Sophie wondered whether Arthur was thinking of those times when they had walked together on the Ridge tracks. She wondered whether he was remembering little things he had said ... she had said ... the afternoon he had recited:
"I met a lady in the meadsFull beautiful, a fairy's child;Her hair was long, her foot was light,And her eyes were wild."
Sophie wished she had not begun to think back. She wished she had not danced with Arthur. People looking after her wondered why she was not laughing; why suddenly her good spirits had died down. She was tired and wanted to cry.... She hoped she would not cry; but she did not like dancing with Arthur Henty before all these people. It was like dancing on a grave.
Henty's grip tightened. Sophie's face had become childish and pitiful, working with the distress which she could not suppress. His hand on hers comforted her. Their hands loved and clung; they comforted each other, every fibre finding its mate, twined and entwined; all the little nests of nerves were throbbing and crooning to each other.
Were they dancing, or drifting through space as they would drift when they were dead, as perhaps they had drifted through time? Sophie wondered. The noises of the ball-room broke in on her wondering—voices, shouting, and laughter; the little cries of girls and the heavy exclamations of men, the music enwrapping them....
Sophie longed for the deep, straight glance of his eyes; yet she dared not look up. Arthur's will, working against hers, demanded the surrender. Through all her body, imperiously, his demand communicated itself. Her gaze went to him, and flew off again.
As they danced, Arthur seemed to be taking her into deep water. She was afraid of getting out of her depth ... but he held her carefully. His grasp, was strong and his eyes hungry. Sophie could not escape that hungry look of his eyes. She told herself that she would not look up; she would not see it. They moved unsteadily; his breath, hot and smelling of whisky, fanned her. She sickened under it, loathing the smell of whisky and the rank tobacco he had been smoking. His grasp tightened. She was afraid of him—afraid of all the long, old dreams he might revive. Her step faltered, his arm trembled against her. And those hungry, hungry eyes.... She could not see them; she would not.
A clamour of tiny voices rose within her and dinned in her ears. She could hear the clamour of tiny voices going on in Henty, too; his voices were drowning her voices. She looked up to him begging him to silence them ... begging, but unable to beg, terrified and quailing to the implacable in him—the stark passion and tragedy which were in his face. She was helpless before them.
Arthur had given her his arm before the open door; they had moved a little distance from the door. Darkness was about them. There was no hesitancy, no moment of consideration. As two waves meeting in mid-ocean fall to each other, they met, and were lost in the oblivion of a close embrace. The first violence of their movement, failing, brought consciousness of time and place. They were standing in the slight shadow of some trees just beyond the light of the hall. A purring of music came to them in far-away murmurs, and strange, distant ejaculations, and laughter.
Sophie tried to withdraw from the arms which held her.
"No, no," she breathed; but Henty drew her to him again.
He murmured into her hair, and then from her lips again took a full draught of her being, lingeringly, as though he would drain its last essence.
A shadow loomed heavy and shapeless over them. It fell on them. Sophie was thrown back. Dazed, and as if she were falling through space, for a moment she did not realise what had happened. Then, there in the dark, she knew men were grappling silently. The intensity of the struggle paralysed her; she could see nothing but heavy, rolling shapes; hear nothing but stertorous breathing and the snorting grunts as of enraged animals. A cry, as if someone were hurt, broke the fear which had stupefied her.
She called Michael.
Two or three men came running from the hall. The struggling figures were on their feet again; they swung from the shadow. Sophie had an instant's vision of a hideous, distorted face she scarcely recognised as Potch's ... she saw Henty on the ground and Potch crouched over him. Then the surrounding darkness swallowed her. She knew she was dragged away from where she had been standing; she seemed to have been dragged through darkness for hours. When she wakened she could see only those heavy, quiet figures, struggling and grappling through the darkness.
Sophie went into the shed where her cutting-wheel was soon after eight o'clock next morning. She took up a packet of small stones George Woods had left with her and set to work on them.
The wheel was in a line with the window, and she sat on the wooden chair before it, so that the light fell over her left shoulder. On the bench which ran out from the wheel were a spirit lamp and the trays of rough opal; on the other side of the bench the polishing buffers were arranged one against the other. A hand-basin, the water in it raddled with rouge, stood on the table behind her, and a white china jug of fresh water beside it.
Sophie lighted the spirit lamp, gathered up a handful of the slender sticks about the size of pen-holders which Potch had prepared for her, melted her sealing-wax over the flame of the lamp, drew the saucer of George's opals to her, and fastened a score of small stones to the heated wax on the ends of the sticks. She blew out the lamp.
She was working in order not to think; she worked for awhile without thinking, details of the opal-cutting following each other in the routine they had made for themselves.
The plague of her thoughts grew as she worked. From being nebulæ of a state of mind which she could not allow herself to contemplate, such darkness of despair there was in it, they evolved to tiny pictures which presented themselves singly and in panorama, flitting and flickering incoherently, incongruously.
Sophie could see the hall as she had the night before. She seemed to be able to see everything at once and in detail—its polished floors, flowering boughs, and flags, the people sitting against the iron walls in their best clothes ... Mrs. Watty, Watty and George, Ella and Bully ... Bully holding the baby ... the two little Woods' girls in their white embroidered muslin dresses, with pink ribbons tied round their heads.... Cash Wilson dancing solemnly in carpet slippers; Mrs. Newton at the piano ... the prim way her fat little hands pranced sedately up and down over the keys.... Paul enjoying his own music ... getting a little bit wild over it, and working his right leg and knee as though he had an orchestra to keep going somehow.... Mrs. Newton refusing to be coaxed into anything like enthusiasm, but trying to keep up with him, nevertheless.... Mrs. Henty, Polly, Elizabeth ... Mrs. Arthur ... the Langi-Eumina party ... the Moffats ... Potch, Michael ... John Armitage.
Images of New York flashed across these pictures of the night before. Sophie visualised the city as she had first seen it. A fairy city it had seemed to her with its sky-flung lights, thronged thoroughfares, and jangling bells. She saw a square of tall, flat-faced buildings before a park of leafless trees; shimmering streets on a wet night, near the New Theatre and the Little Opera House; a supper-party after the theatre ... gilded walls, Byzantian hangings, women with bare shoulders flashing satin from slight, elegant limbs, or emerging with jewel-strung necks from swathings of mist-like tulle, the men beside them ... a haze of cigarette smoke over it all ... tinkle of laughter, a sweet, sleepy stirring of music somewhere ... light of golden wine in wide, shallow-bowled glasses, with tall, fragile stems ... lipping and sway of tides against the hull of a yacht on quiet water ... a man's face, heavy and swinish, peering into her own....
Then again, Mrs. Watty against the wall of the Ridge ball-room, stiff and disapproving-looking in her high-necked black dress ... Michael dancing with Martha ... Martha's pink stockings ... and the way she had danced, lightly, delightedly, her feet encased in white canvas shoes. Sophie had worn white canvas shoes at the Warria ball, she remembered. Pictures of that night crowded on her, of Phyllis Chelmsford and Arthur ... Arthur....
