Deirdre knew that McNab would not come near Steve's while the dead body of Conal lay there. In the morning, she saddled the chestnut and rode into Wirreeford.
"It was you shot Conal and I'm going to let all the countryside know it," she said, facing McNab in the reeking parlour of the Black Bull.
"And who do y' think will believe you?" McNab sidled up to her, his eyes kindling.
"Everybody who knows you."
"And they'll say to you: 'How do y' know?' 'What proof have you got, Deirdre?' Nobody'll want to go agen Thad McNab lest they're sure—and nobody'll want to be gettin' up and givin' evidence against McNab lest they're sure they're comin' out on the right side of the business."
"Proof? there's proof enough!"
Deirdre's voice rang clear, though her heart was beginning to quail. She knew that what he said was true. She had come with the idea of using Conal's death as a weapon against McNab; but it had suddenly become empty and useless in her hands.
"Now look here, my dear, it's no use bein' nasty," McNab said. "You know and I know, there's no man in the Wirree would go against me 'less he was pretty sure of getting somebody stronger than himself to back him. Well, is he going to get anybody? That's the question."
Deirdre thought of M'Laughlin, sodden with drink, and as much McNab's creature as any other man in the Wirree.
McNab chuckled, though there was a nervous edge to his voice.
"There's Sergeant M'Laughlin, of course, he's police officer for the district. You can tell him your story if you like. But he's a hard-headed man, M'Laughlin. He'll want proofs. And then don't forget I've still the trump card up me sleeve."
Her immobility maddened him.
"See here, Deirdre," he said, shaking with rage, "I've been patient with you till now, and I'm not a patient man. Y' may not 've liked the ways of my love-makin', but they're my ways. Either you take my terms or you leave them. And if you send any more jackanapes to me y'll find them served as was Conal.
"Maybe y're waitin' and hopin' young Davey'll come overland," he rasped on, "to—to help you. Don't let him get in my way again, Deirdre. Don't let him. If he gets in my way, he'll have to get out of it."
"Or you will have to get out of his way!"
Deirdre's eyes flashed into his. She saw the mean cunning soul in them. She knew that it would be Davey who would get out, that there was no fighting McNab. Davey would die as Conal had died, of a shot in the dark, or a death-dealing stab in the back.
McNab realised that she had measured his chances against Davey Cameron, Davey's chances against him, in that moment, for all her proud look.
"There's a boat just in the Port—takin' on some cattle—brought news from Melbourne," he said. "Davey's acquitted. So is the Schoolmaster. Jury didn't find there was evidence enough to convict. They'll be coming along by theAlbatross. She's due in a couple of days. Johnson, Cameron's man, brought word. If you don't marry me—if y're not Mrs. McNab before that boat gets in—it can take y'r father and Steve along with it. It goes right on to Hobart Town after calling here."
Deirdre stumbled out of the room. McNab did not follow her. He knew that she would not fight any more.
He watched her swing into her saddle and ride out along the flat, dun-coloured road to the hills. Mrs. Mary Ann, driving a string of snow-white geese along the green ledges of the wayside, called to her, but Deirdre fled on, past the cottage that the Schoolmaster and she had lived in, past the out-croppings of gorse beginning to bud goldenly on the edge of the plains.
And McNab chuckled softly, rubbing his hands together.
TheAlbatrosswas in.
Just before midday, carts and carry-alls had clattered along the road to the Port. Deirdre, riding down from the hills at dawn, had seen the schooner on the dim shining screen of sea and sky. There was no wind, and like a great white bird she hovered outside the bar, waiting for the wind and tide to carry her into the quiet waters of the inlet.
It was not until midday that a breeze sprang up, sending white, curled breakers high over the bar, and theAlbatrosson the crest of them came sailing into the harbour. She rode, furling her sails, to the log-wood wharf on its further side. A crowd had gathered to meet her, and it was early afternoon before the vehicles began to rattle back along the road to the hills and Wirreeford. Deirdre stood at the window of McNab's parlour, behind the curtains that had been hung up in her honour, watching them.
