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Pioneers, The

<h2>CHAPTER XLVII</h2> 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." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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