"It's what I wore, meself, white muslin, when I went to me first ball," Mrs. George Woods said, standing off to admire the frock of white muslin Sophie had on, and which she had just fastened up for her.
Sophie was admiring her reflection in Mrs. Woods' mirror, a square of glass which gave no more than her head and shoulders in brilliant sketchy outlines. She moved, trying to see more of herself and the new dress. Maggie Grant, who had helped with the making of the dress, was also gazing at her and at it admiringly.
When it was a question of Sophie having a dress for the ball at Warria, Mrs. Grant had spoken to Michael about it.
"Sophie's got to have a decent dress to go to the station, Michael," she said. "I'm not going to have people over there laughing at her, and she's had nothing but her mother's old dresses, cut down—for goodness knows how long."
"Will you get it?" Michael inquired anxiously.
Mrs. Grant nodded.
"Bessie Woods and I were thinking it might be pinspot muslin, with a bit of lace on it," she said. "We could get the stuff at Chassy Robb's and make it up between us."
"Right!" Michael replied, looking immensely relieved to have the difficulty disposed of. "Tell Chassy to put it on my book."
So the pinspot muslin and some cheap creamy lace had been bought. Mrs. Woods and Sophie settled on a style they found illustrating an advertisement in a newspaper and which resembled a dress one of the Henty girls had worn at the race ball the year before. Maggie Grant had done all the plain sewing and Mrs. Woods the fixing and finishing touches. They had consulted over and over again about sleeves and the length of the skirt. The frock had been fitted at least a dozen times. They had wondered where they would put the lace as a bit of trimming, and had decided for frills at the elbows and a tucker in the V-shaped neck of the blouse. They marvelled at their audacity, but felt sure they had done the right thing when they cut the neck rather lower than they would have for a dress to be worn in the daytime.
Martha M'Cready, insisting on having a finger in the pie, had pressed the dress when it was finished, and she had washed and ironed Mrs. George Woods' best embroidered petticoat for Sophie to wear with it.
And now Sophie was dressing in Mrs. Woods' bedroom because it had a bigger mirror than her own room, and the three women were watching her, giving little tugs and pats to the dress now and then, measuring it with appraising glances of conscious pride in their workmanship, and joy at Sophie's appearance in it. Sophie, her face flushed, her eyes shining, turned to them every now and then, begging to know whether the skirt was not a little full here, or a little flat there; and they pinched and pulled, until it was thought nothing further could be done to improve it.
Sophie was anxious about her hair. She had put it in plaits the night before, and had kept it in them all the morning. Her hair had never been in plaits before, and she had not liked the look of it when she saw it all crisp and frizzy, like Mirry Flail's. She had used a wet brush to get the crinkle out, but there was still a suggestion of it in the heavy dark wave of her hair when she had done it up as usual.
"Your hair looks very nice—don't worry any more about it, Sophie," Martha M'Cready had said.
"My mother used to say there was nothing nicer for a young girl to wear than white muslin," Mrs. Woods remarked, "and that sash of your mother's looks real nice as a belt, Sophie."
The sash, a broad piece of blue and green silk shot like a piece of poor opal, Sophie had found in a box of her mother's, and it was wound round her waist as a belt and tied in a bow at the side.
"Turn round and let me see if the skirt's quite the same length all round, Sophie," Mrs. Grant commanded.
"Yes, Maggie," Bessie Woods exclaimed complacently. "It's quite right."
Sophie glanced at herself in the glass again. Mrs. Woods had lent her a pair of opal ear-rings, and Maggie Grant the one piece of finery she possessed—a round piece of very fine black opal set in a rim of gold, which Bill had given her when first she came to the Ridge.
Sophie had on for the first time, too, a necklace she had made herself of stones the miners had given her at different times. There was a piece of opal for almost every man on the fields, and she had strung them together, with a beautiful knobby Potch had made her a present of for her eighteenth birthday, a few days before, in the centre.
Just as she had finished dressing, Mrs. Watty Frost called in the doorway: "Anybody at home?"
"Come in," Mrs. George Woods replied.
Mrs. Watty walked into the bedroom. She had a long slender parcel wrapped in brown paper in her hand, but nobody noticed it at the time.
"My!" she exclaimed, staring at Sophie; "we are fine, aren't we?"
Sophie caught up her long, cotton gloves and pirouetted in happy excitement.
"Aren't we?" she cried gaily. "Just look at my gloves! Did ever you see such lovely long gloves, Mrs. Watty? And don't my ear-rings look nice? But it does feel funny wearing ear-rings, doesn't it? I want to be shaking my head all the time to make them joggle!"
She shook her head. The blue and green fires of the stones leapt and sparkled. Her eyes seemed to catch fire from them. The women exchanged admiring glances.
"Where's my handkerchief?" Sophie cried. "Father's late, isn't he? I'm sure we'll be late! How long will it take to drive over to Warria?—An hour? Goodness! And it'll be almost time for the dance to begin then! Oh, don't my shoes look nice, Maggie?"
She looked down at her feet in the white cotton stockings and white canvas shoes, with ankle straps, which Maggie Grant had sent into Budda for. The hem of her skirt came just to her ankles. She played the new shoes in and out from under it in little dancing steps, and the women laughed at her, happy in her happiness.
"But you haven't got a fan, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said.
"A fan?" Sophie's eyes widened.
"You should oughter have a fan. In my young days it wasn't considered decent to go to a ball without a fan," Mrs. Watty remarked grimly.
"Oh!" Sophie looked from one to the other of her advisers.
Mrs. George Woods was just going to say that it was a long time since Mrs. Watty's young days, when Mrs. Watty took the brown paper from the long, thin parcel she was carrying.
"I thought most likely you wouldn't have one," she said, "so I brought this over."
She unfurled an old-fashioned, long-handled, sandal-wood fan, with birds and flowers painted on the brown satin screen, and a little row of feathers along the top. Mrs. George Woods and Mrs. Grant exchanged glances that Mrs. Watty should pander to the vanity of an occasion.
"Mrs. Watty!" Sophie took the fan with a little cry of delight.
"My, aren't you a grown-up young lady now, Sophie?" Mrs. Woods exclaimed, as Sophie unfurled the fan.
"But mind you take care of it, Sophie," Mrs. Watty said, stiffening against the relaxing atmosphere of goodwill and excitement. "Watty got it for me last trip he made to sea, before we was married, and I set a good deal of store by it."
"Oh, I'll be ever so careful!" Sophie declared. She opened the fan. "Isn't it pretty?"
Dropping into a chair, she murmured: "May I—have this dance with you, Miss Rouminof?" And casting a shy upward glance over her fan, as if answering for herself, "I don't mind if I do!"
Martha and Mrs. Woods laughed heartily, recognising Arthur Henty's way of talking in the voice Sophie had imitated.
"That's the way to do it, Sophie," Mrs. Woods said; "only you shouldn't say, 'Don't mind if I do,' but, 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure.'"
"It's a pleasure, I'm sure," Sophie mimed.
"Is she going to wear the dress over?" Mrs. Watty asked anxiously.
"Yes," Maggie Grant said. "Bessie's lending her a dust-coat. I don't think it'll get crushed very much. You see, they won't arrive until it's nearly time for the dance to begin, and we thought it'd be better for us to help her to get fixed up. Everybody'll be so busy over at Warria—and we thought she mightn't be able to get anybody to do up her dress for her."