Her thought stopped there. Arthur ... what did it all mean? She saw again the fixed, flat figures she had seen against the wall when she was dancing with Arthur—the corpse-like faces.... Why had everybody died when she was dancing with Arthur Henty? Sophie remembered that people had looked very much as usual when she went out to dance with Arthur; then when she looked at them again, they all seemed to be dead—drowned—and sitting round the hall in clear, still water, like the figures she had seen in mummy cases in foreign museums. Only she and Arthur were alive in that roomful of dead people. They had come from years before and were going to years beyond. It had been dark before she realised this; then they had been caught up into a light, transcending all consciousness of light; in which they had seemed no more than atoms of light adrift on the tide of the ages. Then the light had gone....
They were out of doors when she recognised time and place again. Sophie had seen the hall crouched heavy and dark under a starry sky, its windows, yellow eyes.... She was conscious of trees about her ... the note of a goat-bell not far away ... and Arthur.... They had kissed, and then in the darkness that terror and fear—those struggling shapes ... figures of a nightmare ... light on Potch's hair.... She heard her own cry, winging eerie and shrill through the darkness.
With a sudden desperate effort Sophie threw off the plague of these thoughts and small mind-pictures; she turned to the cutting-wheel again. It whirred as she bent over it.
"Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel purred. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
Her brain throbbed as she tried not to listen or hear that song of the wheel; "Arthur, Arthur, Arthur!" the blood murmured and droned in her head.
Her hand holding an opal to the wheel trembled, the opal skidded and was scratched.
"Oh, God," Sophie moaned, "don't let me think of him any more. Don't let me...."
A mirror on the wall opposite reflected her face. Sophie wondered whether that was her face she saw in the mirror: the face in the mirror was strangely old, withered and wan. She closed her eyes on the sight of it. It confronted her again when she opened them. The eyes of the face in the mirror were heavy and dark with a darkness of mind she could not fathom.
Sophie got up from her chair before the cutting-wheel. She went to the window and stood looking through its small open space at the bare earth beyond the hut. A few slight, sketchy trees, and the broken earth and scattered mounds of old dumps were thrown up under a fall of clear, exquisite sky, of a blue so pure, so fine, that there was balm just in looking at it. For a moment she plunged into it, the tragic chaos of her mind obliterated.
With new courage from that moment's absorption of peaceful beauty, she went back to the wheel, the resolution which had taken her to it twice before that morning urging her. She sat down and began to work, took up the piece of opal she had scratched, examined it closely, wondering how the flaw could be rectified, if it could be rectified.
The wheel, set going, raised its droning whirr. Sophie held her mind to the stone. She was pleased after a while. "That's all right," she told herself. "If only you don't think.... If only you keep working like this and don't think of Arthur."
It was Arthur she did not want to think of. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!" the wheel mocked. "Arthur! Arthur! Arthur!"
Her head went into her hands. She was moaning and crying again. "Don't let me think of him any more ... if only I needn't think of him any more...."
She began to work again. There was nothing to do but persist in trying to work, she thought. If she kept to it, perhaps in the end the routine would take her; she would become absorbed in the mechanism of what she was doing.
A shadow was thrown before her. In the mirror Sophie saw that John Armitage was standing in the doorway. Her feet ceased to work the treadles of the cutting-wheel; her hands fell to her lap; she waited for him to come into the room. He walked past her to the window, and stood with his back to it, facing her. Her eyes went to him. She let him take what impression he might from her face, her defences were down; vaguely, perhaps, she hoped he would read something of her mind in her face, that he would need no explanation of what she had no words to express.
There had been a smile of faint cynicism in his eyes as he looked towards her; it evaporated as she surrendered to the inquisition of his gaze.
"Well?" he inquired gravely.
"Well?" she replied as gravely.
They studied each other quietly.
John Armitage had changed very little since she had first seen him. His clean-shaven face was harder, a little more firmly set perhaps; the indecision had gone from it; it had lost some of its amiable mobility. He looked much more a man of the world he was living in—a business man, whose intelligence and energies had been trained in its service—but his eyes still had their subtle knowledge and sympathy, his individuality the attraction it had first had for her.
He was wearing the loose, well-cut tweeds he travelled in, and had taken off his hat. It lay on the window-sill beside him, and Sophie saw that there was more silver in his hair where it was brushed back from his ears than there used to be. His eyes surveyed her as if she were written in an argot or dialect which puzzled him; his hands drifted and moved before her as he smoked a cigarette. His hands emphasised the difference between John Lincoln Armitage and men of the Ridge. Sophie thought of Potch's hands, and of Michael's, and the smile Michael might have had for Armitage's hands curved her lips.
Armitage, taking that smile for a lessening of the tension of her mood, said:
"You'd much better put on your bonnet and shawl, and come home with me, Sophie. We can be married en route, or in Sydney if you like.... You know how pleased the old man'll be. And, as for me——"
Sophie's gaze swept past him, fretted lines deepening on her forehead.
Armitage threw away his cigarette, abandoning his assumption of familiar friendliness with the action, and went to her side. Sophie rose to meet him.
"Look here, Sophie," he said, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes, "let's have done with all this neurotic rot.... You're the only woman in the world for me. I don't know why you left me. I don't care.... Come home ... let's get married ... and see whether we can't make a better thing of it...."
Sophie had turned her eyes from his.
"When I've said that before, you wouldn't have anything to do with it," he continued. "You had a notion I was saying it because I ought—thought I had to, or the old man had talked me into it.... It wasn't true even then. I came here to say it ... so that you would believe I—want it, and I want you—more than anything on earth, Sophie."
There was no response, only an overshadowing of troubled thought in Sophie's face.
"Is there anything love or money can give you, girl, that I'm not eager to give you?" Armitage demanded. "What is it you want?... Do you know what you want?"
Sophie did not reply, and her silence exasperated him.
Taking her face in his hands, Armitage scrutinised it as though he must read there what her silence held from him.
He realised how wan and weary-looking it was. Shadows beneath her eyes fell far down her cheeks, her lips lay together with a new, strange sternness. But he could not think of that yet. His male egoism could only consider its own situation, fight imperiously in its own defence.
"You want something I can't give you?"
His eyes held her for the fraction of a second; then, the pain of knowledge gripping him, his hands fell from her face. He turned away.
"Which is it ... Potch or—the other?" He spoke with cruel bitterness. "It's always a case of 'which' with you—isn't it?"
"That's just it," Sophie said.
He glanced at her, surprised to hear a note of the same bitterness in her voice.
"I didn't mean that, Sophie," he said. "You know I didn't."
She smiled.
"It's true all the same."
"Tell me"—he turned to her—"I wish you would. You never have—why you left New York ... and gave up singing ... everything there, and came here."
Sophie dropped into her chair again.
"But you know."
"Who could know anything of you, Sophie?"
She moved the stones on the bench absent-mindedly. At length she said:
"You remember our big row about Adler, when I was going to the supper on his yacht?"
