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<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> Davey had said good-bye to the Schoolmaster. "Well, I'll be going now," he said, moving away clumsily. He had said all he could, though there was not much of that. Most of what he wanted to say remained deep within him. He could not dig it up. The words to express his feeling would not come. He had muttered something about "passing that way" and having come in "to say good-bye," when he entered the big, bare room at Steve's. He had not seen Deirdre, nor the Schoolmaster, since the night of the fires. His father had kept him busy; and with all the work of the new buildings going up at Ayrmuir there was plenty to do. He talked of it for a while in a strained, uninterested fashion. "Deirdre told me mother put up a great fight for the house," he said, "but of course the old man doesn't give her credit for that—thinks he could have saved it, if he had been on the spot in time. I wish he had been there. I'd like to 've seen if he could've beaten a fire—with that wind against him. I might've been with mother a bit earlier and been able to help her, if I'd had a decent nag—and that's what I told him—but I'm not likely to get one. The expense of the new buildings has got him down, and he's mad because Nat left a couple of hundred yearlings in one of the back paddocks. We ran in about a hundred of 'em last week—found some burnt to cinders—the others 've got away." Awkwardly, uncertainly, he shifted his feet. He did not want to go, to say the final words, and yet he did not know how to stay. Farrel understood that and kept him talking longer. He was still wearing a bandage over his left eye. "Your eye's all right, isn't it?" Davey asked. "It isn't seriously hurt? Mother was asking me the other day if it was better. She doesn't know how it happened, Mr. Farrel." "How what happened?" Farrel asked. A spasm of pain twitched his lean, sunburnt features. He was sitting with his back to the light on a low bench under the window. "How you got that burn about your eyes," said Davey. "But I saw. If you hadn't tried to prevent the branch falling on mother, the way she was standing, it would have come down on her face." "It might have fallen on any of us." The Schoolmaster spoke sharply. "I hope you're not going to have any trouble with it," Davey said. "No, of course not." Dan rose from his seat under the window. "You'll be wanting to say good-bye to Deirdre, too, won't you, Davey?" He went across to the door and called into the next room: "Davey's going, Deirdre!" But though a muffled sound of someone moving came from it, there was no answer. He called again; but still there was no reply. "She must have gone to bring in the cows for Steve," the Schoolmaster said. "Never mind, I'll tell her you left a message for her." "Yes," said the boy, folding and re-folding his hat. But it did not seem the same thing as seeing Deirdre and saying good-bye to her himself. "Mind, if there's any books you're wanting, or any way I can help you, if you want to study more, you can always let me know, and I'll be glad to do anything I can for you," the Schoolmaster said. "Steve will pass a letter on to me. I don't know where we'll settle at first, or just what we're going to do, but he'll generally know our whereabouts. And there's one other thing I'd like to say, Davey, you can always be sure of a friend in the world. If you get into a scrape, or any sort of trouble, will you remember that?" They gripped hands. "Thank you, Mr. Farrel," Davey muttered. "But I wish you weren't going," he added, desperately. "I wish we weren't too," Farrel said with a sigh, "but then you see people don't want to build the school again. They don't think there's the same need for one now. Most of the girls I've been teaching for the last few years can teach the children coming on well enough. And besides, there's talk of Government schools being set up everywhere." "Yes." Davey's countenance was one of settled gloom. "Good-bye." The Schoolmaster wrung his hand. Davey found himself lifting his rein from the docked sapling in the shanty yard. Two other horses, with reins hung over the post, stood before Steve's bar; a couple of cattle dogs lay at their heels nosing the dust. The fowls scratching in the stable-yard spread their wings and cackled as he turned out of the yard to the road. "So-long, Davey," the Schoolmaster called from the verandah. "S'-long," Davey replied. The loose gravel rolled under his mare's feet as she slipped and slid down the hill, the reins hanging loose on her neck. He looked straight before him, trying to understand the state of his mind. He had not expected to be so disturbed at taking leave of the Schoolmaster. Then he remembered that he had not seen Deirdre—to say good-bye to her, he thought. For the first time he realised that she was going away—going out of his life. Perhaps that realisation had been at the bottom of his thought all the time; but it struck him suddenly, viciously, now. He