The Pioneers by Katharine Susannah Prichard
CHAPTER XLVII
Mrs. Cameron was feeding her chickens when she thought she heard someonecalling. She listened, and decided that it was only a whispering of windin the trees that had caught her ear.
The mild light of the evening lingered about her. Her eyes lay on thehill that rose with a gentle slope beyond the yard, the barns andstable, and a score of low-built brushwood sheds. Mists were beginningto gather among the trees that fringed the top on either side. Davey hadgone up among those trees.
The sound of her name called faintly again disturbed her. She lookeddown towards the road that wound uphill out of the forest. It waswraith-like in the twilight, the long white gate that barred it from thepaddock about the house, growing dim. The gum saplings of two or threeyears' growth, with their powdery-grey leaves pressing on the far sideof the fence behind the barn, shivered as the surface of still watershivers when something stirs beneath it. Her eyes were directed towardsthe centre of the almost imperceptible movement.
Someone called her, faintly, whisperingly.
Going towards the fence, she saw a wan face and wide eyes among theleaves. The lines of a long, dark dress went off into the shadows amongthe trees.
"Deirdre," she cried.
The girl came towards her. Her dress was draggled and torn. There was ared 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 urgencyin her face. "Come in, you're exhausted. You don't mean to say you'vewalked from the Wirree."
She took her hand and led her into the kitchen. The fire was sendinglong ruddy beams of light over the bricked floor, glimmering on the rowsof polished metal covers on the walls, and the crockery on the woodendresser 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-chairby 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. Cameronthought.
"Oh, child, why did you do it? What could have driven you to it?" sheasked.
The shadow of a slow and subtle smile crept for a moment about Deirdre'slips and vanished again.
"If only you'd have told me your trouble," Mrs. Cameron cried. "I mighthave been able to help you."
"Oh no, you wouldn't," Deirdre said.
"You couldn't have married McNab for any reason of choice." Mrs. Cameronwas torn between grief, bewilderment and compassion. "Davey is breakinghis heart about it, out on the hills somewhere, now. I had to tell himwhen he came in, for fear--What's to be done about it, Deirdre? Oh, I'mnot wanting to blame you. You did it for a good reason, I'm sure, andyou 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'sarm.
"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. Cameronhesitated.
Deirdre sprang out of the chair, her eyes blazing.
"Davey! Davey! It's all Davey with you!" she cried. "You sacrificedfather to him. You sent him to that trial. I know now. And Davey--whycouldn't he have gone to gaol instead? He's young and strong and itwouldn'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 foryou? Hasn't he worshipped you all these years? I've seen it since I wasa child. And is this all you could do for him, send him to the LawCourts to get Davey off, knowing that it would be worse than death tohim to have to go to prison again? Oh, you knew what he'd have to sufferin 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 oldstory. You do, I know. Steve told me. McNab scared the wits out of Steveone day when he was by himself and got all the proofs he wanted, thoughhe seems to have had the facts--most of them, anyway--before. Then hetold me--what being at large before the expiration of sentence meant,and what his information would do if he used it, about father, when thetrial 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 intowords the pain and trouble of her mind.
"I couldn't let father suffer any more. I couldn't bear to think what itwould 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 sacrificehim to Davey. I could see him going over there, hurt and alone, in thedark, the dear, great, gentle heart of him crying ... crying for thosehe loved to be near him, to hear the sound of their voices, to touchtheir 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 hesaw the branch falling. It would have hit you if he had not put up hisarm, 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 fromhim. But I wouldn't have it. I knew that the time had come for somebodyto do something for him."
There was a few moments' silence.
"Only after all"--a weary bitterness surged in her voice--"it was nogood. McNab was too clever for me. He trapped me--and sold father allthe same--and Steve, poor old Stevie, too. M'Laughlin took him down tothe Port this afternoon. I heard him crying like a baby. When I askedMcNab why he had broken his word to me, he said"--a little sick laughterstruggled from her--"that, blind as father was, he knew he'd have toreckon with him for having taken me, if he ever came back to theWirree."
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. Itwas 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 camenear me. I told him not to, but he did. He talked of his rights. I hitat him ... to keep him away from me ... with something that was lying onthe 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 Iran out of the room and came here. Oh, I didn't mean to do it--but I'mnot sorry it's done--that he is dead and can do no more harm to any ofus. He killed Conal. And it was he that shot at Davey. He would haveagain, too. He was afraid of Davey--what he would do ... when he foundout about father and me."