Armitage exclaimed with a gesture of protest.
"I know," Sophie said, "you were angry ... you didn't mean what you said. But you were right all the same. You said I had let the life I was leading go to my head—that I was utterly demoralised by it.... I was angry; but it was true. You know the people I was going about with...."
"I did my best to get you away from them," Armitage said.
Sophie nodded. "But I hadn't had enough then ... of the beautiful places and things I found myself in the midst of ... and of all the admiration that came my way. What a queer crowd they were—Kalin, that Greek boy who was singing with me inEurydice, Ina Barres, the Countess, Mrs. Youille-Bailey, Adler, and the rest of them.... They seemed to have run the gamut of all natural experiences and to be interested only in what was unnatural, bizarre, macabre.... Adler in that crowd was almost a relief. I liked his—honest Rabelaisianism, if you like.... I hadn't the slightest intention of more than amusing myself with him ... but he, evidently, did not intend to be merely a source of amusement to me. The supper on the yacht.... I kept my head for a while, not long, and then——"
"Then?" Armitage queried.
"That's why I came home," Sophie said. "I was so sick with the shock and shame of it all ... so sick and ashamed I couldn't sing any more. I wouldn't. My voice died.... I deserved what happened. I'd been playing for it ... taking the wine, the music, Adler's love-making ... and expecting to escape the taint of it all.... Afterwards I saw where I was going ... what that life was making of me...."
"I don't know how you came to have anything to do with such a rotten lot," Armitage cried, sweating under a white heat of rage.
"Oh, they're just people of means and leisure who like to patronise successful young dancers and singers for their own amusement," Sophie said.
"Because you fell in with a set of ultraæsthetics and degenerates, is no reason to suppose all our people of means and leisure are like them," Armitage declared hotly.
"I don't," Sophie said; "what I felt, when I began to think about it, was that they were just the natural consequences of all the easy, luxurious living I'd seen—the extreme of the pole if you like. I saw the other when I went to live in a slum settlement in Chicago."
"You did?" Armitage exclaimed incredulously.
"When I got over the shock of—my awakening," she went on slowly, "I began to remember things Michael had said. That's why I went to Chicago ... and worked in a clothing factory for a while.... I saw there why Adler's a millionaire, and heard from girls in a Youille-Bailey-M'Gill factory why Connie Youille-Bailey has money to burn...."
"Old Youille-Bailey had fingers in a dozen pies, and he left her all he'd got," Armitage said.
"But people down in the district where most of their money is made are living like bugs under a rotten log," Sophie exclaimed wearily. "They're made to live like that ... in order that people like William P. Adler and Mrs. Youille-Bailey ... may live as they do."
Armitage's expression of mild cynicism yielded to one of concerned attentiveness. But he was concerned with the bearing on Sophie of what she had to say, and not at all with its relation to conditions of existence.
"After all, life only goes on by its interests," she went on musingly; "and Mrs. Youille-Bailey's not altogether to blame for what she is. When people are bored, they've got to get interest or die; and if faculties which ought to be spent in useful or creative work aren't spent in that work, they find outlet in the silly energies a selfish and artificial life breeds...."
"I admit," Armitage said, trying to veer her thoughts from the abstract to the personal issue, "that you went the pace. I couldn't keep up with it—not with Adler and his mob! But there's no need to go back to that sort of life. We could live as quietly as you like."
Sophie shook her head. "I want to live here," she said. "I want to work with my hands ... feel myself in the swim of the world's life ... going with the great stream; and I want to help Michael here."
Armitage sat back against the window-sill regarding her steadily.
"If I could help you to do a great deal for the Ridge," he said; "if I were to settle here and spend all the money I've got in developing this place.—There's nothing innately immoral about a water-supply or electric power, I suppose, or in giving people decent houses to live in. And it would mean that for Fallen Star, if the scheme I have in mind is put into action. And if it is ... and I build a house here and were to live here most of my time ... would you marry me then, Sophie?"
Sophie gazed at him, her eyes widening to a scarcely believable vision.
"Do you mean you'd give up all your money to do that for the Ridge?" she asked.
"Not quite that," he replied. "But the scheme would work out like that. I mean, it would provide more comfort and convenience for everybody on the Ridge—a more assured means of livelihood."
"You don't mean to buy up the mines?"
"Just that," he said.
"But the men wouldn't agree...."
"I don't know so much about that. It would depend on a few——"
"Michael would never consent."
"As a matter of fact"—John Armitage returned Sophie's gaze tranquilly—"I know something about Michael—some information came into my hands recently, although I've always vaguely suspected it—which will make his consent much more likely than you would have imagined.... If it does not, giving the information I hold to men of the Ridge will so destroy their faith and confidence in Michael that what he may say or do will not matter."
Sophie's bewilderment and dismay constrained him. Then he continued:
"You see, quite apart from you, my dear, it has always been a sort of dream of mine—ambition, if you like—to make a going concern of this place—to do for Fallen Star what other men I know have done for no-count, out-of-the-way towns and countries where natural resources or possibilities of investment warranted it.... I've talked the thing over with the old man, and with Andy M'Intosh, an old friend of mine, who is one of the ablest engineers in the States.... He's willing to throw in his lot with me.... Roughly, we've drawn up plans for conservation of flood waters and winter rains, which will alter the whole character of this country.... The old man at first was opposed—said the miners would never stand it; but since we've been out with the Ridge men, he's changed his mind rather. I mean, that when he knew some of the men would be willing to stand by us—and I have means of knowing they would—he was ready to agree. And when I told him Michael might be reckoned a traitor to his own creed——"
"It's not true," Sophie cried, her faith afire. "It couldn't be! ... If everybody in the world told me, I wouldn't believe it!"
Armitage took a cigarette-case from his vest pocket, opened it, and selected a cigarette.
"I'm not asking you to believe me," he said. "I'm only explaining the position to you because you're concerned in it. And for God's sake don't let us be melodramatic about it, Sophie. I'm not a villain. I don't feel in the least like one. This is entirely a business affair.... I see my way to a profitable investment—incidentally fulfilment of a scheme I've been working out for a good many years.
"Michael would oppose the syndicate for all he's worth if it weren't for this trump card of mine," Armitage went on. "He's got a Utopian dream about the place.... I see it as an up-to-date mining town, with all the advantages which science and money can bring to the development of its resources. His dream against mine—that's what it amounts to.... Well, it's a fair thing, isn't it, if I know that Michael is false to the things he says he stands for—and he stands in the way of my scheme—to let the men know he's false? ... They will fall away from the ideas he stands for as they will from Michael; two or three may take the ideas sans Michael ... but they will be in the minority.... The way will be clear for reorganisation then."
Not for an instant did Sophie believe that Michael had been a traitor to his own creed—false to the things he stood for, as John Armitage said,—although she thought he may have done something to give Armitage reason for thinking so.
"I'll see Michael to-morrow, and have it out with him," John Armitage said. "I shall tell him what I know ... and also my plans. If he will work with me——"
Sophie looked up, her smile glimmering.