She saw none of the curious looks and gestures that went her way, the pitiful glances that covered her. For the news of the Port that morning beat any the boat had brought. Those who saw the dim white face of the girl at the window, and her shadowy eyes, knew that she was Thad McNab's wife. They knew that McNab had driven Deirdre Farrel into the Port before any of them were astir and that a clergyman had married them in the church there.
"Why did she do it? What could have made her," they asked each other.
"It wasn't for love of his beautiful face, be sure," snarled Salt Watson.
"It's hard on the Schoolmaster. He'll not know of it yet," somebody else said.
Deirdre neither heard nor saw them. She was watching for Davey and Dan to pass. She had seen Mrs. Ross and Jessie go by to the Port in Cameron's double-seated buggy. She thought they would ride together to the hills in that, Davey and her father.
If they knew, they would stop at the Black Bull; if no one had told them they would go on, she had decided. They would wonder why she was not on the wharf when the boat got in, to meet them. But McNab would not have that. He would not lose sight of her. Besides she did not want to meet the eyes of the men and women who would be there, and hear what they had to say.
She was cut off from the world as she stood at the window of McNab's house. Her mind was too utterly weary to reason further. As she watched and waited a sense of bleak desolation closed in on her. Her eyes ached for sight of the Schoolmaster's form against the clear sky, although she knew she would hardly see it above the buggy and among other people.
She asked herself what he would do when he found that she was not waiting for him at Steve's—what he would think when he found the letter that was lying for him there.
Steve would have to read it for him. It would break his heart, the letter that she had wept and prayed over; but it was better that his heart should break than that he should go to the Island again. And Steve, poor old Steve, would die in peace some day and be put to rest where they had put Conal. A magistrate—assisted in a fashion by M'Laughlin and a jury—had duly investigated and found that his tragic death was an impenetrable mystery. An "open verdict," they called the finding.
Conal's resting place was on a sunny hillside under a blossoming white gum in which the bees hummed drowsily in the spring time and through which the green parrots flashed all the year. It was good to think that Steve would draw his last breath in freedom, and then sleep there under the blue sky. But for her, there would be no freedom, no open spaces. Life had become a prison from which there was only one gate—Death; and that she would not be able to open because she was a hostage for other lives. Dan's, and Steve's—perhaps Davey's.
Cameron's buggy rounded a turn in the road.
Mrs. Ross and Jessie were in it, and there was a man's figure beside theirs—only one though.
The horse, moving at her slow, steady jog-trot, drew nearer.
Deirdre saw clearly the man who was driving. It was Davey. The Schoolmaster was not with him.
A panic seized her. She flew out to the road, the horse stopped automatically.
"Where's father?" she cried.
Davey stared at her. He scarcely knew her—this wild, white-faced creature with burning eyes and colourless lips.
"Hasn't he come?" she asked.
"No," he said slowly.
He got down from the buggy. His heart ached at the sight of her. He hardly knew how to speak. He moved to take her hands.
She shrank from him.
"Why didn't he come?"
"Because ... Oh, Deirdre, it breaks my heart to tell you," he broke out. "Don't look at me like that. I did all I could, but it was no good. Some cursed brute gave information—"
"Oh," she whispered. "It was that then!"
And after a moment:
"They took him again—for being at large before the expiration of ... sentence!"
"Yes."
His eyes were all tenderness and pity for her.
"When, Davey?"
"Just before we were leaving, four days ago. Don't look like that, Deirdre! I won't leave a stone unturned to get him back. And I promised him that we—"
She laughed, a strange, cracking little laugh.
"Deirdre!"
He was perplexed and hurt.
"Don't come near me!"
She turned away from him and ran into the house under the swinging sign of the black bull with red-rimmed eyes.
Davey attempted to follow her. He saw McNab in the doorway.
"What the hell's she doing there?" he muttered.
