"Davey!"
The Schoolmaster's voice went out with a glad note in it. He turned aside from the men who were talking with him outside Mrs. Hegarty's parlour. His arm stretched to grip the boy's hand.
But Davey swung past. He did not see or hear. He did not even know where he was going. He walked through darkness, surging darkness, though the night was a clear one, stars diamond-bright on the inky-blue screen of the sky. The houses of the Wirree were white in the light. Deep shadows were cast back from their walls as they squatted against the earth.
Davey turned the angle of the house into the stable yard.
Instinct carried him to it, and to the fence where his horse was tethered. There was a fluttered cackle of fowls, a startled yelping of dogs, as he threw on his saddle and turned out of the yard, taking the road to the hills.
The men outside Hegarty's, smoking and swopping yarns with the Schoolmaster, watched him go. Sparks of white fire flew from his horse's hoofs as they beat along the road.
"Young Davey's riding as though the devil were at his heels," someone remarked, through teeth that gripped a pipe.
"Never seen him ride like that before," Thad McNab said.
Farrel did not speak; he wondered too what it was had sent the boy out into the night like that. Half an hour before he had seen him dancing with Jess Ross, and his face had just such a look as his mother's might have had when she was his age, and dancing.
He looked back into the room. Jess was sitting, a very forlorn, dejected little figure on a bench by herself. Deirdre was dancing with Conal.
Instinctively he associated Davey's going with Deirdre.
They had been such good friends when they were children, and he had imagined that they would be so glad to meet each other again.
He followed Deirdre as she danced with Conal. Conal was an old friend of his. He had seen a good deal of him since they left the hills, and few men had the place in the Schoolmaster's regard and affection that Long Conal had. He had been with them on several of their wanderings, and Deirdre and he had always seemed to get on like brother and sister together, he thought. But now he saw the gleam in Conal's eyes as he bent over her, the tenderness in his swarthy face, Deirdre's smile, her swift glances, shy and alluring, her averted head. The way she laughed and moved were a revelation to him.
"So Deirdre's a woman and at woman's tricks," he thought.
She had been a child to him till this night. Conal with his sunburnt, bearded face, his rough hands, his eyes, bright with love and laughter, had made a woman of her, he told himself. And what had she made of him? The Schoolmaster saw his eyes on her neck where the dark curls gathered dewily.
He knew as much as there was to be known of Long Conal, knew that he had flirted and drunk and sworn his way along all the stock routes in the country. He had kissed and ridden away times without number. But there was something else in his eyes now, something that promised he would never want to ride far, or long, from the sight of Deirdre.
The Schoolmaster was sure of that. For a moment he saw the girl's averted face, the curve of her white neck, the little tendrils of hair clustering moist and jetty about her ears, her scarlet fluttering lips, as Conal might have seen them.
"She's a beautiful woman—Deirdre."
An uneasily-moving voice jerked suddenly behind him with sly, chuckling laughter.
It was Thad McNab who spoke.
He grudged Mrs. Hegarty her gathering of young people and the patronage of Pat Glynn, but then she was able to run the place better than he, and although it was supposed to be her property, none knew better than the two of them that it was his as much as the Black Bull.
McNab came and stood in Mrs. Mary Ann's doorway sometimes when there was dancing, and the joy of several of the dancers was quenched at the mere sight of his shrivelled yellow face and pale eyes.
The Schoolmaster looked down at him. No man could afford to quarrel with McNab.
"How old will she be now?" asked McNab.
"Eighteen," replied the Schoolmaster.
"She's the prettiest girl ever seen down this part of the world," muttered old Salt Watson.
"Conal seems to think so."
It was Johnnie M'Laughlin who laughed.
"And who's Conal to think so? Isn't any girl on the roads good enough for him to play the fool to?" asked McNab, waspishly.
"Best not let him hear you say so, Thad."
McNab shook his shoulders.
"I'm not frightened of Conal. The rest of ye may be."
"Still you wouldn't like that fist of his about you, Thad," Salt Watson murmured, "and Conal isn't what y' might call a respecter of persons when he's roused."
The Schoolmaster went into the dance-room. He crossed it in leisurely fashion and went to Jessie. She was sitting staring before her, a mist of tears dimming her pretty eyes.
He did not go near Deirdre, did not look at her even. But Conal dropped her hand when the Schoolmaster came into the room, and a faint bird-like fear that had fluttered in Deirdre's eyes vanished.
A little later she came to him with a breath that was almost a sob.
"Can't we go now?" she said.
Looking into her eyes he saw the shine of tears in them. He had meant to talk very seriously to her on their way from Mrs. Hegarty's; but now she demanded tenderness and not reproof. She seemed to have stumbled against something she did not understand. She had dropped her armour of gaiety—all her shy, bright glances, smiles, sighs and little airs and graces. She had been playing with these women's weapons and had wearied of them, or perhaps she was surprised at their power, and troubled by it, he thought. There was a hurt expression he had never seen before in her eyes. She looked very young and tired.
He wrapped her up in her shawl, took her by the arm, and they went out into the moonlight together, making their way to the Black Bull, where they were staying until they could find another home in the district.
In the Wirree, Farrel was never known as anything but the Schoolmaster. Everybody called him that—even Deirdre when she spoke of him.
They had gone to live in a cottage on the outskirts of the township. The Schoolmaster had taken up his old trade, though it was understood he had been droving with Conal for Maitland the greater part of the time he had been away. Deirdre had wandered with him wherever he went, and it was on her account he was anxious to get back to steadier and more settled ways of life, it was said. Before long two or three of the brown-skinned Wirree children were trotting to the cottage for lessons every day.
The south had heard a great deal of Sam Maitland, head of the well-known firm of Maitland & Co., stock-dealers, of Cooburra, New South Wales.
There had been a bad season in the north-west for a couple of years. Maitland had bought up poor beasts and sent them to fatten in the south. Conal had been driving them through Wirreeford at intervals of two or three months, taking the fattened beasts back on the return journey over the border after he brought down the starvers.
All the week the township slept peacefully in the spring sunshine. When a clear, young moon came up over the plains in the evenings, it drenched them with wan, silver light.