"If he will work with me," Armitage repeated, knowing she realised all that would mean in the way of surrender for Michael, "nothing need be said which will undermine Michael's influence with men of the Ridge. I know he can make things a great deal easier by using his influence with them—by bending their thoughts in the direction of my proposition, suggesting that, after all, they have given their system a trial and it has not worked out as satisfactorily as might have been expected.... I'll make all the concessions possible, you may be sure—give it a profit-sharing basis even, so that the transaction won't look like the thing they are prejudiced against. But if Michael refuses...."
"He will...."
"I am going to ask the men to meet me in the hall, at the end of the month, to lay before them a proposition for the more effective working of the mines. I shall put my proposition before them, and if Michael refuses to work with me, I shall be forced to give them proofs of his unworthiness of their respect...."
"They won't believe you."
"There will be the proofs, and Michael will not—he cannot—deny them."
"You'll tell him what you are going to do?"
"Certainly."
Sophie realised how far Armitage was from understanding the religious intensity and simplicity with which Ridge folk worked for the way of life they believed to be the right one, and what the break-up of that belief would mean to those who had served it in the unpretentious, unprotesting fashion of honest, downright people. To him the Ridge stood for messy sentimentalism, Utopian idealism. And there was money in the place: there was money to be made by putting money into it—by working the mines and prospecting the country as the men without capital could not.
John Armitage was ready to admit—Sophie had heard him admitting in controversy—that the Fallen Star mines which the miners themselves controlled were as well worked and as well managed within their means as any he had ever come across; that the miners themselves were a sober and industrious crowd. What capital could do for them and for the Fallen Star community by way of increasing its output and furthering its activities was what he saw. And the only security he could have for putting his capital into working the mines was ownership of them. Ownership would give him the right to organise the workers, and to claim interest for his investment from their toil, or the product of their toil.
The Ridge declaration of independence had made it clear that people of Fallen Star did not want increased output, the comforts and conveniences which capital could give them, unless they were provided from the common fund of the community. Ultimately, it was hoped the common fund would provide them, but until it did Ridge men had announced their willingness to do without improvements for the sake of being masters of their own mines. If it was a question of barter, they were for the pride and dignity of being free men and doing without the comforts and conveniences of modern life. Sophie felt sure Armitage underestimated the feeling of the majority of men of the Ridge toward the Ridge idea, and that most of them would stand by it, even if for some mysterious reason Michael lost status with them. But she was dismayed at the test the strength of that feeling was to be put to, and at the mysterious shame which threatened Michael. She could not believe Michael had ever done anything to merit it. Michael could never be less than Michael to her—the soul of honour, the knight without fear, against whom no reproach could be levelled.
Armitage spoke again.
"You see," he said, "you could still have all those things you spoke of, under my scheme—the long, quiet days; life that is broad and simple; the hearth; home, children—all that sort of thing ... and even time for any of the little social reform schemes you fancied...."
Sophie found herself confronted with the fundamental difference of their outlook again. He talked as if the ideas which meant so much to her and to people of the Ridge were the notions of headstrong children—whimsical and interesting notions, perhaps, but mistaken, of course. He was inclined to make every allowance for them.
"The only little social reform I'd have any time for," she murmured, "would be the overthrowing of your scheme for ownership of the mines."
John Armitage was frankly surprised to find that she held so firmly to the core of the Ridge idea, and amused by the uncompromising hostility of her attitude. Sophie herself had not thought she was so attached to the Ridge life and its purposes, until there was this suggestion of destroying them.
"Then"—he stood up suddenly—"whether I succeed or whether I don't—whether the scheme goes my way or not—won't make any difference to you—to us."
"It will make this difference," Sophie said. "I'm heart and soul in the life here, I've told you. And if you do as you say you're going to ... instead of thinking of you in the old, good, friendly way, I'll have to think of you as the enemy of all that is of most value to me."
"You mean," John Armitage cried, his voice broken by the anger and chagrin which rushed over him, "you mean you're going to take on Henty—that's what's at the back of all this."
"I mean," Sophie said steadily, her eyes clear green and cool in his, "that I'm going to marry Potch, and if Michael and all the rest of the men of the Ridge go over to you and your scheme, we'll fight it."
"Are you there, Potch?" Sophie stood in the doorway of Michael's hut, a wavering shadow against the moonlight behind her.
Michael looked up. He was lying on the sofa under the window, a book in his hands.
"He's not here," he said.
His voice was as distant as though he were talking to a stranger. He had been trying to read, but his mind refused to concern itself with anything except the night before, and the consequences of it. His eyes had followed a trail of words; but he had been unable to take any meaning from them. Sophie! His mind hung aghast at the exclamation of her. She was the storm-centre. His thoughts moved in a whirlwind about her. He did not understand how she could have worn that dress showing her shoulders and so much of her bared breast. It had surprised, confused, and alarmed him to see Sophie looking as she did in that photograph Dawe Armitage had brought to the Ridge. The innocence and sheer joyousness of her laughter had reassured him, but, as the evening wore on, she seemed to become intoxicated with her own gaiety.
Michael had watched her dancing with vague disquiet. To him, dancing was rather a matter of concern to keep step and to avoid knocking against anyone—a serious business. He did not get any particular pleasure out of it; and Sophie's delight in rhythmic movement and giving of her whole being to a waltz, amazed him. When Armitage came, her manner had changed. It had lost some of its abstract joyousness. It was as if she were playing up to him.... She had been much more of his world than of the world of the Ridge; had displayed a thousand little airs and superficial graces, all the gay, light manner of that other world. When she was dancing with Arthur Henty, Michael had seen the sudden drooping and overcasting of her gaiety. He thought she was tired, and that Potch should take her home. The old gossip about Arthur Henty had faded from his memory; not the faintest recollection of it occurred to him as he had seen Sophie and Arthur Henty dancing together.
Then Sophie's cry, eerie and shrill in the night air, had reached him. He had seen Potch and Arthur Henty at grips. He had not imagined that such fury could exist in Potch. Other men had come. They dragged Potch away from Henty.... Henty had fallen.... Potch would have killed him if they had not dragged him away.... Henty was carried in an unconscious condition to Newton's. Armitage had taken Sophie home. Michael went with Potch.
Michael did not know exactly what had occurred. He could only imagine.... Sophie had been behaving in that gay, light manner of the other world: he had seen her at it all the evening. Potch had not understood, he believed; it had goaded him to a state of mind in which he was not responsible for what he did.
Sophie was conscious of Michael's aloofness from her as she stood in the doorway; it wavered as his eyes held and communed with hers. The night before he had not been able to realise that the girl in the black dress, which had seemed to him almost indecent, was Sophie. He kept seeing her in her everyday white cotton frock—as she sat at work at her cutting-wheel, or went about the hut—and now that she stood before him in white again, he could scarcely believe that the black dress and happenings of the ball were not an hallucination. But there was a prayer in her eyes which came of the night before. She would not have looked at him so if there had been no night before; her lips would not have quivered in that way, as if she were sorry and would like to explain, but could not.