Mrs. Ross and Jessie eyed each other anxiously. They did not speak for a minute. Then the elder woman said nervously, uncertainly:
"P'raps ... p'raps she came down with Steve to meet the Schoolmaster. But we'd better be going on, Davey. Don't risk any trouble with Thad McNab to-day. Your mother's waiting eagerly for you. You're her only thought now. All she has got."
Davey climbed into the buggy again. His face was sombre. He had not got over the shock of his father's death and Deirdre's manner wounded and bewildered him. He thought that she was distraught with agony and disappointment on the Schoolmaster's account. He had imagined how tenderly he would tell her what had happened, and comfort her. Now to find her at the Black Bull, not at Steve's, where he had thought she would be, and Mrs. Ross and Jessie beside him, when he wanted to fold her in his arms and assure her that he would never rest until Dan was with them again! He swore at every jolt and jar on the road to relieve his impatience.
It was Mrs. Ross who said to Mary Cameron, taking her aside when mother and son had met, and Davey was turning Bess into the paddock again:
"It's true what we heard about Deirdre Farrel going to marry McNab. She was married to him this morning. You'd better break the news to Davey. He doesn't know yet. I dursn't tell him for fear he'd go to McNab. I wanted to bring him safe to you. Jessie and I'll go home now. No doubt you'll like to have the house to yourself, but if you want anything, or there's anything we can do for you—"
"We're always glad to do anything for you, Mrs. Cameron, dear," Jessie said softly.
"It's a queer, heartless girl Deirdre is, to play fast and loose with the love of a fine fellow like Davey," Mrs. Ross said, when Jess was outside setting their bundles and baskets into the cart.
"Oh, she wouldn't do that—Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron replied. "It's something dreadful that's driven her to it."
"Yes—I suppose it is," Mrs. Ross sighed. "Poor child. Perhaps I'm spiteful about it, Mary. But maybe now that she is out of the way, Davey may think of my Jessie again."
Davey' s mother smiled sadly.
"I'd be sorry for any woman he married but Deirdre, for she has the whole of him—heart and soul," she said.
"Oh well, it's a pity!" Mrs. Ross kissed her good-bye. "Jess had better make up her mind to have Buddy Morrison, then, and that's what I've been telling her this long time. He's a good lad, very fond of her, and been wanting to marry her for the last five years."
When Jess and her mother had gone, driving off in their high, jolting buggy, Davey and Mrs. Cameron went indoors together.
He had aged considerable since she last saw him. It was a stern, strange face to her, this her boy's. There were sorrow, self-repression, a bitter realisation of life and what it means in heartache and disappointment, in his expression; something of power and assurance too.
She was wondering how she could tell him, covering him with tender, pitiful glances, and praying that he would not leave her, that no hurt might come to him, when he asked suddenly:
"Have you seen anything of Deirdre, mother?"
He had been moving restlessly about the room, lifting things from their place on the mantelpiece and putting them back again.
She called him to her and, putting her hands on his head, told him what Mrs. Ross had said.
Davey's face hardened and whitened slowly. He put her hands away from him and wheeled unsteadily from the room. She heard him go across the yard, and saw him stumbling up the narrow track to the trees on the far side of the hill.
Mrs. Cameron was feeding her chickens when she thought she heard someone calling. She listened, and decided that it was only a whispering of wind in the trees that had caught her ear.
The mild light of the evening lingered about her. Her eyes lay on the hill that rose with a gentle slope beyond the yard, the barns and stable, and a score of low-built brushwood sheds. Mists were beginning to gather among the trees that fringed the top on either side. Davey had gone up among those trees.
The sound of her name called faintly again disturbed her. She looked down towards the road that wound uphill out of the forest. It was wraith-like in the twilight, the long white gate that barred it from the paddock about the house, growing dim. The gum saplings of two or three years' growth, with their powdery-grey leaves pressing on the far side of the fence behind the barn, shivered as the surface of still water shivers when something stirs beneath it. Her eyes were directed towards the centre of the almost imperceptible movement.