But on Friday morning at dawn, the cattle came pouring into the town, with a cracking of whips, barking of dogs, yelling and shouting of men and boys. With a rush and a rattling of horns, they charged along between the rows of huddled houses, swinging from one side to the other of the track, wild and fearful-eyed, with lowered heads, long strings of glistening saliva dripping from their mouths. They seemed to be searching for the opportunity to break and head out to the hills again; But ringed with cracking whips, brushing horses, snapping dogs, they were turned into the sale-yards.
The one street of Wirreeford had been cobbled for some distance on either side of the sale-yards because the cattle and horses made a sea of mud about them when the spring rains had soaked into the soft earth. The stores and shanties were full on sale days.
Drovers, rough-haired, hawk-eyed men, with faces seared and seamed with the dust of the roads, hands burnt, and broken with barcoo, slouched along the streets, or stood watching their cattle, yarning in desultory fashion, leaning over the rails of the drafting yards. They smoked, or chewed and spat, in front of the shanties, and at night sprawled over the table at the Black Bull, playing cards or tossing dice.
A mob that had travelled a long way was often yarded the night before the sales. When the selling for the day was over, the beasts that had come down from the hills were driven out along the Rane road, and got under Way for the northern markets; but sometimes they were left in the yards, lowing and bellowing all night, while the stockmen who were going to take charge of them spent the evening at the Black Bull, or Mrs. Mary Ann's.
The township was full of the smell of cattle and dogs, and of the muddy, slowly-moving river that had become a waste-butt for the houses.
In the early spring, breezes from the ocean with a tang of salt in them blew right through the houses, and later, when the trees by the river blossomed, and bore masses of golden down, a warm, sweet, musky fragrance was wafted to their very doors. It overlaid the reek of the cattle yards, the fumes of rank spirits and tobacco that came from the shanties. And in the long glimmering twilights when the light faded slowly from the plains and the wall of the hills changed from purple to blue and misty grey, they were caught up into the mysterious darkness of the night—those perfumes of the lightwood and wattle trees in blossom—and rested like a benediction in the air.
From their shabby, whitewashed wattle-and-dab hut on the outskirts of the town the Schoolmaster and Deirdre could watch the twilight dying on the plains and breathe all the fragrance of the trees by the river when they were in bloom. The plains spread in vivid, undulating green before the cottage to the distant line of the hills, and the grass was full of wild flowers, all manner of tiny, shy, and starry, blue, and white, and yellow flowers.
Deirdre had watched Davey bring cattle down from the hills across the plains. She had seen him riding off runaways. Once a heifer had broken and careered over the plains before the cottage. Davey had chased after her at breakneck speed, and, rising in his stirrups, had swept his stock-whip round her, letting it fall on her plushy hide with ripping cracks. He had flogged the beast, driving her with strings of oaths, his dog, a black and tan fury, yelping and snapping at her nozzle, until the blood streamed from it, and with a mutinous bellow she turned back to the mob again.
Deirdre had watched him going home in the evening with his father, or some of Cameron's men, at the heels of a mob, his eyes going straight out before him. He never looked her way or seemed to see her where she stood, at the gate of the whitewashed cottage within a hundred yards of the river.
She had been chasing Mrs. Mary Ann's geese from the river across the green paddock that lay between the shanty and the Schoolmaster's house, when Davey rode out of the township towards her, one evening. He was driving a score or so of weedy, straggling calves.
Deirdre stood by the roadside and waited for him, her eyes luminous in the dusk. The wind had whipped her hair to the long tendrils it used to hang in when they raced each other along the roads from school.
"Davey!" she called, as he came towards her.
There was appeal in her voice.
But Davey stared at her as though he had not seen her, and passed on.
"You're a rude, horrible boy! And I hate you, hate you, hate you!" she cried passionately after him.
When they met again it was near the sale-yards, when the street was thronged with people from the hills. She had seen his horse hitched to the posts outside McNab's, and so was ready for him when they passed. The path was so narrow that they could not avoid brushing. But Deirdre's chin was well up and her eyes very steady when they met his under his hat brim. Such gloomy, morose eyes they were that she looked into. She almost exclaimed with surprise at them. Her mouth opened to speak. But Davey was as intent on passing as she had been. His face had an ugly, sullen look, something of his father's dourness. After he had passed she stood still and watched him.
He crossed the road and went into the Black Bull.
The Schoolmaster saw him there in the evening. It was not often Farrel was seen in the tap-room of the Black Bull, though there was always a lighting of eyes, a shifting of seats in anticipation of a lively evening when he appeared. He wondered what Davey Cameron was doing there. His father had been crippled with rheumatism for a couple of weeks and Davey had charge of his business. Farrel wondered if he had begun to swagger, to give himself airs on the strength of it.
He seemed on good terms with McNab and most of the men in the bar, but his acknowledgment of Dan's greeting was off-hand and he went soon after Farrel came in.
The Schoolmaster's eyes met McNab's; but McNab's eyes never met any man's for very long. Perhaps he was afraid of the inner man a stranger might get glimpse of, afraid to let any one else see in his eyes the secrets of that sly, spying soul of his.
Now that Farrel had only one eye, McNab feared him less, although when the concentrated light of the Schoolmaster's spirit poured from it in a single beam, he fidgeted, showed craven and was glad to escape.
No one had the knack that Dan Farrel had of showing McNab to the Wirree for what he was. The Schoolmaster could string McNab up before the eyes of the men in the bar on the thread of one of his whimsical humours and show him dangling, all his crooked limbs writhing, his twisted face simmering with wrath. He could pin McNab with a few, lightly-flung words and make a butt of him, where he stood before his rows of short-necked, black and muddied bottles. He would have him quivering with wrath, impotent against that bitter, blithe wit and the laughter it raised. He laughed too—McNab. He was wise, as cunning as a dingo. Though his eyes were baleful, and his hands shook as he poured the raw spirits from his bottle into a mug beside him, he laughed.
"It's a mad game y're on with McNab," Salt Watson, one of the oldest of the Wirreeford men, said to the Schoolmaster one evening on his way home. "Give it up, Dan! It's good enough to make the boys laugh, but you've only to look at Thad's face when he smiles to know what he is promising himself of it all."
