"If you promise to marry me, nothing'll be heard of it," he said.
Deirdre was not surprised. She had expected something like what he had said. The sound of it stunned her nevertheless.
"P'raps the Schoolmaster'll get off this affair of the cattle, but that's only three years," McNab said. "The other'd be till the expiration of his sentence, probably for the end of his life, my dear; 'n Steve—a month or two'd be the end of him! You're the price of their freedom. You pays y'r money and takes y'r choice, Deirdre."
Deirdre did not hear him. After all, she was thinking, this was a proposition. She was even grateful for it. Anything seemed better than helplessness, hopelessness—the terrible prospect of not being able to avert this ultimate catastrophe which threatened Dan. All that had been sensitive to joy or sorrow in her seemed dead. She realised only one overwhelming necessity. One fact, crowding out all others, filled her mind. Thad McNab had said that Dan would have to go back to the Island and that she could prevent it. She did not think of Davey at all, except to remember, vaguely, that she had promised to marry him, and that now she was going to break her promise and say that she would marry McNab, if—
She looked at him as he sat by the hearth. Misshapen, with unkempt, brakish hair and beard, turning grey, wrinkled and withered, he was no mate for her glowing youth! But what did that matter? She saw the Schoolmaster's face as she had last seen it—the dear, thin, eager face with deep lines, drawn by the sleepless ache of his heart, on it. She knew now why there had been an underlying grief and bitterness in what he said when he went away; knew that he must have been afraid of recognition and its consequences. But Mrs. Cameron had required him to save Davey. It was all plain now. Yet Deirdre realised that what he had done he would probably have done without her having to ask for it. What part had Mrs. Cameron had in his life that she could command him—that she dared ask him to lay down his life for her? What had she done for him? In the old time the Schoolmaster had said: "We owe her more than either you or I can hope to repay, Deirdre." But surely he had paid—on the night of the fires if at no other time. And now—
McNab's gaze on her recalled her mind to what he had said.
She met it steadily, unwaveringly.
Yes. She would marry him, if—Her thought went back on its track. If what? Yes, if Dan got off—if he did not get the three years. If he had to go to prison for three years, then it would be no use to marry McNab. He could not help Dan then. For three years he would have to live in a prison, wear filthy, hideous clothes, work like a beast of burden.
"I'll tell you this day week," she said.
"Think you'll know then how the trial's goin'," he snarled. "Well, there's an end to three years, don't forget, my pretty, and if he gets an acquittal on this, the other'll come out, unless—"