Someone called her, faintly, whisperingly.
Going towards the fence, she saw a wan face and wide eyes among the leaves. The lines of a long, dark dress went off into the shadows among the trees.
"Deirdre," she cried.
The girl came towards her. Her dress was draggled and torn. There was a red line on her cheek where a broken branch had caught and scratched it.
"Where's Davey?" she asked.
"Deirdre, what has happened?" Mrs. Cameron recognised a tragic urgency in her face. "Come in, you're exhausted. You don't mean to say you've walked from the Wirree."
She took her hand and led her into the kitchen. The fire was sending long ruddy beams of light over the bricked floor, glimmering on the rows of polished metal covers on the walls, and the crockery on the wooden dresser at the far end of the room. It was very homely and peaceful, Mrs. Cameron's kitchen. She pushed Deirdre gently into the big arm-chair by the fire.
"Sit there, dearie, till I get you a hot drink," she said.
Deirdre sat very still, gazing before her.
"It's this marriage with McNab is too much for her," Mrs. Cameron thought.
"Oh, child, why did you do it? What could have driven you to it?" she asked.
The shadow of a slow and subtle smile crept for a moment about Deirdre's lips and vanished again.
"If only you'd have told me your trouble," Mrs. Cameron cried. "I might have been able to help you."
"Oh no, you wouldn't," Deirdre said.
"You couldn't have married McNab for any reason of choice." Mrs. Cameron was torn between grief, bewilderment and compassion. "Davey is breaking his heart about it, out on the hills somewhere, now. I had to tell him when he came in, for fear—What's to be done about it, Deirdre? Oh, I'm not wanting to blame you. You did it for a good reason, I'm sure, and you love Davey. It's hard on you, Deirdre. You do love him?"
"Yes," Deirdre said slowly.
Mrs. Cameron knelt beside the chair. Her hands trembled on the girl's arm.
"Don't touch me," Deirdre gasped, moving out of the reach of her hands. "Don't touch me," she whispered again, eyeing her strangely.
"Davey—I'm afraid what he'll do if he sees you...." Mrs. Cameron hesitated.
Deirdre sprang out of the chair, her eyes blazing.
"Davey! Davey! It's all Davey with you!" she cried. "You sacrificed father to him. You sent him to that trial. I know now. And Davey—why couldn't he have gone to gaol instead? He's young and strong and it wouldn't have mattered so much to him. He's got all his life before him. But father—hadn't he done enough for you? Hasn't he given his eyes for you? Hasn't he worshipped you all these years? I've seen it since I was a child. And is this all you could do for him, send him to the Law Courts to get Davey off, knowing that it would be worse than death to him to have to go to prison again? Oh, you knew what he'd have to suffer in Davey's place...."
Mrs. Cameron put her hands over her face.
"You knew he couldn't afford to come under the notice of the law," Deirdre said. "But I shouldn't talk like this—"
Her voice trailed wearily.
"Only—I had to choose between father and Davey. McNab knows all the old story. You do, I know. Steve told me. McNab scared the wits out of Steve one day when he was by himself and got all the proofs he wanted, though he seems to have had the facts—most of them, anyway—before. Then he told me—what being at large before the expiration of sentence meant, and what his information would do if he used it, about father, when the trial was on. He said that he wouldn't use it if I'd marry him."
Mrs. Cameron stared at her.
Deirdre went on, her voice dragging as if she could scarcely put into words the pain and trouble of her mind.
"I couldn't let father suffer any more. I couldn't bear to think what it would be for him to go back there, to the Island," she said. "He, blind ... and loving me so ... and you—and both of us willing to sacrifice him to Davey. I could see him going over there, hurt and alone, in the dark, the dear, great, gentle heart of him crying ... crying for those he loved to be near him, to hear the sound of their voices, to touch their hands. I couldn't endure it. Oh, I couldn't."
Her head dropped.
"He has made sacrifices all his life. His eyes for you—"
"Don't say that, Deirdre!"