The Schoolmaster had watched McNab's face when he smiled. He had learnt all he wanted to. He knew what Salt meant.
For awhile he dropped out of the circle round Thad's bar. When he made one of it, his laughter was less frequent, and he missed McNab when his lightly-flung arrows of wit whistled in the assembly. His spirits had suffered a depression. Some of the men thought the trouble with his eyes was on his mind. He avoided encounters with McNab, though none of them had any idea he was afraid of Thad. His one eye was more than a match for Thad's two any day, they knew.
There was no open quarrel between them. The Schoolmaster's duelling with McNab had never been more than a laughing matter, a pricking, rapier fashion, in the intervals of card-playing and drinks. It had an air of good-fellowship. His humour had a quality of amiability, though nobody was deceived by it, least of all Thad himself. There was always contempt and an underlying bitterness in it.
"What's the matter with Davey?" Farrel asked his daughter a few days later. "I've asked him to come up here and have tea with us, but he won't come. He'll barely speak to me when we meet, gets out of my way if he sees me coming."
Deirdre was kneeling by the hearth waiting for the kettle to boil. Their table was spread with cups and saucers and a little pile of toast smoked beside the teapot. She said nothing, only bent her head lower to avoid his glance.
"Have you got anything to do with it?" he asked.
The firelight played on her face. For a moment she thought she would tell him of the meeting under the trees and the promises she and Davey had made to each other when they said good-bye. But there was so much to tell, and he would be hurt that she had not told him about it long ago. They never had any secrets. She had shared all her thoughts with Dan. At first, that she and Davey were sweethearts, had just been something to smile about and gossip over with herself.
The Schoolmaster had wondered while they were away why she was always restless and wanting to get back to the hills. And now there was shame and grief in her heart—a smarting sense of anger and disappointment that had come of seeing Davey dancing with Jess, and of hearing what people were saying about them. It was all fixed up between Ross's Jess and Davey Cameron, someone had told her, and remarked what a fine couple they would make, and how satisfied their parents were about it—even Donald Cameron, who was not an easy man to please. She could not explain all that.
Dan read in her face something of what was in her mind. He took her hand and looked into her face. It was quivering and downcast.
"Then you have had something to do with it, Deirdre," he said.
"No."
Her voice broke.
"It was the night of the dance, at Mrs. Mary Ann's the night we came, I remember," he said; "Conal was there, and Davey went away angry."
"I've tried to speak to him a dozen times, since," she cried.
"Well, I can't quite make it out," the Schoolmaster said, after a few moments, "but they tell me in the town that since his father's been ill and Davey's had charge of things, he's been drinking a good deal and playing the fool at McNab's generally. We've got to try and get him out of that, if it's only for his mother's sake, Deirdre. We owe her a bigger debt, you and I—you because you love me—than we can ever repay."
"She owes you something, too," the girl said quickly, "that night of the fires if you hadn't tried to prevent it—"
She knew that he was displeased.
"You mustn't say that again," he said.
"Oh, I hate her! I hate her!" Deirdre cried, passionately.
"What do you mean?"
The Schoolmaster's voice was very quiet.
Deirdre clung to him sobbing.
"I didn't mean that I hate her really," she said, "I like her too. But she's the only one who has ever come between you and me, Dan, and I can't bear it."
He drew her to his knees and looked down gravely into her face. Her body was stiff against his; it shuddered and a storm of tears shook her. Tragic dark eyes were lifted to his when her weeping had spent itself.
"When she came and you looked at her, my heart died," she said. "Don't you remember when we used to gather the wild flowers to put on the table at school, you used to say we could never find a flower that was like her eyes. When we made a Mrs. Cameron bouquet, we used to put in it white honey-flowers and the pink giraffe orchids that grow on a long stem, for the colour of her cheeks, scarlet-runners for her mouth, and fly-catchers for her hair. Don't you remember? At first we couldn't find anything for her hair, but then I found the climbing fly-catchers with the little pink buds on the end of them. The down on the leaves, all browny gold and glistening in the sun, was a little bit like her hair, wasn't it, Dan?"
"Yes," he said, his mind going back to all their gay gatherings of wild flowers for Mrs. Cameron. It awed and surprised him that she should even then have discovered what his most secret heart was scarcely aware of.
"It was the little blue flowers, don't you remember, we put in for her eyes?" Deirdre went on, "Though you said that they weren't a bit like her eyes. 'Dew on the grass' is what some would call her eyes, but it is a poor colour, that—dew on the grass—no colour at all,' you said. 'Grass with the dew on it, or dew with a scrap of heaven, or the twilight shining in it, would have been better. That's what she has, Deirdre,' you used to say; 'eyes with the twilight in them—twilight eyes—you can see her thoughts gathering in them, brooding and dark, or glimmering like the light of the day, dying,' Do you remember saying all that to me? I do; because I've said it over to myself so often."
He understood the apprehensive, shy and shamed confession of her eyes.
"Do you mean," he asked, "that Deirdre thinks anybody could be to me what she is?"
Deirdre nodded, her contrite gaze melting into his.
"That one," his head turned in the direction of the hills, "is like the Mother of God to me. She was very good to me when I was a desperate man, long ago."
Deirdre gazed at him, her lips quivering.
"That's why you must always love her—Mrs. Cameron—my darling black head," he said.
"Sing it to me," Deirdre cried, thirsting for the tenderness of the old song.
He gathered her up in his arms and crooned in the Gaelic as he used to when she was a baby:
"Put your black head, darling, darling, darling.Your darling black head my heart above.O mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance.Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?"
Deirdre, pressing to him, tasted the satisfaction that all young creatures have in being close to those they love. His arms were warm and tender. An invasion of peace drove the sorrowful ache from her heart.
"My own mother," she asked suddenly. "Was she like Mrs. Cameron?"
"No."
There was the mingling of grief and troubled thinking in his face that she had always seen there when he spoke of her mother.
"She had a little brown bird, an English bird that sang in a cage," he said. "She was like that; but she never sang herself. She was one of those people life has broken, Deirdre."
"You married her ... and looked after her, Dan!"
His head dropped; he avoided her eyes.