Potch had staggered home beside Michael, swaying and muttering as though he were drunk. But he was not drunk, except with rage and grief, Michael knew. He had lain on his bunk like a log all night, muttering and groaning. Michael had sat in a chair in the next room, trying to understand the madness which had overwhelmed Potch.
In the morning, he realised that work and the normal order of their working days were the only things to restore Potch's mental balance. He roused him earlier than usual.
"We'd better get down and clear out some of the mullock," he said. "The gouges are fair choked up. There'll be no doing anything if we don't get a move on with it."
Potch had stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then he got up, changed his clothes, and they had gone down to the mine together. His face was swollen and discoloured, his lip broken, one eye almost hidden beneath a purple and blue swelling which had risen on the upper part of his left cheek. He had dragged his hat over his face, and walked with his head down; they had not spoken all the morning. Potch had swung his pick stolidly. All day his eyes had not met Michael's as they usually did, in that glance of love and comradeship which united them whenever their eyes met.
In the afternoon, when they stopped work and went to the top of the mine, Potch had said:
"Think I'll clear out—go away somewhere for awhile, Michael."
From his attitude, averted head and drooping shoulders, Michael got the unendurable agony of his mind, his pain and shame. He did not reply, and Potch had walked away from him striking out in a south-easterly direction across the Ridge. Michael had not seen him since then. And now it was early evening, the moon up and silvering the plains with the light of her young crescent.
"He says—Potch says ... he's going away," Michael said to Sophie.
Her eyes widened. Her thought would not utter itself, but Michael knew it. Potch leaving the Ridge! The Ridge without Potch! It was impossible. Their minds would not accept the idea.
Sophie turned away from the door. Her white dress fluttered in the moonlight. Michael could see it moving across the bare, shingly ground at the back of the hut. He thought that Sophie was going to look for Potch. He had not told her the direction in which Potch had gone. He wondered whether she would find him. She might know where to look for him. Michael wondered whether Potch haunted particular places as he himself did, when his soul was out of its depths in misery.
Instinctively Sophie went to the old playground she and Potch had made on the slope of the Ridge behind the Old Town.
She found him lying there, stretched across the shingly earth. He lay so still that she thought he might be asleep. Then she went to him and knelt beside him.
"Potch!" she said.
He moved as if to escape her touch. The desolation of spirit which had brought him to the earth like that overwhelmed Sophie. She crouched beside him.
"Potch," she cried. "Potch!"
Potch did not move or reply.
"I can't live ... if you won't forgive me, Potch," Sophie said.
He stirred. "Don't talk like that," he muttered.
After a little time he sat up and turned his face to her. The dim light of-the young moon showed it swollen and discoloured, a hideous and comic mask of the tragedy which consumed him.
"That's the sort of man I am," Potch said, his voice harsh and unsteady. "I didn't know ... I didn't know I was like that. It came over me all of a sudden, when I saw you and—him. I didn't know any more until Michael was talking to me. I wouldn't've done it if I'd known, Sophie.... But I didn't know.... I just saw him—and you, and I had to put out the sight of it ... I had to get it out of my eyes... what I saw.... That's all I know. Michael says I didn't kill him ... but I meant to ... that's what I started to do."
Sophie's face withered under her distress.
"Don't say that, Potch," she begged.
"But I do," he said. "I must.... I can't make out ... how it was ... I felt like that. I thought I'd see things like you saw them always, stand by you. Now I don't know.... I'm not to be trusted——"
"I'd trust you always, and in anything, Potch," Sophie said.
"You can't say that—now."
"It's now ... I want to say it more than ever," she continued. "I can't explain ... what I did ... any more than you can what you did, Potch. But I'm to blame for what you did ... and yet ... I can't see that I'm altogether to blame. I didn't want what happened—to happen ... any more than you."
She wanted to explain to Potch—to herself also. But she could not see clearly, or understand how the threads of her intentions and deeds had become so crossed and tangled. It was not easy to explain.
"You remember that ball at Warria I went to with father," she said at last. "I thought a lot of Arthur Henty then.... I thought I was in love with him. People teased me about him. They thought he was in love with me, too.... And then over there at the ball something happened that changed everything. I thought he was ashamed of me ... he didn't ask me to dance with him like he did at the Ridge balls.... He danced with other girls ... and nobody asked me to dance except Mr. Armitage, I wanted to go away from the Ridge and learn to look like those girls Arthur had danced with ... so that he would not be ashamed of me.... Afterwards I thought I'd forgotten and didn't care for him any more.... Last night he was not ashamed of me.... It was funny. I felt that the Warria people were envying me last night, and I had envied them at the other ball.... I didn't want to dance with Arthur ... but I did ... and, somehow, then—it was as if we had gone back to the time before the ball at Warria...."
A heavy, brooding silence hung between them. Sophie broke it.
"Michael says you're going away?"
"Yes," Potch replied.
Sophie shifted the pebbles on the earth about her abstractedly.
"Don't leave me, Potch," she cried, scattering the pebbles suddenly. "I don't know what will become of me if you go away.... I wanted us to get married and settle down."
Potch turned to her.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do," Sophie said, all her strength of will and spirit in the words. "I'm afraid of myself, Potch ... afraid of drifting."
Potch's arms went round her. "Sophie!" he sobbed. But even as he held her he was conscious of something in her which did not fuse with him.
"But you love him!" he said.
Sophie's eyes did not fail from his.
"I do," she said, "but I don't want to. I wish I didn't."
His hands fell from her. "Why," he asked, "why do you say you'll marry me, if you ... if——"
Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful ... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and——"
Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a thousand tender associations—their home, the quiet course their lives might have together. He loved her enough for both, he told himself.
His conscience was not clear that he should take this happiness the gods offered him, even for the moment. And yet—he could not turn from it. Sophie had said she needed him; she wanted the home they would have together; all that their life in common would mean. And by and by—he stirred to the afterthought of her "and"—she wanted the children who might come to them.... Potch knew what Sophie meant when she said that she cared for him. Whatever else happened he knew he had her tenderest affection. She kissed him familiarly and with tenderness. It was not as Maud had kissed him, with passion, a soul-dying yearning. He drove the thought off. Maud was Maud, and Sophie Sophie; Maud's most passionate kisses had never distilled the magic for him that the slightest brush of Sophie's dress or fingers had.
Sophie took his hand.
"Potch," she said, "if you love me—if you want me to marry you, let us settle the thing this way.... I want to marry you.... I want to be your loving and faithful wife.... I'll try to be.... I don't want to think of anyone but you.... You may make me forget—if we are married, and get on well together. I hope you will——"
Potch took her into his arms, an inarticulate murmur breaking his voice.
Potch had looked towards Michael's hut before he went into his own, next evening. There was no light in its window, and he supposed that Michael had gone to bed. In the morning, as they were walking to the mine, Potch said:
"He's back; did you know?"