"It's the truth," the girl said fiercely. "That night of the fixes he saw the branch falling. It would have hit you if he had not put up his arm, and it came down on him—on his face—all the red-hot embers...."
Mrs. Cameron uttered a low cry.
"And now at the end of his days you took this last scrap of freedom from him. But I wouldn't have it. I knew that the time had come for somebody to do something for him."
There was a few moments' silence.
"Only after all"—a weary bitterness surged in her voice—"it was no good. McNab was too clever for me. He trapped me—and sold father all the same—and Steve, poor old Stevie, too. M'Laughlin took him down to the Port this afternoon. I heard him crying like a baby. When I asked McNab why he had broken his word to me, he said"—a little sick laughter struggled from her—"that, blind as father was, he knew he'd have to reckon with him for having taken me, if he ever came back to the Wirree."
She sank back in the chair, shivering and sobbing.
Mrs. Cameron leant towards her.
"Don't touch me!" Deirdre shrank from her. "I haven't told you all yet. McNab locked me in a room when he knew that I knew what he'd done. It was when he came to me there and called me his wife—I killed him."
Mrs. Cameron fell back from her.
"Oh, I didn't mean to kill him," the girl cried distractedly. "He came near me. I told him not to, but he did. He talked of his rights. I hit at him ... to keep him away from me ... with something that was lying on the table. I don't know what it was, but it was heavy—and he fell down.
"I knew he was dead by the way he lay there, without moving—and then I ran out of the room and came here. Oh, I didn't mean to do it—but I'm not sorry it's done—that he is dead and can do no more harm to any of us. He killed Conal. And it was he that shot at Davey. He would have again, too. He was afraid of Davey—what he would do ... when he found out about father and me."
She was sobbing breathlessly; her hands went out before her with a desperate, despairing gesture. She moved towards the door.
"Where are you going? What are you going to do, Deirdre?"
Mrs. Cameron followed her.
"I don't know!" The girl stood quivering by the doorpost. "Only I must go. They may come from the Wirree and find me here. And I don't want to be hanged—that's what they do with people who have done what I've done, isn't it? I want to go. Davey mustn't see me. It's no good. No good! There would be the great gulf between us always ... and as long as I lived—to the day of my death—I'd be on the other side of it, with my arms out to him. Oh, you mustn't keep me. Can't you see it's best that I should go ... now ... like this, before...."
"You're not thinking of doing any harm to yourself, Deirdre?"
The anguished eyes of the woman beside her reached the girl through the maze and terror of her thoughts. They calmed the tumult within her.
"The Long Gully," she said simply, wearily, "the mists are so deep in it to-night, and there would be no waking in the morning."
Mrs. Cameron took her hand.
"You say I've never done anything for your father, Deirdre. I want to do something for him now. Come back and listen to me for a moment."
She led the girl back to the chair, and forced her into it.
"But they'll be coming for me soon," Deirdre cried fretfully, looking back at the door.
She hardly heard what Mrs. Cameron was saying for awhile. Her tired, bright eyes wandered restlessly up and down the room. The pain in her head prevented her thinking.
"Deirdre darling," Mrs. Cameron said, her voice trembling, "there's not a man or woman in the country would not say you were justified. And no woman is better able to understand than I am. I'm not afraid for you ... and there's no one I'd rather have for Davey's wife than you. You were willing to sacrifice yourself. But when treachery had been proved against you, there was that within you would not let evil come near you."
"Do you mean ... you'd be satisfied for Davey to have me!" Deirdre asked.
"Yes."
Mrs. Cameron's eyes were on hers.
"You'd not be throwing it up at me that I ... that I did this?" Deirdre inquired. "And that father—"
"No." Mrs. Cameron's voice was very low. "Because if I had been served as your father was—I'd have been a convict too."
In the shock of what she had said, Deirdre forgot her own trouble.
"You?" she whispered.