"That's right," Mrs. Watty said.
There was a rattle of wheels on the rough shingle near the hut.
"Here's your father, Sophie," Martha called.
"And Michael and Potch are in the kitchen wanting to have a look at you before you go, Sophie," Maggie Grant said.
"Oh!" Sophie took the coat Mrs. Woods was lending her, and went out to the kitchen with it on her arm.
Michael and Potch were there. They stared at her. But her radiant face, the shining eyes, and the little smile which hovered on her mouth, held their gaze more than the new white dress standing out in slight, stiff folds all round her. The vision of her—incomparable youth and loveliness she was to Michael—gripped him so that a moisture of love and reverence dimmed his eyes.... And Potch just stared and stared at her.
Paul was bawling from the buggy outside:
"Are you ready, Sophie? Sophie, are you ready?"
Mrs. Woods held the dust-coat. Very carefully Sophie edged herself into it, and wrapped its nondescript buff-coloured folds over her dress. Then she put the pink woollen scarf Martha had brought over her head, and went out to the buggy. Her father was sitting aloft on the front seat, driving Sam Nancarrow's old roan mare, and looking spruce and well turned out in a new baggy suit which Michael had arranged for him to get in order to look more of a credit to Sophie at the ball.
"See you take good care of her, Paul," Mrs. Grant called after him as they drove off.
The drive across the plains seemed interminable to Sophie.
Paul hummed and talked of the music he was going to play as they went along. He called to Sam Nancarrow's old nag, quite pleased to be having a horse to drive as though it belonged to him, and gossiped genially about this and other balls he had been to.
Sophie kept remembering what Mrs. Grant and Mrs. George Woods had said, and how she had looked in those glimpses of herself in the mirror. "I do look nice! I do look nice!" she assured herself.
It was wonderful to be going to a ball at Warria. She had never thought she could look as she did in this new frock, with her necklace, and Mrs. Woods' ear-rings, and that old sash of her mother's. She was a little anxious, but very happy and excited.
She remembered how Arthur had looked at her when she met him on the road or in the paddock sometimes, She only had on her old black dress then. He must like her in this new dress, she thought. Her mind had a subtle recoil from the too great joy of thinking how much more he must like her in this pretty, new, white frock; she sat in a delicious trance of happiness. Her father hummed and gossiped. All the stars came out. The sky was a wonderful blue where it met the horizon, and darkened to indigo as it climbed to the zenith.
When they drove from the shadow of the coolebahs which formed an avenue from the gate of the home paddock to the veranda of the homestead, Ted Burton, the station book-keeper, a porky, good-natured little man, with light, twinkling eyes, whose face looked as if it had been sand-papered, came out to meet them.
"There you are, Rouminof!" he said. "Glad to see you. We were beginning to be afraid you weren't coming!"
Sophie got down from the buggy, and her father drove off to the stables. Passing the veranda steps with Mr. Burton, she glanced up. Several men were on the steps. Her eyes went instinctively to Arthur Henty, who was standing at the foot of them, a yellow puppy fawning at his feet. He did not look up as Sophie passed, pretending to be occupied with the pup. But in that fleeting glance her brain had photographed the bruise on his forehead where it had caught a veranda post when Bully Bryant, having regained his feet, hit out blindly.
Potch had told Sophie what happened—she had made him find out in order to tell her. Arthur and Bully had wanted to fight, but after the first exchange of blows the men had held them back. Bully was mad drunk, they said, and would have hammered Henty to pulp. And the next evening Bully came to Sophie, heavy with shame, and ready to cry for what he had done.
"If anybody'd 've told me I'd treat you like that, Sophie, I'd 've killed him," he said. "I'd 've killed him.... You know how I feel about you—you know how we all feel about you—and for me to have served you like that—me that'd do anything in the world for you.... But it's no good trying to say any more. It's no good tryin' to explain. It's got me down...."
He sat with his head in his hands for a while, so ashamed and miserable, that Sophie could not retain her wrath and resentment against him. It was like having a brother in trouble and doing nothing to help him, to see Bully like this.
"It's all right, Bully," she said. "I know ... you weren't yourself ... and you didn't mean it."
He started to his feet and came to stand beside her. Sophie put her hand in his; he gripped it hard, unable to say anything. Then, when he could control his voice, he said:
"I went over to see Mr. Henty this morning ... and told him if anybody else 'd done what I did, I'd 've done what he did."
Potch had said the men expected Bully would want to fight the thing out when he was sober, and it was a big thing for him to have done what he had. The punishing power of Bully's fists was well known, and he had taken this way of punishing himself. Sophie understood that, She was grateful and reconciled to him.
"I'm glad, Bully," she said. "Let's forget all about it."
So the matter ended. But it all came back to her as she saw the broken red line on Arthur Henty's forehead.
She did not know that because of it she was an object of interest to the crowd on the veranda. News of Arthur Henty's bout with Bully Bryant had been very soon noised over the whole countryside. Most of the men who came to the ball from Langi-Eumina and other stations had gleaned varied and highly-coloured versions, and Arthur had been chaffed and twitted until he was sore and ashamed of the whole incident. He could not understand himself—the rush of rage, instinctive and unreasoning, which had overwhelmed him when he hit out at Bully.
His mother protested that it was a shame to give Arthur such a bad time for what was, after all, merely the chivalrous impulse of any decent young man when a girl was treated lightly in his presence; but the men and the girls who were staying at the station laughed and teased all the more for the explanation. They pretended he was a very heroic and quixotic young man, and asked about Sophie—whether she was pretty, and whether it was true she sang well. They redoubled their efforts, and goaded him to a state of sulky silence, when they knew she was coming to the ball.
Arthur Henty had been conscious for some time of an undercurrent within him drawing him to Sophie. He was afraid of, and resented it. He had not thought of loving her, or marrying her. He had gone to the tank paddock in the afternoons he knew she would be there, or had looked for her on the Warria road when she had been to the cemetery, with a sensation of drifting pleasantly. He had never before felt as he did when he was with Sophie, that life was a clear and simple thing—pleasant, too; that nothing could be better than walking over the plains through the limpid twilight. He had liked to see the fires of opal run in her eyes when she looked at him; to note the black lines on the outer rim of their coloured orbs; the black lashes set in silken skin of purest ivory; the curve of her chin and neck; the lines of her mouth, and the way she walked; all these things he had loved. But he did not want to have the responsibility of loving Sophie: he could not contemplate what wanting to marry her would mean in tempests and turmoil with his family.
He had thought sometimes of a mediæval knight wandering through flowering fields with the girl on a horse beside him, in connection with Sophie and himself. A reproduction of the well-known picture of the knight and the girl hung in his mother's sitting-room. She had cut it out of a magazine, and framed it, because it pleased her; and beneath the picture, in fine print, Arthur had often read:
"I met a lady in the meads,Full beautiful—a fairy's child;Her hair was long, her foot was light,And her eyes were wild."I set her on my pacing steed,And nothing else saw all day long;For sideways would she lean, and singA faery's song."