"Then you came ... and she died," he said.
"Such a sorrowful mite you were!" he went on. "Such a lonely baby, wailing night and day, that there was only one name to give you, Deirdre—Deirdre of the griefs."
His eyes were lifted to hers. The black shield covered one of them; the other was shining with his tenderness for her, the strength of the tide behind it.
"It was a sorrowful name to give you, darling, you that have been the sunshine, and have banished the sorrows of my life," he cried. "May they never come any more or grief touch us again!"
Strange tales were being told of Cameron's son in Wirreeford.
Donald Cameron had been laid up, crippled with rheumatism since the early spring, and Davey had been managing for him. For the first time in his life the boy found himself with responsibility, authority and money in his hands. The old man required a strict account of his movements and operations, allowing him only a few shillings to pay for his meals and nothing over for the couple of drinks that cemented a deal in the township.
McNab had got hold of Young Davey. How it was not exactly known.
"Let the old man sew up his money-bags, Young Davey'll open them for him," sale-yard loafers began to say.
Davey swaggered. He was cock of the walk at McNab's. Conal had gone to New South Wales again, and now there was not a man spent more, nor was as free with the dice as Davey.
The Schoolmaster heard McNab talking to Davey in the parlour behind the bar one evening, filling the boy with a flattery that went to his head faster than the crude spirits he plied him with.
"The only son of the richest man in these parts—be a bit of a millionaire y'self, Davey—when y're too old to enjoy the money—have a good time with it," McNab said. "Your father's a great man—a great man, Davey—a bit near, that's all—don't understand that a high-spirited youngster like you'se got to have a bit of gilt about him! Makes you look ridiculous, that's what it does, havin' no more money about you than a teamster, or a bloomin' rouseabout."
"Here you ... you hold your tongue about the old man, McNab," Davey struggled to say. "You ... you give me the money. It'll be all right when I come into the property. I want to go'n have a game with the boys now."
McNab sniggered.
"Oh well—you're a lad, Davey," he said. "As good a man with cattle as your father, and you know better than he does how to make yourself popular. We used to say you was as mean as him once—a chip of the old block."
Davey started to his feet. He stood by the table, swaying a little as he hung to it.
"You ... you be careful, McNab, or I'll smash your damned head," he said.
It was only when they were very fuddled that men spoke to him like this. McNab giggled.
Farrel heard the boy's voice. It came to him, thick and uncertain, through the thin walls. The door of McNab's parlour was ajar. He caught a glimpse of Davey's sullen, flushed face, his eyes, stupid and dull, with the glow of drink in them.
He pushed open the door and went into the room.
"Hullo, Davey," he said, "I was looking for you."
Davey stared at him uncertainly.
"You mayn't know, Mr. Farrel," McNab said, an evil light in his yellow eyes, "but Davey, here, is doing an important bit of business with me and you're intrudin'."
The Schoolmaster glanced at him.
"Intruding, am I?" he replied coolly. "Well, it seems to me, it's just about time."
"What do you mean? What the hell do you mean?"
"School's out, Mr. Farrel," Davey crowed, lurching back on his heels. "You hurry up and give me the money, McNab."
McNab put a couple of sovereigns into his hand.
"Come and have a drink, Mr. Farrel," Davey cried boisterously. "There's a couple of chaps in the bar ... waiting for me ... and I'll play you poker, bob rises. Not a dime more."
He staggered across the room and threw open the door into the tap-room. McNab followed him, turning back at the doorway to shoot a glance of triumph at the Schoolmaster.
Davey's appearance in the bar was hailed with a shout. Dan heard the rattling of bottles and glasses, the shouts of laughter, blaring of oaths and stamping of heavy feet that followed the boy's call for drinks all round.
Fragments of a song, bawled jocosely, came to the Schoolmaster's ears as he tramped down the road to the cottage, on the edge of the township.
He brooded over the change in Davey, asking himself how he came to be kicking over the traces; why he was going to the dogs with the ne'er-do-wells of McNab's, what Donald Cameron would say to it if he knew; how he could fail to know; what his mother was feeling and thinking about it. She would know, of that he was certain. Not much escaped those clear, still eyes of hers.
In the morning when he saw the boy again, he tried to speak to him; but Davey swung past, dragging his hat over his face, shamefacedly.
The Schoolmaster got into the habit of watching him, trying to see his face. Sometimes it surprised him. He had seen Davey thrashing a steer until the blood poured from its tawny hide. He had seen him swinging along the roads on sale days after the midday meal, reckless and laughing, his head thrown back, a couple of McNab's men at his heels. He had heard him singing drunkenly on his way home to the hills in the evenings.
He went after him one evening, when Johnson, Cameron's head stockman, had gone on early, and Davey was going home alone.
"Look here, Davey," he said, riding beside him, "what's this game you're on? You'll have to drop it."
Davey laughed.
"You're like the rest of them," he said bitterly. "Think a fellow never grows up! I've been treated like a kid too long. The old man's been making me the laughing stock of the country ... and he's got to understand I'm a man ... and I've got to be treated like one."
"You needn't go drinking and chucking money about at McNab's to be that—"
Davey's eyes veered on him.
"Conal does it," he said. "And you all think no end of him."
"Oh, Conal! What has he got to do with it?" The Schoolmaster hesitated. "Conal does it ... but then he's a roadster. It comes natural to him. It doesn't to you. You're Cameron's son and—"
"Cameron's son!" Davey scoffed. "Much good that does me!"
"What's your father going to say when he hears about this business at the Black Bull," the Schoolmaster asked.
"Say? Oh, he'll cut up at first. He's got to understand though, I've got to go my own way—have some money to call my own. He won't know more than's good for him though. That's arranged between McNab and me."
"You don't mean to say you've got into any—arrangement with McNab?" the Schoolmaster asked.
"Oh, you needn't look like that about it," Davey replied. "It's a harmless one. He's been decent. I'm not fool enough to give McNab any real handle against me."
"You're a darned fool, Davey," the Schoolmaster said, his voice ripping the silence with startled energy. "McNab and his crew'll have you in a hole before you know where you are."
Davey flicked the reins across his mare's neck. She leapt forward along the track.