"That's what I wanted to tell you ... it's been locked in my heart so long ... and nobody else knows," Mrs. Cameron said. "It's because I think it may help you, Deirdre, now that your soul is in the deep waters, I want you to know ... that something like what has happened to you happened to me, long ago. Only I had less excuse."
Her face was torn with grief; she turned from the girl, overwhelmed by the flood-tide of dark memories.
"Oh, I can't think of it without all the agony again," she cried.
And after a moment, continued:
"I didn't want to bring shame on my people by having it known ... I had been the cause of death to a man ... but the weight was on my soul, I had heard of people escaping public trial by condemning themselves to transportation. It was the only way I could have any peace of mind, I thought—taking on myself the punishment other women had got for doing what I did. But it was never as bad for me as for them. Davey's father saw me on the wharf among the emigrant women, and he wanted to marry me. There was a Government bounty—thirty pounds I think it was—given to married couples coming to the colony, and he wanted the money to begin with in the new country. I told him why I was going out, and he was willing to take me. There were terrible days of fear among all the rough people I found myself with ... till he came. I was grateful to him, and swore to be a good and faithful wife to him.
"I've not spoken of this since then, Deirdre. I'm telling you because I want you not to throw your life away—not to waste it. I know I was wrong. There was this difference between what you did and what I did. I was not in a corner, fighting for my life as you were. I did not mean to take life. I did not mean to. It was an accident, really. Right was on my side, but I was angry, or the accident would never have happened. I have suffered from knowing that. All these years have made little difference. That's why I was always wanting to help convicts and prisoners in the old days—and it angered Davey's father so. I felt that they were suffering what I ought to have been suffering too....
"But with you it was different. Your own instinct tells you the difference. It does not accuse you. No one else will, either. And there's your father to think of. It would take the last gleam of happiness from him to know you had ended your own life, Deirdre. And there's Davey and me to love you and care for you, always."
Deirdre stared at her; then the tears came; she cried quietly.
Mrs. Cameron put her arms round her. She comforted her with tender little murmurings. Deirdre raised her head, and put her off from her, gazing into her face with drenched eyes.
"I understand ever so much better now," she said. And a moment later: "Have I been mad with fright? What'll I do? My head aches so, I scarcely know what I am saying. I can't think. What shall I do? What is going to happen to me?"
"There's no jury in the country that would not acquit you," Mrs. Cameron said. "McNab was well known. Oh, people were afraid of him, but they will speak now. You're young and beautiful, and if your story is not a justification—there's no God watching over the world."
"But what will Davey think of me?" Deirdre cried. "I'm afraid to see him—I wanted to, when I came here—but I'm afraid now. I thought it would be to say good-bye. They'll be coming for me soon, too. Oh, I'll go now, Mrs. Cameron. If Davey looked at my hands, and knew what they had done—"
Conflicting thoughts, whipping each other, were driving her like a leaf, first one way and then the other.
There was a heavy step on the threshold. Davey's figure loomed against the doorway.
Coming in from the light, it was a few minutes before his eyes accustomed to the gloom, saw that there was someone with his mother.
He stared at Deirdre as though they were ghosts who were meeting after death, beyond the world. She shrank from the stare of his eyes, putting up her arms to hide her face, with a little pitiful cry. She moved along the wall towards the door as if to go out and escape them.
"Davey! Davey! Don't let her go," Mrs. Cameron cried. Although his eyes followed her, and he seemed to guess her intention, he did not stir.
"Davey," Mrs. Cameron cried, a pang in her heart like the blade of a knife. "She has killed McNab, and is going to her death because of it."
Deirdre stood still. Her arms dropped from her face. She threw back her head, her eyes met his unflinchingly.
"You—you have killed him?"
His voice was harsh with the effort to speak.
"Yes," she said.
A gust of passion rushed over him. It flooded him with a vigour, and exultation that transformed him.
He strode towards her. His arms imprisoned her. He held her, and kissed her with the hungry kiss of a lover, long denied.
"Deirdre, Deirdre!" he sobbed. "That you should have—It was for me to do—that. I meant to, to-night. Do you think I could have lived ... breathed ... been sane, while you ... were near him?"