As a small boy Arthur had been attracted by the picture, and his mother had told him its story, and had read him Keats' poem. He had read it ever so many times since then himself, and after he met Sophie in the tank paddock that afternoon she had ridden home on his horse, some of the verses haunted him with the thought of her. One day when they were sitting by the track and she had been singing to him, he had made a daisy chain and thrown it over her, murmuring sheepishly, in a caprice of tenderness:
"I made a garland for her head,And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;She looked at me as she did loveAnd made sweet moan."
Sophie had asked about the poem. She had wanted to hear more, and he had repeated as many verses as he could remember. When he had finished, she had looked at him "as she did love" indeed, with eyes of sweet confidence, yet withdrawing from him a little in shy and happy confusion that he should think of her as anyone like the lady of the meads, who was "full beautiful—a fairy's child."
But Arthur did not want to love her; he did not want to marry her. He did not want to have rows with his father, differences with his mother. The affair at Newton's had shown him where he was going.
Sophie was "a fairy's child," he decided. "Her hair as long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild"; but he did not want to be "a wretched wight, alone and palely loitering" on her account; he did not want to marry her. He would close her eyes with "kisses four," he told himself, smiling at the precision of the knight of the chronicle; "kisses four"—no more—and be done with the business.
Meanwhile, he wished Sophie were not coming to the ball. He would have given anything to prevent her coming; but he could do nothing.
He had thought of escaping from the ball by going to the out-station with the men; but his mother, foreseeing something of his intention, had given him so much to do at the homestead for her, that he could not go away. When the buggy with Sophie and her father drove up to the veranda, there was a chorus of suppressed exclamations among the assembled guests.
"Here she is, Art!"
"Buck up, old chap! None but the brave, etc."
Sophie did not hear the undertone of laughter and raillery which greeted her arrival. She was quite unconscious that the people on the veranda were interested in her at all, as she walked across the courtyard listening to Mr. Burton's amiable commonplaces.
When Mr. Burton left her in a small room with chintz-covered chairs and dressing-table, Sophie took off her old dust-coat and the pink scarf she had tied over her hair. The mirror was longer than Mrs. Woods'. Her dress looked very crushed when she saw it reflected. She tried to shake out the creases. Her hair, too, was flat, and had blown into stringy ends. A shade of disappointment dimmed the brightness of her mood as she realised she was not looking nearly as nice as she had when she left the Ridge.
Someone said: "May I come in?" and Polly Henty and another girl entered the room.
Polly Henty had just left school. She was a round-faced, jolly-looking girl of about Sophie's own age, and the girl with her was not much older, pretty and sprightly, an inch or so taller than Polly, and slight. She had grey eyes, and a fluff of dry-grass coloured hair about a small, sharp-featured, fresh-complexioned face, neatly powdered.
Sophie knew something was wrong with her clothes the moment she encountered the girls' curious and patronising glances as they came into the room. Their appearance, too, took the skin from her vanity. Polly had on a frock of silky white crêpe, with no lace or decoration of any kind, except a small gold locket and chain which she was wearing. But her dress fell round her in graceful folds, showing her small, well-rounded bust and hips, and she had on silk stockings and white satin slippers. The other girl's frock was of pale pink, misty material, so thin that her shoulders and arms showed through it as though there were nothing on them. She had pinned a pink rose in her hair, too, so that its petals just lay against the nape of her neck. Sophie thought she had never seen anyone look so nice. She had never dreamed of such a dress.
"Oh, Miss Rouminof," Polly said; "mother sent me to look for you. We're just ready to start, and your father wants you to turn over his music for him."
Sophie stood up, conscious that her dress was nothing like as pretty as she had thought it. It stood out stiffly about her: the starched petticoat crackled as she moved. She knew the lace should not have been on her sleeves; that her shoes were of canvas, and creaked as she walked; that her cotton gloves, and even the heavy, old-fashioned fan she was carrying, were not what they ought to have been.
"Miss Chelmsford—Miss Rouminof," Polly said, looking from Sophie to the girl in the pink dress.
Sophie said: "How do you do?" gravely, and put out her hand.
"Oh!... How do you do?" Miss Chelmsford responded hurriedly, and as if just remembering she, too, had a hand.
Sophie went with Polly and her friend to the veranda, which was screened in on one side with hessian to form a ball-room. Behind the hessian the walls were draped with flags, sheaves of paper daisies, and bundles of Darling pea. Red paper lanterns swung from the roof, threw a rosy glare over the floor which had been polished until it shone like burnished metal.
Polly Henty took Sophie to the piano where Mrs. Henty was playing the opening bars of a waltz. Paul beside her, his violin under his arm, stood looking with eager interest over the room where men and girls were chatting in little groups.
Mrs. Henty nodded and smiled to Sophie. Her father signalled to her, and she went to a seat near him.
Holding her hands over the piano, Mrs. Henty looked to Paul to see if he were ready. He lifted his violin, tucked it under his chin, drew his bow, and the piano and violin broke gaily, irregularly, uncertainly, at first, into a measure which set and kept the couples swaying round the edge of the ball-room.
Sophie watched them at first, dazed and interested. Under the glow of the lanterns, the figures of the dancers looked strange and solemn. Some of the dancers were moving without any conscious effort, just skimming the floor like swallows; others were working hard as they danced. Tom Henderson held Elizabeth Henty as if he never intended to let go of her, and worked her arm up and down as if it were a semaphore.
Sophie had always admired Arthur's eldest sister, and she thought Elizabeth the most beautiful-looking person she had ever seen this evening. And that pink dress—how pretty it was! What had Polly said her name was—the girl who wore it? Phyllis ... Phyllis Chelmsford.... Sophie watched the dress flutter among the dancers some time before she noticed Miss Chelmsford was dancing with Arthur Henty.
She watched the couples revolving, dazed, and thinking vaguely about them, noticing how pretty feet looked in satin slippers with high, curved heels, wondering why some men danced with stiff knees and others as if their knees had funny-bones like their elbows. The red light from the lanterns made the whole scene look unreal; she felt as if she were dreaming.
"Sophie!" her father cried sharply.
She turned his page. Her eyes wandered to Mrs. Henty, who sat with her back to her. Sophie contemplated the bow of her back in its black frock with Spanish lace scarf across it, the outline of the black lace on the wrinkled skin of Mrs. Henty's neck, the loose, upward wave of her crisp white hair, glinting silverly where the light caught it. Her face was cobwebbed with wrinkles, but her features remained delicate and fine as sculpturings in ancient ivory. Her eyes were bright: the sparkle of youth still leapt in them. Her eyes had a slight smile of secret sympathy and amusement as they flew over the roomful of people dancing.
Sophie watched dance after dance, while the music jingled and jangled.
Presently John Armitage appeared in the doorway with Nina Henty. Sophie heard him apologising to Mrs. Henty for being late, and explaining that he had stayed in the back-country a few days longer than usual for the express purpose of coming to the ball.
Mrs. Henty replied that it was "better late than never," and a pleasure to see Mr. Armitage at any time; and then he and Nina joined the throng of the dancers.
Sophie drew her chair further back so that the piano screened her. The disappointment and stillness which had descended upon her since she came into the room tightened and settled. She had thought Arthur would surely come to ask her for this dance; but when the waltz began she saw he was dancing again with Phyllis Chelmsford. She sat very still, holding herself so that she should not feel a pain which was hovering in the background of her consciousness and waiting to grip her.