There was not a man in Wirreeford who did not think he knew what Thad was driving at, that he was working for a shot at Donald Cameron through Young Davey. Only he did not see it, the calf, they said. They laughed and followed the course of Thad's snaring, with winks, chuckles of amusement, and sly jokes at Young Davey's expense, although they drank with him, flattered and applauded him, playing up to the part McNab had set them.
The Schoolmaster tried again to warn the boy. This time, Davey was inclined to listen to him.
"What can McNab do to me?" he asked. "I'm not a lag, or a lag's son."
"No," the Schoolmaster said, a little bitterly. "But I've been watching McNab—seeing the way he works. He's got a genius for the underhand job. There's not much he couldn't do if he set his mind to it. He's set his mind to something now I can see that ... and you're in the way of it. I don't know exactly what it is. You know he doesn't love your father. Perhaps it's that. He's never forgiven him for trying to get him cleared out. He's using you somehow, Davey."
"I believe you're right, Mr. Farrel," Davey said slowly, after a while. "I've been a fool!" He swore uneasily. "Think I've been mad lately. I wanted people to reckon I wasn't ... just Cameron's son, and 'mean as they make 'em!' I'm two parts wrong and one part right. The right part is, I've got to be independent. I've got to have money of my own. It was what you said the other night set me thinking. I'm going to keep out of McNab's way."
"McNab never shows his hand when he means to win, Davey," there was a whimsical inflection in the Schoolmaster's voice. "You can only beat him at his own game if you don't let him see your cards either."
"Eh?" the boy looked at him. "You mean don't drop him at once ... let him down slowly."
"Yes. He's got his knife into me, too, you know, though he hasn't shown it quite clearly yet. He's good at the waiting game. It'll be a bit interesting to see how he marks us both off—if we don't mark him off, that is. I'm going to get out of his way as soon as I can. I'm giving up the teaching here. Deirdre and I are going up to Steve's for a while, and then I hope we'll shake the dust of the Wirree off our feet."
They were parting when the Schoolmaster said:
"Hear Pat and Tom Kearney have cleared out to the new rush? Eaglehawk, isn't it? They brought in a mob for Conal—Maitland's cattle—from the North-west, poor as mice. They said Conal was on the roads and will be in presently to take them up to the hills. Maitland's got a couple of fattening paddocks beyond Steve's."
Two days later, on sale day, this same scraggy mob of northern bullocks was still in the largest pen of the Wirreeford yards. Davey heard them bellowing mournfully.
"Conal's been expected the last couple of days to take charge of them," somebody told him. "But he's not come yet, and the Schoolmaster's beating the town for a man to drive 'em to the hills for him. The boys 've all cleared out to the rush. Dan's goin' to take them himself in the morning."
Mrs. Cameron was not seen in Wirreeford during those months of her husband's illness. Cameron drove into the township unexpectedly one day when the sales were in progress and she was with him. He went to the yards and she turned the horse, a sturdy daughter of old Lassie, back along the road and halted her outside the Schoolmaster's cottage.
Deirdre went out to meet her.
"I only heard you were back a few days ago, Deirdre," Mrs. Cameron said.
"Didn't Davey tell you?" Deirdre asked.
"No," his mother replied.
They went indoors and Mrs. Cameron sat with her back to the window in the Schoolmaster's wicker chair. Deirdre noticed that she looked older and wearier than when she had last seen her.
"They tell me you're to marry Conal, the drover, dear," Mrs. Cameron said.
"It's not true!" Deirdre gasped, turning away from her. "Who told you?"
"Mrs. Ross, it was," Mrs. Cameron replied. "She was over the other day ... she and Jess. She said the boys had heard at the sales."
"They tell me," Deirdre's eyes met Mrs. Cameron's, and her voice ran as quietly as hers, "that Davey's to marry Jess Ross."
"Oh," Mrs. Cameron exclaimed, distressfully, "I don't know! They say so, but Davey—"
Her face worked pitifully.
"He's so strange. I don't understand him at all, Deirdre. He's so changed. I can't help him ... can't do anything for him. He seems to have become a man quite suddenly, and—"
She put her hands over her eyes and began to cry.
Deirdre bent over her.
"Don't! Don't cry, Mrs. Cameron, dear," she whispered, kissing her.
"It's so foolish," Mary Cameron said tremulously, as if asking forbearance, "but my heart's just breaking to see Davey like he is! I have managed to keep his father from knowing, so far, but I'm afraid—I daren't think what will happen when he knows."
Deirdre said nothing, but her eyes were full.
Mrs. Cameron stretched a hand out to her.
"Oh, dear," she said, "they say it is Jess, Davey's going to marry, but I can't think it's anybody but you he cares about. When first you went away we used to talk about you; Davey used to say: 'She's a Pelling, I do believe, mother'—because of the fairy-tale I used to tell him. He made me tell it over and over again after you'd gone away. It was about Penelop, the tylwyth teg, who married the farmer's boy. Do you remember, Deirdre? I'm sure I told it to you, too, in the old days."
"Yes," Deirdre cried breathlessly, "and ever afterwards their descendants were called Pellings, the children of Penelop, and it was said, if they had dark hair and bright eyes, there was fairy blood in their veins."
Mrs. Cameron smiled.
"Yes," she said, "fancy you remembering it after all this long time, dear. Once, soon after you'd gone away, Davey said to me, 'I wonder if Deirdre married me, mother, would she melt away if I touched her with a piece of iron.' He sat thinking and smiling a long time, Deirdre, and I felt so happy about you both.... Then you came back ... and it was all different."
"I've been thinking perhaps it was Conal has come between you." The eyes of Davey's mother were very wistful. "But if you're not going to marry Conal, perhaps you can be good friends with Davey again, Deirdre. He would do anything in the world for you once. The other night when he came home—he had been at McNab's until late and the drink was strong on him—I couldn't let him into the house for fear of his father waking. He slept in the barn and I sat near him ... I was afraid he might light a match and drop it in the hay ... and he talked in his sleep—sobbing and crying—and it was your name he was saying, over and over again to himself, as though his heart was breaking over it, 'Deirdre! Deirdre!'"
