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

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