It was different, this sitting on a chair by herself and watching other people dance, to anything that had ever happened to her. She had always been the centre of Ridge balls, courted and made a lot of from the moment she came into the hall. Even Arthur Henty had had to shoulder his way if he wanted a waltz with her.
As the crowd brushed and swirled round the room, it became all blurred to Sophie. The last rag of that mood of tremulous joyousness which had invested her as she drove over the plains to the ball with her father, left her. She sat very still; she could not see for a moment. The waltz broke because she did not hear her father when he called her to turn the page of his music; he knocked over his stand trying to turn the page himself, and exclaimed angrily when Sophie did not jump to pick it up for him.
After that she watched his book of music with an odd calm. She scarcely looked at the dancers, praying for the time to come when the ball would end and she could go home. The hours were heavy and dead; she thought it would never be midnight or morning again. She was conscious of her crushed dress and cotton gloves, and Mrs. Watty's big, old-fashioned fan; but after the first shock of disappointment she was not ashamed of them. She sat very straight and still in the midst of her finery; but she put the fan on the chair behind her, and took off her gloves in order to turn over the pages of her father's music more expertly.
She knew now she was not going to dance. She understood she had not been invited as a guest like everybody else; but as the fiddler's little girl to turn over his music for him. And when she was not watching the music, she sat down in her chair beyond the piano, hoping no one would see or speak to her.
Mrs. Henty spoke to her occasionally. Once she called pleasantly:
"Come here and let me look at your opals, child."
Sophie went to her, and Mrs. Henty lifted the necklace.
"What splendid stones!" she said.
Sophie looked into those bright eyes, very like Arthur's, with the same shifting sands in them, but alien to her, she thought.
"Yes," she said quietly. She did not feel inclined to tell Mrs. Henty about the stones.
Mrs. Henty admired the ear-rings, and looked appreciatively at the big flat stone in Mrs. Grant's brooch. Sophie coloured under her attention. She wished she had not worn the opals that did not belong to her.
Looking into Sophie's face, Mrs. Henty became aware of its sensitive, unformed beauty, a beauty of expression rather than features, and of a something indefinable which cast a glamour over the girl. She had been considerably disturbed by Arthur's share in the brawl at Newton's. It was so unlike Arthur to show fight of any sort. If it had not happened after she had sent the invitation, Mrs. Henty would not have spoken of Sophie when she asked Rouminof to play at the ball. As it was, she was not sorry to see what manner of girl she was.
But as Sophie held a small, quiet face before her, with chin slightly uplifted, and eyes steady and measuring, a little disdainful despite their pain and surprise, Mrs. Henty realised it was a shame to have brought this girl to the ball, in order to inspect her; to discover what Arthur thought of her, and not in order that she might have a good time like other girls. After all, she was young and used to having a good time. Mrs. Henty heard enough of Ridge gossip to know any man on the mines thought the world of Sophie Rouminof. She had seen them eager to dance with her at race balls. It was not fair to have side-tracked her about Arthur, Mrs. Henty confessed to herself. The fine, clear innocence which looked from Sophie's eyes accused her. It made her feel mean and cruel. She was disturbed by a sensation of guilt.
Paul was fidgeting at the first bars of the next dance, and, knowing the long programme to go through, Mrs. Henty's hand fell from Sophie's necklace, and Sophie went back to her chair.
But Mrs. Henty's thoughts wandered on the themes she had raised. She played absent-mindedly, her fingers skipping and skirling on the notes. She was realising what she had done. She had not meant to be cruel, she protested: she had just wished to know how Arthur felt about the girl. If he had wanted to dance with her, there was nothing to prevent him.
Arthur was dancing again with Phyllis, she noticed. She was a little annoyed. He was overdoing the thing. And Phyllis was a minx! That was the fourth time she had slipped and Arthur had held her up, the rose in her hair brushing his cheek.
"Mother!" Polly called. "For goodness' sake ... what are you dreaming of?"
The music had gone to the pace of Mrs. Henty's reverie until Polly called. Then Mrs. Henty splashed out her chords and marked her rhythm more briskly.
After all, Mrs. Henty concluded, if Arthur and Phyllis had taken a fancy to each, other—at last—and were getting on, she could not afford to espouse the other girl's cause. What good would it do? She wanted Arthur to marry Phyllis. His father did. Phyllis was the only daughter of old Chelmsford, of Yuina Yuina, whose cattle sales were the envy of pastoralists on both sides of the Queensland border. Phyllis's inheritance and the knowledge that the interests of Warria were allied to those of Andrew Chelmsford of Yuina, would ensure a new lease of hope and opportunity for Warria.... Whereas it would be worse than awful if Arthur contemplated anything like marriage with this girl from the Ridge.
Mrs. Henty's conscience was uneasy all the same. When the dance was ended, she called Arthur to her.
"For goodness' sake, dear, ask that child to dance with you," she said when he came to her. "She's been sitting here all the evening by herself."
"I was just going to," Sophie heard Arthur say.
He came towards her.
"Will you have the next dance with me, Sophie?" he asked.
She did not look at him.
"No," she said.
"Oh, I say——" He sat down beside her. "I've had to dance with these people who are staying with us," he added awkwardly.
Her eyes turned to him, all the stormy fires of opal running in them.
"You don'thaveto dance with me," she said.
He got up and stood indecisively a moment.
"Of course not," he said, "but I want to."
"I don't want to dance with you," Sophie said.
He turned away from her, went down the ball-room, and out through the doorway in the hessian wall. Everyone had gone to supper. Mrs. Henty had left the piano. Paul himself had gone to have some refreshment which was being served in the dining-room across the courtyard. From the square, washed with the silver radiance of moonlight which she could see through the open space in the hessian, came a tinkle of glasses and spoons, fragments of talking and laughter. Sophie heard a clear, girlish voice cry: "Oh, Arthur!"
She clenched her hands; she thought that she was going to cry; but stiffening against the inclination, she sat fighting down the pain which was gripping her, and longed for the time to come when she could go home and be out in the dark, alone.
John Armitage entered the ball-room as if looking for someone. Glancing in the direction of the piano, he saw Sophie.
"There you are, Sophie!" he exclaimed heartily. "And, would you believe it, I've only just discovered you were here."
He sat down beside her, and talked lightly, kindly, for a moment. But Sophie was in no mood for talking. John Armitage had guessed something of her crisis when he came into the room and found her sitting by herself. He had seen the affair at Newton's, and knew enough of Fallen Star gossip to understand how Sophie would resent Arthur Henty's treatment of her. He could see she was a sorely hurt little creature, holding herself together, but throbbing with pain and anger. She could not talk; she could only think of Arthur Henty, whose voice they heard occasionally out of doors. He was more than jolly after supper. Armitage had seen him swallow nearly a glassful of raw whisky. His face had gone a ghastly white after it. Rouminof had been drinking too. He came into the room unsteadily when Mrs. Henty took her seat at the piano again; but he played better.
Armitage's eyes went to her necklace.
"What lovely stones, Sophie!" he said.