He crushed her in his arms again. They sobbed together childishly.
Mrs. Cameron went into the other room—her sitting-room with its shiny black horse-hair furniture, and the cupboard in which her spinning wheel had stood since the days of Donald Cameron's greatness. The beloved blue vase that she had saved from the fire was still on the chiffonier. She sat in the room she had been so proud of, a long time, her hands clasped in her lap, reviewing her memories.
They came in straggling lines and phalanxes—memories of her youth, of an old sad time, of her voyage across the seas beside Donald Cameron, of their journey into the hills, of the days of struggle and toil and domestic tranquility that had given her a son, of her first fear and loneliness in the silent world of the trees, and of the gaunt men who had come to her out of them.
The complexities of human emotion were a mystery and a distress to her. She had the momentary vision of a prison yard, its grim walls, trains of sullen men in grimy grey and yellow clothes, all of the same pattern, and of one who walked among them, wearily, a little uncertainly, singing faintly, as she had often heard him singing on the hill roads. Her eyes went down the slope of the hill to the spot under the light-leafed trees where Donald Cameron had been laid to rest, her heart crying an assurance of loyalty and fidelity to the yoke mate. They had set a seed in the country that would bear fruit in the union of the two in the next room, she knew. All the labour of their pioneering had not been in vain. Donald Cameron had done what he set out to do, though his last days had been darkened with disappointment, the bitter sense of disgrace and the futility of all his long years of toil. But his name would go on, she realised, and his children's children would talk with pride of their grandfather who had come from the old country, a poor man, and had made a great name for himself in the new land. Of the spiritual undertow which bound Deirdre and Davey, she could not think. That was entwined with the subtle, inexplicable currents of her own soul. She had turned her face from them, shut her eyes and ears to the sight and sound of them. She had never allowed herself to recognise their existence even; yet she knew that they were there, rushing on, silently, irresistibly into eternity.
A vision of the prison yard came again, shaping itself slowly, vaguely, and with it a sound of chains, the harsh voices of warders and gaolers. Her thoughts went back to the lovers in the other room.
She folded her hands with a little passionate gesture; the light of her whole soul shone in her eyes.
"Oh God," she whispered breathlessly, "we broke the earth, we sowed the seed. Let theirs be the harvest—the joy of life and the fullness thereof."
Fifteen Years After
A boy pushed the bracken and ferny grey and green wattle sprays from before a lichen-grown wooden cross. He was a sturdy youngster, with an eager, sensitive face, and dropped on one knee beside the mound the parted ferns and branches revealed, to read the inscription on the cross.
The path that wound uphill through the trees behind him was an old one, overgrown with mosses. Scraps of bark and sear leaves were matted across it. The weathered, rambling homestead of Ayrmuir was just visible through the trees, and a cornfield waving down the slope of the hill showed golden through a gap in the waving leafage. Donald Cameron had marked the place long before, and said that there, where the wagon had come to a standstill, he must be laid to rest. And it was within memory of the boy that his grandmother, Mary Cameron, had been laid beside him.
A voice floating down the hillside from the house called:
"Dan! Dan!"
Deirdre came down the path towards him, an older, graver Deirdre, with peace in her deep-welled eyes, though an undefinable shadow rested on her face.
"Here you are, dear!" she said. "It'll be time to be getting ready soon. Mick has the horses in—and your father won't like to be kept waiting. There was so much I wanted to say to you, too, before you go up to this big school. It won't be a bit like going to the school down here or doing Latin with me—going to the Grammar School, Dan."
"No, of course, mother."
"I wonder sometimes if I've been wrong to keep you so much with me," she said wistfully. "You had to be told all the terrible old story. I told you myself, because I wanted you to understand."
"Mother!" There were reverence and adoration in his eyes as they rested on her.
"You're sure—sure, you don't feel strange about your mother, Dan?" she asked. "A jury acquitted me, but I know I was right myself. There was nothing else to do."