She was sobbing breathlessly; her hands went out before her with adesperate, 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 mustgo. They may come from the Wirree and find me here. And I don't want tobe 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 Ilived--to the day of my death--I'd be on the other side of it, with myarms out to him. Oh, you mustn't keep me. Can't you see it's best that Ishould go ... now ... like this, before...."
"You're not thinking of doing any harm to yourself, Deirdre?"
The anguished eyes of the woman beside her reache
"The Long Gully," she said simply, wearily, "the mists are so deep in itto-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 dosomething 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, lookingback 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 herhead prevented her thinking.
"Deirdre darling," Mrs. Cameron said, her voice trembling, "there's nota man or woman in the country would not say you were justified. And nowoman 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 werewilling to sacrifice yourself. But when treachery had been provedagainst you, there was that within you would not let evil come nearyou."
"Do you mean ... you'd be satisfied for Davey to have me!" Deirdreasked.
"Yes."
Mrs. Cameron's eyes were on hers.
"You'd not be throwing it up at me that I ... that I did this?" Deirdreinquired. "And that father--"
"No." Mrs. Cameron's voice was very low. "Because if I had been servedas 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 solong ... and nobody else knows," Mrs. Cameron said. "It's because Ithink it may help you, Deirdre, now that your soul is in the deepwaters, I want you to know ... that something like what has happened toyou happened to me, long ago. Only I had less excuse."
Her face was torn with grief; she turned from the girl, overwhelmed bythe 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 hadbeen the cause of death to a man ... but the weight was on my soul, Ihad heard of people escaping public trial by condemning themselves totransportation. It was the only way I could have any peace of mind, Ithought--taking on myself the punishment other women had got for doingwhat I did. But it was never as bad for me as for them. Davey's fathersaw 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 tomarried couples coming to the colony, and he wanted the money to beginwith in the new country. I told him why I was going out, and he waswilling to take me. There were terrible days of fear among all the roughpeople I found myself with ... till he came. I was grateful to him, andswore to be a good and faithful wife to him.
"I've not spoken of this since then, Deirdre. I'm telling you because Iwant you not to throw your life away--not to waste it. I know I waswrong. There was this difference between what you did and what I did. Iwas not in a corner, fighting for my life as you were. I did not mean totake life. I did not mean to. It was an accident, really. Right was onmy side, but I was angry, or the accident would never have happened. Ihave suffered from knowing that. All these years have made littledifference. That's why I was always wanting to help convicts andprisoners in the old days--and it angered Davey's father so. I felt thatthey were suffering what I ought to have been suffering too....
"But with you it was different. Your own instinct tells you thedifference. It does not accuse you. No one else will, either. Andthere's your father to think of. It would take the last gleam ofhappiness from him to know you had ended your own life, Deirdre. Andthere'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 tenderlittle 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 scarcelyknow what I am saying. I can't think. What shall I do? What is going tohappen to me?"
"There's no jury in the country that would not acquit you," Mrs. Cameronsaid. "McNab was well known. Oh, people were afraid of him, but theywill speak now. You're young and beautiful, and if your story is not ajustification--there's no God watching over the world."
"But what will Davey think of me?" Deirdre cried. "I'm afraid to seehim--I wanted to, when I came here--but I'm afraid now. I thought itwould be to say good-bye. They'll be coming for me soon, too. Oh, I'llgo now, Mrs. Cameron. If Davey looked at my hands, and knew what theyhad 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 againstthe doorway.
Coming in from the light, it was a few minutes before his eyesaccustomed to the gloom, saw that there was someone with his mother.
He stared at Deirdre as though they were ghosts who were meeting afterdeath, beyond the world. She shrank from the stare of his eyes, puttingup her arms to hide her face, with a little pitiful cry. She moved alongthe wall towards the door as if to go out and escape them.
"Davey! Davey! Don't let her go," Mrs. Cameron cried. Although his eyesfollowed 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 aknife. "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 herhead, 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, andexultation that transformed him.
He strode towards her. His arms imprisoned her. He held her, and kissedher with the hungry kiss of a lover, long denied.
"Deirdre, Deirdre!" he sobbed. "That you should have--It was for me todo--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 shinyblack horse-hair furniture, and the cupboard in which her spinning wheelhad stood since the days of Donald Cameron's greatness. The beloved bluevase that she had saved from the fire was still on the chiffonier. Shesat in the room she had been so proud of, a long time, her hands claspedin her lap, reviewing her memories.