Sophie looked up. "Yes, aren't they? The men gave them to me—there's a stone for every one. This is Michael's!"—she touched each stone as she named it—"Potch gave me that, and Bully Bryant that."
Her eyes caught Armitage's with a little smile.
"It's easy to see where good stones go on the Ridge," he said. "And here am I—come hundreds of miles ... can't get anything like that piece of stuff in your brooch."
"That's Mrs. Grant's," Sophie confessed.
"And your ear-rings, Sophie!" Armitage said. "'Clare to goodness,' as my old nurse used to say, I didn't think you could look such a witch. But I always have said black opal ear-rings would make a witch of a New England spinster."
Sophie laughed. It was impossible not to respond to Mr. Armitage when he looked and smiled like that. His manner was so friendly and appreciative, Sophie was thawed and insensibly exhilarated by it.
Armitage sat talking to her. Sophie had always interested him. There was an unusual quality about her; it was like the odour some flowers have, of indescribable attraction for certain insects, to him. And it was so extraordinary, to find anyone singing arias from old-fashioned operas in this out-of-the-way part of the world.
John Lincoln Armitage had a man of the world's contempt for churlish treatment of a woman, and he was indignant that the Hentys should have permitted a girl to be so humiliated in their house. He had been paying Nina Henty some mild attention during the evening, but Sophie in distress enlisted the instinct of that famous ancestor of his in her defence. He determined to make amends as far as possible for her disappointment of the earlier part of the evening.
"May I have the next dance, Sophie?" he inquired.
Sophie glanced up at him.
"I'm not dancing," she said.
Her averted face, the quiver of her lips, confirmed him in his resolution. He took in her dress, the black opals in her ear-rings swinging against her black hair and white neck. She had never looked more attractive, he thought, than in this unlovely dress and with the opals in her ears. The music was beginning for another dance. Across the room Henty was hovering with a bevy of girls.
"Why aren't you dancing, Sophie?" John Armitage asked.
His quiet, friendly tone brought the glitter of tears to her eyes.
"No one asked me to, until the dance before supper—then I didn't want to," she said.
The dance was already in motion.
"You'll have this one with me, won't you?"
John Armitage put the question as if he were asking a favour. "Please!" he insisted.
Putting her arm on his, Armitage led Sophie among the dancers. He held her so gently and firmly that she felt as if she were dancing by a will not her own. She and he glided and flew together; they did not talk, and when
the music stopped, Mr. Armitage took her through the doorway into the moonlight with the other couples. They walked to the garden where, the orange trees were in blossom.
"Oh!" Sophie breathed, her arm still on his, and a little giddy.
The earth was steeped in purest radiance; the orange blossoms swam like stars on the dark bushes; their fragrance filled the air.
Sophie held up her face as if to drink. "Isn't it lovely?" she murmured.
A black butterfly with white etchings on his wings hovered over an orange bush they were standing near, as if bewildered by the moonlight and mistaking it for the light of a strange day.
Armitage spread his handkerchief on a wooden seat.
"I thought you'd like it," he said. "Let's sit here—I've put down my handkerchief because there's a dew, although the air seems so dry."
When the music began again Sophie got up.
"Don't let us go in yet," he begged.
"But——" she demurred.
"We'll stay here for this, and have the next dance," Armitage said.
Sophie hesitated. She wondered why Mr. Armitage was being so nice to her, understanding a little. She smiled into his eyes, dallying with the temptation. John Armitage had seen women's eyes like that before; then fall to the appeal of his own. But in Sophie's eyes he found something he had not seen very often—a will-o'the-wisp of infinite wispishness which incited him to pursue and to insist, while it eluded and flew from him.
When she danced with John Armitage again, Sophie looked up, laughed, and played her eyes and smiles for him as she had seen Phyllis Chelmsford do for Arthur. At first, shyly, she had exerted herself to please him, and Armitage had responded to her tentative efforts; but presently she found herself enjoying the game. And Armitage was so surprised at the charm she revealed as she exerted herself to please him, that he responded with an enthusiasm he had not contemplated. But their mutual success at this oldest diversion in the world, while it surprised and delighted them, did not delight their hosts. Mr. and Mrs. Henty were surprised; then frankly scandalised. Several young men asked Sophie to dance with them after she had danced with John Armitage. She thanked them, but refused, saying she did not wish to dance very much. She sat in her chair by the piano except when she was dancing with Mr. Armitage, or was in the garden with him.
"See Ed. means to do you well with a six-horse team this evening, Mr. Armitage," Peter Newton said, while Armitage was having his early meal before starting on his all-night drive into Budda.
Newton remembered afterwards that John Armitage did not seem as interested and jolly as usual. Ordinarily he was interested in everything, and cordial with everybody; but this evening he was quiet and preoccupied.
"Hardly had a word to say for himself," Peter Newton said.
Armitage had watched Ed. bring the old bone-shaking shandrydan he called a coach up to the hotel, and put a couple of young horses into it. He had a colt on the wheel he was breaking-in, and a sturdy old dark bay beside him, a pair of fine rusty bays ahead of them, and a sorrel, and chestnut youngster in the lead. He had got old Olsen and two men on the hotel veranda to help him harness-up, and it took them all their time to get the leaders into the traces. Bags had to be thrown over the heads of the young horses before anything could be done with them, and it took three men to hold on to the team until Ed. Ventry got into his seat and gathered up the reins. Armitage put his valise on the coach and shook hands all round. He got into his seat beside Ed. and wrapped a tarpaulin lined with possum skin over his knees.
"Let her go, Olly," Ed. yelled.
The men threw off the bags they had been holding over the horses' heads. The leaders sprang out and swayed; the coach rocked to the shock; the steady old wheeler leapt forward. The colt under the whip, trying to throw himself down on the trace, leapt and kicked, but the leaders dashed forward; the coach lurched and was carried along with a rattle and clash of gear, Ed. Ventry, the reins wrapped round his hands, pulling on them, and yelling:
"I'll warm yer.... Yer lazy, wobblin' old adders—yer! I'll warm yer.... Yer wobble like a cross-cut saw.... Kim ovah! Kim ovah, there! I'll get alongside of yer! Kim ovah!"
Swaying and rocking like a ship in a stormy sea, the coach turned out of the town. Armitage thought its timbers would be strewn along the road at any moment; but the young horses, under Mr. Ventry's masterly grip, soon took the steady pace of the old roadsters; their freshness wore off, and they were going at a smart, even pace by the time the Three Mile was reached.
"Seemed to have something on his mind," Ed. Ventry said afterwards. "Ordinarily, he's keen to hear all the yarns you can tell him, but that day he was dead quiet."
"'Not much doin' on the Ridge just now, Mr. Armitage,' I says.
"'No, Ed,' he says.
"'Hardly worth y'r while comin' all the way from America to get all you got this trip?'
"'No,' he says. But, by God—if I'd known what he got——"
It was an all-night trip. Ed. and Mr. Armitage had left the Ridge at six o'clock and arrived in Budda township about an hour before the morning train left for Sydney. There was just time for Armitage to breakfast at the hotel before he went off in the hotel drag to the station. The train left at half-past six. But Ed. Ventry had taken off his hat and scratched his grizzled thatch when he saw a young, baldy-faced gelding in the paddock with the other coach horses that evening.
