softly to herself, Davey and Deirdre crouched on the grass beside her, and, when they begged for them, she would tell some of the fairy tales they loved to hear.
Mrs. Cameron scarcely ever saw the Schoolmaster, and it was rarely then that she spoke to him. Sometimes she discovered him in the background of a gathering of hill folk who met in the school-room on Sundays for hymns, prayers and a reading of the Scriptures, and sometimes she heard him singing in the distance as he rode along the hill roads. Deirdre had sensed a reserve in Mrs. Cameron's manner and attitude towards her father, and could not forgive her for it, though she had a shy, half-grateful affection for her.
Davey was not sure that he liked the Deirdre who had learnt to brush her hair and wear woman's clothes as well as the old Deirdre. There was something more subdued about her; her laughter was rarer, though it had still the catch and ripple of a wild bird's song. She was not quite tamed, however, for all that she did, deftly and quickly though it was done, had a certain wild grace.
It was one evening when she was knitting—making a pair of socks for the Schoolmaster—and muttering to herself; "Knit one, slip one, knit one, two together, slip one," that he realised Deirdre was going a woman's way and that he had to go a man's.
"It'll be moonlight early to-night, and there'll be dozens of 'possums in the white gums near the creek, Deirdre," he said, coming to her eagerly.
The proposition of a 'possum hunt had always been irresistible. Deirdre had loved to crouch in the bushes with him on moonlight nights and watch the little creatures at play on the high branches of trees near the edge of the clearing. They had flung knobby pieces of wood at them, or catapulted them, and were rejoiced beyond measure when a shot told, there was a startled scream among the 'possums and a little grey body tumbled from a bough in the moonlight to the dark earth.
But this night Deirdre shook her head, and went on with her murmuring of: "Knit one, slip one, knit one, two together, slip one."
"No, I can't go 'possuming to-night, Davey," she said. "I want to finish turning this heel."