was looking into the distance, dazed by the tumult within him, when a blithe voice called him, and glancing up he saw Deirdre standing on the bank by the roadside. "There you are, Davey!" she cried. "Going away without saying a word to me! I'd a good mind to let you go." She was breathless with running across the paddocks to reach the turn in the road. The wind had blown her dark hair into little tendrils about her face, and there was a sparkle of anger in her eyes. "I heard what you said to father," she went on, "and if you haven't anything better to say to me, I'll go back." Davey gazed at her. He gazed as though he had never seen her before. She seemed another creature, nothing like the ragged little urchin who had climbed trees with him and ridden to school straddle-legged behind him; nothing like the sedate housewife his mother had made of her, either. Deirdre stared at him too, as though he were quite different from the Davey she had known. A shy smile quivered on her lips. She plucked nervously at trails of the scarlet-runners which overhung the bank, and put the end of a runner between her teeth and chewed the stalk. Davey saw that her lips were as scarlet as the flowers that, like broken-winged butterflies, hung at the end of the trail. He slid off his horse and stood facing her. His limbs were trembling. "What's the matter?" she asked, a little distress creeping into her voice. Davey's face was tense and colourless. To the trouble which had surprised him that day, a strange soft thrill was added when she put the runner stalk with its scarlet flowers between her teeth. It struck him with a strange pang that Deirdre was beautiful, that her lips were the same colour as the flowers hanging near them. It was all translated, this emotion of his, in the shamed, shy smile that came into his face as he stared at her. Deirdre understood well enough. She scrambled down the bank and went to him. "You are sorry we're going, aren't you, Davey?" she asked. He nodded, finding he could not speak. The gloom of the forest was closing round them, the sunset dying. She sighed and slipped her hand into his. After a few moments, as he said nothing, she spoke again. "It'll be all changed, I suppose, when father and I come back," she said. "We will come back, by and by, sometime, you know, father says. We'll come to see Steve, perhaps. But we'll be grown up ... quite, you and I, Davey. You'll be married, and I—" "What?" Davey had wakened. "I was saying, we'll be grown-up and married, perhaps by the time we see each other again," Deirdre murmured. "None of the times'll come again like the ones when we went home on Lass, or in the spring-cart, or walked, and chased wallies and went after birds' nests. I wish they could! I wish I could be just ten when I come back and give you a race down the road, Davey." Her voice ran on quickly, but Davey's mind stuck on her first words. "There's only one girl I'll be married to," he said. "Yes." Her eyes leapt to his. "Jess Ross!" "Who says so?" "She does." Deirdre laughed. "She says she's the only girl you've ever kissed. And her mother says—" "When she was a kid, they put her face up to me; but I never kissed her—or any girl," Davey said. "I didn't believe it, of course!" Deirdre laughed softly. "Why?" "Well—I thought—if there was any girl you'd be wanting to kiss, it would be me, Davey!" The bright shy glance that flew towards him, and the quiver of her lips, fired the boy. His arms went out to her. He caught her shoulder and held her to him. For an instant he did not know whether it was night or day. But when he withdrew from that moment of unconsciousness, wild, uncontrollable joy and possession, his eyes were humid. And her eyes beneath his were like pools in the forest which the fallen-leaf mould has darkened and the twilight striking through the trees makes a dim, mysterious mirror of. "Deirdre," he whispered, as if he had never before said her name, and to say it were like singing in church. He kissed her again, slowly and tenderly; the first pressure of her lips had made a man of him. "You're my sweetheart, aren't you, Deirdre?" he said exultingly, holding her in his arms and gazing down at her. "When you come back we'll be married." "Yes," Deirdre whispered. Her eyes reflected the glow of her heart. "I've always meant to marry you, Davey, though I've sometimes pretended I liked Mick Ross, or Buddy Morrison better." She drew a little sigh. "But I'm so glad it's all settled, now ... and we're really going to marry each other." The sunset had died out of the sky, and the forest was dark about them when they kissed and whispered "good-bye—for a little while." Davey could scarcely say the words. He watched Deirdre as she fled up hill to the shanty; then leaping on his horse he sent her clattering down hill, all his young manhood—the tumult of his love, awakened senses, rejoicing and dreams—orchestrating within him. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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