"Could've swore I left Baldy at the Ridge," he said to the boy who looked after the stables at the Budda end of his journey.
"Thought he was there meself," the lad replied, imitating Ed.'s perplexed head-scratching.
At the Ridge, when he made his next trip, they were able to tell Mr. Ventry how the baldy-face happened to be at Budda when Ed. thought he was at Fallen Star, although Ed. heard some of the explanation from Potch and Michael a day or two later. Sophie had ridden the baldy-face into Budda the night he drove Mr. Armitage to catch the train for Sydney. No one discovered she had gone until the end of next day. Then Potch went to Michael.
"Michael," he said; "she's gone."
During the evening Paul had been heard calling Sophie. He asked Potch whether he had seen her. Potch said he had not. But it was nothing unusual for Sophie to wander off for a day on an excursion with Ella or Mirry Flail, so neither he nor Michael thought much of not having seen her all day, until Paul remarked querulously to Potch that he did not know where Sophie was. Looking into her room Potch saw her bed had not been slept in, although the room was disordered. He went up to the town, to Mrs. Newton and to the Flails', to ask whether they had seen anything of Sophie. Mirry Flail said she had seen her on one of the coach-stable horses, riding out towards the Three Mile the evening before. Potch knew instinctively that Sophie had gone away from the moment Paul had spoken to him. She had lived away from him during the last few months; but watching her with always anxious, devout eyes, he had known more of her than anyone else.
Lying full stretch on his sofa, Michael was reading when Potch came into the hut. His stricken face communicated the seriousness of his news. Michael had no reason to ask who the "she" Potch spoke of was: there was only one woman for whom Potch would look like that. But Michael's mind was paralysed by the shock of the thing Potch had said. He could neither stir nor speak.
"I'm riding into Budda, to find out if she went down by the train," Potch said. "I think she did, Michael. She's been talking about going to Sydney ... a good deal lately.... She was asking me about it—day before yesterday ... but I never thought—I never thought she wanted to go so soon ... and that she'd go like this. But I think she has gone.... And she was afraid to tell us—to let you know.... She said you'd made up your mind you didn't want her to go ... she'd heard her mother tell you not to let her go, and if ever she was going she wouldn't tell you...."
Potch's explanation, broken and incoherent as it was, gave Michael's thought and feeling time to reassert themselves.
He said: "See if Chassy can lend me his pony, and I'll come with you, Potch."
They rode into Budda that night, and inquiry from the station-master gave them the information they sought. A girl in a black frock had taken a second-class ticket for Sydney. He did not notice very much what she was like. She had come to the window by herself; she had no luggage; he had seen her later sitting in a corner of a second-class compartment by herself. The boy, a stranger to the district, who had clipped her ticket, said she was crying when he asked for her ticket. He had asked why she was crying. She had said she was going away, and she did not like going away from the back-country. She was going away—to study singing, she said, but would be coming back some day.
Michael determined to go to Sydney by the morning train to try to find Sophie. He went to Ed. Ventry and borrowed five pounds from him.
"That explains how the baldy-face got here," Ed. said.
Michael nodded. He could not talk about Sophie. Potch explained why they wanted the money as well as he could.
"It's no good trying to bring her back if she doesn't want to come, Michael," Potch had said before Michael left for Sydney.
"No," Michael agreed.
"If you could get her fixed up with somebody to stay with," Potch suggested; "and see she was all right for money ... it might be the best thing to do. I've got a bit of dough put by, Michael.... I'll send that down to you and go over to one of the stations for a while to keep us goin'—if we want more."
Michael assented.
"You might try round and see if you could find Mr. Armitage," Potch said, just before the train went. "He might have seen something of her."
"Yes," Michael replied, drearily.
Potch waited until the train left, and started back to Fallen Star in the evening.
A week later a letter came for Michael. It was in Sophie's handwriting. Potch was beside himself with anxiety and excitement. He wrote to Michael, care of an opal-buyer they were on good terms with and who might know where Michael was staying. In the bewilderment of his going, Potch had not thought to ask Michael where he would live, or where a letter would find him.
Michael came back to Fallen Star when he received the letter. He had not seen Sophie. No one he knew or had spoken to had seen anything of her after she left the train. Michael handed the letter to Potch as soon as he got back into the hut.
Sophie wrote that she had gone away because she wanted to learn to be a singer, and that she would be on her way to America when they received it. She explained that she had made up her mind to go quite suddenly, and she had not wanted Michael to know because she remembered his promise to her mother. She knew he would not let her go away from the Ridge if he could help it. She had sold her necklace, she said, and had got £100 for it, so had plenty of money. Potch and Michael were not to worry about her. She would be all right, and when she had made a name for herself as a singer, she would come home to the Ridge to see them. "Don't be angry, Michael dear," the letter ended, "with your lovingest Sophie."
Potch looked at Michael; he wondered whether the thought in his own mind had reached Michael's. But
Michael was too dazed and overwhelmed to think at all.
"There's one thing, Potch," he said; "if she's gone to America, we could write to Mr. Armitage and ask him to keep an eye on her. And," he added, "if she's gone to America ... it's just likely she may be on the same boat as Mr. Armitage, and he'd look after her."
Potch watched his face. The thought in his mind had not occurred to Michael, then, he surmised.
"He'd see she came to no harm."
"Yes," Potch said.
But he had seen John Armitage talking to Sophie on the Ridge over near Snow-Shoes' hut the afternoon after the dance at Warria. He knew Mr. Armitage had driven Sophie home after the dance, too. Paul had been too drunk to stand, much less drive. Potch had knocked off early in the mine to go across to the Three Mile that afternoon. Then it had surprised Potch to see Sophie sitting and talking to Mr. Armitage as though they were very good friends; but, beyond a vague, jealous alarm, he had not attached any importance to it until he knew Sophie had gone down to Sydney by the same train as Mr. Armitage. She had said she was going to America, too, and he was going there. Potch had lived all his days on the Ridge; he knew nothing of the world outside, and its ways, except what he had learnt from books. But an instinct where Sophie was concerned had warned him of a link between her going away and John Armitage. That meeting of theirs came to have an extraordinary significance in his mind. He had thought out the chances of Sophie's having gone with Mr. Armitage as far as he could. But Michael had not associated her going with him, it was clear. It had never occurred to him that Mr. Armitage could have anything to do with Sophie's going away. It had not occurred to the rest of the Ridge folk either.
Paul was distracted. He made as great an outcry about Sophie's going as he had about losing his stones. No one had thought he was as fond of her as he appeared to be. He wept and wailed continuously about her having gone away and left him. He went about begging for money in order to be able to go to America after Sophie; but no one would lend to him.
"You wait till Sophie's made a name for herself, Paul," everybody said, "then she'll send for you."
"Yes," he assented eagerly. "But I don't want to spend all that time here on the Ridge: I want to see something of life and the world again."
Paul got a touch of the sun during the ferment of those weeks, and then, for two or three days, Michael and Potch had their work cut out nursing him through the delirium of sun-stroke.
A week or so later the coach brought unexpected passengers—Jun Johnson and the bright-eyed girl who had gone down on the coach with him—and Jun introduced her to the boys at Newton's as his bride. He had been down in Sydney on his honeymoon, he said, that was all.