She was quivering to the shock of startled memories.
"I can't feel that I could have done anything else than I did," she cried passionately, "but I can't forget, Dan. The horror of it all shadows me still—it always will."
The boy slipped his arms through hers and pressed against her.
"Whenever I read in history or a story of people who had to do terrible things for those they loved, I think: 'Like my mother!' But no one I've ever read, or heard of, was like you," he said shyly.
"Dan!"
A smile of melting, eager tenderness suffused her eyes.
As they turned away he looked back at the grave under the trees.
"I thought I'd like to say good-bye to them," he said. "They were pioneers, weren't they, grandfather and grandmother? Makes me feel like being a bit of history myself, to think that my grandfather and grandmother were pioneers. I was saying to myself just now: 'They did so much against such big odds, what a lot I ought to be able to do with everything made easy for me."
"I wish your father and mother were down here, too," he added.
"I never knew my mother, Dan," Deirdre said dreamily. "You know, I've told you all about that. She died when I was born—and it was because I was such a wailing baby, that my father called me Deirdre—Deirdre of the griefs. And he—lies over there in the Island."
"I remember him," the boy said eagerly, his voice hushed. "When I was a little kid, we went, you, and I, and father, to see him, didn't we? And I sort of remember a tall, thin man who had white hair—quite white hair, and was blind; he was always singing, so as you could scarcely hear him, and once he said suddenly when I was on his knee, don't you remember: 'He's got her eyes, Deirdre?'"
"Yes." Deirdre murmured, the pain in her eyes deepening.
"I've wondered ... I've often wondered what he meant, mother. How could he know what my eyes were like. He was blind."
"He meant your grandmother—Mary Cameron, Dan. He used to say she had twilight eyes; and that the light of them pierced his darkness," Deirdre said.
The boy puzzled over that.
"I remember, she said to me once," he said, thoughtfully. "'You ought to be a great man, Dan, because four great nations have gone to the making of you.' I didn't know what she meant at first. Then she told me that my four grandparents were English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. 'They have quarrelled and fought among themselves, but you are a gathering of them in a new country, Dan,' she said. 'There will be a great future for the nation that comes of you and the boys and girls like you. It will be a nation of pioneers, with all the adventurous, toiling strain of the men and women who came over the sea and conquered the wilderness. You belong to the hunted too, and suffering has taught you.'
"Then she told me about prisons here in the early days, mother, and terrible stories of how people lived in the old country. 'They may talk about your birthstain by and by, Dan,' she said, 'but that will not trouble you, because it was not this country made the stain. This country has been the redeemer and blotted out all those old stains.'"
Deirdre gazing into the eager, wistful face of her son realised that he was unfolding a dream to her. She smiled into his eyes and he back to her with a consciousness of the serene understanding and sympathy between them.
"'You will be a pioneer too, Dan,' grandmother said," the boy continued with a shy reverence, "'a pioneer of paths that will make the world a better, happier place for everybody to live in. You will, because you won't be able to help it. There's the blood of pioneers in you.'"
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER VCHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER XCHAPTER XICHAPTER XIICHAPTER XIIICHAPTER XIVCHAPTER XVCHAPTER XVICHAPTER XVIICHAPTER XVIIICHAPTER XIXCHAPTER XXCHAPTER XXICHAPTER XXIICHAPTER XXIIICHAPTER XXIVCHAPTER XXVCHAPTER XXVICHAPTER XXVIICHAPTER XXVIIICHAPTER XXIXCHAPTER XXXCHAPTER XXXICHAPTER XXXIICHAPTER XXXIIICHAPTER XXXIVCHAPTER XXXVCHAPTER XXXVICHAPTER XXXVIICHAPTER XXXVIIICHAPTER XXXIXCHAPTER XLCHAPTER XLICHAPTER XLIICHAPTER XLIIICHAPTER XLIVCHAPTER XLVCHAPTER XLVICHAPTER XLVIICHAPTER XLVIII