Michael guessed whom Potch was speaking of. "Saw him ... as I was walking out along the Warria road yesterday afternoon," he said; "and then at Newton's.... He looks ill."
Potch did not reply. They did not speak of Charley again, and yet as they worked they thought of no one else, and of nothing but the difficulties his coming would bring into their lives. For Potch, his father's return meant the revival of an old shame. He had been accepted on his merits by the Ridge; he had made people forget he was Charley Heathfield's son, and now Charley was back Potch had no hope of anything but the old situation where his father was concerned, the old drag and the old fear. The thought of it was more disconcerting than ever, now too, because Sophie would have to share the sort of atmosphere Charley would put about them.
And Michael was dulled by the weight of the fate which threatened him. Every day the consciousness of it weighed more heavily. He wondered whether his mind would remain clear and steady enough to interpret his resolve. For him, Charley's coming, and the enmity he had gauged in his glance the night before, were last straws of misfortune.
John Armitage had put the proposition he outlined for Sophie, to Michael, the night before he left for Sydney. He had told Michael what he knew, and what he suspected in connection with Rouminof's opals. Michael had neither defended himself nor denied Armitage's accusation. He had ignored any reference to Paul's opals, and had made his position of uncompromising hostility to Armitage's proposition clear from the outset. There had not been a shadow of hesitation in his decision to oppose the Armitages' scheme for buying up the mines. At whatever cost, he believed he had no choice but to stand by the ideas and ideals on which the life of the Ridge was established and had grown.
John Armitage, because of his preconceived notion of the guilty conscience Michael was suffering from, was disappointed that the action of Michael's mind had been as direct to the poles of his faith as it had been. He realised Sophie was right: Michael would not go back on the Ridge or the Ridge code; but the Ridge might go back on him. Armitage assured himself he had a good hand to play, and he explained his position quite frankly to Michael. If Michael would not work with him, he, John Armitage, must work against Michael. He would prefer not to do so, he said. He described to several men, separately, what the proposals of the Armitage Syndicate amounted to, in order that they might think over, weigh, and discuss them. He was going down to Sydney for a few weeks, and when he came back he would call a meeting and lay his proposition before the men. He hoped by then Michael would have reconsidered his decision. If he had not, Armitage made it clear that, much as he would regret having to, he would nevertheless do all in his power to destroy any influence Michael might have with men of the Ridge which might militate against their acceptance of the scheme for reorganisation of the mines he had to lay before them. Michael understood what that meant. John Armitage would accuse him of having stolen Paul's opals, and he would have to answer the accusation before men of the Ridge.
His mind hovered about the thought of Maud Johnson.
He could not conceive how John Armitage had come to the knowledge he possessed, unless Maud, whom he was aware Armitage had bought stones from in America, had not showed or sold them to him. But Armitage believed Michael still had, and was hoarding the stones. That was the strange part of it all. How could Armitage declare he had one of the stones, and yet believe Michael was holding the rest? Unless Maud had taken that one stone from the table the night she came to see Potch? Michael could not remember having seen the stone after she went. He could not remember having put it back in the box. It only just occurred to him she might only have taken the stone that night. Jun had probably recognised the stone, and she had told Armitage what Jun had said about it. Jun might have gone to the hut for the rest of the stones, but then Maud would not have told Armitage they were still on the Ridge. Maud would be sure to know if Jun had got the stones on his own account, Michael thought.
His brain went over and over again what John Armitage had said, querying, exclaiming, explaining, and enlarging on fragments of their talk. Armitage declared he had evidence to prove Michael Brady had stolen Rouminof's stones. He might have proof that he had had possession of them for a while, Michael believed. But if Armitage was under the impression he still had the opals, his information was incomplete at least, and Michael treasured a vague hope that the proof which he might adduce, would be as faulty.
But more important than the bringing home to him of responsibility for the lost opals, and the "unmasking" to eyes of men of the Ridge which Armitage had promised him, was the bearing it would have on the proposition which was to be put before them. Michael realised that there was a good deal of truth in what Armitage had said. A section of the younger miners, men who had settled on the new rushes, and one or two of the older men who had grown away from the Ridge idea, would probably be willing enough to fall in with and work under Armitage's scheme. George, Watty, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant, Cash Wilson, and most of the older men were against it, and some of the younger ones, too; but Archie and Ted Cross were inclined to waver, although they had always been staunch for the Ridge principle, and with them was a substantial following from the Punti, Three Mile, and other rushes.
A disintegrating influence was at work, Michael recognised. It had been active for some time. Since Potch's finding of the big stone, scarcely any stone worth speaking of had been unearthed on the fields, and that meant long store accounts, and anxious and hard times for most of the gougers.
The settlement had weathered seasons of dearth, and had existed on the merest traces of precious opal before; but this one had lasted longer, and had tried everybody's patience and capacity for endurance to the last degree. Murmurs of the need for money to prospect the field and open up new workings were heard. Criticisms of the ideas which would keep out money and money-owners who might be persuaded to invest their money to prospect and open up new workings on Fallen Star, crept into the murmurings, and had been circulating for some months. Bat M'Ginnis, a tall, lean, herring-gutted Irishman, with big ears, pointed like a bat's, was generally considered author of the criticisms and abettor of the murmurings. He had sunk on the Coolebah and drifted to the Punti rush soon after. On the Punti, it was known, he had expatiated on the need for business men and business methods to run the mines and make the most of the resources of the Ridge.
M'Ginnis was a good agent for Armitage, before Armitage's proposition was heard of. Michael wondered now whether he was perhaps an agent of Armitage's, and had been sent to the Ridge to prepare the way for John Armitage's scheme. When he came to think of it, Michael remembered he had heard men exclaim that Bat never seemed short of money himself, although if he had to live on what his claim produced he would have been as hard up as most of them. Michael wondered whether Charley's home-coming was a coincidence likewise, or whether Armitage had laid his plans more carefully than might have been imagined.
Michael saw no way out for himself. He could not accept Armitage's bribe of silence as to his share in the disappearance of Paul's opals, in order to urge men of the Ridge to agree to the Armitages' proposition for buying up the mines. If he could have, he realised, he would carry perhaps a majority of men of the Ridge with him; and those he cared most for would stand by the Ridge idea whether he deserted it or not, he believed. He would only fall in their esteem; they would despise him; and he would despise himself if he betrayed the idea on which he had staked so much, and the realisation of which he would have died to preserve. But there was no question of betraying the Ridge idea, or of being false to the teaching of his whole life. He was not even tempted by the terms Armitage offered for his co-operation. He was glad to think no terms Armitage could offer would tempt him from his allegiance to the principle which was the corner-stone of life on the Ridge.