When Michael went into the bar at Newton's the same evening, he found Jun there, explaining as much to the boys.
"I know what you chaps think," he was saying when Michael entered. "You think I put up the checkmate on old Rum-Enough, Charley played. Well, you're wrong. I didn't know no more about it than you did; and the proof is—here I am. If I'd 'a' done it, d'y'r think I'd have come back? If I'd had any share in the business, d'y'r think I'd be showin' me face round here for a bit? Not much...."
Silence hung between him and the men. Jun talked through it, warming to his task with the eloquence of virtue, liking his audience and the stage he had got all to himself, as an outraged and righteously indignant man.
"I know you chaps—I know how you feel about things; and quite right, too! A man that'd go back on a mate like that—why, he's not fit to wipe your boots on. He ain't fit to be called a man; he ain't fit to be let run with the rest."
He continued impressively; "I didn't know no more about that business than any man-jack of you—no more did Mrs. Jun.... Bygones is bygones—that's my motto. But I tell you—and that's the strength of it—I didn't know no more about those stones of Rummy's than any man here. D'y' believe me?"
It was said in good earnest enough, even Watty and George had to admit. It was either the best bit of bluff they had ever listened to, or else Jun, for once in a way, was enjoying the luxury of telling the truth.
"We're all good triers here, Jun," George said, "but we're not as green as we're painted."
Jun regarded his beer meditatively; then he said:
"Look here, you chaps, suppose I put it to you straight: I ain't always been what you might call the clean potato ... but I ain't always been married, either. Well, I'm married now—married to the best little girl ever I struck...."
The idea of Jun taking married life seriously amused two or three of the men. Smiles began to go round, and broadened as he talked. That they did not please Jun was evident.
"Well, seein' I've taken on family responsibilities," he went on—"Was you smiling, Watty?"
"Me? Oh, no, Jun," the offender replied, meekly; "it was only the stummick-ache took me. It does that way sometimes. You mightn't think so, but I always look as if I was smilin' when I've got the stummick-ache."
George Woods, Pony-Fence Inglewood, and some of the others laughed, taking Watty's explanation for what it was worth. But Jun continued solemnly, playing the reformed blackguard to his own satisfaction.
"Seein' I've taken on family responsibilities, I want to run straight. I don't want my kids to think there was anything crook about their dad."
If he moved no one else, he contrived to feel deeply moved himself at the prospect of how his unborn children were going to regard him. The men who had always more or less believed in him managed to convince themselves that Jun meant what he said. George and Watty realised he had put up a good case, that he was getting at them in the only way possible.
Michael moved out of the crowd round the door towards the bar. Peter Newton put his daily ration of beer on the bar.
"'Lo, Michael," Jun said.
"'Lo, Jun," Michael said.
"Well," Jun concluded, tossing off his beer; "that's the way it is, boys. Believe me if y'r like, and if y'r don't like—lump it.
"But there's one thing more I've got to tell you," he added; "and if you find what I've been saying hard to believe, you'll find this harder: I don't believe Charley got those stones of Rummy's."
"What?"
The query was like the crack of a whip-lash. There was a restive, restless movement among the men.
"I don't believe Charley got those stones either," Jun declared. "'Got,' I said, not 'took.' All I know is, he was like a sick fish when he reached Sydney ... and sold all the opal he had with him. He was lively enough when we started out. I give you that. Maybe he took Rum-Enough's stones all right; but somebody put it over on him. I thought it might be Emmy—that yeller-haired tart, you remember, went down with us. She was a tart, and no mistake. My little girl, now—she was never ... like that! But Maud says she doesn't think so, because Emmy turned Charley out neck and crop when she found he'd got no cash. He got mighty little for the bit of stone he had with him ... I'll take my oath. He came round to borrow from me a day or two after we arrived. And he was ragin' mad about something.... If he shook the stones off Rum-Enough, it's my belief somebody shook them off of him, either in the train or here—or off of Rummy before he got them...."
Several of the men muttered and grunted their protest. But Jun held to his point, and the talk became more general. Jun asked for news of the fields: what had been done, and who was getting the stuff. Somebody said John Armitage had been up and had bought a few nice stones from the Crosses, Pony-Fence, and Bully Bryant.
"Armitage?" Jun said. "He's always a good man—gives a fair price. He bought my stones, that last lot ... gave me a hundred pounds for the big knobby. But it fair took my breath away to hear young Sophie Rouminof had gone off with him."
Michael was standing beside him before the words were well out of his mouth.
"What did you say?" he demanded.
"I'm sorry, Michael," Jun replied, after a quick, scared glance at the faces of the men about him. "But I took it for granted you all knew, of course. We saw them a good bit together down in Sydney, Maud and me, and she said she saw Sophie on theZealanidathe day the boat sailed. Maud was down seeing a friend off, and she saw Sophie and Mr. Armitage on board. She said—"
Michael turned heavily, and swung out of the bar.
Jun looked after him. In the faces of the men he read what a bomb his news had been among them.
"I wouldn't have said that for a lot," he said, "if I'd 've thought Michael didn't know. But, Lord, I thought he knew ... I thought you all knew."
In the days which followed, as he wandered over the plains in the late afternoon and evening, Michael tried to come to some understanding with himself of what had happened. At first he had been too overcast by the sense of loss to realise more than that Sophie had gone away. But now, beyond her going, he could see the failure of his own effort to control circumstances. He had failed; Sophie had gone; she had left the Ridge.
"God," he groaned; "with the best intentions in the world, what an awful mess we make of things!"
Michael wondered whether it would have been worse for Sophie if she had gone away with Paul when her mother died. At least, Sophie was older now and better able to take care of herself.
He blamed himself because she had gone away as she had, all the same; the failure of the Ridge to hold her as well as his own failure beat him to the earth. He had hoped Sophie would care for the things her mother had cared for. He had tried to explain them to her. But Sophie, he thought now, had more the restless temperament of her father. He had not understood her young spirit, its craving for music, laughter, admiration, and the life that could give them to her. He had thought the Ridge would be enough for her, as it had been for her mother.
Michael never thought of Mrs. Rouminof as dead. He thought of her as though she were living some distance from him, that was all. In the evening he looked up at the stars, and there was one in which she seemed to be. Always he felt as if she were looking at him when its mild radiance fell over him. And now he looked to that star as if trying to explain and beg forgiveness.
His heart was sore because Sophie had left him without a word of affection or any explanation. His fear and anxiety for her gave him no peace. He sweated in agony with them for a long time, crying to her mother, praying her to believe he had not failed in his trust through lack of desire to serve her, but through a fault of understanding. If she had been near enough to talk to, he knew he could have explained that the girl was right: neither of them had any right to interfere with the course of her life. She had to go her own way; to learn joy and sorrow for herself.
Too late Michael realised that he had done all the harm in the world by seeking to make Sophie go his own and her mother's way. He had opposed the tide of her youth and enthusiasm, instead of sympathising with it; and by so doing he had made it possible for someone else to sympathise and help her to go her own way. Opposition had forced her life into channels which he was afraid would heap sorrows upon her, whereas identification with her feeling and aspirations might have saved her the hurt and turmoil he had sought to save her.
