"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!"