"And there's some affair with McNab troubling him," Mrs. Cameron went on. "I don't know what it is. Oh, I don't know what he's been doing to get mixed up with McNab in anything—I know he can mean Davey no good whatever. He has sworn to have vengeance on his father for long enough. They say you're the most beautiful woman in the country, Deirdre. If only you'd help me to keep Davey away from McNab's! You could! He'd do anything for you in the old days. What is it has come between you?"
Mrs. Cameron's eyes were very like Davey's had been when he kissed her under the trees, Deirdre thought.
She put her hand in Mrs. Cameron's.
A shadow darkened the window, breaking the blank of the sunlight beyond it. The Schoolmaster came in at the door that overlooked the road.
An exclamation drew his gaze to the far end of the room.
Mrs. Cameron held out her hand to him.
She had not seen him since the night of the fires. Deirdre went to her little lean-to of a kitchen and busied herself making tea.
When she returned, Mrs. Cameron was sitting as she had left her, on the wicker chair with her back to the light; but there was an added pain in her eyes: her hands lay limp in her lap.
Deirdre had a tray with tea and the cups on it. She set it down on the table in the middle of the room, and they gathered their chairs about it.
"What a nice home you've got," Mrs. Cameron said, smiling at the Schoolmaster. "Deirdre has turned out a wonderful housekeeper after all."
The Schoolmaster laughed.
"She was always more eager to be 'possuming and chasing calves with Davey than to be learning to cook and sew, wasn't she?" he said.
"But after a while she made butter as well as I could." Mrs. Cameron smiled. "And as for spinning, Deirdre could take my old wheel and twist up a yarn for me in no time. Will you let her come soon to stay with me for a while?"
"Yes."
The Schoolmaster's eyes dwelt on the girl for a moment.
"There are not enough children coming for schooling. We won't be here for much longer," he said. "We'll be going up to Steve's soon."
"Going up to Steve's?" Deirdre asked. "When?"
The Schoolmaster did not answer at once.
"When Conal gets back. I want to see him first," he said. "We'll just be staying a few weeks with Steve for a holiday and then be leaving the district again."
Mrs. Cameron sat talking to them of the every-day affairs of her life, a little longer. Then she got up to go.
"Is it true what they say—that he will lose his sight?" she asked Deirdre when they were outside.
Deirdre nodded. She could scarcely speak of the time when the light of the world would be blotted out for ever from Dan.
"We saw a doctor in Rane. He said so," she replied.
Mrs. Cameron's exclamation was in the soft tongue of the spinning song she sang when she sat with her wheel in the garden. Deirdre did not know the words, but she understood their distress and the little gesture that went with them.
Donald Cameron was made of the stuff that gives confidence and appreciation grudgingly. He was obsessed by the idea that no one could do anything as well as he could. He could only satisfy his own reckless desire to be up and doing by girding at all that was being done for him. If Davey had been less efficient a stop-gap it would have pleased him better. He would have liked to see mistakes made which would assure him that no one but himself could run Ayrmuir as it ought to be run. But Davey had done very well in his place. He had brought off one bargain with a smartness that his father vaguely resented, and Davey was chockful of boyish pride over.
There had been chafings and crossings of will, two or three times. Mary Cameron trembled when she heard them. Anxious fears fluttered and filled her with foreboding every time her husband's irritability at his chained helplessness and crippling pain was directed at Davey. The boy's short answers with an underlying contempt in them fanned his father's smouldering wrath.
"Davey, dear," she had said once, after there had been high words between them, "try and be a little more patient with your father. It's hard on him having to sit in a chair like this after the active life he's led. He's fretting his heart out to be up and doing things, and seeing them done the way he likes."
"There's no pleasing him, mother," Davey said, shaking her arms from him.
She knew he was right, but Davey was almost as sullen and surly as his father these days. Donald Cameron kept him going all day. The boy was dog-weary when he came into the house at nightfall; then there were entries to make and book-keeping to do, accounts of sales and movements of stock to render, and nothing but carping and fault-finding for his pains.
At one time, in the evenings he used to take out his books and read intently for hours, sprawling over the table, till the candle flickered down and his mother said softly: "Won't you go to bed now, dear?" knowing that late hours were never an excuse, in Donald Cameron's eyes, for failing to be out after the cows before the sun was up. But now he lay in his chair, his long legs stretched out before him, after he had given his father an account of the day's work, and got from him directions for the next; and there was a sullen, brooding look on his face, an expression in his eyes that it hurt her to see.
Davey's face had changed so within the last few months. It was a revelation to her. There was a firmness of line about his chin and upper lip that caused her to glance from him to his father. Little of the boy was left in Davey now, she realised. What there was lay in his eyes and about his mouth. It was as if the child in him were dying hard. Something had hurt him bitterly, she surmised, and she wondered whether it was bitter thinking, hard riding, or the life he was leading with strange, rough men that had brought those creases about his nose, given his face its dour manliness.
This man-Davey was a strange to her. Her heart yearned over him, as though her baby had been snatched from her arms. She wanted to know him, to understand his ways of thinking. But he had a new and strange manner with her. His mind was shut. He kissed her in a perfunctory fashion, and when she put her arms round him, he stiffened under them. In sympathetic sensitive fashion she knew that he was guarding the kingdom of himself against her. She had some subtle warning that he was afraid of her love, of her tenderness, which, with its fine edge, might prize open the inner shell of his being and discover the trouble and tremulous fury of emotion which lay hidden within.
She was afraid of offending him, afraid of approaching him with her affection and sympathy, afraid not to respect the reserve that he had put between them. Yet her anxiety tormenting her, one day she said:
"Tell me what is troubling you, Davey? Tell me. It is breaking my heart to see you like this."
"There's nothing to tell, mother," he replied sharply.
For a long time he had not been coming home till late. The silence of the long evenings when she sat and sewed by the fire and Donald Cameron glowered into it, smoking, had been unbroken. Sometimes he had asked where Davey was. Then she stilled the tremors in her voice to say quietly that she thought he was with the Rosses or at Mrs. Hegarty's for the dancing.
When Davey came in from the Wirree, the night after Mrs. Cameron had been to see Deirdre and the Schoolmaster, Donald Cameron was standing before the fire.