They came in straggling lines and phalanxes--memories of her youth, ofan old sad time, of her voyage across the seas beside Donald Cameron, oftheir journey into the hills, of the days of struggle and toil anddomestic tranquility that had given her a son, of her first fear andloneliness in the silent world of the trees, and of the gaunt men whohad 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 ofsullen men in grimy grey and yellow clothes, all of the same pattern,and of one who walked among them, wearily, a little uncertainly, singingfaintly, as she had often heard him singing on the hill roads. Her eyeswent down the slope of the hill to the spot under the light-leafed treeswhere Donald Cameron had been laid to rest, her heart crying anassurance of loyalty and fidelity to the yoke mate. They had set a seedin the country that would bear fruit in the union of the two in the nextroom, 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 hadbeen darkened with disappointment, the bitter sense of disgrace and thefutility of all his long years of toil. B
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 herwhole soul shone in her eyes.
"Oh God," she whispered breathlessly, "we broke the earth, we sowed theseed. Let theirs be the harvest--the joy of life and the fullnessthereof."
CHAPTER XLVIII
Fifteen Years After
A boy pushed the bracken and ferny grey and green wattle sprays frombefore a lichen-grown wooden cross. He was a sturdy youngster, with aneager, sensitive face, and dropped on one knee beside the mound theparted ferns and branches revealed, to read the inscription on thecross.
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 acrossit. The weathered, rambling homestead of Ayrmuir was just visiblethrough the trees, and a cornfield waving down the slope of the hillshowed golden through a gap in the waving leafage. Donald Cameron hadmarked the place long before, and said that there, where the wagon hadcome to a standstill, he must be laid to rest. And it was within memoryof 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, withpeace in her deep-welled eyes, though an undefinable shadow rested onher 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 thisbig school. It won't be a bit like going to the school down here ordoing 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," shesaid wistfully. "You had to be told all the terrible old story. I toldyou myself, because I wanted you to understand."
"Mother!" There were reverence and adoration in his eyes as they restedon her.
"You're sure--sure, you don't feel strange about your mother, Dan?" sheasked. "A jury acquitted me, but I know I was right myself. There wasnothing 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," shecried passionately, "but I can't forget, Dan. The horror of it allshadows 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 terriblethings for those they loved, I think: 'Like my mother!' But no one I'veever 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 werepioneers, weren't they, grandfather and grandmother? Makes me feel likebeing a bit of history myself, to think that my grandfather andgrandmother were pioneers. I was saying to myself just now: 'They did somuch against such big odds, what a lot I ought to be able to do witheverything 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'vetold you all about that. She died when I was born--and it was because Iwas such a wailing baby, that my father called me Deirdre--Deirdre ofthe griefs. And he--lies over there in the Island."
"I remember him," the boy said eagerly, his voice hushed. "When I was alittle kid, we went, you, and I, and father, to see him, didn't we? AndI sort of remember a tall, thin man who had white hair--quite whitehair, and was blind; he was always singing, so as you could scarcelyhear him, and once he said suddenly when I was on his knee, don't youremember: '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 couldhe know what my eyes were like. He was blind."
"He meant your grandmother--Mary Cameron, Dan. He used to say she hadtwilight eyes; and that the light of them pierced his darkness," Deirdresaid.
The boy puzzled over that.
"I remember, she said to me once," he said, thoughtfully. "'You ought tobe a great man, Dan, because four great nations have gone to the makingof you.' I didn't know what she meant at first. Then she told me that myfour grandparents were English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh. 'They havequarrelled and fought among themselves, but you are a gathering of themin a new country, Dan,' she said. 'There will be a great future for thenation that comes of you and the boys and girls like you. It will be anation of pioneers, with all the adventurous, toiling strain of the menand women who came over the sea and conquered the wilderness. You belongto the hunted too, and suffering has taught you.'
"Then she told me about prisons here in the early days, mother, andterrible stories of how people lived in the old country. 'They may talkabout your birthstain by and by, Dan,' she said, 'but that will nottrouble you, because it was not this country made the stain. Thiscountry has been the redeemer and blotted out all those old stains.'"
Deirdre gazing into the eager, wistful face of her son realised that hewas unfolding a dream to her. She smiled into his eyes and he back toher with a consciousness of the serene understanding and sympathybetween them.
"'You will be a pioneer too, Dan,' grandmother said," the boy continuedwith a shy reverence, "'a pioneer of paths that will make the world abetter, happier place for everybody to live in. You will, because youwon't be able to help it. There's the blood of pioneers in you.'"