But he asked himself what the men would think of him when they heard Armitage's story; what Sophie would think, and Potch. He turned in agony from the thought that Sophie and Potch would believe him guilty of the thing he seemed to be guilty of. Anything seemed easier to bear than the loss of their love and faith, and the faith of men of the Ridge he had worked with and been in close sympathy with for so long—Watty and George, Pony-Fence Inglewood, Bill Grant and Cash Wilson. Would he have to leave the Ridge when they knew? Would they cold-shoulder him out of their lives? His imagination had centred for so long about the thing he had done that the guilt of it was magnified out of all proportion to the degree of his culpability. He did not accuse himself in the initial act. He had done what seemed to him the only thing to do, in good faith; the opals had nothing to do with it. He did not understand yet how they had got an ascendancy over him; how when he had intended just to look at them, to see they were well packed, he had been seduced into that trance of worshipful admiration.
Why he had not returned the stones to Paul as soon as Sophie had left the Ridge, Michael could not entirely explain to himself. He went over and over the excuses he had made to himself, seeing in them evidence of the subtle witchery the stones had exercised over him. But as soon as he was aware of the danger of delay, he tried to assure himself, and the appearance it must have, he had determined to get rid of the stones.
Would the men believe he had wanted to give the stones to Paul—even that he had done what he had done for the reasons he would put before them? George and Watty and some of the others would believe him—but the rest? Michael could not hope that the majority would believe his story. They would want to know if at first he had kept the stones to prevent Sophie leaving the Ridge, why he had not given them to Paul as soon as she had gone. Michael knew he could only explain to them as he had to himself. He had intended to; he had delayed doing so; and then, when he went to find the stones to give them to Paul, they were no longer where he had left them. It was a thin story—a poor explanation. But that was the truth of the situation as far as he knew it. There was nothing more to be said or thought on the subject. He put it away from him with an impulse of impatience, desperate and weary.
When Potch returned from the mine that afternoon; he went into Michael's hut before going home. Michael himself he had seen strike out westwards in the direction of the swamp soon after he came above ground. Potch expected to see his father where he was; he had seen him so often before on Michael's sofa under the window. Charley glanced up from the newspaper he was reading as Potch came into the room.
"Well, son," he said, "the prodigal father's returned, and quite ready for a fatted calf."
Potch stood staring at him. Light from the window bathed the thin, yellow face on the faded cushions of Michael's couch, limning the sharp nose with its curiously scenting expression, all the hungry, shrewd femininity and weakness of the face, and the smile of triumphant malice which glided in and out of the eyes. Michael was right, Potch realised; Charley was ill; but he had no pity for the man who lay there and smiled like that.
"You can't stay here," he said. "Michael's coming."
Charley smiled imperturbably.
"Can't I?" he said. "You see. Besides ... I want to see Michael. That's what I'm here for."
Potch growled inarticulately. He went to the hearth, gathered the half-burnt sticks together to make a fire. He would have given anything to get Charley out of the hut before Michael returned; but he did not know how to manage it. If Charley thought he wanted him to go, nothing would move him, Potch knew.
"What do you want to see Michael about?" he asked.
"Nice, affectionate son you are," Charley murmured. "Suppose you know you are my son—and heir?"
"Worse luck," Potch muttered, watching the flame he had kindled over the dry chips and sticks.
"You might've done worse," Charley replied, watching his son with a slight, derisive smile. "I might've done worse myself in the way of a son to support me in my old age."
"I'm not going to do that."
Charley laughed. "Aren't you?" he queried. "You might be very glad to—on terms I could suggest. And you're a fine, husky chap to do it, Potch, my lad.... They tell me you've married Rouminof's girl, and she's chucked the singing racket. Rum go, that! She could sing, too.... People I know told me they'd seen her in America in some revue stunt there, and she was just the thing. Went the pace a bit, eh? Oh, well, there's nothing like matrimony to sober a woman down—take the devil out of her."
Potch's resentment surged; but before he could utter it, his father's pleasantries were flipping lightly, cynically.
"By the way, I saw a friend of yours in Sydney couple of months ago. Oh, well, several perhaps. Might have been a year.... Maud! There's a fine woman, Potch. And she told me she was awfully gone on you once. Eh, what?... And now you're a married man. And to think of my becoming a grandfather. Help!"
Potch sprang to his feet, goaded to fury by the jeering, amiable voice.
"Shut up," he yelled, "shut up, or——"
The doorway darkened. Potch saw Charley's face light with an expression of curious satisfaction and triumph. He turned and discovered that Michael was standing in the doorway. Irresolute and flinching, he stood there gazing at Charley, a strange expression of fear and loathing in his eyes.
"You can clear out now, son," Charley remarked, putting an emphasis on the "son" calculated to enrage Potch. "I want to talk to Michael."
Potch looked at Michael. It was his intention to stand by Michael if, and for as long as, Michael needed him.
"It's all right, Potch," Michael said; but his eyes did not go to Potch's as they usually did. There was a strange, grave quality of aloofness about Michael. Potch hesitated, studying his face; but Michael dismissed him with a glance, and Potch went out of the hut.
The sky was like a great shallow basin turned over the plains. No tree or rising ground broke the perfect circle of its fall over the earth; only in the distance, on the edge of the bowl, a fringe of trees drew a blurred line between earth and sky.
Potch and Sophie lay out on the plains, on their backs in the dried herbage, watching the sunset—the play of light on the wide sweep of the sky—silently, as if they were listening to great music.
They had been married some days before in Budda township, and were living in Potch's hut.
Sophie and Potch had often wandered over the plains in the evening and watched the sunset; but never before had they come to the sense of understanding and completeness they attained this evening. The days had been long and peaceful since they were living together, an anodyne to Sophie, soothing all the restless turmoil of her soul and body. She had ceased to desire happiness; she was grateful for this lull of all her powers of sense and thought, and eager to love and to serve Potch as he did her. She believed her life had found its haven; that if she kept in tune with the fundamentals of love and service, she could maintain a consciousness of peace and rightness with the world which would make living something more than a weary longing for death.
All the days were holy days to Potch since Sophie and he had been married. He looked at her as if she were Undine making toast and tea, cooking, washing dishes, or sweeping and tidying up his hut. He followed her every movement with a worshipful, reverent gaze.
Soon after Sophie's return, Potch had gone to live in the hut which he and his father had occupied in the old days. He had put a veranda of boughs to the front of it, and had washed the roof and walls with carbide to lessen the heat in summer. He had turned out the rooms and put up shelves, trying to furnish the place a little for Sophie; but she had not wanted it altered at all. She had cleared the cupboard, put clean paper on the shelves, and had arranged Potch's books on them herself.
Sophie loved the austerity of her home when she went to live in it—its earthen floor, bare walls, unvarnished furniture, the couch under the window, the curtains of unbleached linen she had hemstitched herself, the row of shining syrup-tins in which she kept tea, sugar, and coffee on shelves near the fireplace, the big earthenware jar for flowers, and a couple of jugs which Snow-Shoes had made for her and baked in an oven of his own contrivance. She had a quiet satisfaction in doing all the cleaning up and tidying to keep her house in the order she liked, so that her eyes could rest on any part of it and take pleasure from the sense of beauty in ordinary and commonplace things.