He had said nothing all the way of the long drive from Wirreeford; but his wife, by the set of his face, knew that something unusual had happened. He stood before the fireplace waiting for Davey to come home, listening for the sound of his horse's feet, the yelping of the dogs in the yard that would announce his arrival.
Before they had left the sale-yards, as he was sitting in the high buggy before they drove off, he had sent her back to look for Davey and tell him to come home as soon as the sales were over. Davey, a lean, lithe figure, on the edge of a group of stockmen, had recognised the urgency in her voice, the appeal of her eyes, as she gave him the message.
"We were just fixing-up to have a game of poker to-night, Mrs. Cameron," Mick Ross had said.
She sought Davey's eyes. The shadow of his hat was over them. He stood a moment flicking his leggings with the lash of the long whip curled on his arm.
"Right, mother! I'll come along, presently," he said.
She went back to her husband, her heart soothed.
But his face all the way home had filled her with fear.
"Has anything happened to upset you, Donald," she asked.
"Aye, matter enough," he replied.
"What is it?" she ventured.
"You'll hear soon."
He lapsed into silence again.
She knew that there was trouble ahead for Davey. What it was she could only imagine; every fibre of her being ached to know. She hurried Jenny on with the dinner so that his father's inner man would be warmed and comforted before Davey arrived.
He was an hour or two later than they were.
When he came into the kitchen she went up to him and put her arms round him.
"Whatever you do, don't cross your father, Davey dear," she said. "He's in a queer temper to-night."
Davey looked at her stupidly. He threw off his hat and brushed his hand across his forehead.
"Right, mother," he said slowly.
His voice was thick. She smelt the whisky on his breath as he turned into the next room.
Hurrying backwards and forwards from the fire to the table, lifting the dinner she had kept warm for him by the fire, she did not hear the first words of the storm that was brewing in the inner room. Lifting the tray she carried it in, but on the threshold she stood still, her heart cold at the sight of her husband and son.
They were facing each other, all the antagonism that had been latent for months, between them, ablaze in their eyes, betrayed by every line of their passion-white faces. She put her tray on the table.
Donald Cameron had a packet of papers in his hand. The torn envelope he had taken them from lay on the floor.
"Look at them ... look at them!" he shouted. "Perhaps you can tell me the meaning of them."
David took the papers. He pushed back a chair, staring at them.
"Curse McNab!" he muttered. "He promised me—"
"Curb your tongue in this house!" Donald Cameron took a step forward. "Have you anything to say to these bills? McNab says you've had credit for a couple of hundred pounds."
Davey's head cleared. The sight of his father's face, livid with rage, raised a demon in him.
"Yes," he said, "there's a couple of drinks I had to-day not charged for."
"You insolent young blackguard!" Donald Cameron cried, careless of words in his anger. "Is this the sort of son I've got—goes robbing me behind my back, drinking with pothouse boys, lags and thieves? I thought you could be trusted to take charge of my interests while I was ill."
"Stop that!" Davey's nostrils quivered ominously.
"Thought you could play the young lord ... and McNab comes telling me—"
"I'll wring McNab's neck!"
"Aye, you will," said the old man, bitterly. "You've let him wring you properly. McNab's got no reason to love me and you know it ... but he did the square thing this time—if he never did it in his life before, telling me I was being robbed by my own son."
"I'd advise you, father, not to talk that way," Davey's temper was rising. "I wanted money; you wouldn't have given it to me if I'd asked for it. I had to get it. McNab lent it to me. He said I could pay him by and by, and that it was good enough—being Cameron's son—to borrow money on. He said you'd never see these receipts I gave him."
"Well, you'll borrow no more," Donald Cameron breathed. "Johnson can take charge of things till I'm about again. And before you make an arrangement of this kind again you'll perhaps wait till I'm dead and buried. I'll have it posted in the Wirree that no one is to serve you with drink unless you pay for it."
"If you do that—" Davey began.
"What I regret is that I didn't give Johnson charge of things from the first," the old man continued. "But I set my own son before him. You've shown y' weren't fit for the trust—snaring me on a level with gaol birds...."
Davey's voice trembled with passion.
"I haven't snared you!" he cried, "I haven't taken what wasn't my own. Isn't what's yours, mine? Haven't you always said so? Isn't that what you've said when I've asked for wages and you've said: 'No!' Haven't you said that it will be all mine some day—this place and all the money you've made? Who else have you got to give it to? I've only been doing with the money what you ought to have done. I've spent some of it so as not to have us shamed in the country."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Donald Cameron's grey eyes gleamed beneath their shaggy brows. "The son's to make ducks and drakes of the fortune the father earns by the sweat of his brow. Well, I'll tell you this much, Davey, you'll not get a penny of my money to throw to the winds. If you were a good son, a hardworking, industrious lad, y' might be sure of it, but if you were fifty times flesh of my flesh, you'd not get a penny to go to the devil with."
"Donald! Donald!" Mary Cameron laid a hand on her husband's coat. "Don't speak to the boy like that," she cried. "You know he's a good lad, that he's worked hard for years."
He pushed her away.
"Be silent!" he said harshly. "You've held y're tongue, though you must have known what's been going on—that he's got into these brawling, roistering ways. McNab told me about them—said that I'd be blaming him when I found out, if he didn't tell me himself. You've screened and hidden the boy."
"Leave mother out of it," Davey said.
"Davey!" she besought him.
"It's all right, mother," he turned from her, impatiently. "We've got to have this out now and be done with it. I'm not going on as I have done. This is what I've got to say."
He eyed Donald Cameron squarely.
"Since I left school four years ago, I've worked on this place—worked harder than two men. And what have I got for it—wages? No. Abuse? Stacks of it! And you're making money, hand over fist."
The contempt in his eyes deepened.
"I know what your bank says. I know what the countryside says about Donald Cameron's money. You're the richest man this side of the ranges....
"But how do we live? You go about in old clothes as if you hadn't a penny to bless yourself with; and I might be anybody's rouseabout for the look of me. Never a penny leaks out of your pockets if you can help it. There's none in them to leak out of mine. Don't you know what people are saying about us? Haven't you heard anybody say: 'There go Cameron and his son! Old Cameron is as mean as they make 'em, and Young Davey's a chip of the old block!' It was hearing that got me down. What's the good of your money to you? What's the good of it to mother? What's the good of it to me? Because you worked hard for it in the beginning, is that any reason why you should hang on to it, when you've got it—be afraid to spend it?