Thought of what he had done to prevent Paul taking Sophie away haunted Michael. But, after all, he assured himself, he had not stolen from Paul. Charley had stolen from Paul, and he, Michael, was only holding Paul's opals until he could give them to Paul when his having them would not do Sophie any harm.... His having them now could not injure Sophie.... Michael decided to give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them, when the shock of what Jun had said left him. He tried not to think of that, although a consciousness of it was always with him.... But Paul was delirious with sun-stroke, he remembered; it would be foolish to give him the stones just then.... As soon as that touch of the sun had passed, Michael reflected, he would give Paul the opals and explain how he came to have them....
The summer Sophie left the Ridge was a long and dry one. Cool changes blew over, but no rain fell. The still, hot days and dust-storms continued until March.
Through the heat came the baa-ing of sheep on the plains, moving in great flocks, weary and thirsty; the blaring of cattle; the harsh crying of crows following the flocks and waiting to tear the dead flesh from the bones of spent and drought-stricken beasts. The stock routes were marked by the bleached bones of cattle and sheep which had fallen by the road, and the stench of rotting flesh blew with the hot winds and dust from the plains.
It was cooler underground than anywhere else during the hot weather. Fallen Star miners told stockmen and selectors that they had the best of it in the mines, during the heat. They went to work as soon as it was dawn, in order to get mullock cleared away and dirt-winding over before the heat of the day began.
In the morning, here and there a man was seen on the top of his dump, handkerchief under his hat, winding dirt, and emptying red sandstone, shin-cracker, and cement stone from his hide buckets over the slope of the dump. The creak of the windlass made a small, busy noise in the air. But the miner standing on the top of his hillock of white crumbled clay, moving with short, automatic jerks against the sky, or the noodlers stretched across the slopes of the dumps, turning the rubble thrown up from the shafts with a piece of wood, were the only outward sign of the busy underground world of the mines.
As a son might have, Potch had rearranged the hut and looked after Paul when Sophie had gone. He had nursed Paul through the fever and delirium of sun-stroke, and Paul's hut was kept in order as Sophie had left it. Potch swept the earthen floor and sprinkled it with water every morning; he washed any dishes Paul left, although Paul had most of his meals with Potch and Michael. Michael had seen the window of Sophie's room open sometimes; a piece of muslin on the lower half fluttering out, and once, in the springtime, he had caught a glimpse of a spray of punti—the yellow boronia Sophie was so fond of, in a jam-tin on a box cupboard near the window. Potch had prevailed on Paul to keep one or two of the goats when he sold most of them soon after Sophie went away, and Potch saw to it there was always a little milk, and some goat's-milk butter or cheese for the two huts.
People at first were surprised at Potch's care of Paul; then they regarded it as the most natural thing in the world. They believed Potch Was trying to make up to Paul for what his father had deprived him of. And after Sophie went away Paul seemed to forget Potch was the son of his old enemy. He depended on Potch, appealed to, and abused him as if he were his son, and Potch seemed quite satisfied that it should be so. He took his service very much as a matter of course, as Paul himself did.
A quiet, awkward fellow he was, Potch. For a long time nobody thought much of him. "Potch," they would say, as his father used to, "a little bit of potch!" Potch knew what was meant by that. He was Charley Heathfield's son, and could not be expected to be worth much. He had rated himself as other people rated him. He was potch, poor opal, stuff of no particular value, without any fire. And his estimate of himself was responsible for his keeping away from the boys and younger men of the Ridge. A habit of shy aloofness had grown with him, although anybody who wanted help with odd jobs knew where they could get it, and find eager and willing service. Potch would do anything for anybody with all the pleasure in the world, whether it were building a fowl-house, thatching a roof, or helping to run up a hut.
"He's the only mate worth a straw Michael's had since God knows when, 't anyrate," Watty said, after Potch had been working with Paul and Michael for some time. George and Cash agreed with him.
George and Watty and Cash had "no time," as they said themselves, for Rouminof; and Potch as a rule stayed in the shelter with Paul when Michael went over to talk with George and Watty. He was never prouder than when Michael asked him to go over to George and Watty's shelter.
At first Potch would sit on the edge of the shelter, leaning against the brushwood, the sun on his shoulder, as if unworthy to take advantage of the shelter's shade, further. For a long time he listened, saying nothing; not listening very intently, apparently, and feeding the birds with crumbs from his lunch. But Michael saw his eyes light when there was any misstatement of fact on a subject he had been reading about or knew something of.
Soon after Sophie had gone, Michael wrote to Dawe Armitage. He and the old man had always been on good terms, and Michael had a feeling of real friendliness for him. But the secret of the sympathy between them was that they were lovers of the same thing. For both, black opal had a subtle, inexplicable fascination.
As briefly as he knew how, Michael told Dawe Armitage how Sophie had left Fallen Star, and what he had heard. "It's up to you to see no harm comes to that girl," he wrote. "If it does, you can take my word for it, there's no man on this field will sell to Armitages."
Michael knew Mr. Armitage would take his word for it. He knew Dawe Armitage would realise better than Michael could tell him, that it would be useless for John Armitage to visit the field the following year. George Woods had informed Michael that, by common consent, men of the Ridge had decided not to sell to Armitage for a time; and, in order to prevent an agent thwarting their purpose, to deal only with known and rival buyers of the Armitages. Dawe Armitage, Michael guessed, would be driven to the extremity of promising almost anything to make up for what his son had done, and to overcome the differences between Armitage and Son and men of the Ridge.
When the reply came, Michael showed it to Watty and George.
"DEAR BRADY," it said, "I need hardly say your letter was a great shock to me. At first, when I taxed my son with the matter you write of, he denied all knowledge or responsibility for the young lady. I have since found she is here in New York, and have seen her. I offered to take her passage and provide for her to return to the Ridge; but she refuses to leave this city, and, I believe, is to appear in a musical comedy production at an early date. Believe me overcome by the misfortune of this episode, and only anxious to make any reparation in my power. Knowing the men of the Ridge as I do, I can understand their resentment of my son's behaviour, and that for a time, at least, business relations between this house and them cannot be on the old friendly footing. I need hardly tell you how distressing this state of affairs is to me personally, and how disastrous the cutting off of supplies is to my business interests. I can only ask that, as I will, on my part, to the best of my ability, safeguard the young, lady—whom I will regard as under my charge—you will, in recognition of our old friendship, perhaps point out to men of the Ridge that as it is not part of their justice to visit sins of the fathers upon the children, so I hope it may not be to visit sins of the children upon the fathers.
"Yours very truly,
"DAWE P. ARMITAGE."
"The old man seems fair broken up," Watty remarked.
"Depends on how Sophie gets on whether we have anything to do with Armitage and Son—again," George replied. "If she's all right ... well ... perhaps it'll be all right for them, with us. If she doesn't get on all right ... they won't neither."
"That's right," Watty muttered.
The summer months passed slowly. The country was like a desert for hundreds of miles about the Ridge in every direction. The herbage had crumbled into dust; ironstone and quartz pebbles on the long, low slopes of the Ridge glistened almost black in the light; and out on the plains, and on the roads where the pebbles were brushed aside, the dust rose in tawny and reddish clouds when a breath of wind, or the movement of man and beast stirred it. The trees, too, were almost black in the light; the sky, dim, and smoking with heat.