But the hut was small and its arrangements so simple that an hour or two after Potch had gone to the mines Sophie went to the shed into which he had moved her cutting-wheel, and busied herself facing and polishing the stones which some of the men brought her as usual. She knew her work pleased them. She was as skilful at showing a stone to all its advantage as any cutter on the Ridge, and nothing delighted her more than when Watty or George or one of the Crosses exclaimed with satisfaction at a piece of work she had done.
In the afternoon sometimes she went down to the New Town to talk with Maggie Grant, Mrs. Woods, or Martha. She was understudying Martha, too, when anyone was sick in the town, and needed nursing or a helping hand. Martha had her hands full when Mrs. Ted Cross's fourth baby was born. There were five babies in the township at the time, and Sophie went to Crosses' every morning to fix up the house and look after the children and Mrs. Ted before Martha arrived. When Martha found the Crosses' washing gaily flapping on the line one morning towards midday, she protested in her own vigorous fashion.
"I ain't going to have you blackleggin' on me, Mrs. Heathfield," she said. "And what's more, if I find you doin' it again, I'll tell Potch. It's all right for me to be goin' round doing other people's odd jobs; but I don't hold with you doin' 'em—so there! If folks wants babies, well, it's their look-out—and mine. But I don't see what you've got to do with it, coming round makin' your hands look anyhow."
"You just sit down, and I'll make you a cup of tea, Mother M'Cready," Sophie said by way of reply, and gently pushed Martha into the most comfortable chair in the room. "You look done up ... and you're going on to see Ella and Mrs. Inglewood, I suppose."
Martha nodded. She watched Sophie with troubled, loving eyes. She was really very tired, and glad to be able to sit and rest for a moment. It gave her a welling tenderness and gratitude to have Sophie concerned for her tiredness, and fuss about her like this. Martha was so accustomed to caring for everybody on the Ridge, and she was so strong, good-natured, and vigorous, very few people thought of her ever being weary or dispirited. But as she bustled into the kitchen, blocking out the light, Sophie saw that Martha's fat, jolly face under the shadow of her sun-hat, was not as happy-looking as usual. Sophie guessed the weariness which had overtaken her, and that she was "poorly" or "out-of-sorts," as Martha would have said herself, if she could have been made to admit such a thing.
"It's all very well to give folks a helping hand," Martha continued, "but I'm not going to have you doin' their washin' while I'm about."
Sophie put a cup of tea and slice of bread and syrup down beside her.
"There! You drink that cup of tea, and tell me what you think of it," she said.
"But, Sophie," Martha protested. "It's stone silly for you to be doing things like Cross's washing. You're not strong enough, and I won't have it."
"Won't you?"
Sophie put her arms around Martha's neck from behind her chair. She pressed her face against the creases of Martha's sunburnt neck and kissed it.
Martha gurgled happily under the pressure of Sophie's young arms, the childish impulse of that hugging. She turned her face back and kissed Sophie.
"Oh, my lamb! My dearie lamb!" she murmured.
She recognised Sophie's need for common and kindly service to the people of the Ridge. She knew what that service had meant to her at one time, and was willing to let Sophie share her ministry so long as her health was equal to it.
Mrs. Watty, and the women who took their views from her, thought that Sophie was giving herself a great deal of unnecessary and laborious work as a sort of penance. They had withdrawn all countenance from her after the disaster of the ball, although they regarded her marriage to Potch as an endeavour to reinstate herself in their good graces. Mrs. Watty had been scandalised by the dress she had worn at the ball, by the way she had danced, and her behaviour generally. But Sophie was quite unconcerned as to what Mrs. Watty and her friends thought: she did not go out of her way either to avoid or placate them.
When she went to the Crosses' to take charge of the children and look after the house while Mrs. Cross was ill, the gossips had exclaimed together. And when it was known that Sophie had taken on herself odds and ends of sewing for other women of the township who had large families and rather more to do than they knew how to get through, they declared that they did not know what to make of it, or of Sophie and her moods and misdemeanours.
Potch heard of what Sophie was doing from the people she helped. When he came home in the evening she was nearly always in the kitchen getting tea for him; but if she was not, she came in soon after he got home, and he knew that one of these little tasks she had undertaken for people in the town had kept her longer than she expected. Usually he hung in the doorway, waiting for her to come and meet him, to hold up her face to be kissed, eyes sweet with affection and the tender familiarity of their association. Those offered kisses of hers were the treasure of these dream-like days to Potch.
He had always loved Sophie. He had thought that his love had reached the limit of loving a long time before, but since they had been married and were living, day after day, together, he had become no more than a loving of her. He went about his work as usual, performed all the other functions of his life mechanically, scrupulously, but it was always with a subconscious knowledge of Sophie and of their life together.
"You're tired," he said one night when Sophie lifted her face to his, his eyes strained on her with infinite concern.
"Dear Potch," she said; and she had put back the hair from his forehead with a gesture tender and pitiful.
Her glance and gesture were always tender and pitiful. Potch realised it. He knew that he worshipped and she accepted his worship. He was content—not quite content, perhaps—but he assured himself it was enough for him that it should be so.
He had never taken Sophie in his arms without an overwhelming sense of reverence and worship. There was no passionate need, no spontaneity, no leaping flame in the caresses she had given him, in that kiss of the evening, and the slight, girlish gestures of affection and tenderness she gave as she passed him at meals, or when they were reading or walking together.
As they lay on the plains this evening they had been thinking of their life together. They had talked of it in low, brooding murmurs. The immensity of the silence soaked into them. They had taken into themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was time to go home, Sophie sat up.
"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet the whole world is within us...."
"Yes," Potch said, and the silence streamed between them again.
"I'll never forget," Sophie continued dreamily, "hearing a negro talk once about what they call 'the negro problem' in America. He was an ordinary thick-set, curly-haired, coarse-featured negro to look at—Booker Washington—but he talked some of the clearest, straightest stuff I've ever heard.
"One thing he said has always stayed in my mind: 'Keep close to the earth.' It was not good, he said, to walk on asphalted paths too long.... He was describing what Western civilisation had done for the negroes—a primitive people.... Anyone could see how they had degenerated under it. And it's always seemed to me that what was true for the negroes ... is true for us, too.... It's good to keep close to the earth."
"Keep close to the earth?" Potch mused.
"In tune with the fundamentals, all the great things of loving and working—our eyes on the stars."
"The stars?"
"The objects of our faith and service."
They were silent again for a while. Then Sophie said:
"You ..." she hesitated, remembering what she had told John Armitage—"you and I would fight for the Ridge principle, even if all the others accepted Mr. Armitage's offer, wouldn't we, Potch?"
"Of course," Potch said.
"And Michael?"
"Michael?" His eyes questioned her in the dim light because of the hesitation in her question. "Why do you say that? Michael would be the last man on earth to have anything to do with Armitage's scheme."
"He comes back to put the proposition to the men definitely in a few days, doesn't he?" Sophie asked.
"Yes," Potch said.
"Have you talked to Michael about it?"