"I might just as well be dead as working always with nothing else in the world to think of but work—always under your thumb, screwed down—not allowed to have a mind of my own. I'd rather get a job on the roads and be free, and have a few shillings in my pocket."
Donald Cameron's face was set.
"I've said my say," he said.
"And I've said my say," cried Davey.
"Johnson'll have charge from to-morrow an' you'll work under him."
"You'll give me wages—pay me the same as the rest of the men?" Davey asked, his eyes bright with anger.
"No."
Cameron hesitated. Something of the justice of the boy's point of view reached him. But there was more involved than a mere recognition of justice. It meant the breaking of a will. And it was foreign to his mind to yield; his obstinacy was the habit of a lifetime.
"You're my son—not a hired labourer on the place," he said. "I've fed and clothed you all your days. You'll have food and clothes—and what else I like to give you."
"And how much will that be?"
Davey eyed him narrowly.
"It won't wear a hole in y'r trousers pockets." Donald Cameron permitted himself the grim humour, believing that he had won the day. "And it won't encourage you to be dicing and drinking at McNab's."
His mother, more sensitive to Davey's state of mind, broke in.
"Oh," she cried, "have no more of this talking now I Sit down and eat your supper, Davey. It'll all be cold."
"Stick to your money!" Davey yelled. "I won't be fed and clothed by you any longer. I'll earn my own living somewhere else." He strode out of the room. His mother heard him go across the flagged floor of the kitchen.
"Go out after him, Donald. Call him back," she urged.
"No," said Cameron slowly.
Davey's defiance was a shock to him. He had ruled his little world autocratically. His will had been law. He had not believed that Davey would dare to resist it.
"If he goes of his own will—let him come back of it," he said.
"Oh, go after him, Donald," she cried. "You've driven him to it, you, with your harshness."
She ran to the door; but already the beat of hoofs was flying up from the misty depths of the trees.
"Davey! Davey! Davey!" she called.
She ran down the track calling him.
But Davey was beyond her voice, or the sound of his horse's hoofs and the hot blood in his ears dulled the echo of his name that floated down to him.
When Mary went indoors again Donald Cameron was sitting in his chair, the fire had gone out of his eyes, leaving him dull and vacant.
"You've been harsh with him, Donald," she said. "It's all true what he says. You have worked him like a navvy, and never given him enough pocket money to keep him in tobacco even. It's hard on him when the Morrison boys and the Rosses have their own money to spend, and everybody saying we're better off than any of the people about. You wouldn't have stood so much yourself at his age."
"Whist, woman," he said pettishly, his head bent, as if he were trying to catch the sound of distant hoof-beats. "Of course you'd take sides with him!"
"Oh Donald, isn't it yourself in him that's making him like this," she cried. "Isn't it your own blood speaking in all his high-handed ways? What did you think your son would be to take the sort of treatment you've given him from any man—even his own father? You should have stayed on the farm in the old country if you'd wanted that sort of man for a son. If you hadn't wanted Davey to have a high spirit you should never have come over the sea here. You shouldn't have had me to come with you for his mother...."
Donald Cameron dropped into his chair. His face was grey and lined, as if the light behind it were extinguished.
"Be quiet, will you not, woman," he said.
"I will not!" There was a spark in her eyes. "I've got to say what I'm thinking, now, Donald Cameron. I've held my tongue long enough. You've had your way, and I've hardly dared to breathe when you spoke, for years. Your always laying your will on people crushes the spirit in them! The dominating way you have wants to lay down everything before it. But I'm glad you've not crushed Davey—though it's breaking my heart to think of his going away from us. I'd rather have it than see him grow into the creeping, crawling thing Nat Johnson is. Davey's got in him what brought you and me here. I'm glad he's got that spirit. There's no fear in it—it goes straight forward. You've grown old and I've grown old," she continued breathlessly. "We've lost all our fire, but he's got it—it's going on in him. And you with your old ideas—you don't like it—but he's got to be free—he's got to go his own way—he's got to break his own earth, Donald."
Donald Cameron moved restively.
"It's from his mother he's taken his liking for clacking words, then," he said.
She fell back from him with a little desperate gesture that she had made so little headway against the stone-wall of his mind.
"Will you not go after him to Wirreeford and get him to come home again?" she asked pitifully. "He is a clever lad. He'll be a credit and joy to us yet, if you'll only give him his head for a bit, Donald. This at McNab's doesn't mean anything; it's only to put you right with the people here, really—and because he's troubled in his mind about something else!"
"What do you mean?"
His eyebrows twitched, his sharp eyes settled on her.
"There's a girl on his mind," she replied hesitatingly.
"Jess Ross?" he asked. "I'd fixed in my mind for him to marry her."
"Well," there was the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. "It's not Jessie that Davey's got fixed in his mind to marry, so perhaps it's just as well you should be away from each other for a while."
"One of the Wirree girls—lag's daughters, every one of them!"
His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.
A shade of sadness had fallen on Mrs Cameron's face.
"Well ... you—you won't get Davey to come home, or let me try?" she asked, her heart fainting at her own words.
"No." He repeated the word slowly as if in fear that his tongue would give effect to other stirrings of his brain. "Of his own will he went—of his own will he'll come back again."
"Would you have in like circumstances?" she asked.
He did not reply.
"He's our only one, Donald," she pleaded.
"He's my son. But what's the meaning of these?" he said, shuffling the handful of McNab's papers Davey had thrown down. "Did I ever make bills like this for myself? Haven't I worked and slaved year in and year out. Did I ever throw away roistering what he has?"
Mary looked at the bills. She had not seen them before.
"Oh," she said, slowly, "that's the bad blood of me in him. My people were all a spendthrift lot, and I've never been able to keep anything at all myself, whether it was love, or money, or a shawl, or even a spirit of my own to go through my life with."
She picked up the tray with Davey's untouched meal on it, and went out of the room.